Worse Off Together

As discussed in the review of You’re the Worst: Season 1, the show is about enjoying the honesty and dysfunction of two fairly horrible people. Jimmy and Gretchen are flawed people, but not just flawed in the way that most sitcom characters are flawed. This isn’t just a cute, “oh, he never puts his socks away,” or, “she always forgets her glasses,” kind of arrangement. These are both socially loathsome, angry, rude people who, you would think, would be the villains of any other kind of story. But the show is about these two, the trials and tribulations of an angry writer and a disinterested press agent.

And the thing is: you like them. They aren’t great people, but they’re refreshingly honest people. You can’t hate Jimmy or Gretchen because even when they’re at their worst they’re still shockingly relatable. I doubt most of us would be as brutally blunt or self-centered as these two, but I also think the duo reveals to us the way we all would want to act if society didn’t demand that we be polite and nice and proper. There’s nothing nice about Jimmy and there’s nothing proper about Gretchen, and that’s why, at least in this show, they’re great.

This second season adds additional wrinkles to their relationship. After having moved in together at the end of last season, they’re now having to learn to adjust and work around each other. Jimmy isn’t used to having anyone in his space, rearranging his house. Gretchen, to him, is a guest, someone living there while she has nowhere else to stay and before she… well, there isn’t really a planned out “before”. She lives there, and it’s her home, but it’s not her home unless Jimmy realizes it needs to be, so he has to figure that out.

Beyond that, Gretchen has a secret: she’s clinically depressed. It comes and goes in waves, leaving her feeling normal and happy for months or years on end, and then suddenly she crashes, her depression takes over, and suddenly she can’t feel anything but sadness. For a new, more permanent thing between the two of them, this puts real pressure on the relationship. How can you be there for someone that doesn’t want you around because, in their words, they can’t feel anything at all. It’s painful and it sucks and it’s hard to know if this is something the two of them could survive together.

Season two of You’re the Worst feels like a story bifurcated into two parts, which is interesting considering all the episodes were released, once a week, over the course of a three month period. The part of the story where Jimmy needs to figure out what to do about Gretchen living in his space comes first, and it’s accompanied by a B-plot about Edgar having the hots for Lyndsey. But then, halfway into the season, things take a shift. Gretchen develops depression (which first manifests as her having to go out to her car at night and play snake on her phone while she cries) and the two of them have to find a way to work through all that. Meanwhile, Edgar has moved on from Lyndsey, who is struggling with her impending divorce, and finds a new girlfriend, Dorothy (Collette Wolfe), who he met at improv class.

These two halves could have been separate seasons but the series handles them as one continuous group of episodes, which I appreciate. While the show is set up as a series of individual episodes, each focusing on their own plotlines, it’s also heavily serialized, with moments and lessons come back up, again and again, as these characters all grow and evolve. If the series had dragged out these storylines to be two full seasons it would have left the show feeling like it was dragging. It might have made sense from a network perspective, but now when you view it as a continuous tale (especially while binging).

Of the two parts of the main story, I feel like the depression storyline is the more important, and more impactful, part of the tale. Yes, it’s a big step for Jimmy to give a key to Gretchen when he finally feels like sharing his space with her, but at the same time, this is a storyline that basically could have been resolved in two sentences. “I moved in and Jimmy gave me a key after I pouted at him for a few minutes.” Like, what is gained by having Jimmy, who already let Gretchen move in, not give her a key for a while. It feels heartless and petty, even for Jimmy. This part doesn’t work as well.

But the depression storyline, that’s the real big one, and it hits. For starters, the series treats Gretchen’s depression seriously. She’s not able to just shake it off or party her way through it, which she says as much. The show has Jimmy try to perk her up, to make her not be depressed, even after she tells him that he can’t fix her. That’s fair and honest; it doesn’t work like that. Depression, especially the way she gets it, has to work its way out, one way or another, and sometimes that can take a very long time to happen. Weeks or months, even.

Now, of course, a sane person would take medication for something this severe, but Gretchen is not a normal, sane person. For starters, when you’re in the throes of it then it can be hard to think straight and go, “man, I need to go to a doctor for this,” while lying curled up, on a couch, with a blanket thrown over your head feels like the right move to make. And when she’s out of her depression, there’s no motivation to fix it. She feels great, she has no regrets, and happiness is her day. Why bother with it then?

Naturally that’s because she didn’t have a serious relationship that was sitting on the razor’s edge of falling apart before this. She hasn’t had someone in her life like Jimmy that actually seems to care about her (he doesn’t care about anyone else, but he does care about her), that wants to be there and help her. In the pit of it all it’s hard to see that, so she does the things you’d expect, including trying to shove him away as hard as she can. It’s tough to watch, but also very honest, and You’re the Worst handles it really well.

It’s actually handled so well that I found myself caring less and less about the Edgar and Lyndsey storylines. Don’t get me wrong, I do like these characters (especially Lyndsey) and I appreciate having their storylines around to help break up the A-plot (and it’s very depressing moments). You need B-plots to help stagger the main scenes. The issue is that I just don’t care about their particular storylines this time around. The show tries to invest heavily in what’s going on with these two but their tales don’t matter.

Lyndsey got dumped by her husband, Paul, at the end of last season so he could go off with a nerdy girl he’s been talking to online. Most of the season, then, is about her trying to find a way to get him back, despite the fact that she hates him, and only near the end does she decide to move on… and then the show finds a way to revert that, too. She’s stuck in the mud, with a husband that does legitimately suck, and the show keeps her from moving forward until it’s basically too late. Much as I like her character, this plotline isn’t great.

Worse is Edgar, who gets really into improv and finds a girl. Dorothy is sweet and nice and I’m happy for his character finding someone like that he can rely on. The issue is that for much of his storyline we get to see him doing improv… but it’s not really improv because it’s all scripted since this is a scripted show. What You’re the Worst actually illustrates with this storyline is that improv is only amusing when the people are actually improvising on the fly (and, even then, it doesn’t feel that funny most of the time). Scripted “improv” is just tedious to watch. It’s not fun, it’s not amusing, and it makes you wish you were watching anything better or more interesting.

Despite these flaws, I do think that this season is stronger than the first, and that all comes down to Jimmy and Gretchen. Their main plot in the back half of the season is so strong that it actually carries up everything else with it. I never really hated the B-plots this season, they just weren’t as strong as the A-plot. But then, with an A-plot this good, few other storylines could be. You’re the Worst is a show that knows how to get at the strong heart of a love story, and it does, digging deep into the painful core to find its truths. It’s not always easy to watch, but it is honest, and more than anything that’s what I really like about this show.