One of the ongoing themes in You’re The Worst is that Jimmy and Gretchen are constantly playing the role of adults because they aren’t quite sure how to just be an adult. In “Crevasses,” this is shown through Gretchen’s inability to simply buy things.
We’re at the point in every cohabitation storyline when Gretchen and Jimmy disagree about space, belongings, and semantics (“my” house, not “our” house, etc.). Jimmy notes that Gretchen doesn’t have any of her own personal belongings (or any normal adult belongings) so she’s still using Jimmy’s toothbrush and spitting in martini glasses. In return, Gretchen brings up the relevant fact that Jimmy hasn’t exactly made her feel wholly welcome there because he’s yet to really allow her to have her own space — her three trash bags of stuff are piled in one corner.
The solution, then, is to go on a mall trip (mall trip! One of my favorite television plots!) where Edgar and Lindsay can hang in a sports bar as he lusts over her and she lusts over beefy dudes, where Jimmy can find some sort of Walden-like inspiration to help his writing, and where Gretchen can venture out and go shopping (and where we can get a perfect montage of Gretchen/Jimmy being the worst, and therefore the best, while in the mall).
Jimmy’s plot, while good, is the most forgettable of the bunch though I do love that we get another quick moment in which one of our lead characters unknowingly ruins someone’s life — this time it’s a security guard who mistakenly believes he and Jimmy are going to write the novelization of a movie. Edgar and Lindsay’s plot is a lot of fun, particularly because of their individual performances. What I like most about it is that You’re The Worst is building their friendship and possible-eventual-relationship slowly.
YOU’RE THE WORST — “Crevasses” — Episode 202 (Airs Wednesday, September 16, 10:30 pm e/p Pictured: (l-r) Kether Donohue as Lindsay, Desmin Borges as Edgar. CR: Byron Cohen/FX
The series is showing us how they play off each other, the benefits to their friendship, the mismatched personalities (and levels of interest), and the ways in which this couple both can and can’t work. The hints — Lindsay’s sudden realization that Edgar will do anything for her, Edgar’s eagerness to please but also his frustration, their casual friendship that is layered with complications, and their interests in other people — are all great to watch. It’s also a wonderful juxtaposition between Gretchen and Jimmy, who immediately hooked up first and then decided to see if they work well together.
Anyway, that leaves Gretchen with the best arc of the night. She can’t buy things — she doesn’t know what to get, or how, or why she really even needs to. In one of my favorite jokes — second only to Cash’s perfect delivery of “irresponsible monster who burned down her apartment with her vibrator” — the employee at a home store gives Gretchen one of those college freshman checklists, effectively boiling Gretchen down to a lost teen who is living on her own for the first time — one of the first steps into adulthood. For a bit, Gretchen seems to do OK and even seems to be enjoying the shopping but when blindsided by a question about storage, she freaks out yet again and bolts from the store, unable to commit to adulthood because she’s equal parts confused and scared.
But You’re The Worst is about these baby steps to adulthood, and how Gretchen and Jimmy are helping each other bring out the more positive aspects of their personalities even when the series hinges on promoting the worst aspects. It’s about how each character is pushing each other along, even when they both have no idea what the hell they’re doing. They fake it, and they’ll get it eventually. Jimmy makes an effort to build Gretchen a night table; Gretchen moves her clothes out of trash bags and into Jimmy’s dresser. If nothing else, it’s a start.