overnights

You’re the Worst Recap: Irresponsible Garbage People

You’re the Worst

The Sweater People
Season 2 Episode 1
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
YOU'RE THE WORST --

You’re the Worst

The Sweater People
Season 2 Episode 1
Editor’s Rating 4 stars
Aya Cash as Gretchen Cutler. Photo: Byron Cohen/FX

The premise of these recaps is simple, yet vital: We will determine what is, above (below?) all else, the worst thing in the episode. There’s stiff competition for this slot, as each week will bring us face-to-face with our series regulars, who are all basically vicious, brutal narcissists. (Except for Edgar, resident moral compass and not-selfish person.) Terrible decision-making, mind-altering drugs, questionable sexual choices: all contenders for the crown of the Worst.

Let’s do this.

Gretchen and Jimmy are shacking up, pulling all-nighters to prove their continued awesomeness to each other and themselves. This is not ideal for Edgar, who, what with the crippling PTSD and all, has a hard enough time sleeping as it is. And he has a job! Edgar got a job at the gym, cleaning showers and such. Sounds like Abbi’s gig at Soulstice.

How committed are Gretchen and Jimmy to making co-habitation work? They are all in on not “turning boring,” the great fear of comfortable couples the world over. Then again, Gretchen doesn’t actually know Jimmy’s address. I find this hard to believe. Wouldn’t she have been programming it into her GPS to get there this entire time? But whatever, it sets up a good joke about people who do know their address, including kidnapped children and this dog Jimmy saw on Dateline who rides the bus to the park.

Gretchen might be ready for a break from back-to-back benders, but Lindsay isn’t having it. She speaks from the wizened perch of a soon-to-be divorced woman: “There comes a day when every relationship turns gross, old, and boring. Like Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.” Can we just take a moment for this prescience? YTW predicted the Ben and Jen breakup, like, months in advance.

Anyway, Lindsay makes the case for Gretchen to “do butt stuff” with Jimmy, even though Gretchen is kind of in the mood for hot tea and a good night’s sleep. Not on Lindsay’s watch! Gretchen is going to get weird: “For all of us who let love die by becoming ordinary.”

Edgar — sweet, gentle Edgar, voice of reason in this cruel, cruel world — rushes to Jimmy’s side with some off-brand Gatorade and, unlike Lindsay, suggests that without rest, Jimmy will die. Jimmy disagrees: “Yeah, I’m peeing blood, and I briefly forgot the word for telephone. But just because we’re co-habitating doesn’t mean we’re going to become disgusting normals.”

This scene brings us to the best, most vicious joke of the night. Jimmy can tell that Edgar has a crush on Lindsay because Edgar has been crying out Lindsay’s name in his sleep. “Usually,” Jimmy says, “it’s things like ‘Get to the chopper!’ and ‘Where’s Rodriguez?’ and ‘I didn’t know it was a school!’” Edgar, almost to himself: “I didn’t know it was a school.”

(Does that joke make you deeply uncomfortable? That’s okay, you’re a better person than I am, maybe, but anyway, this might not be the show for you.)

Jimmy and Gretchen spend the next few nights completely destroying themselves and their apartment, each refusing to be the one who says, “Maybe we don’t need to add cocaine to the butt stuff.” It is taking a toll. Everyone looks like hell. Sam takes away Gretchen’s phone and replaces it with this burner-type flip phone from 1999, because she is too reckless for anything but a phone made for “hookers, drug addicts, and irresponsible garbage people.”

Just when these two crazy kids think about dialing back the crazy, they come face-to-face with these youths who are awful in the way that only people who are slightly younger than you can be awful. These baby millennials are so unimpressed by cocaine, which is only cool, “If you’re a day trader in the ’80s or my dad’s new wife, Brenda.” They hook Jimmy and Gretchen up with overpriced death pills that come with bizarre warnings — “Do not listen to music, nothing is sucking you towards it” — and, whoops, our lovebirds wake up in their underwear in a car wreck in the middle of nowhere.

In sidekick city, Paul swings by Lindsay’s place to pick some stuff up and oops has sex with her, which he immediately regrets. He’s going to regret it even more when he finds out Lindsay Amazing Amy Dunne’d his used condom in the freezer.

So what’s the worst? Look, it’s a close call. I really hate those douche-y early-20-somethings at the bar. But I have to be ruthless and I know, in my heart, they are not the worst this week. Drumroll please …

The Worst: Not knowing it was a school.

Runners-up: Head-wigglies, being too hung-over to eat breakfast lasagna, unrequited love, American exceptionalism, the fact that Edgar doesn’t have a family, sleepy bitches who lose their right to have normal-people phones.

A few good things: Sprawling, Gretchen’s death stares, a “just checking in” text exactly when you need it the most.

You’re the Worst Recap: Garbage People