You're the Worst 5.12: "We Were Having Such a Nice Day"

Chris: I’ll admit that I was really worried about the direction of the final season from a quality standpoint but every episode since the Sunday Funday episode has been better than the previous. For being a comedy, this episode has some really great dramatic moments, the best of which is Edgar giving Jimmy some harsh truth but it’s something he feels that needs to be said that no one else is saying even though it will cost him his friendship with Jimmy which is something Jimmy had just started to appreciate finally. I love the metaphor of the broken glass and even though it was a joke in the opening, it remained a poignant symbol in the end. A mess is a mess, no matter who it belongs to and whether it be an actual mess or an emotional one, it goes nowhere if no one cleans it up. And that’s the danger of Gretchen believing that Jimmy will always clean her mess up because it runs the risk of Jimmy either not being their to or simply unwilling to clean it up anymore. This was a great episode with a lot of characters having revelations and progressing however, doom still is in the air around this wedding.

Alexa: Different characters have been “the worst” at any given time on this show, but this time the worst is unquestionably Gretchen’s mother. The impact of Gretchen’s fraught relationship with her mother on her behavior has been explored throughout the show, but this is the most extensive direct interaction we’ve seen between them. The root of many of Gretchen’s issues this season is on full display here, from her mother’s refusal to acknowledge her mental illness to her inability to communicate honestly. Gretchen’s mother isn’t wrong to raise concerns about Gretchen’s impending marriage to Jimmy. The whole season has been one long string of reasons why their marriage isn’t likely to last. But for Gretchen’s mom, voicing those doubts isn’t about understanding Gretchen and what’s best for her; it’s about being right. By contrast, Edgar’s concerns about Jimmy and Gretchen’s relationship comes from a place of genuine love and concern. His final exchange with Jimmy is by far the high point of this episode, the culmination of not only a season’s worth of buildup surrounding Jimmy and Gretchen’s fragile relationship but an entire series’ worth of evolution in Jimmy and Edgar’s friendship. Edgar has finally gained the confidence the break free from Jimmy’s grip on him. For the past few episodes, they’ve been equals. Their friendship is actually mutual now. It’s incredibly moving to see Jimmy finally verbalize what his friendship with Edgar means to him, which makes what happens next all the more heartbreaking. Edgar knows urging Jimmy not to marry Gretchen could be the end of their friendship, but cares about Jimmy too much to keep his mouth shut. He genuinely believes Jimmy and Gretchen will destroy each other if they get married and he can’t bear to see that happen. But Jimmy is in love and he’s legitimately hurt that his best friend would tell him so bluntly not to go through with the wedding. One of this show’s greatest strengths is its ability to deftly toe the line between comedy and drama, and the ability of its actors to convey those ricocheting emotions with such honesty. Chris Geere and Desmin Borges absolutely knock this scene out of the park. It’s devastating to watch, like we the viewers are intruding on an intensely personal moment.  With one episode left, now I’m not only concerned about Jimmy and Gretchen’s future but about the future of the entire group.

Joel: This feels like the episode that I’ve been waiting for this whole season. Gretchen and Jimmy both go on outings right before the wedding, with people who don’t think they should get married. It’s not clear that these are parallel journeys at the beginning of the episode, but by the end, we see that their respective last day before their wedding mirror each other. Gretchen’s mother arrives unexpectedly ruining what was supposed to be a nice day out for Lindsay and Gretchen and is structured to be the dramatic center of the episode. We’ve seen Gretchen’s limited interactions with her parents so far, and are expecting some major fallout between these two characters. Initially it feels like Jimmy and Edgar’s storyline is going to be the comedic B-plot storyline that is there to balance out Gretchen’s dramatic storyline and for a while it looks like that’s where things are going. It’s not until the final moments of the episode where we really learn what the show has been angling for this entire time.

Gretchen’s mother and Edgar are both people who think the wedding shouldn’t happen. Their feelings comes from a place of concern, even if it’s poorly expressed by Gretchen’s mother. But as both characters talk about how this marriage isn’t right for Gretchen or Jimmy, it’s amazing to see their different approaches mirror each other. Gretchen’s mother knows that she’s correct. She knows that no matter what Gretchen says to her she’s right and Gretchen is wrong, this marriage should not happen. It’s this absolute certainty that gives Gretchen’s mother comfort. Things may not go her way, and there’s nothing that she can do to stop it, but at the end of the day, when the world goes up in flames, at least she’ll have been proven right. Edgar likewise, knows just certainly that this wedding is a bad idea. There is nothing that Jimmy can say to make him feel otherwise, he knows that if Gretchen and Jimmy get married then they are doomed. But instead of comfort, that certainty destroys Edgar. He would give anything for just a sliver of doubt. To think for a second that it might be possible that what he is certain about might not be right. But that’s not the case. Edgar knows that if they get married, Jimmy and Gretchen will destroy each other, and that breaks his heart.

The final scene between Jimmy and Edgar is easily the best scene in season five and might be the best scene in the series. Though it’s been pushed to the sidelines this past season, Jimmy and Edgar’s relationship has been one of the constant throughlines that’s gone through the entire show. We’ve gone from Edgar wanting Jimmy to come and watch his improv performance, to never giving up on trying to find Jimmy when he disappeared at the end of the third season, to a hundred other moments that Edgar has stood by Jimmy when he should have walked away. All that was for this one moment where Jimmy is finally able to say to Edgar, earnestly that he is and always has been his best friend. And Edgar has to throw that moment away in an attempt to save his friend. It’s a great, heartbreaking moment to watch this all crumble around Edgar. You know that he never really thought he was going to change Jimmy’s mind about getting married. He was shouting “stop!” to a man who had already gone over the edge, but he had to do it anyway. He had to destroy the one relationship he had held onto for all these years for the one in a million chance that Jimmy might listen to him.

The episode titles for You’re the Worst are always a line said by one of the characters, usually a line that helps to express the theme of that episode. The title for this episode “We Were having Such a Nice Day” is spoken by Gretchen’s mother (who for the record was spending a day with Gretchen that Gretchen would have described as terrible), but the brunt of the title is really felt on Edgar. The final scene here, casts a new light on the entire episode. Like I previously mentioned, Edgar and Jimmy storylines have been largely absent this season, and now, with just one episode to go, we’re getting the best Jimmy and Edgar day that we’ve seen in a long time. This is a great day that both the characters and the audience are going to look back fondly on, only to have it all come crashing down at the end. They were having such a nice day. Only looking back on it do you realize that Edgar knew how the day would likely end. He knew that these were quite possibly the final hours that he would have Jimmy as a friend. It’s a gut punch of an episode and one of the best examples of the show firing on all cylinders.