A review of tonight's “You're the Worst” coming up just as soon as I recognize this building from the opening credits of “Better Off Ted”…
The original “Sunday Funday” was arguably the funniest episode of “You're the Worst” season 1, but also the show's most atypical installment, collecting lots of funny jokes (“Daniel Craig?!?! He looks like an upset baby!”) and situations but keeping the dysfunction of Jimmy and Gretchen's relationship to a minimum. Given the episode's popularity, I wouldn't have blamed Stephen Falk and company if they had just stuck to the basics for it, like the “Bar Wars” episodes of “Cheers,” or the annual Halloween contest on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”
But “Spooky Sunday Funday” is something else entirely, not only combining the original concept with Halloween costumes and tons of horror movie tropes, but something that stays deep inside the tough emotional territory the show's been exploring lately.
Jimmy inevitably breaks his promise to Gretchen to not try to fix her, and is so smugly naive that he actually tells her what his plan is. Worse, his behavior at the bar – where he seems very much on the verge of hooking up with the bar owner who also knows about “Buckle Your Shoes”(*) and seems much less emotionally complicated – confirms for us every fear Gretchen has about her depression chasing him away.
(*) Not a real show, but it might as well be. British sitcoms were/are weird.
Lindsay, meanwhile, somehow winds up in her underwear doing a riff on the “It puts the lotion in the basket” scene from “Silence of the Lambs,” only here with a super-helpful horror house employee(**) who talks her through the process of getting her power back on. It's a small triumph in the grand scheme of things – as we can see from the wreckage of the house, even with its power – but it was still a fun inversion of slasher film cliches about the girl trapped in the pit, and this was as vulnerable as we'd seen Lindsay before faux-Jame Gumb talked her out of it.
(**) I briefly wondered if Buffalo Bill was really Paul following her around to help her out (having ditched the Stephen Hawking costume – and its troublesome text to voice software – that so confused Lindsay), but it was a different actor.
The Edgar/Dorothy plot, while mainly an excuse to show The Situation having sex with Steven Spielberg, didn't flinch in continuing to deal with Edgar's PTSD, even as it layered in something the others could more comfortably (and amusingly) mock him for in his three-year sex drought. The only worry I have is that Dorothy is becoming perhaps too awesome, and unless the plan is to make Collette Wolfe a regular, something ugly is going to have to happen to break them up.
Then again, ugliness in romantic comedy is what “You're the Worst” does best.
What did everybody else think? Was this a worthy follow-up to both the original “Sunday Funday” and last week's emotional episode?