The YOU’RE THE WORST Team on the Unexpected Series Finale

April 5, 2019 by Marisa Roffman

YOU’RE THE WORST — “Pancakes” – Season 5, Episode 13 (Airs April 3, 10:00 pm e/p) Pictured (l-r): Aya Cash as Gretchen, Chris Geere as Jimmy. CR: Byron Cohen/FXX

[This post contains spoilers for the YOU’RE THE WORST series finale.]

YOU’RE THE WORST ended its five season run with a fittingly unconventional ending: Jimmy (Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash) ran out on their wedding, and opted to just commit to each other anew every day.

For the duo, it worked. The flashforwards—which had been teased throughout the season—showed the couple was still together, and raising their daughter.

“We really worry over every question, every decision, and this was a very binary decision: do they get married or do they not?” YOU’RE THE WORST creator Stephen Falk explains in the video below. “I wanted to find a different way to do it…They could just make that decision—which seems very Jimmy and Gretchen—to bail on their wedding, but still stay together, even if only for that day. They realize that making that vow forever doesn’t feel right. So they decide to just choose every single day ‘are we still gonna be together?’ That allows them this false freedom to actually continue and end up having a family and staying together.”

The friend group did grow apart, however, as Edgar’s (Desmin Borges) warning that Jimmy shouldn’t marry Gretchen shifted their friendship and allowed the scribe to move to New York. He reunited with his estranged friend in the future at Lindsay (Kether Donohue) and Paul’s (Allan McLeod) second wedding, and the two were (mostly) able to put things behind them.

“It became very exciting to me early on that the mystery we were building in flash forwards of this break-up that we assume is Jimmy and Gretchen…it was very exciting for me to shift it to Jimmy and Edgar, and make that the central break-up in the season,” Falk says. “It was a little bit of a surprise, and a surprise to the audience, which is nice to do, but also it was completely fitting of what Edgar needed to do to catapult himself out of Jimmy’s orbit.”

He adds of Lindsay and Paul: “They’re just too much of a disaster to be with anybody else!”

For more on the finale, Falk and series stars Geere, Cash, Donohue, Borges, McLeod, Janet Varney, and Todd Robert Anderson give their thoughts about the episode and their endings…

Stephen Falk: