Overall, I thought this episode was….fine. The show still struggles to commit to any one plotline. Gretchen fully investing in her relationship with Boone would be interesting, but she’s still too indecisive, confused and conflicted to do that. Jimmy either continuing to try to get Gretchen back or disappearing into his public persona as erotica author would be interesting, but….Jimmy doesn’t know what he wants, either. So the characters just kind of flounder around. I don’t think this is unbelievable – it makes sense for the characters to be indecisive – but it takes the tension and focus out of the show. Fortunally, it’s still really funny.
Like in other episodes this season, Jimmy tries to hide from his insecurities by disappearing into a cool, popular, sophisticated persona. Unlike in other episodes this season, Jimmy fails spectacularly. The scenes in which Jimmy tries to impress Katherine’s high powered, intellectual friends contain the most straightforward, vicariously embarassing cringe comedy I’ve seen from YtW. They’re also hilarious, as Jimmy’s clueless arrogance comes to the forefront and we see him as the deluded, ridiculous Michael Scott type figure he’s always been inside. Plus, the statutory grape joke was pure gold.
As usual, Jimmy’s plotline is less challenging and disturbing than Gretchen’s, where the discomfort comes not from seeing a deluding character make an @ss of themselves but from seeing a confused, fearful and troubled one lose even more control over herself and her relationships. While YtW’s premise presents Gretchen, Jimmy and Lindsay as more disturbed, rude, and callous than the rest of the world, it consistently presents us with casually cruel side characters with even more internalized issues than the mains (ie, Becca, Vernon, Max, Paul, Becca’s “gay friend”). Today it’s Whitney, who is clearly unhappy with her life as a parent/mature adult and chooses to romanticize binge drinking and “having fun” rather than deal with her problems. After refraining from drinking for about two minutes, she starts ordering copious amounts of alcohol and devulging uncomfortably personal information, and Gretchen, being Gretchen, of course goes along with it. Gretch ends up blacking out and coming to while she’s fingering Whitney on the couch. It’s a disturbing scene, and it’s implied Whitney took advantage of her drunkenness in a non-consentual way. (Whitney’s insistence that she and Gretchen have youthful “fun” reminds me of Gretchen’s own behavior towards the teenagers in “Not A Great Bet” – in both cases, characters try to escape into a romanticized version of youth and pressure others to help them recreate their fantasies. Whitney’s behavior is less creepy because Gretchen is an adult, but…still)
Lindsay and Becca’s plotline was one of the most funny, but also felt the most unsupported and unearned. Lindsay’s generally an optimist, and she’s at a pretty good point in her life (successful career, friends with benefits relationship with Edgar) so it feels strange that she would question her own self worth so much in this episode. The best explanation is that Becca is dragging her down while she finds a scapegoat for her own problems, which…f you, Becca, as usual. That said, the bit with “Bamba Dad” and his lemon grove was hilarious and unexpectedly sweet (the look on Lindsay’s face when he remembers she wanted to be a dinosaur!) so I can’t complain too much.
Grade: B+