Revelations, murder, and Paul F. Tompkins star in You're The Worst's final Sunday Funday

Sunday Funday has always been a bit of a misnomer. The holiday’s eponymous song might promise raucous celebration before the workweek begins, but the day’s activities and binge drinking belie the customary growth moments that historically occur. After all, Sunday Funday is the day when Jimmy told Gretchen not to leave him for Ty. It pushed Lindsay to take steps to end her marriage, even as she thought she was saving it. It’s when Edgar overcame his sexual drought and soothed his PTSD symptoms with immersion therapy. While Sunday Funday undoubtedly represents youthful extravagance in the face of responsibility (that’s part of the reason why the gang stopped doing it), it has never been as carefree as expected.

Sure enough, You’re The Worst’s final Sunday Funday is no different. Written by Stephen Falk and directed by Alex Hardcastle, “Bachelor/Bachelorette Party Sunday Funday” takes Jimmy and Gretchen on a crazy journey—rife with revelations, twists, and violence—that both underscores their incompatibility and reaffirms their resilience. Beyond the dynamic duo at its center, it also serves as an affecting tribute to the strength of unlikely friendships that previously seemed tenuous at best. The episode’s last few minutes are about as nakedly sentimental as You’re The Worst has ever been and, considering there are only four episodes left, they arrived right on schedule.

Before all that, however, “Bachelor/Bachelorette Party Sunday Funday” begins with mixed vibes and unwelcome company. Edgar and Lindsay convince Jimmy and Gretchen to go along with their wedding-themed Sunday Funday, but when they get on the party bus, they find the happy throuple (okay, not really, but still)—Vernon, Becca, and Paul—aboard as well. Jimmy and Gretchen begrudgingly tag along on Edgar’s terminally lame activities list while drinking Paul’s awful strawberry pale ale microbrew. Though the day initially seems like a bust, things quickly liven after Paul, under the influence of his ultra-low ABV beer, tells Jimmy that he impregnated Becca via intercourse. Of course, Jimmy immediately spills the beans to the rest of the group (following a $1,000 Venmo payment to Paul), setting the stage for further revelations and discomfiting truths.

Some of these are fairly predictable: Vernon reveals the threesome after being labeled a cuck by the rest of the group (once again, following a $1,000 Venmo payment to Paul) and Jimmy eventually announces that he sucked a dick. Yet, the tense environment that Jimmy and Gretchen accelerate ultimately leads to another rift between them. Once Paul F. Tompkins joins the party, he stirs the pot by playing host to a band of disparate assholes who, on paper, shouldn’t be in the same room with each other. He lands on Jimmy and Gretchen and asks them their opinions on circumcision, religion, and whether or not they even want kids. They disagree on every point.

Falk smartly doesn’t linger on their disagreements or center their rift upon one specific issue, but rather illustrate Gretchen’s flexibility might not jive with Jimmy’s stubbornness. Jimmy believes he’s living his most free life, one that’s unencumbered by any unwanted external factors. On the otherh and, Gretchen doesn’t believe that she’ll remain the same. In five years, she might be sober and pregnant with uncircumcised children living in a religious household. Or she might not. “We can make these big declarations, but it doesn’t mean anything,” she tells Jimmy, “or worse we think it means something, so we force ourselves to be this, even though that’s not who we are anymore.” Jimmy replies, “But I am who I am.” “I am, too. For now,” Gretchen responds.

And that’s the rub. Jimmy, for better or worse, has a fixed belief system that he’s worked to develop and maintain over the years. Gretchen still wants to grow and doesn’t want that to be seen as a weakness. Falk keeps the playing field very level and admirably doesn’t pick a side in the fight. Sympathy flows to Gretchen when she admits she doesn’t talk about religion around Jimmy because he makes her feel dumb or that she wants the opportunity to change. At the same time, Jimmy’s frustration with this isn’t unfounded, and though his “Those aren’t beliefs. They’re whims” line sounds pretty nasty, he isn’t exactly wrong. These two are just in different stages of life, which used to matter less when they weren’t staring down a lifetime together, but now it might be too big an obstacle.

Yet, Falk, a true romantic, doesn’t think it’s an insurmountable problem because, at the end of the day, these two love each other. How does he depict Jimmy and Gretchen’s undying affection for each other in this episode, you ask? By putting them through an upsettingly realistic double homicide scenario. After the bus stalls out in the desert on the way to Las Vegas, Edgar pins the blame on Tompkins, who proceeds to denigrate him and mocks his friends. Reeling from months of workplace abuse, Edgar pushes him off the bus, knocking him out. At this point, this all appears to be a misunderstanding gone awry. It all can be chocked up to high temperatures and alcohol. There’s still a way out of this. But Edgar finds a gun on Tompkins’ person and decides to hold the famous comedian at gunpoint, which eventually leads to Vernon getting stabbed in the neck.

