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S04.E05: Fog of War, Bro

ElectricBoogaloo

By ElectricBoogaloo
in You're The Worst [V]

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whiporee

whiporee

She's not a nice person. Jimmy's a scared jerk, but he didn't deserve that. 

If he were to attack her with the vehemence she's shown to him, there'd be no sympathy at all for him. I hope there's none for her. 

I've always liked Gretchen. But unlike Jimmy, Gretchen is cruel. She's mean. Not in a cute way, but in a destructive, malicious, intentionally hurtful way. 

She deserves the abyss she finds herself in.  

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whiporee

whiporee

I guess we see it differently. Careless is not malicious. I don't think for a second there's any reading on this story that suggests Jimmy ever intentionally hurt Gretchen. 

Tonight Gretchen intentionally hurt and humiliated him. To me, there'd a big difference. 

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arc

arc

The two are and always have been comparably damaged but in their own different ways. For example, Gretchen lies a lot while Jimmy wants to put out a reckless and selfish, unkind sort of radical honesty. That urge, actually, I think ties in to how he's been incredibly self-absorbed (with some laudable exceptions) through most of this series. But I agree with @AlliMo overall.  You (@whiporee) are correct that he wasn't malicious, but to me that doesn't matter. The damage he caused -- I'm more talking about the abandonment than texting the rappers -- was tremendous. I guess I'm a little consequentialist here: it doesn't matter much to me if his actions were not maliciously intended.

That said, as far as she knows, they entered a truce about their professional lives and then Jimmy immediately broke it.

Personally, I didn't care for the music cues. I gather from reading reviews that it was Hitchcockian or something? I'm a cultural boor who doesn't know the classic film canon.

I did like that Gretchen was outthinking Lindsay from basically the first sentence Linds got out.

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whiporee

whiporee

I was so affected by the ending I forgot to say how weirdly directed it was tonight. A lot of the scenes felt really awkward, with strange camera choices and strange dialogue. Gretchen stuff aside, I thought it was one of the worst overall eps of the show -- still good TV, but not nearly what the previous shows this season had put together. 

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Deanie87

Deanie87

8 hours ago, whiporee said:

She's not a nice person. Jimmy's a scared jerk, but he didn't deserve that. 

If he were to attack her with the vehemence she's shown to him, there'd be no sympathy at all for him. I hope there's none for her. 

I've always liked Gretchen. But unlike Jimmy, Gretchen is cruel. She's mean. Not in a cute way, but in a destructive, malicious, intentionally hurtful way. 

She deserves the abyss she finds herself in.  

Yeah, I agree.  They are both awful in their own ways, and Jimmy is a complete pompous, condescending narcissist, and he can be carelessly cruel sometimes, but I think that he has a glimmer of self-awareness that Gretchen doesn't.  Or maybe its just that I find the ways that Jimmy is awful to be more relatable/funny than I do Gretchen.  I always remember her and Lindsay going into that yogurt store and eating up the samples and then throwing trash on the floor and leaving a mess, numerous times.  Also, I think she was the one stealing wedding gifts in the premiere.  And then last night, whether it was deserved or not, breaking a window and throwing Jimmy's bed out of it just isn't funny to me.  Jimmy ignoring Edgar and asking for Toast Soldiers or whatever it was, is funny to me.  

Speaking of Edgar, does anyone think he has been acting really weird this season?  Maybe its that he has gotten more confidence or maybe its because he is now working on a comedy show, but he is soooo DudeBro in a way that he never has been before.  I can't decide if it makes him more or less Ross Gellar-like.  Either way, not sure I like it.

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iMonrey

iMonrey

Quote

She's not a nice person. Jimmy's a scared jerk, but he didn't deserve that. 

If he were to attack her with the vehemence she's shown to him, there'd be no sympathy at all for him. I hope there's none for her. 

I go back and forth on what Jimmy "deserves" considering the abandonment last season. However, I do agree that if the shoe were on the other foot there would be a lot more hair-pulling over his behavior. It feels like she can get away with more because she's the woman. He abandoned her after the proposal because he's damaged, not because he deliberately wanted to be cruel to her. 

That's sort of the conundrum on this show, I guess. They're both awful people but who is "worse?" Is Jimmy the worst or is Gretchen? I used to think they were equally awful but this season is pushing me harder towards Gretchen being worse. Very meta when Honey Nutz (or was it Shitstain?) barged in and yelled at her "you're the worst . . . publicist ever."

I did get a kick out of Gretchen manipulating Linsday into thinking she had imagined Gretchen staying at her place for the past three months.

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possibilities

possibilities

11 hours ago, arc said:

@AlliMo@whiporee

That said, as far as she knows, they entered a truce about their professional lives and then Jimmy immediately broke it.

