Season Four of You're the Worst was its weakest, and the fourth season is where many shows lose their footing and can't maintain the quality demonstrated by its earlier seasons. Sometimes, the show never recovers (The Office) and sometimes they come roaring right back in Season Five (The Sopranos). Fortunately, You're the Worst was able to stick the landing after it looked like it was losing its grip.
Much of the season centers around the buildup to Jimmy and Gretchen's wedding, including the first episode, which focuses on Jimmy and Gretchen meeting a wedding planner. They invent this whole backstory about how they met. The scenes of this story are played out by different actors in the first 10-15 minutes of the premiere, and I got sucked into it pretty good. The whole time I was also just wondering whether I was even watching the correct show, since Stephen Falk made the interesting choice for his main characters to not appear until about halfway through the episode.
Another standout episode was "Zero Eggplants", which was You're the Worst's sweet spot between comedy and drama. Jimmy and Gretchen actually meet another couple that they don't hate and really get along with. They get close, but the woman in the couple, Rachel, utters the quote:
“Here’s how it is with me. I don’t let just anyone in, but I don’t lose people. So once you’re in, you’re in for life.”Predictably, that's too much for Gretchen, who immediately sabotages the friendship. Gretchen's commitment issues are well-documented (hell, they're a healthy part of the rationale for the show's theme song), but even the lack of surprise can't stop her actions from being gut-wrenching to watch.
That was quite the emotional contrast to one of the series' funniest scenes earlier in the episode. Jimmy embarks on a quest to fellate another man in an effort to make things up with Gretchen (incidentally, she was sort of joking about that, which makes the whole thing all the more crazy). Jimmy finds a man on an online dating app, but his efforts to be sexy fall woefully short, and he spends most of the encounter spitting obnoxious intellectual blather, which earns him some pretty swift rejection.
Another unforgettable episode was "Bachelor/Bachelorette Party Sunday Funday", in which the gang busts Sunday Funday out of retirement for an insane episode with a thrilling sequence that involves Vernon getting stabbed by a deranged Paul F. Tompkins, and then Tompkins getting shot by Jimmy in defense of Edgar. The whole thing was staged, which was great not only because Jimmy and Gretchen got goofed, but also because we finally got some payoff out of Edgar's comedy writing career, which had been a consistent weak point of the series over these last couple seasons.
The last thing to discuss is the finale and the ultimate closure of the arcs for all of these characters. I found the finale somewhat odd, even if the conclusion of Jimmy and Gretchen's storyline makes sense. The show foreshadowed the commitment issues of each, and sure enough, they bail on the wedding. However, they make a resolution while eating pancakes at a breakfast restaurant to choose each other every day. It makes sense, because each one has only been able to function in the relationship as long as they know they can have one foot out the door at any given time. Without the specter and formality of a marriage hanging over them, they're able to pursue their love in a way that makes sense for what we know about the way Jimmy and Gretchen operate.
The conclusions for the rest of the cast are hit-or-miss. Vernon and Becca (who, by the way, is the actual worst, if we're keeping score) seem to move past many of their issues, and Vernon starts to get back on his feet financially. Edgar gets his clean break from Jimmy (after telling Jimmy not to marry Gretchen, in one of the series' most shocking moments) and has come a long enough way to pursue his career successfully.
Other stories didn't work as well. I actually thought that Paul's storyline came to a natural, if weird conclusion in "The Pillars of Creation", in which he gets intimate with Vernon and Becca. The three seem almost like a family afterwards, but the show has other ideas down the stretch and pairs him back up with Lindsay, who re-marries him. That didn't make a lick of sense to me, as the pair couldn't be worse for one another and the last time they were together, Lindsay stabbed him with an actual knife, in what looked like a possible shark-jump for the series. This all comes after Lindsay's random two-episode stint as a lesbian, which she seemed to shrug off as quickly as the show did. I was disappointed in Lindsay's arc all season long after she practically carried the show in Season Four, and You're the Worst seemed to have no clue how her story should end.
Those blips aside, Season Five of You're the Worst had some of the series' best episodes and found its peak form for extended stretches. Falk & co. went out strong in their final season of a show that was bursting with humor, creativity, and feeling. They took a show about two cynical, selfish jerks and turned it into easily the most unconventional romantic comedy I've ever seen. It's not part of the inner circle of the best shows of all-time, but it's practically a lock to go down as one of the greatest hidden gems of the Golden Age of Television.
Episode Grades
- "The Intransigence of Love": A
- "The Pin in My Grenade": B
- "The One Thing We Don't Talk About": B-
- "What Money?": A-
- "A Very Good Boy": B
- "This Brief Fermata:": B+
- "Zero Eggplants": A
- "The Pillars of Creation": A-
- "Bachelor/Bachelorette Sunday Funday": A
- "Magical Thinking": C+
- "Four Goddamn More Days": B
- "We Were Having Such a Nice Day": A-
- "Pancakes": B+
Season Five Grade: A-
Series Grade: A-
