You’re the Worst Review: This Brief Fermata (Season 5 Episode 6)
Jimmy and Gretchen experiment with the boundaries of their relationship on You’re the Worst Season 5 Episode 6, “This Brief Fermata,” where the cracks really begin to show.
There’s nothing more disheartening than realizing that a beloved show is leaning on little more than writing that is, at its core, lazy and hoping that will carry it through. Ultimately, that’s a lot of what “This Brief Fermata” is.
Ideally, You’re the Worst is a show where an exploration into polygamy could be a halfway decent and interesting route to take, at least for an episode. In execution, Jimmy’s decision for Gretchen and himself to have a week of no-strings-attached sex feels little more than contrived.
At the basest level, this is all incredibly cringe-inducing, because it’s not doing anything interesting with the concept. It’s doing what plenty of other shows have done before without adding its own twist on it. The series simply puts it out there as it is and hopes that its mere existence is enough.
Beyond that, however, the series is doubling down on its recent and worst quality: an insistence on being cruel to its characters for the sole reason of being cruel. There was a time where the show felt like it was really rooting for these characters, but now it just seems like the show is actively against them and any kind of lasting happiness for them.
It’s as if the writers have this idea of Jimmy and Gretchen not making it to the end as a couple and now it’s working backwards from there and coming up with plot lines to support that end. Ultimately, the episode fails because it’s not believable at this point that Jimmy is this type of person to either suggest this ludicrous idea or to even cheat the way that he does.
At the place where both Jimmy and Gretchen are in the series, it strains the realm of plausibility that it’s how any of this would go.
“This Brief Fermata” is an episode that revels in how seriously Gretchen takes her job now but wants to knock her — and subsequently Jimmy — down a peg. Again, this series is demonstrating at the very end of its run that it’s uncomfortable with characters having any lasting kind of happiness.
Regardless of the show that believes in that kind of philosophy, it’s a sign of writing insecurity and nothing else.
Speaking of Gretchen, it should be noted how incredible Aya Cash is in this episode, especially at the very end as Jimmy is attempting to explain his rendezvous with the florist. Cash is always stellar at demonstrating this kind of barely restrained fury that could decimate whole city blocks, and that particular scene is no different.
There’s a kind of wonderful subtlety to it, but at the same time it feels completely dangerous.
Overall, however, if this is the direction that the rest of the final season of You’re the Worst is going, then this is going to be a massively disappointing end.
What did you think of this episode of You’re the Worst? Share your thoughts 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.
One thought on “You’re the Worst Review: This Brief Fermata (Season 5 Episode 6)”
I liked it imho but damn, I really do not want to see Gretchen again making Jimmy miserable by her destructive antics because of the mistake he did. The way she insisted things at the end really did open my eyes to show how selfish Jimmy is though, maybe the path where the split up before or after marriage shown by the frequent future scenes in the episode might turn true, ending up breaking my heart like season 4 all over again
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