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<em>GIRLS</em> Season 4 Finale Recap: "Home Birth"

Rebecca Fishbein

Published Mar 23, 2015

Modified Mar 23, 2015

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Rebecca Fishbein

Published Mar 23, 2015

Modified Mar 23, 2015

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The fourth season of GIRLS has been very uneven, with some standout episodes ("Sit-In," notably) and more than a few duds (rot in hell, "Ask Me My Name"). The gang left a lot hanging leading up to last night's season finale. Would Hannah and Adam reconcile? Would Desi and Marnie really put a ring on their disgusting love? Would someone give Shosh a job? Would Jessa get any lines? Luckily, we got most of that tied up in a surprisingly sweet, if not particularly profound episode that somehow managed to roll all the protagonists forward a little in a season that seemed frustratingly static. Let's dig in.

Perhaps it's best to start with Shosh, who's had a pretty tough, if fairly characteristic, first year out of school. Finally, after a series of cringe-inducing failed job interviews, Aidy Bryant offers Shosh a dream marketing position. The bad news is, this dream job is located all the way in Japan, and though it's hard to see why someone wouldn't want to live in a country that has a VILLAGE FULL OF FOXES, Shosh has just started dating Hot Soup Master Scott, and things are going well. "I'm going to be in love with you soon," he tells her, begging her not to move across the world. So...WILL SHOSH TAKE THE JOB?

Next, Desi and Marnie are preparing for their first big gig, one which writers from Pitchfork and Brooklyn Vegan and some other name-droppy websites will attend and offer their perspective on the folksy dreck these two creatures make with their mouth holes. But first, Desi has a confrontation with lovelorn Ray, who he believes (rightfully) does not like him. "I'm the sort of person that needs to know that...I'm making everybody happy," Desi tells Ray, before blaming their unfriendship on the rainy Pacific Northwestern world that birthed this denim-clad demon. That's a bad news line, since it seems like Desi wants to make everybody happy for his sake and not theirs. After all, if you're proposing to your girlfriend because you feel bad about blowing all your money on some guitar pedals and not because you actually want to marry her, well...that's probably not going to end well for anyone.

Ray tells Desi he fucking hates him. "This is about that distressed shirt you're wearing," he says, throwing Desi's Pacific Northwest theory to the wind. "This is about the fact that you have eyeliner on your face right now. This is about the fact that your musical sensibility is insufferable. Don't ever think that you get onstage anywhere where the vast majority of the crowd doesn't think, 'Douche.'" YOU GO, RAY. Unfortunately, Ray then turns this well-placed smackdown into a gross love letter to Marnie. "Marnie...is a beautiful, fully formed woman, dazzling in her complexity," Ray tells Desi, which....ruins the moment, since Marnie is probably the least compelling of all the GIRLS characters. But, okay! Desi looks sad. So...WILL HE SHOW UP TO THE GIG?

Last but not least, Hannah, Jessa and Adam have all ended up at Laird's apartment, where Adam's sister Gaby Hoffmann has decided to birth her baby in her bathtub, sans any help from a medical professional. This home birth scene is as borderline bizarre and horrifying as Connie Britton's Baby Satan Birth in the first season of American Horror Story, except instead of scary ghosts, we have Hannah, Jessa, Adam and Councilman Jamm. If you have ever considered pushing a baby out of your uterus but have still not, this scene will potentially turn you off for life.

Things get even hairier when it turns out the baby is breached, and Gaby Hoffmann needs to get to a hospital IMMEDIATELY. Jessa, who has been largely ignored by the writers all season, steps in. "I know you're scared right now, but if there was ever a time to not be pathetic, it's now," she tells a sobbing Laird, urging him to get Gaby Hoffmann out of the tub and into a doctor's arms. So...WILL THEY MAKE IT?

The universe tends to unfold as it should, as they say, and the GIRLS world coalesced quite nicely here. Shosh gets a pep talk from Colin Quinn—"Be the walker, not the dog," he tells her—and decides to take the job. Desi skips out on his and Marnie's show, but Marnie manages to bring down Pete's Candy Store on her own, without singing anything by Kanye West. And Gaby Hoffmann makes it to the hospital, where she gives birth to a baby girl named after Jessa and Hannah and inspires the former to seek a career as a therapist.

It's all very lovely, but the best moment comes close to the end, when Hannah and Adam have a moment standing over baby Jessa-Hannah's incubator. GIRLS hits its stride when its oblique dialogue strikes at moments of real truth, and we get that here when Adam tells Hannah he doesn't think he ever really knew Mimi-Rose, the woman he broke Hannah's heart over. "Isn't that how it really feels when a relationship ends?" Hannah tells him. "Like, 'What was that? Who was that?' And then you give it a few months and all the good memories come back, and you can kind of live with it, I think." It's a line about him and Mimi-Rose, and Hannah and Adam, and about all of us for whom love once turned to tortured hate, and finally settled into a sort of comforting ghost.

Here, Adam tells Hannah he wants her back, and that he made a mistake. It's what everyone wants to hear after someone slices your aorta in half, but it's almost never true and Hannah, ostensibly remembering the nights she spent waiting for him while he took his Broadway star space from her in Season 3, knows it and turns him down.

And so, our GIRLS find strength in solitude. Shosh will be alone in Japan. Marnie will be alone musically. Jessa will be alone in her own head, without the help of drugs or sociopathic Zachary Quinto. And Hannah will learn to rely on herself without the help of another half, so she won't be stuck wasting half her life on someone she doesn't really know, like her mother did. There is power in being able to survive alone.

...And then, six months later, Hannah happily strolls through snowy New York with Sad Fran from school. But I'll save that rage for another time. Let's not ruin a good thing right now.

Some closing notes:

This is the first time I've mentioned that Laird is Councilman Jamm of Parks & Rec fame. This is because I JUST REALIZED they were played by the same actor. I'm slipping in my old age.
Gaby Hoffmann was actually pregnant during the filming of this episode
"If we just take a minute and put our hearts together, you and me, right here, I think we'll both find that we're not really all that different." Please, for the love of God, do not bring Desi back for Season 5.
Then again, I will feel pretty bad if Desi did "Jeff Buckley" himself like the mean record company man speculates, even though I almost turned this last recap into a ranking of which GIRLS characters I would most like to murder. Guess who's number one!
Marnie's music is much less vomit-inducing solo.
There was no Elijah this week :( But there was plenty of Colin Quinn, whose description of Sheryl Sandberg was a treat. "Yes, my wife left a copy out, I saw an attractive woman and I read the book, I'm a convert."
Obviously Hot Soup Master Scott's friend Bryce has a house in Amagansett.

That's it for 2015! Next season on GIRLS, someone better give Jessa a storyline.

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Rebecca Fishbein

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