You’re the Worst Review: Four Goddamn More Days (Season 5 Episode 11)
The wheels are starting to fall off the wagon on You’re the Worst Season 5 Episode 11, “Four Goddamn More Days,” as we inch unbearably closer to the finish line.
“Four Goddamn Days More” exists for two reasons: To set up how Jimmy and Gretchen’s relationship is probably going to go badly and also to turn the subtext regarding their relationship into text.
The similarities that lie within that are the ways that Jimmy and Gretchen disclose information to each other. The episode is able to illustrate this rather well in a kind of contrasting view, as the pair separately struggle with professional setbacks.
For Jimmy, he’s able to sink down into his despair at getting kicked off of the adaptation for his novel, but still rely on his fiancee through his depressive episode. Gretchen, on the other hand, hides it away from Jimmy until the last possible moment, making herself miserable in the process.
It’s not often that you’d be able to say that Jimmy’s way of dealing with a situation is better than someone else’s, but here it is.
Given Jimmy’s horrified look in the final moments of the episode, it isn’t hard to imagine that Gretchen unloading this truth bomb on him all at once is the thing that drives them apart. The irony there is that if Gretchen had confided in him sooner on a smaller scale with all of these things, it likely would have been fine.
For a normal person, learning all of the things that Gretchen has kept from him recently would be a lot — and Jimmy is most certainly not a normal person. Of course, the series will find a way to make their inevitable separation Jimmy’s fault too, but this will no doubt play a part in it.
At the same time, it’s easy to see Gretchen’s perspective in all of this as she’s desperately trying to explain it all to Edgar. Jimmy has a history of running. He ran after he proposed, and he almost ran when Gretchen was in the midst of her severe depressive state.
So much of Gretchen and her psychosis comes through during that exchange between the two, and it feels really earned and well within the bounds of her character. She lashes out and tries to be cruel in an effort to get him to back off, because she can’t deal with someone calling her out. The viciousness there feels all too natural and even a bit understandable.
What really makes that scene work — on top of how stellar Aya Cash is throughout it — is the sobering presence of Edgar. At some point during the last few episodes, Edgar has become a sort of dominant presence in the ensemble. And that comes through brilliantly here, as he’s completely unflappable the entire time.
He recognizes the vitriol and he’s able to talk that down, possibly because of his own explosively emotional past. So often before Edgar has been relegated to the character that passingly offers advice and is instantly brushed aside. But here, he’s persistent and doesn’t allow himself to be brushed aside.
The credit to that has to go to Desmin Borges, who is giving a quiet, contained performance against Cash, the louder and supposedly more interesting character.
Overall, “Four Goddamn More Days” is the necessary episode we need before we get to the penultimate installment and everything begins to fall apart.
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: Four Goddamn More Days (Season 5 Episode 11)”
Totally agree with you on the part where the show makes Jimmy take the blame for the relationship falling apart, not understanding how hard Gretchen can be to handle, given her self-sabotaging tendencies and the way she played with his feelings in season 4 as a way to punish him after he left her at the hill, which people say he probably deserved, but can’t deny how toxic her behavior was then.
And, Edgar finally revealing that he knows what she’s been trying to hide was played so well, she does exactly what people do sometimes, out of shame and anger, they lash out to hide their pain by pushing the other person away. But, the ‘PTSD dummy’ handled it so well, he maybe a third wheel but he’s something they need but do not deserve.
So far, disappointed to see Lindsey’s pursuit of having a romantic relationship but perhaps, a rude awakening that she can’t have sex with anyone and get away with it, when it comes to a professional setting.
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