 

This is what makes it so terrible. It's like he's repeating the abandonment on the hill and daring her to take it. She doesn't know it was a mistake. She reasonably thinks he did it on purpose.

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wendyg

wendyg

This was the first episode of YTW that I thought was poor, the main reason being that it tipped over the line from funny to just uncomfortable. For me, not just because the characters were thoughtless or mean, because they've always had those moments. Instead, I think what bothered me was the apparent pointlessness of it. I really thought at the beginning when Jimmy wanted Edgar to make him toast soldiers that Edgar would tell him regretfully that Gretchen's his boss now because she's the one who paid the rent, and Jimmy would be told to go live elsewhere. As things went, I can't see what her immediate plan is, nor do I see why she wanted to destroy the bedroom she was sleeping in. I think her behavior in front of the cameras made sense given that she thought Jimmy had made the pact with her and then deliberately broken it (though actually Jimmy's best strategy from the outset would probably have been to say nothing and hope she stayed put).

There are other things: the marketing plan was dumb. Granted, Jimmy disappeared for three months, but the publicist seems to know nothing about him, not even information she could have gleaned from his agent. And PEOPLE writers are at least *somewhat* journalists - you'd think they'd go after it like hawks when they realized the kind of fake image they were being sold. What we know of Lindsay's boss suggests that Lindsay would be back at work at 8AM even if she stayed until 6AM; seems like a weak explanation to make it possible for Lindsay to be involved in a daytime plot (without having to hire and pay Kathleen Rose Perkins and a few more extras). I'm disappointed in what they're doing with Edgar, too - he had such a great story arc last season, and this year it seems like he's just sort of...there, with not enough attention being paid to him.

Like others, I thought the best bit was Gretchen's confusing Lindsay about her staying there. But that was the only bit to come close to the show's usual level of cleverness. I expected revenge - but I expected it to be *funny* and *clever* revenge.

I believe - I never saw the movie - that Gretchen's horror movie music and movements were from CARRIE.

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arc

arc

3 minutes ago, wendyg said:

I believe - I never saw the movie - that Gretchen's horror movie music and movements were from CARRIE.

I think the hair-over-the-face and crawl were straight out of THE RING, hence Edgar saying she was acting like a Japanese ghost.

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MaggieG

MaggieG

17 hours ago, arc said:

I think the hair-over-the-face and crawl were straight out of THE RING, hence Edgar saying she was acting like a Japanese ghost.

I thought the same thing. I did laugh at Edgar running out of the room and Gretchen just rising creepily over the wall.

Poor Edgar trying to start group texts and nobody responds to him.

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Ottis

Ottis

(edited)
On 9/27/2017 at 10:53 PM, whiporee said:

She's not a nice person. Jimmy's a scared jerk, but he didn't deserve that. 

If he were to attack her with the vehemence she's shown to him, there'd be no sympathy at all for him. I hope there's none for her. 

I've always liked Gretchen. But unlike Jimmy, Gretchen is cruel. She's mean. Not in a cute way, but in a destructive, malicious, intentionally hurtful way. 

She deserves the abyss she finds herself in.  

This is what I've been posting all season. This episode I fast forwarded through most of... it was contrived, created by the fact that Jimmy should kick Gretchen out and doesn't. She's horrible, and there is no excuse for her behavior. She isn't "the worst," she's a childish, selfish loser who needs to move on. With every episode this season she makes it clear that Jimmy's reaction to her acceptance of his proposal was pure self defense. Run, Jimmy, run. Like I'm about  to from this show. Hello, Better Things. 

Edited by Ottis
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tennisgurl

tennisgurl

I thought the Hitchcock stylist was really interesting, and I mostly enjoyed it. This show takes some weird stylistic choices, but I will take weird but interesting over safe but boring any day. At least in a show like this. 

Poor Edgar. The group text struggle is real. Either no one talks to you, or EVERYONE does. 

As to who is worse, its hard to say. I tend to say that Gretchen is generally the worst of the two, because she tends lack the glimmers of self awareness that Jimmy has, is more malicious, and has less full on redeemable moments (like Jimmy sticking with Gretchen during the worst of her depression), but Jimmy is awful too, and Gretchen has the high ground after the whole abandonment thing, so its hard to tell. Really, I think thats the point of the whole show. That everyone, even really shitty garbage fire people, has someone. Thats why I am still convinced Jimmy and Gretchen will work things out, even if it takes awhile. 

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Irlandesa

Irlandesa

On 9/28/2017 at 3:20 AM, arc said:

That said, as far as she knows, they entered a truce about their professional lives and then Jimmy immediately broke it.

