'You're the Worst': Bringing Out the Best in the Season Finale
When You’re The Worst premiered last year, it had to overcome the initial presentation of its main characters as a couple of self-absorbed brats. (The title of the show seemed to underscore the you’re-gonna-hate-these-people challenge to viewers.) As the series proceeded, it achieved its goal: Aya Cash’s Gretchen and Chris Geere’s Jimmy became likable self-absorbed brats, and by the end of the first season, you understood the reasons for their different-but-overlapping outlooks on life.
So I went into the second season a fan, and was totally on-board when show creator Stephen Falk took Worst into what could have been one of his worst decisions: dramatizing Gretchen’s clinical depression. The show dealt with Gretchen’s gradual descent into immobile despair with both subtlety and briskness — after all, the show also had to have other things on its mind, such as the fall-out of Lindsay’s divorce and Edgar’s new life as an improv actor and romancer of a colleague, Dorothy, played with immense charm by Collette Wolfe.
Related: The Best TV Comedies of 2015
We’ve now arrived at the second-season finale, Wednesday night at 10:30 on FXX, and it’s a terrific episode. Instead of pulling Gretchen out of her downward spiral and acting as though it never happened for the sake of moving the sitcom along, Worst nestles down into her ongoing condition to force Jimmy to come to terms with what it means to continue a relationship with her.
The episode also springs some surprising twists on Lindsay’s hidden-sperm pregnancy storyline, and Kether Donahue has really been excellent at expanding the range of her vulgar-baby-voiced character’s emotions. I was also really happy to see such prominence given to Lindsay’s sister, Becca (Janet Varney), whose own bitterness-infused pregnancy and sibling rivalry have been highlights of the season whenever Varney is on-camera.
The finale accomplishes a necessary goal — it sets up season three and leave you wanting more —while leaving you mightily impressed with how much Worst covered in its quick 13 Season-2 episodes.
Related:
The 23 Best TV Moments on 2015
You’re the Worst airs Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m. on FXX.
