Chris: So I would’ve expected some punchline where Gretchen got a promotion simply because she got a new office but weirdly enough, I guess the show just assumed we all knew that information and skipped right past it. Now it can be frustrating that so much of the episode was dedicated to Gretchen “interviewing” a slew of women with one actually fitting into Gretchen’s ludicrous criteria only for Gretchen to toss it all away and give it to Lindsay in a throw-away mention at the end. However, this seems like the most on-brand response Gretchen could’ve had to this whole situation which includes her showing some bravery in calling her mom only to allow her mom to believe she’s marrying Boone. And on Jimmy’s side of things, we see the complicated relationship he has with success when he finds out his (Edgar’s) pitch was accepted but doesn’t want the responsibility of having to actually write the script. Finally, I know there were jokes in previous seasons that Paul F. Tompkins was a monster but I’m not sure I needed to actually see it and I’m really not sure I want to see where this story is going.
Alexa: I think maybe I missed something - did Gretchen get an actual promotion in addition to moving into a new office? Is she leaving her job and I somehow overlooked it? In any case, Gretchen spends most of this episode hiring her replacement in a distinctly Gretchen fashion. We’ve discussed frequently the gang’s tendency to crawl slowly toward adulthood kicking and screaming, and Gretchen is still very much in that place even though Lindsay, Edgar and Jimmy have grown at least a little in the past season. She turns the job interview process into a lengthy distraction from telling her mother about the wedding, and when she finally does she tells her she’s marrying Boone, which probably isn’t the best omen for her marriage to Jimmy. In contrast, when Jimmy finds out about Gretchen’s insane amount of debt, he goes out and lands a new gig as a screenwriter to make more money. After all his past mistakes, he’s putting a lot of effort in laying the foundation for their future, and I hope Gretchen ultimately gets on the same page. One thing that feels off about this season is the lack of Lindsay and Edgar. Lindsay hasn’t had much to do at all so far, and Edgar’s storyline is once again centered on being tormented at work. Surely our two sidekicks will get a better send-off before the end of the season?
Joel: This show has a strange relationship with money. There are times where it seems like it’s happy to acknowledge that Gretchen is successful in her job working with musicians that are far enough along to have “made it” in their career and that Jimmy is a twice published author with one of his books doing well enough to get made into a movie. This isn’t to say that these two should be rolling in money, but there are times that the show treats them as fairly well off. Then there are times where they’re supposed to be drowning in debt. Jimmy has stated that his house is too expensive and he cant afford home insurance, and in this episode we learn that Gretchen has a massive amount of credit card debt.
This looks like it might be the first sign of where this final season of the show is headed. While the previous season was largely focused on Jimmy having to atone for his wrongdoings in the relationship, in this instance, Jimmy seems to be the responsible one in the relationship. WHile Gretchen is insisting that credit card money isn’t real money and spending the whole episode avoiding making a phone call, Jimmy is actually the one who is willing to put in the extra work to make sure that their future life together will be as comfortable as possible. If this is a show about people getting dragged, kicking and screaming, into adulthood, it seems like Jimmy may have actually learned and grown a little bit from the experiences he’s had. The episode even ends on a gag of Gretchen avoiding her problems by letting her mother think she’s marrying Boone instead of Jimmy. Now, this may just be one final joke for the episode, but this is the second time that Boone has been brought up as the more ideal partner for Gretchen, and it’s possible that this is foreshadowing of things to come. Gretchen isn’t avoiding her problems as much as she is just kicking them down the line a little bit and we’re quickly running out of episodes here.
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