Yes.  Although I think what made it especially cutting what Gretchen did was play the "we're still engaged card."  That wasn't just sabotaging Jimmy's interview, it was intentionally stabbing him in the heart.

Perhaps the pain is tit for tat but Gretchen gets this odd glee out of inflicting pain and yet she also doesn't seem to enjoy it.

On 9/28/2017 at 3:31 PM, wendyg said:

I really thought at the beginning when Jimmy wanted Edgar to make him toast soldiers that Edgar would tell him regretfully that Gretchen's his boss now because she's the one who paid the rent, and Jimmy would be told to go live elsewhere.

I'm under the impression that Jimmy owns the house outright so he can't be kicked out. 

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arc

arc

37 minutes ago, Irlandesa said:

I'm under the impression that Jimmy owns the house outright so he can't be kicked out. 

I think he owns but he's still paying mortgage. Not really sure but I think mortgage payments might have been mentioned this season or last.

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wendyg

wendyg

Actually, as in so many shows, Jimmy's finances have never made any sense. He wrote a book that got a good review, but that, as season 1 opened, wasn't earning him anything significant in royalties. He was hard up for a bit - which is why he spent season 2 looking for magazine work and so on - and at some point Gretchen stumped up six months' rent (not really clear how her share was calculated, whether it's rent in that she's paying it to Jimmy or rent in that he's paying it to someone else, or *what*.

The publicist tells Jimmy she knows he needs this because he hasn't had a big payday for a while. But this is nonsense. Supposedly this novel - and the amount of effort the publisher is putting in suggests this - attracted a fairly large advance. Advances are paid in two or three installments - usually a chunk when the book is commissioned (which doesn't apply here), a chunk when the manuscript is delivered (which happened several months ago), and a chunk when it's published (to ensure the writer reads and corrects galleys, participates in publicity, etc.). So Jimmy should have had a substantial payday three months ago after he delivered the book. He wasn't spending much during his time in the trailer park (and he was earning money, too). So why should he be broke now?

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whiporee

whiporee

Jimmy's money doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but I can imagine that he's in the middle of a two-or-three book deal, so the original advance is what he's been living on, and he doesn't get the next payment until the book is actually released, and in order to do that he needs to do contractually-mandated publicity. 

it's not perfect, but it's the best i got. 

 His interactions with Flo at the book store didn't suggest to me that the first book was a flop or unpopular -- just that it had been out a while -- so he might be getting royalties from that, too. 

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Irlandesa

Irlandesa

2 hours ago, whiporee said:

 His interactions with Flo at the book store didn't suggest to me that the first book was a flop or unpopular -- just that it had been out a while -- so he might be getting royalties from that, too. 

Yes.  I'm the worst at remembering details but I thought he was able to buy his house off of the first book which had some success.  He then wrote for TV and magazines.  Yet clearly he's still considered a niche writer.

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Duke2801

Duke2801

On 9/28/2017 at 0:53 AM, whiporee said:

She's not a nice person. Jimmy's a scared jerk, but he didn't deserve that. 

If he were to attack her with the vehemence she's shown to him, there'd be no sympathy at all for him. I hope there's none for her. 

I've always liked Gretchen. But unlike Jimmy, Gretchen is cruel. She's mean. Not in a cute way, but in a destructive, malicious, intentionally hurtful way. 

She deserves the abyss she finds herself in.  

I beg to differ.  Proposing to somebody then ABANDONING them 2 minutes later is pretty fucking cruel.  

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whiporee

whiporee

There's a difference between freaking out and planning to be cruel. Jimmy did the former, Gretchen the latter. I'm not saying what he did was excusable or no big deal. But she decided what she was going to do was hurt him, and hurt his career. She made the conscious decision to do that after giving it thought. A pretty huge difference in those to me. 

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arc

arc

The freak-out itself is one thing. The subsequent three month abandonment of his entire life including being off his cell the whole time? That's not cruel, but it is so monumentally selfish it weighs as heavily as any cruelty.

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Bubbles

Bubbles

23 hours ago, arc said:

The freak-out itself is one thing. The subsequent three month abandonment of his entire life including being off his cell the whole time? That's not cruel, but it is so monumentally selfish it weighs as heavily as any cruelty.

Yeah, and then even after having three months to think about what he did he still couldn't apologize without adding on a "but it was sort of your fault for saying the thing that made me freak out". 

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whiporee

whiporee

I get your point, and I'm not trying to defend Jimmy's actions. 

But ...

Compare it to, after someone has apologized (even if you don't like the apology), getting them to admit (in front of a reporter) they still a) love you and b) still want to marry you, and then humiliating them in front of reporters. And then loudly fucking someone else right in front if them, in their own bed, in front of colleagues and the same reporter.  

It does not feel like a proportional response. 

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