You’re the Worst Review: What Money? (Season 5 Episode 4)
You’re the Worst Season 5 Episode 4, “What Money?” asks the age-old question: How much do you tell your friends and loved ones when you come into a windfall of cash?
There’s one strategy which says that you should never tell anyone for the rest of your life and carry on as if nothing has happened. On the other hand, you can simply tell the people in your life that you completely trust and hope for the best.
That, in itself, is the big thrust of the episode. How much do you really trust the people you surround yourself with? Sure, you can trust someone to pick you up from the airport, but enough to know that you suddenly have large sum of wealth at your disposal? That might be another story altogether.
This thought comes into stark focus on “What Money?” as Jimmy, after receiving a check for selling the rights to his novel to the studio, ponders whether or not to tell Gretchen about the check.
This seems to play into this season’s ongoing theme of “Should Jimmy and Gretchen be getting married at all?” Given that he apparently trusts Paul (honestly, Paul?) more, the answer would seem to indicate no. The interesting thing about this episode, though, is the way that — perhaps for the first time this season — there’s a kind of hopeful bent to it.
That is, until the final scene is brought up, which brings with it a The Leftovers-esque amount of foreboding towards what the final episode has in store for us. Things don’t seem to be going super great for Jimmy. The car he got Gretchen at the end of the episode is trashed, and his house is in escrow.
This doesn’t leave one with a very optimistic outlook for the rest of the season.
Of course, it could be red herring — or it could be the show’s way of gearing us up for an ultimately melancholic ending for the series. It tastes bitter, but is You’re the Worst truly a show where your two self-destructive leads get to ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after?
If this was earlier in the series, I might be willing to say yes. If this was the second season, maybe they could find a kind of happy ending like that. This isn’t that show anymore, though.
It has progressively gotten crueler towards the two leads and sometimes finds a level of satisfaction in knocking them down a peg. It derives pleasures often times from demonstrating just how pathetic the two characters are. We want them to end up together because it makes us feel better about ourselves, but that doesn’t mean it should be that way.
The ending leads us to the conclusion that the kind of functionality that comes with acquiring some level of adulthood and integrating that into your life is something that Gretchen and Jimmy fundamentally fear. So much about them is messy, possibly by their own design, and to be an actual adult would erode the identity they’ve created for themselves.
Only time will tell what kind of ending we are headed for: one that feels good, or the one that’s being hinted at here.
What did you think of this episode of You’re the Worst? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Reviewer Rating:
User Rating:
You’re the Worst airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on FXX.
Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!
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.