I'm Going To Leave You Anyway
You're the Worst Creator: "There's So Much Damn TV You Can't Be Afraid to Alienate Viewers"
Stephen Falk talks about the high risks and higher rewards of Season 2.
By Joanna Robinson
By Byron Cohen/FX
When FXX's half-hour comedy You're the Worst premiered last summer, it came on the heels of a handful of failed and canceled network rom-sitcoms. But this show, from creator Stephen Falk, delivered something new: an acidic, realistic, and sometimes cynical look at modern love and dating in Los Angeles. The series—a critical smash with a very small but devoted audience—got renewed for a second season, and Falk and his writers didn't take that opportunity lightly. They doubled down on the drama, turning their comedy into one of the more poignant dramas of 2015. The show garnered even more praise this year for its bold exploration of the clinical depression that overwhelmed its female lead, played by Aya Cash, and fractured the "rom" at the center of the "com."
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Falk—who previously worked on category-defying shows like Weeds and Orange Is the New Black—would entirely disregard the running time and alleged genre of his show in order to pursue the story that made the most sense to him. Thanks mostly to loud critical buzz—the audience is still quite small—You're the Worst was renewed for a third season. We caught up with Falk over the phone to discuss the show's second-season finale and the huge narrative gamble that paid off in spades.
Vanity Fair: Were you shocked at all that the show was picked up for a third season?
Stephen Falk: I've had a little time to absorb and prepare but it's lovely to see the outpouring of affection some people have for the show and the excitement. When you invest in the show—I know I do—and you're not sure of its chances, it can pre-disappoint you and make you lose faith and not want to get invested, much like a flaky lover you don't want to hurt. I'm really glad that they chose to get it done before these last two episodes so people can really know it's coming back and watch without fear.
You got to take a lot of risks this season. That's not something a lot of people in Hollywood feel they can do these days. What advice would you give for writers who want to produce edgier concepts like You're the Worst?
Well, I certainly wouldn't ever, ever aim for edgy. That could lead to a lot of bad stuff. There was a perception that—particularly when the first couple images came out—that our show was going to be a very "cool" show. I think that, yes, Jimmy and Gretchen are certainly narcissists and have healthy egos. The critical difference is that the creators and writers of the show don't think they're cool. I think that aiming for cool can lead to some bad shit, and I won't name examples but I'm thinking of them right now. I think that makes for a lot of really bad comedy. I try to make cool characters funny, and it's absolutely possible. Even the Fonz was kind of dipshit, and it was clear that they thought his over-coolness was kind of silly and so over the top that it was funny.
So if it's not the cool factor, what gives You're the Worst its advantage over the other rom-sitcoms we saw fail last year?
I always say, when I'm reading writers, that I want to see a pure distillation of that writer's voice on the page. If it remains a cerebral idea, it's probably not going to have the heart and guts and passion that you need to really stick out in the landscape right now. The things that I think are getting critical acclaim, be it Mr. Robot, or Bojack Horseman, or our show, I think hopefully you can tell that these are very personal stories. I think that, then, in this fragmented TV landscape where there are a lot of entities making scripted television, it takes something that garners a passionate audience, even if it's not the hugest audience. There really are few huge audiences anymore. It takes that to make a network want to stick by you.
I was going to ask you about Bojack and Mr. Robot, which—along with shows like Unreal —took a stab at exploring mental illness and depression. Depression is obviously the central issue of You're the Worst's second season. Why do you think the TV climate is so ready for these stories?
I mentioned fragmented landscape and sheer number of scripted television shows, so, necessarily there's going to be room for risky, daring things. Making a show about depression, I don't know what that looks like. Not that our show is about that. Bojack is about a different level of depression, but certainly more about depression than our show is. This is just an arc. I think that there's just room for that right now.
I also think that, and this is just pure conjecture on my part, but I think that there's a de-stigmatization of mental illnesses as being illnesses, as being disorders that need treatments. I think that thing is happening in popular culture and culture in general. I'd probably credit the pharmaceutical industries, I can't remember when exactly the law was enacted, but the law that allows them to advertise prescription medications, I think that probably also paved the way. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing, but it's a fact. There are television commercials where women are walking around with sad clouds following them, or sad bathrobes representing depression. It's out there more.
So when Gretchen first told Jimmy about her depression, she told him he couldn't fix her and then, later, she says he did fix her. Are you really saying Jimmy cured Gretchen's depression?
I don't think Jimmy fixed it at all. He doesn't actually do anything, and we're not suggesting that by building the pillow fort around that he's actually clinically done anything to fix her illness. What he did do is stop trying to fix her and just stay next to her. It's a very small thing, but when you talk to couples who've gone through something sort of one-sided and painful and unpleasant and unsolvable, in a way, that just "stick-to-it-iveness" is sometimes enough. In other words, I think Gretchen was in the end of a cycle when this happened, and the fever broke in the pillow fort. We're not saying that he solves her; we're saying it's his staying in the end and, also, her recognizing that she's now not just living for herself, that someone else is affected. The theme of this episode is that love is about putting someone else's needs above your own, which is very hard for a narcissist to do.
You've talked before about some of the gentle pushback you got from the network when you first pitched the depression arc. At what point did they admit to you that this was a brilliant idea?
It was really in meetings where I was pitching out what the season is going to be. That's pretty much it. I did get a couple of notes as the season went on, like when I would turn in scripts. Like certainly when I turned in the script for "LCD Soundsystem." They were like, "Wow, this is bold. Can you shoot it in such a way that you could cover yourself? If it's not working you could edit it so that your main character actually appears in the first seven minutes rather than the screen is full of the people we have no idea, never met, we don't know what show we're watching, what the fuck is happening?" When they saw the first cut, they completely abandoned that and they were supportive.