Now, obviously, none of this can be real. You’re The Worst takes a certain amount of risks, but it’s not this bold. Still, I’ll admit I jumped when Tompkins seemingly murders Vernon specifically because, up to that point, everyone’s motivation is logically sound and all actions are entirely within character. Edgar pulls the gun on Tompkins because he believes he’s being manipulated by an abusive boss. Tompkins claims he has the gun because he’s nervous to be around a disgruntled employee with PTSD. Tompkins stabs Vernon because he thought he was going to murder him. Hardcastle stages the whole scene like a thriller, but everyone plays it as if a party really has gone south in the worst way imaginable. It’s not absurd to think, amidst all the freak outs, that Jimmy would shoot Tompkins for going after Edgar, or that Gretchen would finish the job once he starts choking Jimmy. After declarations of love and plans to escape to Mexico, Edgar and Lindsay finally reveal that the whole scheme was the real Sunday Funday, leading to screams of delight from everyone except Jimmy and Gretchen, who are still in shock.

Back on the bus, Jimmy and Gretchen renew their faith in one another. If they’re willing to impulsively adjust to circumstances like murder with just a moment’s notice, then maybe they will rise to the challenge of raising kids. But their reconciliation is just one of three. Lindsay and Paul share a very sweet scene in which they bury the hatchet after all those years of bad blood and miscommunication. It’s easy to forget that their marriage was so bad that Lindsay actually stabbed Paul at one point just out of pure existential discomfort. Now, they’re laughing about the fact that Paul made Becca come and Paul tries not to let his tears activate the yeast that has infected his eyes.

The truly winning scene this week features Jimmy and Edgar, who finally share a moment of mutual respect after years of relationship imbalance. Edgar’s character arc more or less came to an organic conclusion in You’re The Worst third season when he reckoned with his PTSD and became gainfully employed by Hollywood. Edgar’s storylines have since been parallel to the rest of the group and mostly involve him trying to move on from Jimmy, who at one point told him that they’ll never be close friends. After all that, it’s moving that Edgar’s whole scheme hinged on Jimmy shooting Tompkins to save the only friend who’s ever stuck around. Jimmy and Edgar might never be best friends in the traditional sense, but they’ve been in each other’s lives for a long time now. It makes sense that they decide to collaborate on Jimmy’s script together, but it makes even more sense that they promise never to lie to each other again.

So Edgar gives up one last secret: Gretchen has been stealing a ton of pills from his cabinet for weeks now and it doesn’t look like it’s for recreation. A bad moon has been on the rise for a while now, and sooner or later, everyone will have to confront some awful demons once again. For now, though, maybe the montage of everyone getting drunk set to Gretchen singing “Anytime” can sustain them just a little bit longer. None of these people should be in each other’s lives, except they are, and for a brief moment, they’re all happily getting along with each other, baggage be damned. The good times might be killing them, but not today.

Stray observations

• T-shirt Nicknames: “Carrot Doc” = Vernon; “Walking Hormone” = Lindsay; “PTS Dummy” = Edgar; “Insect with Boobs”=Becca; “Alive Roger Ebert” = Paul; “Emotionally Stunted Ginger” = Gretchen; “Pompous Albino Brit” = Jimmy
• Full list of cuck-themed film titles: A Cuckwork Orange; The Hunt for Red Cucktober; Uncle Cuck; The Mighty Cucks; The Joy Cuck Club; Cuckleberry Finn; The Marx Bros in Cuck Soup; Good Night and Good Cuck; One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest; Mooncuck; The Cuckle Wears Prada; I Heart Cuckabees
• Things Becca did to Lindsay as a child: Dropped her in the laundry chute, made her sleep in the backyard because she breathed too loud, convinced her to drink urine so that she’ll grow breasts.
• Fun facts about Paul F. Tompkins: He took eight years of stage combat and makes his own squibs.
• This week’s flash-forward: Edgar in a tuxedo running away from someone. Evasive maneuvers!
• In exchange for Paul F. Tompkins’ gracious help with Sunday Funday, Edgar no longer works for him and signs a contract stipulating that he won’t report any alleged abuse.
• After Jimmy’s admission that he sucked a dick, everyone reacts exactly how you think they would: Lindsay wishes she had a guy who would suck a dick for her, Becca assumes he’s gay, Edgar asks if he was even on the shortlist, and Vernon thinks he’d be good at fellatio on account of how good he is at popsicles.
• Jimmy also sings the Sunday Funday song, which is a nice callback to the first season when he outright refused.
• “Little baby growing in there. Gosh. Can you believe it’s not just come anymore?”