You’re the Worst Review: Odysseus (Season 4 Episode 3)
Generally, a bad sign for anything you watch or listen — let alone a television episode — is the inability to remember much about it after you’ve walked away from it. This is, more or less, the case with You’re the Worst Season 4 Episode 3, “Odysseus.”
This isn’t to say that “Odysseus” isn’t a good episode or even noteworthy, but rather that it’s not a particularly memorable episode, which, on the scale of things, is a much lesser sin.
“Odysseus” doesn’t make much of an impression until the third act of the episode, and then it feels like nuclear explosion after nuclear explosion.
What was once an unremarkable episode quickly and quietly becomes an intensely explosive one with real staying power.
“Odysseus” tracks Jimmy’s return to L.A. and his attempts to not-so-elegantly worm his way back into the lives of Gretchen, Lindsey, and Edgar.
The episode is fairly plodding and monotonous throughout, which very well might be the point, so that when Gretchen storms into Jimmy’s house and angrily repeats Jimmy’s text back to him, it has the same amount of accusation as a punch to the face.
Even, impressively, in its final minutes, this is only the first course.
The true blow to the heart is Gretchen slowly, obviously even, lulling Jimmy into an emotional place of calm and acceptance only to rebuke him in the strongest way possible by essentially rejecting his novel based on their relationship and letting it fall to the ground.
The moment is made even more delicious by Jimmy becoming the face of 2016 America with a line that is so perfect given Jimmy’s repeated refusal to accept reality as it is while a trash can burns in the background.
Jimmy: This is fine.
The shame of “Odysseus” is that more of the episode isn’t at that level.
Frankly, the last chunk of the episode is the only worthwhile part, save for the look of terror on Gretchen’s face when she sees Jimmy again for the first time.
As previously mentioned, perhaps the point of the episode is for it to blow up at the end, where you’re slowly building in a pressure cooker. Perhaps the quiet and the mundanity of it all is necessary for the ending to be all the more substantial.
If that is the case, the first two acts of the episode can be forgiven.
Working for “Odysseus” in the early sections is the inclusion of Eureka‘s Colin Ferguson, who makes a wonderful addition to the episode as someone tasked with driving Gretchen home from a party. Ferguson has wonderful mildly antagonist energy with Aya Cash, and it could be nice to see him in future episodes, possibly as a sexual threat to Jimmy.
A lot of “Odysseus” feels a bit like putting characters in places they need to be going forward, but the emotional explosion we get from that as pay-off at the end makes it all worth it.
What did you think of this episode of You’re the Worst? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
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You’re the Worst airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on FXX.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.