Were you personally worried you were going to alienate viewers with a near-catatonic female lead in your second season?
It's almost like—not to compare ourselves to The Wire—but you know The Wire completely switched it up in Season 2, concentrating on the stevedores, and I think that probably dislocated a lot of viewers. Then they kind of returned to the drug dealer Wire story in Season 3. I think it was maybe a little foolish of us, but that was a risk worth taking. There's so much damn TV you can't be afraid to alienate viewers if you think it's the right thing to do. I have a very specific reason why I thought it would be best in Season 2 but it probably would have worked in Season 3 just as well.
What's the specific reason?
The specific reason is that, in a typical rom-com, the sort of "Will they, won't they?" happens and takes the whole movie. Our first season was that, though it was a little different. Then in my mind it's what happens after you say, "Yes, we're going to do this." Once you make the mad dash to the airport. That's when the real work happens, that's when you're actually going to see the baggage because whether you want to admit it or not there is a certain amount of obscuring of all the skeletons during the courtship phase. This is us saying, "Sorry, audience, we're not just going to have fun now that they're together. We're going to represent the ugly truth." We wanted to be—not negative—but very honest about the difficulties of having an honest relationship, and we're trying [to] poke a hole in the fallacy of most rom-coms.
Another thing we see a lot in TV rom-coms is the endless cycle of "will they, won't they." You guys didn't really do that, but you did structure Season 2 as almost a mirror image of Season 1 with meet-the-parents episodes and Sunday Funday and a party at Beccas. What do we get out of that repetition?
We thought it'd be interesting to revisit a lot of the elements of the first season but now through this much more complicated lens and finding our characters in a place that's less cute. It's less aspirational, which a lot of romantic comedies are. Ending with Becca throwing herself another party—it's not that we just own that location—we wanted to revisit an already cracked mirror in an even crackier way and have a nice parallel to the first season. I can't say I won't do another Sunday Funday episode or I'll never have the characters sing again. But this felt like we were trying to put the viewers on some familiar ground while telling such a potentially alienating or at least scary story for people who just liked the aspirational rom-com part of our show. Season 3 will probably look different.
Since you just had a baby and you have a couple of expectant-mom characters on the show now, is Season 3 going to be all about you working out your first-time parenting stuff on-screen?
The whole concept of the show, really, came from my life. We're not necessarily Everybody Loves Raymond where we take the off season and write down a bunch of wacky fights that we have with our spouses then turn those into episodes. There is a lot of stuff that comes directly from us. One of our writers actually did the whole thing with the mouse and ended up killing it in the same way that Jimmy does by putting it in a box and tapping it to the exhaust pipe of his car because he didn't have the heart to smash it. He took apart his whole fridge trying to capture this thing.
Yeah, I can't imagine that it would be there anyway to avoid bringing in thoughts and revelations of being a parent for the first time. Becca and Lindsay are not any models for parenting so I'm sure any stories will be put through a very strong Becca and Lindsay filter. If there is any bad parenting in the next season or Season 4 it doesn't come directly from me. How about that?
The Paul and Vernon fight in the finale was one of my favorite TV moments of 2015 and one I don't think we've seen elsewhere.
Having a toilet fight? Yeah there is not a lot of toilet fights in this year's television. I'm not a big fan of poop humor but having Paul's stomach be wrecked by Lindsay's giant news seemed to fit really well. One of our writers is in a comedy group with Allan McLeod, who plays Paul. Allan is so soft-spoken and such a pleasant southern gentleman, but he was telling us how great he is at yelling. He's sort of a secret Bob Odenkirk, who's so good at yelling comedically so we thought it would be great to have Paul yell very out of character but funny. He nailed it. Yeah, it's one of my favorite scenes as well.
You put Jimmy in a position where Gretchen was pushing him away. But even though she was shutting him out, were you worried at all about audiences permanently souring on Jimmy after the whole Nina interaction?
Yeah, two of my writers who are female watched the Jimmy/Nina kiss, and I just watched them just cringe and curl their lips in fury. We always knew that we were going to piss a lot of people off by having him do that. Even when he catches Gretchen crying in her car and ends up leaving her there—all of these things are possibly bad behavior, but also we can justify them from character point of view. Once you've established those rules and you realize why you're doing something as a writer, I think you can't then worry about what the audience is going to think. There are certain lines that you know that you can't cross, and you know those inherently. You couldn't have Gretchen put the pug in a bag with rocks and throw it in the river. That would be it for Gretchen. She killed a dog. Beyond those egregious things, I think, if you've done the work to make sure it's motivated and it's believable, then I don't think you worry too much about what, about whether you can buy the audience back.
You talk a lot about the fallacies of the rom-com genre, but are there examples of the genre that work for you?
Oh boy! A lot. I'm a big old softie. I don't think there has been a lot that has moved me in that way recently. I think that's the fault of people making television and film and not my fault. In the past, I think, When Harry Met Sally, obviously. I love the movie Joe Versus the Volcano. Forget what Seinfeld says, I really liked The English Patient when I was a kid. There is nothing wrong with that. I am very straight guy and I love action movies. I was watching Taken 3 'til one in the morning last night but I'm not ashamed to admit I love romantic comedies. There just haven't been enough lately.
Joanna Robinson is a senior staff writer at Vanity Fair.