You're the worst final recap: "Pancakes" is a perfect end of sitcom

Each week we select a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week from March 31 to April 6 is "Pancakes" the final of the FXX series You are the worst.

The romantic comedy always tries to run out of time, at least to a certain level. Lovers meet and fall each for the other. They kiss. They fall apart. Maybe they find their way back to the end. It is a worn and respected formula that has trouble flourishing with each new turn that appears.

And most Roma are movies or novels. They are finished and separate in a very tight time. They do not have to deal with ramifications and consequences, what happens after, with the idea that the story does not just stop.

That's why rom-com television has a much more spotter story. TV shows, after all, can last for years and years. It's so easy to stretch a will – they / they do not go – until it slams, or to have nothing to say once the lovers are together. Many television shows were taken by surprise because they did not know how to tell a love story through the seasons.

What is FXX You are the worst, who ended his five seasons on Wednesday, April 3, realized that the television rom-com worked better if you put the couple in relation first. When the rest of the story becomes a consecration, well, it's a space where television can play.

During You are the worstOver the course of the five seasons, her two main lovers, Jimmy (Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash), got into life and wove themselves, never really knowing what brought them closer together or why the traps were so bad. a conventional relationship – something both believed that they did not want – seemed more pleasing with each other than with anyone else.

But the finale of the series still had to solve the question to which all rom-coms had to answer, to know if the two belonged together forever. All Roma-coms had to do the same thing: lovers kissed and went out at sunset or had a last bittersweet meeting where they realized that even though they had so much to gain from knowing each other they did not do it. meant to be.

And in "Pancakes" – You are the worstThe last installment, and one of the best episodes of this great little series – the show has somehow found a way to do both.

How You are the worst was able to tell a beautiful story about marriage without her characters getting married

FXX

The smartest thing the finale does is find a way to have a happy ending, while recognizing the harsh realities of any lasting relationship. Jimmy and Gretchen do not separate, but they do not get married either. Instead, they choose to re-engage each other each day, thinking to be a better signifier of their love than a ceremony.

This result is very much in line with You are the worstThe ethics of finding something beautiful in the midst of all that is difficult to live in life. Indeed, the authors of the series did not consider separating Jimmy and Gretchen at all.

"Simply, not being together was off the table, because I think it's mean," You are the worst creator Stephen Falk, who wrote and directed "Pancakes", told me. "The public has invested so many seasons in this couple that you want to honor that and not just pull the carpet from underneath."

Still, Falk and his team had to find a way to create tension as the season approached. To do this, they cribbed of breaking Bad, of all things. As Jimmy and Gretchen planned their wedding, the episodes were going to project into a much darker future, where the two men were separating and seeing each other for the first time in years. breaking BadThe last season drew the attack on Walter White. Surely You are the worst would not he end with his central couple who hated each other?

Yet even though I was looking at these flash-forward, I suspected sneakily that in the end, they would not be as devastating as they seemed. I had been on the set during the production of "Pancakes". The scene I saw being filmed was indeed devastating. Jimmy and Gretchen confessed they were not sure they could keep the promise of any wedding vow – to love a person forever – and seemed about to cancel everything.

But I had also been told that the place where the episode had been shot was not just a luxury home in the Los Angeles hills. This is where Falk's wedding took place. If he was going to separate these two men forever, he probably would not The.

To feed my theory, actor Chris Geere has said that if you look closely throughout the final episode, you will see family members of the cast and the '' '' '. Series team scattered throughout the wedding scenes, including the wife and children of Falk. (A song that Geere's wife played is part of the episode's soundtrack.) The idea was to give the end a little "family album" feel, Geere said.

I had reason to think that a breakup was not imminent. In the end, the flash-forward throughout You are the worstThe last season proved not to tease the breakup of Jimmy and Gretchen, but for their current project to get married without ever getting married. They have a daughter together, and the big break that the series implied was actually between Jimmy and his best friend, Edgar (Desmin Borges), a man he had long treated terribly and benefited from. The fight that the two had had You are the worstThe penultimate episode is revealed in the finale as upsetting the group of friends of the series.

So, it's Edgar, not Jimmy, that Gretchen has not seen for ages, and their fight is the reason Jimmy fears not to attend the wedding in the flash-forward (which turns out being the second support of the player Lindsey and she twice a husband Paul).

