100 Favorite Shows: #61 — You’re the Worst
“As my grandma used to say, it’s only a walk of shame if you’re capable of feeling shame.”
In the summer of 2014, FX launched two modern rom-coms for their slate of prestige television: Married and You’re the Worst. Starring Nat Faxon, Judy Greer, and Jenny Slate, Married was positioned as the higher caliber series, while You’re the Worst was downplayed as the edgier little cousin of the genre that rounded out the hour block of television. Fast forward two years later, Married was canceled and You’re the Worst was thriving as one of television’s critical darlings, championed by critics like Ben Travers, Andy Greenwald, and Jen Chaney. Created by Stephen Falk, You’re the Worst’s brand of rom-com centered on Gretchen Cutler (Aya Cash), a clinically depressed woman working in the music industry, and Jimmy Shive-Overly (Chris Geere), a self-centered British writer aching to publish a novel. Shifting to FXX after its first season, You’re the Worst came to an end in April 2019 with a conclusion that satisfied the show’s many complicated themes and detestable (but, ultimately, lovable) characters.
(You’re not the worst if you read this essay about You’re the Worst and want to avoid spoilers. You’re just misguided.)
Every show about a friend group has their “thing.” On How I Met Your Mother, the MacLaren’s gang had slap bets and ducky ties. On It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Paddy’s pals had Chardee MacDennis and Night Crawlers. On Happy Days, Potsie and Ralph Malph did whatever Fonzie told them to do. For You’re the Worst, a series matched in acidity by Sunny (but definitely not Happy Days), the friend group of Jimmy, Gretchen, Edgar (Desmin Borges), and Lindsay (Kether Donohue) has “Sunday Funday.” It’s their version of “Treat Yo’ Self 2011,” wherein they spend the entire day having as much fun and drinking as much alcohol as possible.
The first Sunday Funday on You’re the Worst initiates a rivalry between the group and a gang of hipsters (led by Thomas Middleditch). Throughout, the show’s modern sensibility rises to the surface as two maligned social groups in Los Angeles clash against one another. Jimmy and Gretchen’s group is a disastrous tornado of cynicism (the humor matches this, too, ranging in mild jokes about the “Alabama” side of England to extreme scenarios regarding Gretchen’s proclivity for arson and vandalism) and, by the Sunday Funday point of season one, is clearly a toxic unit in Los Angeles, a city built on the fumes of watered down dreams as it is.
The second Sunday Funday, however, is a bit more forgivable when it comes to the merry band leading the charge of You’re the Worst because it’s billed as the Halloween-themed version of the event. Season two’s “Spooky Sunday Funday” begins with a seemingly innocuous brunch before it transitions to a ritzy costume shop, where the gang prepares themselves to visit a Halloween Horror Nights (times a thousand) type “house of horrors.” What results is an almost volcanic schadenfreude as the characters are psychologically tortured in a manner that is almost seen as comeuppance.
The slaughtered pig masks and couches with fold-in flaps to grab guests from underneath would be frightening in most contexts of television (not to keep bringing up Happy Days, but imagine Chachi beating the shit out of a scare actor because his PTSD was activated, as Edgar did. FXX is not quite ABC), but on You’re the Worst, the torture sequences are to the horror aspects of the episode as the brutal, deplorable dialogue is to the comedy aspects. It’s ratcheted up to the cynical degree with which Jimmy and Gretchen are most comfortable because they could use this malicious mirth as a mechanism for grander storytelling. When they’re so desensitized that the torture factory isn’t even the worst part of their night, it’s obvious that “Spooky Sunday Funday” had its sights aimed on the larger narrative of the second season.
This was the reconciliation on Gretchen’s part with the sudden emergence of her clinical depression. “Spooky Sunday Funday” contains early clues that a highly sensitive mental illness is about to crash down upon Gretchen’s brain, but at least at this point in the season, she is only feeling occasional spurts of melancholy with lethargy that comes and goes. As Jimmy sees it, Gretchen is just “down in the dumps,” so the idea of a new Sunday Funday is — to him — a perfect solution that would make her sadness impossible to be felt.
On most shows, this would be a sweet, albeit misguided, gesture that came from a place of genuine intentions. Not on You’re the Worst, though. A spooky Sunday Funday was not an idea he and Gretchen mutually agreed to; he lied and manipulated her to go along with it, presenting the notion as Edgar’s idea, rather than his own. Jimmy doesn’t even surprise Gretchen with a fun-filled day of L.A. antics for the sake of lifting her from a rut to help her feel better about herself; Jimmy ultimately doesn’t want to deal with Gretchen’s “issue,” which he sees as an obstacle, perennially upending the normal routines of his days. It’s a selfish act in the name of just “getting over” her sadness for his own sake — not because he actually cares about her well-being.
