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Where Is Gretchen Going At the End of These 'You're the Worst' Episodes?

By Vivian Kane | TV | October 8, 2015 |

By Vivian Kane | TV | October 8, 2015 |



Last night’s episode of You’re the Worst, titled “We Can Do Better Than This,” was possibly my favorite episode of the second season so far. There were more subplots packed into these twenty-odd minutes than we’re maybe used to— from Gretchen and Lindsay attempting and failing their own IRL Bechdel Test, to Lindsay becoming VERY passionate about Benghazi and the “Keystone-XBox pipeline,” to Edgar’s new love of improv (and his improv teacher), to Jimmy being exceptionally Jimmy in all regards— but it didn’t feel overclogged. All the characters had honest moments and big laughs. But for an episode that moved so swiftly between so many extreme plot lines that it bordered on farcical, it ended on a dark note. Like the episode before it, the last moments show us Gretchen sneaking out of bed, gathering her shoes and a burner phone, and leaving home. “We Can Do Better Than This” added to the mystery by letting us know that Jimmy is aware of this, and is maybe not all that surprised.

While the big-picture feeling here seems to be that Jimmy and Gretchen— as we’ve seen since the very beginning, and even more so since they’ve started cohabitating— have insane chemistry, and bring out the best (and worst) in each other, but they are also quick to glaze over the hard stuff, the emotional bits of coupledom. Clearly there’s something under the surface here that both are aware of, but neither will address. SO WHAT IS IT? In recent interviews leading up to the season premiere, Aya Cash has teased a darker, “deeper” look at their relationship, saying we’ll see “a real push to deal with some stuff [that will] touch everyone.”

It pretty quickly turns. It’s not a whole season about, ‘My God, there’s a tampon in the toilet!’ or ‘My God, where do I put my clothes?’ There are those moments, because that’s real, but it very quickly turns to something… I’m going to say ‘deeper.
Stephen Falk has also talked about how dark things will get. From the sound of it, whatever’s bubbling under the surface is going to be big.
I really want everyone to experience it as it unfolds, so I can’t say what it is, although I would love to. It just surrounds an issue that Jimmy [or] Gretchen has in their personal life that threatens to really derail the relationship, and it’s something that’s very common among a lot of people I know and creative people. So we tackle it head-on in all its messy horror. It was really an effort to challenge ourselves and to see if we could make something that sounds so unfunny funny, or at least render it in a comedic situation.

So what do you think? Where is Gretchen running off to in the middle of the night, and what is this deep, unfunny twist headed our way?


Vivian Kane laughs every time Edgar didn’t know it was a school, and she hates herself for it. Every time.

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