Wait, here we are.  “Sunday Funday” manages to put all four main characters together for once in a bit of day drinking and taking part in Edgar’s most amazing list.  Up until this point, we haven’t had all four characters interact at the same time, but this episode managed to give them all something to do, no matter how minimal.

This episode is all about making choices.  Sometimes we have to make them, and other times we’re just indecisive.  There’s no one saying that we have to always fall into one category or the other, but some, like Jimmy, feel that people should make up their mind instead of wavering without a concrete choice.

Gretchen, though, doesn’t see a need to always pick if she likes all available options.  Lindsay, however, sometimes like both, but we’ll get to that.

You see, Gretchen has received an invite from Ty to attend the Tribeca Film Festival and to travel there via his private plane.  It’s an enticing offer and one she is very much considering it, except for one thing: Jimmy.  She could skip the festival and lose nothing from it, but Jimmy has been on her mind a lot.  He’s an absolute prick, and yet Gretchen feels she could see herself spending years with him.  And that is the reason that compels her to get on the plane.  Her feelings on Jimmy can wait.  A brief, but telling moment, though we’ll get back to this later.

The main plot of this episode revolves around the weekly “Sunday Funday” activity that, as far as I can tell, Edgar, Gretchen, and Lindsay have always taken part in.  Not Jimmy, though.  He considers it all juvenile and is only here for the drinking.  Edgar and Lindsay see this as the last chance to squeeze every drop of life out of the weekend before Monday, even though neither of them works.  True as that is, though, apparently you can be unemployed and still hate Mondays.

But Edgar’s most amazing plan for Sunday Funday wouldn’t be as fun…day, without a little conflict, which he gets in the form of some hipsters.  These hipsters are also taking part in Sunday Funday, which isn’t too strange, but Edgar sees this as a challenge to his most excellent plan.  Plus, the leader, played by Thomas Middleditch from Silicon Valley, claims to have invented the day.  He also returns Edgar’s list after finding that he dropped it.  This will be relevant in a minute.

Jimmy plans to bail since this isn’t his thing, but he’s persuaded to stay when Lindsay tells him about Gretchen’s plans with Ty.  At first, Jimmy thinks nothing of it since Gretchen is free to do whatever she wants, but you can tell that the thought of Gretchen spending time with another guy does bother him a bit.  Still, he knows that Gretchen is a big girl who can make her own choices, but Lindsay corrects him, saying that 99 percent of Gretchen’s decisions are dog shit.  For some perverse reason, Jimmy makes Gretchen happy, so Lindsay wants him to stay.

So while Jimmy and Gretchen have their subplot play out, the Sunday Funday events turn into a game of follow the leader as Edgar finds that the group of hipsters is following them.  Lindsay thinks nothing of it at first, but Edgar is convinced that the leader copied Edgar’s list before returning it.  It could just be a coincidence, though, right?

Jimmy, though, having learned that Gretchen may have other plans, now tries to get her to pick between two choices, but does so by asking her to decide between Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel.  Gretchen says that they’re both good and decides she won’t pick either one.  Jimmy calls that a copout, saying a person can’t like two things that are diametrically opposed.

This continues throughout the episode and Jimmy continues to throw out random choices, like Sean Connery or Roger Moore.  Gretchen, not a fan of the outdated references, picks neither and decides to go with Daniel Craig instead.  This doesn’t mesh with Jimmy, who thinks that Craig looks like an upset baby.  You know, looking back at Casino Royale, I sort of agree.

Gretchen doesn’t feel a need to pick, even when given the option between eggs and pancakes.  It’s easier sometimes to not make choices, and Jimmy hates that.  It’d be like taking a cock in either the vagina or your ass, but you don’t care which hole.  As Lindsay points out, though, sometimes you want both.  This is also true.

But Gretchen does have a reason for not picking.  She’s fine with being indecisive, but Jimmy prefers to just be one thing.  The second she makes a choice, she knows that she’ll open herself to a world of criticism from Jimmy.  That’s probably true.