As such, when he stupidly admits to his own intentions of the day, Gretchen immediately snaps out of the good mood the house of horrors (see what I mean?) put her in, scolding her boyfriend, “You can’t fix me, Jimmy! I don’t need to be fixed!” In retaliation, Jimmy calls her an asshole, illustrating a further gap in his understanding of her needs, and she resigns herself to pretending that Jimmy “cured” her, just so he’ll stop manipulating her into activities she wants to be left alone for.
From Jimmy’s point of view, mental health is a choice. Over the course of season two, his brawls with Gretchen increased in toxicity and fury, eventually culminating in the fork-in-the-road penultimate installment, “Other Things You Could Be Doing.” When Gretchen curls up on the couch and gazes silently out the window (she only has the strength to text Jimmy, rather than verbally speak to him), he begins to snap at her, labeling her “dramatic” and “self-pitying” and telling her to “Stop it!” in regards to her own sadness. Eventually, he even parades a litany of the series’ supporting characters in to “fix” Gretchen, but all she can muster is a wordless stare back at them. To be fair, their strategies for breaking Gretchen out of her “slump” are weak, even though Geere’s performance in the background of each scene is hysterical in its exacerbation. They’re also exceedingly indelicate (Gretchen’s rap group clients, Sam (Brandon Mychal Smith), Shitstain (Darrell Britt-Gibson), and Honeynutz (Allen Maldonado), inadvertently evoke suicide).
Obviously, such tactics are ineffectual and Jimmy’s frustration eventually bubbles over into his remark that he’s glad he found out about Gretchen’s illness at that moment, rather than ten years down the line. It’s a moment that clearly wounds Gretchen, who has been conditioned (in a life thus far devoid of therapy) to believe that her illness is her fault, deepening the cycle in which she blames herself for the people in her life who’ve left her.
While Jimmy’s reaction to a girlfriend he can’t help and who won’t respond to him is understandable in its frustration (and it’s not anyone’s fault, even though he probably makes things worse), it still always felt like it was coming from a place of “I’m not comfortable with this, so you need to be fixed,” rather than a sense of needing to take care of the woman he loves. This is illustrated further in the episode when we see depression from Gretchen’s point of view (and earlier when Gretchen protests that Jimmy knew she was “a snake” when he “picked [her] up,” but again, no one exactly deserves blame here. Blame is counterintuitive in matters of mental well-being).
You’re the Worst, for all the empathy its characters lacked for Gretchen, always portrayed this mental illness with as much empathy as possible. The character arc of Gretchen was completely honest and realistic and, occasionally, devoid of any semblance of hope for her plight. The origins of her imbalance are traced back to the childhood feeling that Gretchen was never enough for the people from whom she sought approval (manifesting in her winning a tennis match, but not by “enough points,” which sent her spiraling). But every time this feeling would come to Gretchen, she was able to shake herself out of it before it took over her entire mind.
Likening the feeling of depression to a solar panel-powered robot on Mars (completely alone, but always able to flip itself over when it got stuck), Gretchen tearfully explains to Jimmy that she wasn’t able to flip during her latest bout and that she is terrified that, for the rest of her life, she will feel nothing. The arc of mental illness on You’re the Worst was always Gretchen-focused throughout her cold, “time to deal with it” attitude and occasional desperation, but even though it went lower than most series about similar topics would dare to, it was always sure to acknowledge the authenticity of Gretchen’s despair. For her, every day is a battle and she will lose most of those battles. The daunting nature of her life and her mentality is played perfectly — throughout every one of her outbursts — by Cash, who might just be giving the best television performance of the decade.
Cash’s best acting comes in the closing moments of “Other Things You Could Be Doing.” Jimmy orchestrates an ornate display of how he’s moving onto better things than dealing with Gretchen, who solemnly accepts his decision. Changing his mind at her nadir, he returns home, slides a pillow under Gretchen’s head (initially suggesting that he might suffocate her because You’re the Worst loved to imply the darkest possible result), and builds a blanket fort around their sleeping bodies. When she eventually wakes up, she immediately breaks down in heaving sobs, only managing to say, “You stayed.” It’s one of the finest sequences I’ve seen from any performer on television and Cash sells every emotion and non-emotion (conflicting as they may be) perfectly — and it came in a bitter, bitter rom-com, no less! When You’re the Worst would hit all of its marks, they’d hit them extremely highly. When it was on point, it was really on point and one of the best on the air.
Ultimately, Jimmy’s decision to return to Gretchen is emblematic of one of the core themes of You’re the Worst: choice. Jimmy chooses to stick it out with Gretchen, even though he’s never faced such a difficult relationship before. But the choices aren’t solely limited to the two of them.
