Edgar takes center stage in a devastating, powerful You’re The Worst

Pain, in all of its ugly manifestations, is a personal, private burden. Sure, some people will truly understand it, and others will do their best to help alleviate it, and plenty others will inadvertently exacerbate it, but at the end of the day, it’s you, the person in pain, that will be tasked with managing and controlling it. It’s an awful prospect, especially for those living with severe mental trauma the likes of which most will never comprehend. Everybody’s having a tough day, which makes the fact that the onus is on us to figure out how to move forward, burdens in check, even harder to swallow.

Given the direction this season of You’re The Worst was headed, “Twenty-Two” was an inevitable episode, and yet it still feels like it came out of left field. Stephen Falk has always treated Edgar’s PTSD with sensitivity, albeit with some dark humor as well—an actor uses Edgar’s life as material for a role, a V.A. officer finds excuses to avoid giving him medication, “I didn’t know it was a school”—but before this episode, he has never really explored Edgar’s own mental hell with specificity and care. Shot like a war film on home turf, “Twenty-Two” follows a day in Edgar’s life, specifically the events of last week’s episode “Men Get Strong,” as he’s on the brink of a complete breakdown. In short, it’s one of the very best episodes of the series, a moving portrayal of a crippled man and his unique difficulties of engaging with a world that would much rather ignore him.

Directed by Falk, “Twenty-Two” drenches us in Edgar’s subjectivity. We watch as he struggles to fall asleep, only for him to be distracted by a plane flying overhead or the paperboy he sees on his night run. He thinks he’s being watched by an electrical worker, a mailman, a groundskeeper, and a cop, all of whom have the same face, are watching him. Strangers in the grocery become ominous portents of doom, an unfortunate reminder of life-or-death combat situations. Noise invades the soundtrack—an eerie ringing sound, Edgar’s heightened breathing, echoed voices interpreted as murmuring threats. Edgar’s periphery scans danger all around him, rendering simple tasks damn near impossible to accomplish. Falk excels at trapping the audience in Edgar’s headspace, formally conveying the lived experience of trauma, and how it makes living anything resembling a normal life an uphill struggle.

Furthermore, Falk restages certain scenes from “Men Get Strong” from Edgar’s perspective demonstrating how tossed-off words can have a damning effect on someone’s psyche. Edgar serves his “special heart pancakes,” and Jimmy, Gretchen, and Lindsay respond with flippant disregard. He drives Jimmy and Gretchen to the graveyard and they act monstrously—fucking in his back seat, mocking his audio tape clearly designed to help calm him down, calling him an “Uber.” Though Jimmy and Gretchen’s behavior in the last episode felt especially mean and obnoxious, Falk underscores how blind they are to how their actions affect Edgar. They know he has PTSD, but they don’t understand how casual cruelty can send a damaged person over the brink. From Jimmy and Gretchen’s perspective, they’re just acting like their selfish, snarky selves, but for someone who needed some small ounce of compassion or encouragement, it’s especially hurtful.

Though “Twenty-Two” doesn’t quite have a standard plot, its main thrust is Edgar’s appointment with Dr. Tabitha Higgins (Julie White), a V.A. doctor whom he’s been trying to see for quite a while now. Though he’s nervous about it, Dorothy convinces them that he’s got to keep trying to get better, if it means “breaking the rules” in favor of his own advocacy. But of course, the meeting is a bust, even when it threatens to go well. Higgins’ attitude is of the “keep it light” variety; she cracks jokes and tries to deflect from uncomfortable conversations. Meanwhile, Edgar tries to stay focused and keep things on track, playing along while also being forthright. Though Higgins promises to put him in alternative virtual reality therapy, she refuses when Edgar admits he has stopped taking his medication because they weren’t working (“It’s just turning down the volume, it’s not living.”). He refuses to leave and makes a violent outburst, but to no avail. “You’re gonna help me,” Edgar says through tears. “It’s the only reason you exist, to help us. It’s not enough to be fed a one-size-fits-all cocktail of ‘shut-up’ pills!” Higgins replies with an awful smile, “Oh, if we had ‘shut-up’ pills, we would have prescribed them to you by now.”