How Broken is Broken?

As I have noted in each of my reviews of this season so far (Season One and Season Two), You’re the Worst is a show about terrible, broken people. The leads – Jimmy, Gretchen, Lindsay, and Edgar – each have their own problems and they’re struggling to even bond with the people in the world around them. That also goes for the side characters who are constantly in their lives, from Lindsay’s off-and-on again husband Paul, Jimmy’s ex (and Lindsay’s sister) Becca, and Becca’s husband Vernon. Each has their flaws, their problems, and they seem, in many ways, like the worst humanity has to offer.

But there’s also this thing about the show that the characters help to illustrate: no one is perfect. At each turn we see people that we should view as good, that on another show would be the protagonists, and we realize they’re just as flawed and fucked up as everyone else. Becca and Vernon would be the kooky lead characters on a different sitcom, sitting around, planning for their family, while Vernon goes off to have crazy antics at his job as a doctor. The show knows this, and it uses all of its characters to illustrate how clearly awful all of humanity can be.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this is a very pessimistic show in many ways. The show doesn’t like people in general, in much the same way that Jimmy and Gretchen seem to hate everyone but each other. Activities that should be fun and interesting are shit on by the characters as they reveal how stupid everything is. Want to go on a long scavenger hunt to find a speakeasy? Well, speakeasies are stupid, the scavenger hunt is overly convoluted and takes way too many twists, and in the end, the bar just isn’t that much fun once they get there. Each time the characters run into a situation that other people would find fun, they have to rip away the artifice to reveal just how trash everything is.

That’s the true message of the show: everything is trash and actually trying to be part of society is stupid. Jimmy gets by taking the piss out of his writing gigs while he works on his debauched pornographic novel. Gretchen has a job as a PR person but she spends almost every single day drinking and avoiding work. Lindsay wants a family but she hates her husband and gets an abortion. And Edgar just wants the VA to help him with his PTSD but, when that doesn’t work out, he turns to pot and gets high all the time. These are characters that can’t work within the expected bounds of society and, in fact, only succeed when they break all the rules. Because the rules, like the rest of human society, are stupid.

When last we saw Jimmy and Gretchen it was after Gretchen had finally pulled herself out of her clinical depression funk thanks to Jimmy’s help. They agreed that she would see therapy to help with her issues, in large part so she didn’t wreck Jimmy’s life and his heart if she fell into a depression again. She starts seeing Justina Jordan (Samira Wiley), she Gretchen is constantly rude to while also failing to take most of the therapist’s advice (especially in a timeline manner when it would actually improve her life). Gretchen doesn’t know how to act normal, and she acts out when people try to help her, and this is another version of that cycle.

Meanwhile, Jimmy has finally figured out his next novel, a pornographic, historical fiction book with a whole lot of kinks (including incest) in it. Surprisingly, his publishers love the idea, singing a deal for the book instantly. That means, though, that Jimmy actually has to set down and write the book, avoiding any distractions. And then a big distraction comes up in the form of the death of his father, which, despite his protestations, completely throws him for a loop. Jimmy finds himself unable to write, as the spite of writing things his father hated fueled him, while also suddenly grieving the very man he hated.

And then there’s Lindsay and Edgar. Lindsay hates Paul and realizes this only as soon as she gets back together with him. She hates him so much she stabs him with a paring knife, although she says it was an accident in the kitchen. She wants nothing to do with him, but due to her own mistake she got pregnant from his warmed up sperm (long story) last season and now she’s stuck and has to decide what to do (which, really, means her coming around to abortion and divorce). Edgar has a great girlfriend, Dorothy (Collette Wolfe), but she’s struggling to find a job in the acting and comedy world. Edgar is struggling with his PTSD but, once he figures out pot clears it up, and it also gives him a line on his own comedy career, suddenly his life starts flying, while Dorothy is stuck down in the gutter. He’s not sure what to do.

As I’ve observed in my previous reviews, this show nails about seventy-five percent of its plotlines but where it fails is with Edgar. I like the character, I think his journey is interesting, and on a different show he’d blend in well and be a proper part of the formula. But there’s something off about having Edgar, a sweet guy who was dragged down by the military, and then drugs after, being on a show about the worst people you’ve ever met. He feels like a transplant from a different show and his interactions with the rest of the cast are so limited this season because his plotlines just don’t work well with the rest of them. As much as I like Edgar, he could be missing from this third season entirely and I don’t think the show would suffer.

Lindsay blends in better, in large part because she has a stronger connection to the rest of the cast. While Edgar is a guy Jimmy knows that lives with him and cooks his food, you don’t get the sense they’re really friends (at least, not from Jimmy’s side of the relationship). Lindsay, though, is Gretchen’s best friend and there’s a lot of time shared between the two of them. She also is connected to her sister, Becca, and Becca’s husband, Vernon, as well as her (soon to be ex) husband, Paul. In a way, Lindsay is the glue that holds the whole show together, and without her most of the characters wouldn’t interact at all.

It’s interesting because while Lyndsay’s plotline is bigger here, giving her a bit more to do as she tries to figure out her life, Jimmy and Gretchen are still the real main characters. On any other show these would be the quirky side characters, the ones that show up once in a while to be weird and funny and steal a few scenes before exiting for another episode or two. They would be the spice, not the main course, of the show, but that does illustrate, once again, how You’re the Worst plays by different rules for its run.

The show acts like an inversion of every other sitcom you’ve seen, giving focus to characters no one likes, casting the standard main characters as side players and extras, and then giving them plotlines that make them seem awful by comparison. I could actually see a companion show to You’re the Worst, modeled on a standard sitcom, focusing on Vernon and Becca as they go about their normal lives that you expect to see. It would be like a reverse Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, while Jimmy and Gretchen take roles more like you’d expect from them. But the magic of You’re the Worst is that it’s not the standard sitcom, that it gives you stories about awful people you don’t expect to see elsewhere, and it makes it feel more real.

When it comes to Jimmy and Gretchen I think the goal this season was to really get you to not like them. Gretchen is fighting her therapy (even as her therapist says that she put in the work to get better) and it causes her to push out bad ideas to her friends and force them into situations that seem to ruin their lives. Meanwhile, because of his father’s death, Jimmy gets shittier and shittier, understandably so, and you can feel the show testing the relationship between the leads, and us as the audience, just to see if it’ll all break. Jimmy is hard to watch, which does make the season less charming, but I can also see why they did this. Pushing his character forces change on him and furthers his character development. Both characters are forced to grow and, clearly, they hate it.

Season three of You’re the Worst is great from a storytelling standpoint for three of the four characters, But, as far as watchability is concerned, it does feel like a weaker season. I liked it, but I didn’t find myself consuming it the same way I did the first two seasons. I had to take breaks, had to let it breathe, to come back to it when I was ready. This season makes the case that this isn’t a show you should binge watch, even as it’s on Hulu and easily consumable. I needed to let You’re the Worst rest at times as I worked up the desire to be around these shitty people. Whether that makes it a bad show or not is really up to the viewer, but on this rewatch of the series I stuck it out and, now, I still find myself interested in continuing on into season four. Take that as you will.