You're the Worst 3.6: "The Last Sunday Funday"

Chris: The show takes an extended break from the death of Jimmy’s dad storyline to further focus on Edgar and Lindsay’s stories and much like other Sunday Funday episodes, we get some things accomplished. This time around, we get Edgar finding out that marijuana actually seems to help his PTSD now that he’s no longer taking medicine. This resolution gives us one of my favorite sequences of the show during the “immersion therapy” scene which I think was beautifully shot. Gretchen is basically the audience in this episode, both in that we want this episode to happen and keeping Jimmy involved and in that we’ve all just about had enough of Lindsay saying she’s bored with Paul but will not stop talking about him. Ultimately, Gretchen summoning Paul leads to Lindsay dealing with it in the most Lindsay way by suggesting an open marriage situation. Also, speakeasy-type bars are overrated. Sure, the vibe is nice but really all it does is give them an excuse to charge way too much for drinks, as Gretchen found out.

Alexa: “The Last Sunday Funday” might be my favorite Sunday Funday of all. Even if the end result is a pretentious speakeasy, the wild journey there is a blast to watch. Jimmy’s begrudging excitement about the scavenger hunt is almost as much fun as Ron Swanson’s secret love of riddles on “Parks and Rec.” The hunt for the speakeasy is delightfully absurd, culminating in the gang breaking into the house of a Spanish-speaking family just minding their own business. As Chris points out, the episode offers a reprieve from many of the season’s ongoing story arcs, but it still makes room for some character growth - at least for Edgar. I don’t know that I would call Lindsay’s open marriage solution growth, but it will surely lead to some interesting and uncomfortable places. But particularly after seeing Edgar struggle so much this season, it’s incredibly rewarding to watch him confront his issues head-on. The “immersion therapy” fireworks scene is visually spectacular and emotionally moving, and it’s vindicating to see that as insensitive as they often are, even Jimmy, Gretchen and Lindsay realize what a breakthrough this is for Edgar.

Joel: Of the “Sunday Funday” episodes that we’ve had so far, this one is by far my favorite. I love the episode long “quest” storyline, that creates a template I hope we get more of, especially if we’re going to have a “sunday funday” episode every season. These are the episodes where the show allows itself to delve just a little bit more into the absurd, with over the top clues that take our characters all over the city. The set up for this episode also allows each character to have their own moments, as the gang moves from clue to clue, even allowing Paul to have a clue that he gets to solve.

Again, we also get Jimmy trying so hard to be high brow and cultured, that he is denying himself something that he would actually find great joy in if he would only allow himself to have fun. While Gretchen is happy to wear her enthusiasm for the scavenger hunt out in the open, Jimmy is obviously the one that’s having the most fun in this episode. I don’t know if this is something intential that the show is building toward, but we can add scavenger hunts to the list of things that Jimmy would love if he wasn’t  being too cool to miss out on them entirely.

While Gretchen and Jimmy were fully invested in the plot of this particular episode, we did get some forward movement in the storylines for Edgar and Lindsay. I want to focus however on Edgar in this particular episode. We get a great moment where everyone helps Edgar with “immersion therapy” in what might be the most cinematically beautiful moment of the show to date. It’s an unexpectedly emotion moment that has a beautiful feeling of triumph about it. We’ve been watching Edgar struggle to some extent since the beginning of the show, and to a much greater extent over the past several episodes. This feels like the first time that Edgar is taking a step beyond just trying to survive and facing his issues head on.