Choices are also present for Lindsay, one of the show’s premier supporting characters. Not quite a “hot mess” (because Lindsay seems to enjoy her status as a mess), Lindsay is one of the shallower characters depicted during this boom of “the anti-rom-com.” She’s all surface (when she spots a doctor costume for women, she dubs it “fake” and her divorce papers from Paul (Allan McLeod) are “sticky”), so it’s hard to derive growth from a character who wouldn’t grow in real life. Instead, when Lindsay makes the choice to embark on an apology tour for the people in her life she wronged (including her sister, Becca (Janet Varney)), it’s unclear what her motivation is for doing it and if she’s actually experiencing changes in heart and mindset from apologizing to others. (My personal favorite is when she tells Gretchen sorry for referring to her as the “poor man’s Isla Fisher.”) But what matters is that she’s making the choice to try to be better. Lindsay may be all surface, but there is growth in her ability to recognize that.
While Lindsay is a vital figure to the lifeblood of You’re the Worst, most of the choices still revolve around Gretchen and Jimmy. How they treat each other, how they love one another, how they grapple with their own roles in the relationship. It’s all a part of the bubbling concoction they’ve created by linking their lives together.
Both are deeply amoral people — the types who are more comfortable in dank, seedy bars than they are in bird-chirped sunshine — and both struggle to genuinely grapple with what it means to choose to love one another. Even in “Spooky Sunday Funday,” Jimmy’s not entirely sure if he’s made the right choice in reconnecting with Gretchen, as opposed to bonding with a better “on paper” match in the bartender whose name he does not remember (Jimmy never remembered any name of someone he initially pegged as “beneath him”), Nina Keune (Tessa Ferrer). Jimmy’s choice is made with uncertainty and a longing glance to Nina, but it’s a choice he makes all the same. It’s not a salve for their fraught relationship, but it’s a moment that is crucial for his eventual choice to persist through Gretchen’s depression alongside her.
Of course, this latter choice also comes at a cost when Jimmy neglects to attend Edgar’s improv show, despite having a seat reserved for him. (After all, Jimmy is the anti-Leslie Knope, never making time for his close friends and blind to when they’re ailing.) Despite the self-centered nature of Jimmy, Edgar is still hellbent on impressing him — or anyone who withholds approval from him — because he wants to feel as validated by his loved ones as he feels validated by his improv hobby. Jimmy’s absence leaves Edgar crushed, but it’s a necessary moment for his own growth as someone who eventually finds the ability to stand up for himself and stand up to Jimmy. Edgar’s choice to stop pinning all of his self-esteem ambitions onto Jimmy is an important piece of the You’re the Worst puzzle as characters transition from being “the worst,” to being amenable, affable members of society. (Granted, the bar for Jimmy is lower than the bar for Edgar, for example.)
You’re the Worst always dealt with their supporting characters in a reverent fashion, even ensuring that their arcs received closure that would be on par with closure received by Jimmy and Gretchen — even as the show revolved around them. For Edgar, this resulted in episodes like “Twenty-Two,” which depicted an entire day as Jimmy’s self-inflicted underling and a man suffering from the PTSD he received during the Iraq War. For even smaller, more recurring characters, like Paul and Vernon (Todd Robert Anderson), Becca’s husband, they were gifted a stand-alone episode, “The Seventh Layer,” in the third season. There was always time for these subplots on You’re the Worst because the show’s creative team was not nearly as Jimmy and Gretchen-centric as the two lead characters were.
All of the choices made by You’re the Worst characters (some being obviously more effectual than others) culminate in a finale, “Pancakes,” that deals with the theme directly. It’s hard to know exactly how to end a rom-com that was way more caustic than it ever was sweet, but somehow Falk (who wrote and directed the concluding installment) found the perfect balance for his anti-heroes. The noxious edginess of You’re the Worst was present in some of its final words on the subject of love (Jimmy and Gretchen insist on mocking those in an eternal honeymoon phase of their relationships), but it also showed the ace up its very loose, very scarred sleeve. In one of the series’ final moments, Jimmy and Gretchen make a pact that they will not stay together as a traditional boyfriend and girlfriend pairing. Rather, they will stay together as two people who choose to love each other one day. In this, You’re the Worst was sweeter than many of its contemporary rom-coms because it embraced the realism of love as a choice, rather than love as a destiny.
After all, a rom-com on television will, by nature, be more in-depth and, therefore, less cute than one filmed for the big screen. Jimmy and Gretchen are messy and they probably don’t last that long a time after the series finale (in spite of the series finale’s time skip), but they probably wouldn’t have lasted five seasons in the first place. The two of them always defied the odds on You’re the Worst, so who’s to say they don’t keep doing it? After all, they recognize love as a choice, as we see emphasized by “Ten Things,” a song by Paul Baribeau that is featured prominently in the finale.
“Name ten thousand reasons why you never wanna die, go and tell someone who might’ve forgotten,” he sings in a husky voice, almost countering Gretchen’s own proclamation that she might decide to commit suicide at any moment in her relationship with Jimmy. For her, she might not have ten thousand reasons, but she does have Jimmy. And for Jimmy, if he heard the song, he might surely feel inclined to inform Gretchen of his love for her and his choice of her. At least, he would for that day. When they wake up in the morning, love might be a different story.
