After You’re the Worst completely changed the game in its second season with its groundbreaking look at clinical depression and how it affects everyone around the person who suffers from it, where does FX’s dark (dark, dark) comedy go from here? The show’s stars (minus Kether Donohue who is deep into rehearsals for Fox’s Grease Live!) and creator Stephen Falk brought some exciting scoop to the 2016 TCA Winter Press Tour early Saturday morning about the already-greenlit season three.
“We just started [planning] two weeks ago, and we just finished yesterday arcing out the entire season for all four characters,” Falk says. “We have a very complex chart on the board. We like to make sure we’re telling one cohesive story for the entire season. We’re going to see a continuum from season two. We’re trying hard not to top this season in terms of some issue we’re dealing with like depression. That’s a very seductive idea but that would feel like we’re trying too hard. We’re just continuing with the fallout from last season, always moving the characters forward. Maybe some of them will fall, we’ll see.”
In season two, the show completely changed from a lighthearted comedy about two “garbage people” who are perfect for each other to a dark, realistic look at how clinical depression can’t be “fixed” and only lived with. By the end of the season, Gretchen (Aya Cash) and Jimmy (Chris Geere) accidentally got to the “I love you” milestone in their relationship after dealing with the ups and downs of Gretchen’s depression.
“Right now, we will start season three literally right after that [I love you] scene,” Falk says. “I think time jumps are useful for certain shows but that feels like a later season thing to do.”
As for Edgar (Desmin Borges), he’s still happily with his improv-loving girlfriend, and enjoying a nice fledgling improv career himself. Things are going pretty well for this PTSD-suffering vet. But will they stay that way?
“Before we started shooting, [Falk]Â told me what the arc was like [for season two] but he didn’t tell me anything about the last three episodes,” Borges says. “I had no idea exactly where that was going. When I read the last few scripts and I found out they were going to stay together, I thought that was great for Edgar. He’s on an upwards trajectory right now. But I think eventually, he does have to fall.”
Looking at the structure of season two, Falk loved how he got to do many different kinds of episodes instead of just telling one linear story.
“The ability to do episodes that break form or take a little pause on the main story to do something else in a different way is really fun,” Falk says. “We had a run of three in a row this year, we had a bottle episode that felt like a play, the horror episode, ‘Sunday Funday,’ which was like a horror movie, and the weird episode where Gretchen was stalking the neighbor couple which was like a little indie film. So while I think that could get tiring and feel stunt-y if you did it too much, I think it refreshes everyone who works on the show and hopefully the viewers as well. Hopefully we’ll be doing some of that [in season three].”
But the question that everyone had on their minds was whether we’d get another installment of Sunday Funday next season.
“In Cuba!” Borges suggested to Falk.
“For us to do it again, we’ll have to think of something that doesn’t try to top that but makes sense,” Falk cautioned. “If we have the right idea. I think we have the right idea already, so it’s a tentative yes.”
What do you want to see from You’re the Worst season three? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Images: FX
You’re the Worst season three returns this fall on FX.
