A quick review of tonight’s You’re the Worst coming up just as soon as I wear pants as a hat…
“This Is Just Marketing” keeps season four’s various character arcs zipping along at a nice clip. Jimmy discovers that while he was hiding out in the trailer park, his book was reclassified as erotica — or, as he puts it, “a sex book for horny airport ladies” — under the guidance of marketing exec Candace (Evil Francie herself, Merrin Dungey), and after some reluctance, takes great pleasure in being objectified and catcalled at an erotic book reading. Gretchen guests on Vernon and Becca’s ever-more-professional podcast (filling in for John Cusack, and hopefully doing better with the sponsored live read than Janeane Garofalo did) and realizes she still has a legal right to live at Jimmy’s house because she paid rent in advance. Edgar perfects a new seduction technique by merging his innate niceness with negging, testing it out successfully on Lindsay(*) before using it at a bar. And a maternal moment with Becca’s baby freaks out Lindsay so much that she decides to throw herself into her job working for Priscilla.
(*) There’s no distinct YouTube clip of it online, but I highly recommend going to the streaming service of your choice to watch the final scene of “Sam’s Women,” the second episode of Cheers, where Sam similarly fakes out both the audience and Diane. Hell, just watch the whole episode. Honestly, just watch Cheers. Matt and I ranked it fourth overall in TV (THE BOOK) for a reason.
All the actors are clearly having a ton of fun with this material, and the writers are being very smart in how they advance things. Thus far, for instance, Edgar has not become emotionally involved with Lindsay at all, and even his fakeout of her only serves to put her in lust, not love; maybe a genuine relationship becomes a thing for them down the line, but both characters have other fish to fry at the moment, and this is more fun than Edgar turning into Ross Gellar and moping about how Lindsay’s perpetually unavailable to him. And the prospect of Gretchen living in Jimmy’s bedroom as part of her revenge quest? I am here for Every. Bit. Of That.
Some weeks with these reviews, I may not have much to say, and just want to note that You’re the Worst is doing what it does very very well. This is one of those.
What did everybody else think?
Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@uproxx.com. He discusses television weekly on the TV Avalanche podcast.