Honestly, he could have felt a bit expensive without Falk's willingness to find a way for Jimmy and Gretchen to be together while displaying social conventions. Their promise to choose to love each day, just for that day, more or less manages to formalize their relationship, without making it official-official. (Although I recommend it for tax purposes, they write at least the paperwork of a legally sanctioned national partnership.)

It's a great recognition of the power of lifetime commitment, which is also reminiscent of the particular dislike of these characters for doing things in a more conventional way, not to mention You are the worstConstant attempts to reverse and subvert the rom-com tropes.

Falk told me that he had first had the idea of ​​"Pancakes" when hearing Hugh Grant describe his relationship with his then-partner, Anna Eberstein, at the time. the Howard Stern show a few years ago. Grant described their relationship at the time as a relationship where marriage would be primarily a formality, where the daily work of building the relationship did not immediately depend on such a step. (Of course, between the interview of this interview by Falk and now, Grant and Eberstein got married in 2018.)

"It may be a very childish idea of, 'Nope! Marriage is not for me!', Explains Falk about the final choice of his characters." But I think we've come to a version which allowed Jimmy and Gretchen to erase their fears, erase their trepidations by making the choice not to do it. "

Ambitious comedy ends are difficult. But You are the worst makes it look easy.

FXX

I've always found it a little curious that American viewers seem ready to adopt ambitious goals in dramatic series, while finding them off-putting in comedy. If we are unhappy with the Seinfeld gangs are forced to answer for their dubious or angry crimes about the How did I meet your mother In the end we met the mother, we really want our sitcoms to end with the indication that everything will be fine and everything will be fine.

Once again, You are the worst understood how to split the difference. It's hard to say that "Pancakes" – which skips through time, after all – is not ambitious. But it's also time to tell how a group of friends gather. It's ambitious, but at the service of a story both romantic and underhanded.

"Slyly romantic at heart" might be the best way to describe You are the worst in general too. As Cash says, it's a show about how to negotiate your own happiness within the couple, whether it's defining rules that make sense to you and your partner, or ignoring social conventions. .

"A relationship is a totally individual experience," says Cash to Jimmy and Gretchen (but also, really, to all relationships). "It's an individual contract between two people of their own. As a result, some things that do not suit you, such as sleeping with others for a week, may be appropriate in some relationships. [as it is for Jimmy and Gretchen]. Just find people willing to sign the same contract. "

Of course, there is no guarantee that Jimmy and Gretchen will be happy forever. But nothing guarantees that a couple will be happy forever. The final scene of "Pancakes" – which is the night of the wedding that Jimmy and Gretchen canceled in favor of their "choose to love each other every day" gambit – makes a nod to this, in the form of a moment when Gretchen admits that her depression could lead her to end her life someday. Jimmy is sitting in front of this for a while before cracking sneakily, but it is clear that at this moment, the two are choosing again, as they have done over and over again.

"This space between [those two lines] shows the success they both have achieved in this relationship, which is a level of understanding that I do not think they have enjoyed so much before, "says Geere.

The night I was on the set during the shooting of the finale was the penultimate day of filming the entire series. Cash would be back the next day for a handful of rudimentary clichés showing Gretchen opening medicine cabinets and other small pieces. – and the actors were properly emptied of their last night of filming. Borges and Donohue were already gone when I arrived, so it was just Geere and Cash, dressed in gorgeous wedding trimmings and looking at the glittering lights of Los Angeles, while Jimmy and Gretchen confessed they did not know they can love forever, because forever is such a big word.

Watching them work together, well before seeing a single image of the last season, I was struck with melancholy, not for the couple – for I was pretty sure everything would be fine – but for You are the worst himself, who has encountered obstacles on the road but who has always found his way, thanks to the two people in his center.

"The central thesis of our show is that we will present you the form of romantic comedy intact, but we will highlight the clichés of the genre, not in a satirical manner, but in a way simply the clear differences between the imaginary fantasy world of the 80s and the 2000s and the reality, how people really engage in relationships and dating, "says Falk. And" Pancakes "finds a way to rethink This question: What does it mean to like someone? What does it mean to promise you to them? What does it mean forever? really?

Maybe his willingness to answer these questions is what allowed You are the worst to navigate with such skill in the enigma of the "final of the ambitious sitcom". The show understood that life really has an epic reach – it takes place over decades, after all! But if you find the right partner, good friends, you will have an intense and flawless intimacy. Life is beautiful and life is small, and "Pancakes" succeed because it shows how to be both.

The first four seasons of You are the worst are available on Hulu, while the fifth is available on FX streaming platforms. You should really look at the dang thing.