Season finale, and our girls have had their ups and downs the whole way. What on earth can the insane mind of Lena Dunham come up with next?

Previously on: Adam moves out, Hannah and Elijah go see Patti LuPone and her fake husband, Bede hires Jessa, Hannah quits/gets fired, Marnie unsuccessfully hits on Desi, Hannah catches Marnie in bed with Ray.

Hannah goes to grab her mail and unexpectedly runs into Adam's crazy sister, Caroline. Turns out she's shacked up with Laird. They seem really happy, have gotten into a whole bunch of hippie shit, and are expecting a baby together. She also hasn't been in contact with Adam since she left, but is just as convinced as everyone else that he'll break up with Hannah. Sorting through the mail, Hannah finds something unexpected - a letter with BIG NEWS. She does a happy dance. Opening title.

Hannah goes over to Marnie's. Of course, Marnie thinks she's about to get bawled out for the terrible crime of sleeping with another single person, but Hannah's not interested in being a jerk right now. Well, not too much anyway. Instead, she tells Marnie the news - she got into Iowa Writer's Workshop, a prestigious graduate school. Marnie is thrilled, but when she brings up that Hannah would have to move to Iowa, we see some hesitation on Hannah's part.

Over at Bede's workshop, she has just asked Jessa a huge favor. She wishes to be euthanized. Jessa refuses, whereupon threatens to fire her. After a beseeching plea on Bede's part, Jessa is flummoxed, but not exactly ruling it out. Meanwhile, Shoshana gets some bad news of her own when the university informs her that she will not be allowed to graduate. Something about missing credits and Glaciology. Outraged, she goes home and trashes her apartment. Oh, honey - that was literally my worst nightmare for four years. I feel you there. Marnie shows up and they have a heart-to-heart. They both wonder if she was distracted by too much sex. Marnie admits that when she was first with Charlie, she went crazy and ruined things for herself at university. She also chooses this moment to break the news about Ray. Shoshana stares like a deer in headlights, then pins her to the bed and screams in her face.

Faced with another turning point, Hannah does what all twenty-somethings do - she calls her parents. Mom advises her to take the opportunity, Dad says to consider all her options. What's more, they appear to be paying for it. But at least they're proud of her, possibly for the first time in the entire series.

She then barges in on Adam right before a performance, which he clearly does not appreciate. Showing all the sensitivity of a brick, she tells him her big news, raising all the relationship questions this would necessarily entail. He's happy for her, though. Everyone else shows up for the big performance. This includes Ray, Marnie, and Shoshana, which creates an extremely awkward dynamic. Shosh is spitting nails. Marnie goes backstage to stalk Desi a bit. She brings him a present - a guitar pick which once belonged to James Taylor. Desi's overjoyed. Soon enough, they have a smash-the-dressing-room makeout session. Marnie tears herself away. She makes the mistake of telling Hannah, who is ready to tear her another one for boyfriend-stealing when the lights go down.

Throughout the performance, they prove themselves to be total theatre etiquette morons. I mean, I grew up in small-town Canada and knew not to whisper during a Broadway performance. Put a sock in it, Shoshana. At intermission, they discuss Marnie's love life and Hannah's upcoming move. Elijah is both admiring and disparaging of each opportunity. Meanwhile, Shoshana and Ray have their long-overdue chat, where Ray defends himself as a single man pursuing a relationship, and Shoshana admits she wants him back. She thinks he makes her more stable, and you just know the university debacle has prompted all this. Ray tells her that though she helped him move forward in many ways, he's not interested in starting things up again. As she begs him to take her back, the intermission bell rings.

Hannah watches the second act with delight, as Adam is very good. Once again, they behave like total boors during the curtain call. Still, it's a triumph. In the theatre bathroom, Marnie runs into Clementine, Desi's girlfriend. She has deduced what Marnie is up to and is not pleased, calling Marnie a "sad, pathetic mess". Oh, and they're both in green - interesting costume choice. Marnie is thus duly chastened and stands at the sink moping.

Jessa gives Bede the fatal pills. Bede is fucking thrilled to be on her way out, though she warns Jessa not to even think of touching the leftover meds. Jessa agrees to wait it out with her until the end.

Elijah and Hannah wait at the stage door while Elijah rattles off a list of all the celebrities he's met. The other actors are happy to see fans, but Adam's in a mood. He thinks the show sucked, and blames Hannah for dropping the news on him just before the show. Elijah scuttles away so the two of them can have the fight they've been building to all season. He accuses her of being overdramatic. She solemnly congratulates him on a good performance and walks off. Looks like the romance of the century is finished?

Jessa sits with Bede, who's in distress. Bede suddenly asks her to call 911 - she's changed her mind. Shoshana cleans up her wrecked apartment. She finds a book Ray gave her, which she throws into a mirror. Desi and Clementine fight while Marnie peers at them from the shadows. Adam is photographed with the cast, but can't stop glaring. Hannah comes home, picks up her grad school acceptance letter, and smiles. Fade to black.

After a season of relentless pessimism and some astonishingly cruel character-destruction, this episode hit a more ambiguous note. Shosh's life went off the rails, Marnie basically treaded water, Hannah appears to have lost in her personal life but taken a professional leap, while Jessa's story is extremely up in the air. Ultimately, it's a good summary of how the entire season went. There are implications of how things will go, but no definite conclusion - and Dunham really could take us in any direction. I guess we'll have to wait until next January to see what comes next. This season, meanwhile, has been maddening and incredibly rich, giving us many different perspectives and directions to explore. For all the complaining viewers have had, the show always offered us something substantial - even if it meant facing the parts of life (and ourselves) we'd prefer that TV ignore.

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