A quick review of tonight's “You're the Worst” coming up just as soon as I eat runny cheese and go on an inverted roller coaster…
Like some of this season's early episodes, “A Rapidly Mutating Virus” had a little too much on its plate, dealing not only with the ongoing depression arc, Jimmy's flirtation with Nina, and Edgar's relationship with Dorothy, but Vernon's money troubles and the beef between Sam, Shitstain, and Honeynutz. As a result, it had some fine individual moments – Jimmy trying to hide his arousal at getting a load of Nina's boot size, Jimmy acting out the final scene of the Heathstead holiday special, Paul's discomfort at all that Vernon kept sharing with him – while feeling rushed as a whole. In particular, Edgar and Dorothy's time at the barbecue barely functioned as a story at all, racing through the necessary plot beats (Edgar is nervous, Edgar tries too hard, Dorothy gets upset, Dorothy forgives him) so quickly to not have been worth the bother at all.
It's not easy for a comedy to deal with clinical depression as bluntly and unflinchingly as “You're the Worst” has this season. Somehow, they've pulled it off without undermining the comedy, and without the comedy diminishing the drama of what Gretchen is going through (and how it's affecting her relationship with Jimmy), but the balance has to be juuuuuust right for that to happen. So when you doing too many things in a single episode, none of it entirely works. (Though the Jimmy/Nina scenes came close.)
What did everybody else think?