You’re the Worst Review: Zero Eggplants (Season 5 Episode 7)
You’re the Worst Season 5 Episode 7, “Zero Eggplants,” reconciles the fallout of Jimmy’s indiscretion and how it affects his relationship with Gretchen going forward.
Despite how tonally dark much of “Zero Eggplants” is throughout, this is perhaps the first episode of the season that feels somewhat hopeful. It might simply be that You’re the Worst is really embracing the proverbial ticking time bomb that are the various flash-forwards we’ve seen thus far, but there’s a certain level of peace that exists here.
A lot of what makes this episode work is the chunk of it that focuses on Gretchen as she first tries to navigate her anger towards Jimmy and then later as she finds some semblance of acceptance with her new couple friend, Rachel (Javina Javankar).
As of late, You’re the Worst has often felt like a series that derives some perverse pleasure out of knocking Gretchen down, even when she’s at her lowest. It’s refreshing for “Zero Eggplants” to, while not necessarily elevate her, allow her to stand her ground a bit.
She doesn’t back down when she and Jimmy get into a massive fight, and she doesn’t allow herself to get labelled as the neurotic and unreasonable one. Her scene with Jimmy is fueled by this righteous anger that she so often isn’t allowed to feel, and it’s a breath of fresh air to see this kind of growth in her character.
Similarly, this connects to a later scene between her and Rachel where she’s trying so hard to not self destruct in front of her new friend and seem completely normal while at the same time trying to explain why she’s hesitant to have kids because of her depression.
Gretchen’s mental illness is a part of her character that the show sometimes wants to forget or occasionally write off as her own self-destructive tendencies. But it’s good to see it alive and well here as something that Gretchen very much still thinks about. It’s a fact of her existence that she does have to constantly think about.
It’s the reason why her final talk with Rachel is low-key one of the most important things to happen on the show. She has this new person in her life that is a sort of mirror image to Gretchen in a lot of ways, but seems to have her life (more or less) together and still accepts Gretchen for who she is to the fullest extent possible.
“Zero Eggplants” is the kind of episode that needed to happen at this point in the series, not just to contextualize how adult Jimmy and Gretchen’s argument is, but also to understand just how vital this acceptance from Rachel is to Gretchen.
We understand her at this point as a person who lashes out first because she fundamentally fears rejection on a personal level — and now here’s a like-minded person who could really not care at all about Gretchen’s broken parts.
In these scenes, it’s Aya Cash that carries the episode. In a just and right world, this would be her Emmy episode, displaying so much of her range not only to be funny but to turn on a dime and deliver vitriol and rage. It’s not easy to make that seem simple or easy, but Cash does it excellently.
“Zero Eggplants” marks perhaps the greatest episode of the season so far and leaves us a little hopeful for what the future of the show brings.
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.