Mary Hartman Mary Hartman - Louise Lassers-GIRLS-largeHannah and Adam are trying to figure out how they will navigate living apart during his Broadway rehearsals. At the same time Hannah is increasingly frustrated with the work aspect of her life, or the possibility spending one’s life supporting someone else’s artistic dream. She gets fired. In the end, she screams when she discovers Marnie and Ray having sex — how did nobody know about this relationship once thought dead?

But the big moment on “Girls” for me Sunday came when Mary Hartman met Marnie Michaels.

Yes, it was Louise Lasser, the second wife of Woody Allen, and star of her own groundbreaking female led comedy comedy show — 38 years ago!  “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”  ran 325 episodes in its two seasons (by running five nights a week).

Back in front of a camera, Lasser was portraying a photographer/artist named Beadie whose show was being hung at Soo Jin’s new gallery.

Lasser looks great for 74, but says a line that embodies the general ageism in the medium: “Getting old is the pits,” Beadie says. “I hate watching television, because all the old women on it are shells, and it just hurts to be a shell.”

Marnie gushes that she studied Beadie’s work back in college, but doesn’t have enough opinions of how to hang one work to be helpful to the process. In comes Jessa, breezing in because she happens to be around, and is so opinionated (and drops the fact she’s looking for a job), that Beadie hires her in a snap to be an archivist. It’s exactly the kind of job Marnie would love to do and is probably qualified for, but the opportunity slips to the recent junkie right before her eyes.

Never mind. At least Marnie can still look forward to her duet performance and possible romance with Desi at an open mike. They do so well even those positioned to hate it — both Hannah and Elijah — turn out loving it. But then Desi’s girlfriend shows up and any hopes of a romance vanish. That’s when Marnie returns to Ray’s even though he had broken up with her (she never agreed to that, she says).

Lasser is not the only big star in the episode, as Hannah has to return to visit Broadway great Patti LuPone. Her earlier interview with her for a magazine advertorial went poorly (she didn’t talk about the anti-osteperosis drug they were pushing) so she goes back to get some quotes.

LuPone, great at poking fun at herself, welcomes her and Elijah for a revealing dinner and conversation and introduces her husband, who spent his life being her support as a college professor and gave up his own creative life as writer.

It doesn’t seem likely she talked any more about bone density, though, so Hannah is in a particularly sour mood when she returns to work and questions what they are all doing there, declaring “this is the biggest squanderization of talent I’ve ever seen.”

“Am I the only person,” she asks annoyingly, “who looks at herself as a truly authentic person?”

She is fired, but doesn’t leave before she calls it “a sweatshop factory for puns.”

That’s about it, except for a cool scene between new roommates Adam and Ray. While the former sits in a tub stewing about heeding his personal time away from Hannah, the latter is shaving, wearing a Top Gun T shirt and with a guiding picture of Buster Keaton next to the shaving mirror. What kind of bachelor pad heaven is this? One more detail: a can of Axe body spray. This is not the Ray I know (on the other hand this may also be why Marnie is jumping his bones).

Next week is the season finale! What will happen then? It would seem fitting for Adam’s play to open on Broadway, but that might be too soon. Will Hannah, free from work, become the serious writer she thinks herself as being? Don’t count on it.