There are four major events taking place here: Adam has a reading for the Broadway show he got a callback for, Jessa’s old rehab buddy Jasper (Richard E. Grant) turns up to screw with her life, everything basically keeps on sucking for Marnie, and Hannah continues to enjoy success at her advertorial job with GQ. Adam lands his part and has a little celebratory freak-out in a public bathroom afterward, something which is pretty awesome to witness. Adam typically has nothing major going on and at least pretends to not care about much of anything, so this feels like a big step forward for him. Also sort of big (because Adam kind of despises most people) is that he makes friends with one of his fellow actors in the play, Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), though he’s as of yet not too developed as a character so it’s unclear why Adam would even like him. Desi’s core function right now seems to be that he’s a new love interest for Marnie. The two of them meet right near the end of the episode, which feels like an earned bit of positivity for Marnie after the series of crushing blows she gets up to that point (not to mention the ones she’s continued to get throughout this season and the previous one). She runs into Soojin (Booth Jonathan’s assistant, played by Greta Lee, from one episode of Season 2; remember her?) who is opening her own art gallery. Following this, Ray dumps her, which makes enough sense (even if it “doesn’t make sense biologically,” as Ray notes). After all, they’re like the worst idea for a couple ever. But it does seem unfortunate that the show evidently doesn’t want to continue to dig deeper into how hilariously awful Marnie/Ray (or Marnay) could be, assuming this breakup sticks, that is. Then we’ve got Jasper, Jessa’s old (as in he’s much older than her) friend from rehab. He finds her and whisks her away from her tedious new life working at a kids’ clothing shop and back to the magical world of cocaine. This is a pretty huge development for Jessa, but still, like the majority of the episodes in Season 3, precious little of the running time is actually devoted to covering it. Jemima Kirke had to disappear partway through Season 2 as a result of her pregnancy and I wonder if she didn’t ask to have her role in the show downsized this season to make time for her new baby. But the bits that are there are pretty great. The way Jasper explains how he found Jessa’s address and threw pebbles at her window until Shoshanna poked her head out and asked “Are you there to rape me?” is incredible, as is watching Shoshanna keep up with a rambling, jumpy conversation with Jasper who’s fueled by coke, while Shosh is just being her usual self. All that brought this episode down a bit were (as usual) the moments where the sitcom dial got turned up a little too high. For example, the running gag/plot about Hannah worrying that Adam’s Broadway show is going to lead to his no longer being happy in their relationship came off as a bit labored, as though I could imagine Lena Dunham and Sarah Heyward (who wrote this episode together) picking spots throughout the script to plant reminders for the audience that this was still happening. But these are nitpicks. Overall, this was a very solid episode, though it was, like many of the episodes this season, actually mostly quite an upbeat one. And so I continue to dread the darkness of future Girls. Den of Geek Rating: 4.5 Out of 5 Stars Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!
