A quick review of tonight’s You’re the Worst coming up just as soon as I try to eat an area rug…
Where You’re the Worst can struggle at times with more traditionally-structured ensemble episodes designed to give each main character his or her own storyline, “Talking to Me, Talking to Me” felt nicely balanced, and equally bittersweet throughout. It helped that Gretchen’s quest for mindfulness linked together her story with Jimmy and Lindsay’s, but this was the rare YTW of this type where none of the stories felt underfed.
If I have any major objection at all, it’s that Paul’s cameo (via text, jpg, and audio message) in the Lindsay subplot seemed to fly in the face of what we saw of him in “The Seventh Layer.” In that one, it seemed he had finally accepted that Lindsay was an awful person who didn’t love him, and he was sticking with her only for the sake of the baby. Here, he’s back in full oblivious/adoring mode, which is designed to give her second thoughts about having an abortion. That didn’t track, but the rest of that story hit the sweet spot between sad and comic, particularly in the moment where the anti-abortion protestor admits to Gretchen that she would make an exception in Lindsay’s case, considering how messed-up the whole situation is.
On the whole, though, this was a strong outing in which many of the characters found themselves questioning what they had done with their lives, and none more painfully than Dorothy as she considers that Edgar fell ass-backward into the kind of job(*) she’s been killing herself for years to try to get, while she’s now old enough to be considered for Overworked Mom rather than Cute Yoga Girl at the commercial audition. A really nice moment for Collette Wolfe as Dorothy’s frozen, forced smile started being covered in tears.
(*) Doug Benson playing himself as the very serious CEO of a stuffy media company was a nice deadpan joke that the episode didn’t overuse.
Jimmy being alone, talking to himself, and growing enthusiastic to the point of seeming deranged has long been something Falk and Chris Geere seem to enjoy doing, and the tree house story was the most effective piece so far of the arc about Ronny’s death: mainly silly, but also suggesting a relationship crisis that doesn’t feel contrived. I can believe that Ronny’s death would have Jimmy questioning all of his life choices, including being with Gretchen, and that’s going to make life complicated for the both of them.
What did everybody else think?
