You're the Worst 3.10: "Talking to Me, Talking to Me"

Chris: And they were going so well during this season. For the first time in the whole show, the majority of the season was spent with Gretchen and Jimmy on solid ground as a couple. Of course, Jimmy is still processing his dad passed and that causes people to reevaluate just about anything and everything regardless if those things need to be reevaluated or not. Self-reflection is the common theme of this episode specifically with Jimmy, Gretchen and then some with Dorothy. While yes, it’s frustrating to see her not be able to really be happy for Edgar with his new opportunity, it’s also hard on her because of all the garbage she’s had to put up with only to barely get an audition here and there. You’d like to think most of us would be able to put our frustrations aside to be happy for our significant other but sometimes it’s too overwhelming.

Alexa: Remember when I said I was enjoying quarterlife crisis Jimmy? That time has passed. As much fun as it was watching Jimmy interacting with dogs and discovering the joys of the outdoors, Jimmy questioning literally everything in his life is significantly less enjoyable. This show has a tendency to slap viewers in the face with a complete downer out of the blue and that’s exactly how this episode ended. Jimmy and Gretchen actually seem stable this season, at least for them, and now it appears Jimmy is about to blow all that up for no reason and create conflict where there wasn’t any. But in happier news I love the idea of Lindsay as this stealth mindfulness expert. As someone who has actually tried mindfulness exercises as part of my own therapy, I almost died laughing watching Lindsay recite her thought process in the moment to Gretchen. Now whenever I try mindfulness techniques, all I can think about is Lindsay in the diner. I do think Lindsay’s abortion may be the final nail in the coffin that is her relationship with Paul. Most people would probably agree Lindsay is not fit to be a mother, but after she made such a big deal about wanting a family with Paul, he will surely be devastated when he finds out.

Joel: So coming out of this episode, the ending really bothered me. It felt like Jimmy and Gretchen’s relationship was finally in a good place and now it was getting blown up, just because, as a tv show, something had to go wrong. However, You’re the Worst is a show that, at this point, has earned the benefit of the doubt. Signs of Gretchen’s depression in season two that seem obvious in retrospect, seemed to be coming out of nowhere initially. The show has, for the most part, done a really good job of weaving the moments of each episode together to make something that, when looked at as a whole, all comes together to tell the story it’s setting out to tell.

In other bits on this episode, Doug Benson’s cameo is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for when talking about celebrities appearing as themselves in the Ben Folds episode. Doug and Edgar negotiating was the silliest, most enjoyable moment of the whole episode. Of course that leads to Dorothy's reaction to Edgar getting a comedy writing job. Seeing people you succeed where you can’t seem to catch a break is frustrating. But seeing someone you care about succeeding at something is a great feeling. But anyone who has ever tried to do something in an artistic field has felt this emotional conflict at one point or another. I’ve lost out on dream roles only to see them go to dear friends who I’m thrilled to see get the part they wanted, even it it’s the exact part that I’m being denied because they’re the one’s getting it. And this doesn’t even calculate in the fact that Edgar was a student of Dorothy's, only to pass her by, getting his foot in the door when she’s been unsuccessfully knocking for years.

It was a genuinely painful moment watching Dorothy try to be happy for Edgar while squashing down her pain. You could tell that she genuinely wanted to be happy for his success. If nothing else, the right thing to do as his girlfriend is to be happy for his success. The overwhelming wash of conflicting emotions all happening at once was beautifully understated in that very quiet moment, and it is probably the strongest character moment we’ve seen from Dorothy in the whole series up until this point.