TV Review: You’re the Worst (2×11) “Other Things You Could Be Doing”

Welcome back to my weekly review and recap of “You’re the Worst.” To catch up on previous coverage, click here.

Apologies for being M.I.A. for a week or two, but here are my thoughts on this weeks excellent episode of You’re the Worst.

• I don’t know how I feel about Lindsay being pregnant, likely from Paul’s sperm that she turkey baster-d into herself. On the one hand, having to watch Lindsay deal with being pregnant seems like an obvious way to mine comedy from the character and there’s no guessing where Kether Donohue could take this material, but it also seems very convoluted and far-fetched. This week we get a minuscule amount of growth from the character and I can’t help but imagine that the pregnancy may derail this.
• It wasn’t a great episode overall for supporting characters, despite the entire seasons so far doing better by them then our two leads. Edgar, fed up with Jimmy once again letting him down, decides he wants to move out, and tells Dorothy he’d like to move in with her. It’s an abrupt decision for the character and one that seems motivated by the shows need to amp up the tension before the finale next week.
• I loved Gretchen’s parade of phone contacts that came and talked to her to try and snap her out of it (all misunderstanding the very nature of depression and that there is no snapping out of it).
• Jimmy overall was handled beautifully this episode and Chris Geere got to play with a wild ride of emotions, from disgust at Nina’s feet, to genuine frustration at Gretchen being unable to verbalize just why she’s been so low and unable to put in any effort to be a person, Geere nails it across the board. He’s a marvelous actor when given the time to shine, and a versatile one, and his atypical romantic lead charisma is in full force this week. His last minute decision to stay with Gretchen feel’s well earned and even well fought for but the show doesn’t short us on the fact that Jimmy can still be an asshole, making his hiding in the bushes to ignore Nina all the funnier. He’s doing the right thing by staying, but he could have handled the situation better.
• Gretchen has had one of the best character arcs this television season, and Aya Cash has been killing it week in and week out (especially with the deeper narrative) but this week she crushes it further, and her explanation to Jimmy about feeling scraped out is enormously poignant, hitting that honest to a fault realism that this show sometimes manages when it’s taking a stroll down it’s more serious routes. However, the scene that absolutely gutted me happened at the very end. Gretchen wakes up, in the middle of the living room floor, to see that Jimmy has built a blanket tent to cover the two. She may not be ready to get up and face the world yet, so he made themselves a smaller world, a safe and warm world where they’re the only two people that exist. Her desperate, relieved and surprised delivery of “you stayed” is utterly heart wrenching. We want these two crazy kids to stay together dammit, and Gretchen clawing at Jimmy’s shirt while crying her eyes out makes the journey to this moment worth it. It solidifies that yes, sometimes they both are the worst, but they are worth it to one another.
• In relation to this, the way the show has never made Jimmy strictly the villain in this scenario, despite a complete and harmful misunderstanding of what depression is and how it operates, in a testament of how smart the show and it’s writers are. Gretchen is a victim to her depression, but we as an audience still at moments are able to understand Jimmy’s frustration, even if we know he has no reason to be. We’re rooting for both of their happiness, which makes the ending this week all the sweeter.

• Song used at the end of the episode, for those of you who, like me, were interested in adding it to your Music Found via TV Playlist.

One episode left of season two!

9/10