I'm 5 minutes from the end of the final episode.

It's either incredibly easy or incredibly hard to understand what this show has come to mean to me. My first comment on it was a lazy throwaway about the asshole personalities I jived with. By the end, I can't think of a more honest and intimate portrayal of my brand of practical idealism.

To be sure, these people are often genuinely horrible to each other over vast swaths of time and reach degenerate status in a way I can only ever aspire to be, but the ethic remains. It will be forever immortalized in the line from Jimmy, "I want to be with you because I want to be with you....[] today, again, I choose you." I've had this exact brand of discussion throughout my 5 year relationship that went bust, my views on marriage and unrealistic promises as unrelenting as they come.

This show allows you to be "chained" to someone who is wildly unhealthy and resentful and needs every ounce of what you can give forever, even if it never fixes them or makes them better. It acknowledges that there's a choice, and if you choose and make yourself involved with whatever the problem is, then it transforms the fantasy into the tangible workable lovable place that should actually exist and make people believe in something.

Often, this will blow up because, in my view, people have been raised on everything you already know about media and naive and unrealistic expectations, but I still think it's worth the effort and practice. You have permission to falter, and hurt each other, and lose your mind, but you choose to keep the person in your life and feel everything you can for them. 2-sided, this is what I wish for myself and everyone else. 1-sided, well, I work in child welfare, and can assure you unstable co-dependent crazy people who latch onto various modes of pathological thinking has ever-differing yet hopelessly familiar forms and patterns.

This went from being a great show that consistently makes me laugh and reflect, to the epitome of why I watch television and am interested in characters and arcs that inch the needle toward my envisioned future. Thank you, "You're the Worst." I couldn't imagine a better ending to a series.