‘Girls’ Recap, Season Four Finale: “Home Birth”

This wasn’t a series finale, what with Girls getting renewed for a fifth season, but if “Home Birth” were the end, it would have been a very satisfying one, even if it was all a bit too tidy. Hannah seemed to reach some peace with her family drama, avoided regressing into an emotionally stunted on and again/off again relationship with Adam, and ultimately ended up with the adorable Fran. Marnie performed a triumphant solo performance after being abandoned by her doofus of a fiance. Shoshanna chose between her dream job and a relationship and took some advice from her idol Sheryl Sandberg and leaned in. Oh, and Jessa thought of another human being for once in her life. Maybe the metaphor of the difficult birth, seen through Adam’s sister Caroline’s ill-advised at-home water birth, was a little too on the nose in regards to the girls’ entering the next phases of their lives, but it did allow us to spend time with the two delightful crackpots Caroline and Laird. Plus, during the birth, we see a lot of Caroline. Like, A LOT. Like, a very pregnant woman splayed out naked in the bath, a lot. Gaby Hoffman definitely takes the baton from Lena Dunham when it comes to being confrontational with her own body.

In addition to each of the main characters growing as people, this was a fantastic episode for guest stars. Spike Jonze had an incredible turn as Marcos, the head of Marnie and Desi’s label. It’s kind of a shame we didn’t actually meet him earlier in the season, if only to see the guy who thought it was a good idea to give this boring Lillith Fair warble a record deal. In any case, Jonze shines when he lists off the names of the blogs there to see the uninspired duo, i.e. Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, and then a few made-up ones like Bad Breath. Over on Twitter, music writer Michael Tedder had fun speculating who over at Pitchfork would write the inevitable scathing takedown of Marnie and Desi and what their rating their record would receive. My guess is a 3.2 at best. Jonze is amazing as the dark, sad sack omen of Marnie and Desi’s impending nuptials, with the sad tale of talking to his kid via Skype during his his and his wife’s most recent separation. We were also treated to a really nice turn from Colin Quinn as Ray’s boss Hermie, who admitted to reading Lean In after seeing an attractive woman on the cover. SNL’s Aidy Bryant turns in an incandescent cameo as the Shoshanna’s interviewer prepping her for a dream job in Japan once she fires a bipolar employee once a manic upswing kicks in.

Anyway, onto the titular girls. Marnie holds her meeting with the Marcos in Ray’s coffeeshop, because why save him from the exquisite torture of seeing her happily show off her engagement ring and moon over their impending wedded bliss? Of course, Ray manages to steal a small victory for himself, and the entire viewing audience, when he acts as our surrogate and gives doofus Desi a severely dressing down prompted by the bearded dip shit asking Ray, “Are we solid? Simpatico?”

No, you sentient block of tofu, you and Ray are not “simpatico.”

“I fucking hate you,” Ray tells him, before taking an unrelenting inventory of everything that makes Desi insufferable and employing the term “douche” several times.

“Don’t ever think that you get on stage anywhere where the vast majority of the crowd doesn’t think, ‘douche!’ Douche! You know how you feel when you watch Imagine Dragons play? Well that’s how we feel about you. And you know what? Imagine Dragons are great, and you’re the douche.” Ray says all of this to Desi, which is an effective takedown and all even if I don’t really buy that Ray likes Imagine Dragons.

Ray loses me when he refers to Marnie as “a beautiful, fully formed woman — dazzling in her complexity, maddening in her mystery.” Have you watched this season, Ray? Damn, you must really be in love.

Ray obviously got to Desi because he didn’t show up to the scheduled performance, thus leaving Marnie to perform for the blogging elite all by her lonesome. Admittedly she sounds infinitely better than when she was with Desi or maybe just louder. It’s kind of like on Empire when I can’t tell the difference between the good take and the bad take, so I just take Cookie’s word for it. Anyway, gauging the reaction, Marnie’s performance was a success and she did it on her own. Way to lean in, girl. Bailing on the performance seems a bit anticlimactic on how I imagined that Desi would firebomb this relationship, but sometimes it’s better to understate things.

Shoshanna finds herself in a similar situation with Hannah last season where she’s tempted to move far away in order to pursue a dream. She’s also leaving behind a dude, in this case the adorable Scott (Josh Ritter), who begs her not to go because he’s “almost” in love with her. Hopefully she doesn’t tank the job in a month and come home to find Scott living with a maddeningly beautiful and acclaimed artist. Even if it just means we see Shosh interacting with the other girls via Skype, it would be amazing to see her thrive in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. However, it’s a bit of a bummer that we didn’t get to spend more time in the Jessa/Shosh apartment now that their living situation is breaking up. Oh well, there’s always fan fiction.

Jessa has a jolt of self-actualization when she sticks her head in the bath and sees that Caroline is in the throes of a breach birth. She’s ultimately successful in convincing Laird and Caroline in getting to the hospital rather than proceeding with their ludicrous hippie home birthing plan. Jessa is clearly still high off the feeling of looking out for someone else and decided to chase that dragon by announcing that she wants to become a therapist. Now that we’d like to see.

As for Hannah, she bolts out of the school to catch her breath amid a panic attack and ends up comforted by Fran. I can’t be the only one surprised that Hannah is still employed by that school or envy the fact that she seems to have ironclad job security for a sub. Amid the home birth drama, Adam eventually pleas for Hannah to come back and she tearfully shoots him down. It’s always satisfying to watch characters walk away from situations that are inherently bad for them. We don’t get to see how Fran and Hannah ended up together as the episode ends with a brief six month time jump, but I’m certainly looking forward to getting to know Fran a bit better next season — if that is indeed what is in the cards. Hannah also seems to have made a bit of piece with her family situation after weathering a bitter rant from her mother only to very chipperly ask for her to pass the phone to “daddy.” By walking away from a reconciliation with Adam, Hannah has been able to do what her mother cannot by rejecting a familiar but dysfunctional arrangement in order to forge her own path amid the future’s uncertainty.

Anyway, it’s nice to see a season end with every girl in a good place. Nowhere to grow but up, right?

Maggie Serota is a Staff Editor at Death and Taxes and a freelance writer who loves TV more than life itself.

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Photos: HBO