You're the Worst: Like People / It's Always Been This Way
November 16, 2017 6:43 AM - Season 4, Episode 12 - Subscribe

Back-to-back episodes wrap-up season 4. Gretchen chooses herself. Jimmy decides to move. Edgar gets a promotion, and Lindsay is a helper, like that glove that makes hamburgers.

Oh, and YtW has been given a fifth and final season.
posted by Thorzdad (4 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I have to say, the opening scenes of the first half were amazing, from Gretchen waking up alone in the hotel room, to her shouting match with Jimmy. Just her crying alone in that room was a huge thing.

The only other time I can recall her crying is back in the season 2 episode Side Bitch, where she's been leaving home in her car at night after Jimmy falls asleep. Jimmy eventually follows her and finds her parked, alone and crying. This was the first overt depiction of her depression. This made her scene in the hotel room really effective for me. Then, to follow it up with the scene with her and Jimmy, the whole opening had the feel of a couples counseling session, where there's finally a breakdown and honest, if angry, communication.

I have to wonder if these episodes were written and shot well before FXX renewed the show for another season? The ending would have, more or less, held up as a series finale, too, just more of a slightly warped Hollywood happy ending.

Gretchen burning Jimmy's car with a string of xmas lights and a Hitachi Magic Wand was pretty funny.

And, holy shit, the crazy, surreal opening to pt.2!
posted by Thorzdad at 6:58 AM on November 16, 2017


I liked this pair of episodes. In hindsight, I feel like the season was better as a whole than the individual episodes would have ranked. The way the stories mostly came together thematically made the process/slog of getting through most of them worthwhile (especially the Lindsay/Becca and Edgar/Max stories), like how Lindsay's childhood informed what Gretchen was doing, and how Edgar's newfound solitude played against Jimmy's. Hell, even Vernon, who we really only saw this season entering and leaving scenes in a tired haze, pushes the plot past the final line by his exhaustion finally having a consequence.

One more season feels right. With all the callbacks in these (the vibrator fire, Killian), and the satisfying ending, it could have ended right here. And more than one more season would probably get tiresome (and they'd be tempted to go back to the plot well like this season and try splitting the main couple up again and Ross and Rachel the sh*t out of them), but I'd love to have one more season of group just going on wacky adventures and having feelings together. Give me one more Sunday Funday.
posted by General Malaise at 1:19 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


As underwhelmed with much of this season as I was, I loved these two episodes. Jimmy doing all of his favorite things and (with some help from Edgar) belatedly realizing they were no fun without Gretchen was great. Ava Cash had some terrific scenes in portraying Gretchen's lingering wounds and her resolve to make better decisions was great, too. But for me (maybe because I am also a guy), the part I identified most with was Jimmy's growth: realizing that he was the one who'd let Gretchen down and that he would have to be the one to make it right; that maybe Edgar's desperate clinging to Max wouldn't have been necessary if he'd only been a better friend.

They really calibrated Jimmy's "fighting for" Gretchen just right. He said enough to show he was sincere, that he cared, that she truly mattered to him. But he did not suddenly turn into Hugh Grant in the third act of a romcom. He was still awful: sucker punching the wrong guy, casually letting out that Gretchen had fingerbanged "some suburban mom," and failing to verbalize many absolute heartbreakers that would have been real enough ("Nothing is good without you" etc.) that must have been hard for the writers to avoid, even as it was truer to Jimmy's character for him not to be able to be that heart-on-his-sleeve.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:01 AM on November 17, 2017


Good news! Filming began last month on the final season of YTW!
posted by Thorzdad at 8:23 AM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


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