Just as another esteemed HBO comedy, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” ended its fourth season at a Broadway opening night, so did the third season end of “Girls” Sunday.
Adam’s debut in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” brings nearly all the “Girls” gang to the Belasco Theatre — each of them bringing their own drama.
Hannah has come to accept living apart from Adam during rehearsals so he could concentrate on the play, but she can’t stop herself from bursting into his dressing room just before curtain to unleash her own bombshell: she’d been accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop in Iowa City and is thinking of going.
Her parents are excited and encouraging the move, and she too is leaning that way (especially since she was fired last week). But it seems an odd time to drop it on Adam.
Marnie, too, can’t leave Desi alone as he prepares for opening night. She fights her way into his dressing room to give him a present — James Taylor’s pick, some sort of grail to him. She knew he admired his guitar playing “but also the honest way he lives his life.” They embrace, which leads to a kiss that would have gone straight to a sexual encounter had not the curtain been looming.
Shoshana has in many ways her most dramatic episode yet — a tour de force for actress Zosia Mamet — as she finds she can’t graduate because she failed a class, trashes her own apartment in rage, finds out Marnie had been sleeping with her ex, Ray (X-ray, see what I did there?). Then she shoves Marnie, pins her down and yells “I hate you!”
It also leads her to confront Ray during intermission, where over Peanut M&Ms she tells him she wants him back. Ray says he’s grateful for all she did to help him grow up a bit, but “we’re in different places, and we have very, very different goals.”
She starts to cry. And when she gets home, she cleans up her apartment, but when she runs across a book she throws it at a window.
Jessa doesn’t make it to the play opening, but for good reason. She’s been helping out the artist Beadie, played by Louise Lasser. Her job is archivist, but Beadie actually wants Jessa to go out and get her drugs — enough to kill her, since she’s tired of life and living in pain. Jessa refuses at first but finally agrees to assist this suicide.
But just when you think a “Girls” character is about to kill Mary Hartman, Beadie awakes from her druggy haze to declare “Call 911! I don’t want to die!”
The episode begins with a surprise run-in with Adam’s crazed sister Caroline, who we find is not only living with Laird on the ground flood of Hannah’s building, but is also pregnant with his child.
But later, it’s all about the drama at the play. Adam seems to do well in what little we see of the play (even Elijah likes it), but he thinks he did terribly, mostly because he was rattled by what Hannah had told him about Iowa.
“You’re leaving me?” he asks her.
“Adam, you’re the one that moved out of our apartment,” she answers.
Besides, she has this big idea of their both being creative types as a couple, and that everything will work out.
“I’m sick of trying to work it out,” he says. “Can’t one thing ever be easy with you?”
She chooses to leave, but their whole way forward doesn’t seem quite resolved.
Marnie thinks something definitely is going to happen with Desi, but she runs into his girlfriend Clementine in the ladies’ room. Not only are they wearing pretty much the same green dress (excuse enough to fight), but she calls Marnie out, saying she knows what she’s trying to do with her boyfriend. Before Marnie could protest, Clementine calls her “a sad pathetic mess.”
“We’re recording an album,” Marnie says.
“Not any more you’re not,” Clementine says.
Later, Clementine and Desi are seen having a fight at the opening night party and Marnie is peeking in the background with a hopeful look — maybe it will open the way for her.
But that isn’t resolved any more than Hannah and Adam’s relationship.
On that front, though, when Hannah gets home, she clutches the acceptance letter from Iowa like it’s a lifeline and smiles.
So will season four play out in the cornfields, far from Williamsburg? We can only hope.