You're the Worst 3.7: "The Only Thing That Helps"

Chris: Honestly, this is about as well as Jimmy’s emotional breakthrough moment could’ve gone, all things considered. I was expecting some big breakdown that could’ve altered the show for good. Instead, Jimmy punts his dad’s ashes into Tony Shaloub’s front lawn. This episode introduces Ben Folds as himself into the show and his addition was perfect to the memorial service as he responded on the piano to Jimmy’s heckles. This episode does a good job significantly touching on all the major storylines going on with Edgar being reluctant to get his medical marijuana card in fear of it interfering with his government benefits, Lindsay wanting to hire someone to have sex with in front of her husband and, finally, Jimmy’s emotional breakthrough. Also, I wouldn’t mind a Killian-centered episode because I have genuine curiosity over what all is going on there and where his father is.

Alexa: Can we just take a minute to appreciate Ben Folds? I had no idea the dude is so funny. I’m sincerely proud we North Carolinians can claim him as our own, and I hope this isn’t his last appearance on “You’re the Worst.” I’m going to choose to believe the fact that he’s such a skeeze on the show means he’s actually a good guy in real life. But his TV persona was the perfect comic relief for such an emotionally significant episode for Jimmy. Once again, the show deals with a serious issue in a way that still manages to feel completely true to character. Jimmy’s relationship with his father is so fraught with complicated emotions that there is no way his father’s death would lead to clean-cut closure. The scene in which Jimmy kicks his father’s ashes over Tony Shalhoub’s fence, the canister explodes and Jimmy walks away covered in ashes somewhere between tears and laughter is really the perfect farewell for this father-son relationship. It’s darkly funny and heartbreaking at the same time, and Chris Geere once again delivers an outstanding performance that conveys so much with few words.

Joel: I do theater with someone who used to date Ben Folds before he was famous. Knowing that person, and her sense of humor, and what that means about the sort of person she would date, I can safely say that Ben Folds had a great time doing this bit on the show. With the show set in LA and Gretchen being in the entertainment business, there is room for other celebrities to show up as exaggerated versions of themselves. That’s the kind of thing that could feel out of place, or one step too far into the absurd, but the way this episode utilizes Ben Folds shows that they know exactly how to handle something like that.

Of course the bulk of this episode centers around the funeral of Jimmy’s father. One thing that’s been bugging me a little bit is how we left the relationship between Jimmy and his father at the end of the episode where Jimmy’s family visited. Now, that moment between Jimmy and his father obviously doesn’t erase the years of issues that have built up between the two men but Jimmy talking to his father and learning that his father had in fact read his book, did feel like the first step in repairing a very long, very broken bridge between the two of them. But that first step hasn’t been mentioned since. We’ve had a few episodes now that are centered around Jimmy’s relationship with his family, specifically his father, and it’s like that positive interaction is never even mentioned. However, in this episode, it’s revealed that this one good moment, one final nice memory that Jimmy could have of his father, is also not what we thought it was.

This is one of the most emotionally complicated moments as far as Jimmy’s father is concerned. Jimmy’s father left their relationship a mess and it’s one that can never be properly put back together at this point. Jimmy is confronted with how he chooses to deal with that fact moving forward in a great moment that ends the episode with Jimmy trying to dump his father’s ashes all over Tony Shalhoub's lawn. This genuine mess that it makes is a perfect visual representation of Jimmy’s relationship with his father. He’s gone, but somehow he still manages to be everywhere.