You're the Worst: Season Five (Review)

You're the Worst
2019 FXX
Season Five
The Nicsperiment Score: 9/10

I've been championing You're the Worst since the show first aired in 2014. So has just about anyone who watches, which I like to think is the reason the show completed its five season arc, despite a small audience. Over its first four seasons, You're the Worst almost exclusively experienced "ups," with only a few "downs.' The fifth and final season continues and cements the show's legacy of excellence.
You're the Worst is a five season exploration of a story that would generally be found in a two hour romantic comedy. Throughout its 62 episodes, You're the Worst has subverted romantic comedy tropes, while attempting to abide by a romantic comedy's general plot structure. Some may say that subversion is best exemplified by the show's absolutely filthy sense of humor, but I think its greatest subversion is the way it has elevated its two "sidekick" characters into not only major players in the story, but two unique, vital people with as equally important and messed up lives as the central couple.
Most of You're the Worst's lows take place in Season Four, an opinion of mine that may not be fair, as that season has to encompass the most alienating section of a romantic comedy: the break-up before the inevitable reunion. Unfortunately, the show's fourth season wandered around a bit too much, and at times made caricatures out of a central quartet (and also three very important peripheral characters) who were always over the top, yet still very believable, very damaged human beings.
Season Five sets out to not only re-humanize You're the Worst's characters, but somehow bring four people who will never really have it together to a place where it feels like they've distinctly and naturally grown and changed from the people introduced in the series premiere.
Will novelist, Jimmy (Chris Geere), ever truly realize he can't fix or parent his partner, Gretchen (Aya Cash)? Will he ever be truly comfortable with the idea of family? Will Gretchen ever take responsibility for her own life? Will she come to terms with her struggle with depression in a way that is honest? Will Jimmy's roommate, the PTSD-laden war-vet, Edgar (Desmin Borges), ever be able to live his own life, away from Jimmy's support? Will Gretchen's best friend, Lindsay (Kether Donohue), ever figure out her messy life and learn to act like an adult? Thankfully, the show's final episodes find both satisfying and realistic (to the characters) answers to those questions.
You're the Worst has always been wonderfully restless with format, and continues to creatively bloom in this final season, featuring an episode of completely unreliable narration, and a season long arc of brief flash forward insertions to build suspense toward just where the characters will end up in the finale. The cinematography continues to be eye-popping, the writing sharp and hilarious (brilliantly mixing nearly obtuse pop-culture references with broader humor), and the performances phenomenal. I hope Chris Geere's starring role in recent smash hit, Detective Pikachu, is a sign of bigger things to come from all four of the excellent leads. However, it's once again Desmin Borges who is asked to carry the heaviest emotional load this season, and Edgar's heart-to-heart with Jimmy at the end of the show's penultimate episode has to be one of the most devastating scenes of the television decade.
Showrunner, Stephen Falk, must be proud of his creation. You're the Worst has not only been the funniest show on TV for the last five years, but a distinct, and surely memorable spin on a well-worn formula. It's been there for my own ups and downs over the past five years, and I'll carry its characters with me for as long as my memory works. I hope the considerable amount of people who missed out during You're the Worst's original run will be just as blessed by it on whatever streaming platform it resides upon in the future.