Welcome to the TV Recap series on the FXX original series You're the Worst. Join me every Thursday to unravel the chaos of TV's greatest/worst romantic couple as they try to get their lives together. Will this be the week that everything works out? Who cares. As long as they don't miss Sunday Funday, everything will be fine. So get your trash juice ready and prepare to do what normal people don't do as I review the plot and other major points from throughout the season. Hope you're ready. If not, too bad. We're doing this anyways.
"I thought all English people were fancy.
But these people are like Alabama English fancy."
- Lindsay (Kether Donohue)
Jimmy (Chris Geere) becomes perturbed when he discovers that his family decides to drop in unexpectedly. With Gretchen (Aya Cash) also still stuck in her depression, things aren't going according to plan. Jimmy's family is unresponsive and negligent to him. While Gretchen takes them out to a grocery store in order to let Jimmy have some space, Lindsay (Kether Donohue) meets up with Honey Nutz (Allen Maldonado) to discuss a wardrobe problem. What ends up happening is that they end up writing a song together. Edgar (Desmin Borges) ends up taking out Jimmy's sister. Jimmy, annoyed by the whole thing, talks to his dad at a bar, where he discovers that he's secretly proud of his son. During this time, Jimmy meets a waitress who he finds interest in opening up to.
WVP:
Family
It is, after all, the entire point of the episode. Jimmy's family comes out to visit, and they're strangely more insufferable than he is. They are very irreverent when it comes to shameful histories, and they really don't seem to like Lindsay. While they're not all bad, they do kind of make themselves too much of a nuisance for their own good. In fact, they're arguably too annoying for the episode, thus breaking the running tally of perfect episodes. Even then, there's something sweet buried underneath their crass and off putting nature. Even if they don't do anything remotely right, they at least seem to mean well enough to give us a sense of where Jimmy originated from. Somehow, he's matured as a person since leaving them.
Worst Moment
If the family seemed insufferable before, then Stephan Falk and the writers really know how to turn things around in the third act. Since we've come to love You're the Worst for its subversion of rude people, it only seems fitting that their grand finale would feature a heartwarming moment between Jimmy and his father. Despite doing very little that seems admirable during the whole episode, the heart to heart reveals something deeper and more personal about how the family sees each other. Jimmy's dad is a good dad, even if he doesn't show it that well. He's read his son's book, which is something we'd never expect to hear. The entire episode falls flat without this moment. Even if it's not the most lively or funny, it definitely has enough to show how this season has turned the genre on its ear with equal parts meanness and humanness.
Was This the Worst?
In a sense, this gave me flashbacks to the pilot episode of You're the Worst. It's at a point where you're almost wanting to give up on the show entirely. I personally couldn't stand Jimmy's family for a good run of the episode. It made sense to Jimmy's character, but it felt like a reach. However, Falk and the writers found a way to update their bait and switch. They make you care when you least expect it. I don't know that it redeems the characters entirely. I do think that his family is a tad worse than Jimmy is. However, the episode works well enough. Even if this is the weakest episode of the season, it's not from creative play by its writers, who continue to add depth to its characters by showing how Jimmy and Gretchen have matured. Considering that we're 10 episodes in, it's impressive that this is the only real "dud" of the bunch. Even then, it's a really good dud.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
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