Continuing with the Sunday Funday events, Lindsay eventually has to leave for another engagement, but the trio of Jimmy, Gretchen, and Edgar go racing in shopping carts.

When they’re eventually joined by the hipsters.  Jimmy ends up all wet when the cart runs into a water barrel…

…and that leads us to the next event on the list: an open house.  The organizer always leaves out free cookies and alcohol, plus an open house is apparently a good way to judge your neighbor’s shitty taste.  Because Jimmy is all wet, Gretchen makes him go upstairs and shower.  When he emerges, he sees Gretchen outside and on the phone with Ty.  With jealousy clearly written across his face, Jimmy leaves the open house and Sunday Funday.

This leaves Gretchen and Edgar, who are now forced to join forces with the hipsters for the sake of getting a ride.  Gretchen, though, catches up with Lindsay and chews her out for abandoning her to hang out with other friends.  Lindsay has her reasons: around Gretchen, Lindsay never gets to be cool.  With these other women, she gets to be the cool one.  More than that, Lindsay isn’t even sure why she was dreading this event until Paul swings by.  Only then does she realize that this is, indeed, her future.  She wants what Gretchen has, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

After stewing in his sadness, Jimmy texts Edgar about his current location and eventually shows up at the reception.  He tells Gretchen, in his own way, that it can be nice to have no reply at all and he even felt ashamed for making her pick between two things that she likes.  However, if she did pick Peter Gabriel- see Ty- and Jimmy is Phil Collins, then Phil Collins would be very sad.  It’s about as close to Jimmy saying ‘I like you’ as we’ve come so far.

The two leave the party together in a warm ending, though Lindsay has the horror of her life when she spots Paul holding a baby.  Perish the thought!

Again, “Sunday Funday” is all about choices.  Jimmy has a very narrow-minded way of looking at things.  He doesn’t prefer to like multiple things; he’s fine with being one and done.  He spends most of the episode badgering Gretchen to pick between two opposite things not just because he wants her to become decisive, but so she’ll pick between him and Ty.  It would be too forward and obvious of him to ask that, plus it’s not in him to be so direct.

Jimmy admits that things between him and Gretchen are just casual without any sort of emotional attachment.  It could end any time and there would be no loss, but they do care for one another.  They’re just too proud to come out and say that.  And yet, when Lindsay tells Jimmy that he makes Gretchen happy, it’s clear from his reaction that the time they spend together is more than just casual.  There could be something much deeper at work here.

It’s that same attachment that drives Jimmy’s jealousy for Ty.  If Jimmy cared nothing for Gretchen outside of the casual sex and banter, he’d have no reason to think anything of her spending time with another guy.  As he said to Lindsay, she’s free to make her own choices, but it still bothers him that those choices involve another man.

And it’s not until near the end that Jimmy accepts the fact that he shouldn’t try and force Gretchen to make a choice.  Instead of some blown-up argument where the two sides are forced to make a decision, Jimmy makes the situation ridiculous through his series of ‘This or that’ examples.  Rather than coming out and saying ‘Him or me,’ because that would be a hit at his pride, he wants to know which actor Gretchen prefers to play James Bond.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume that a good number of couples don’t know how to properly talk about their feelings.  They’ll dance around the issue and try to avoid the subject altogether because just being upfront could lead to a confrontation, hurt feelings, or maybe they’re just naturally afraid.  That’s natural.

Confronting our fears is something that we all eventually have to do, but that doesn’t mean that it will be easy, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart.  This is what Gretchen goes through this week.  She likes Ty, but she sees herself spending years at a time with Jimmy.  The very thought of that terrifies her, so she avoids making a choice between him and Ty so she can continue sampling both flavors.

Since the first episode, we’ve seen Gretchen be a bit more carefree than Jimmy is.  There’s no reason for her to pick one or the other when she can have both.  Is that a copout?  Not entirely, but Gretchen is absolving herself from having to make the difficult choices that we don’t like to make.  At least, that’s how I see it.

She thinks that it’s bullshit for Jimmy to go with one way or the other when it’s just as possible to have a preference for both.  She won’t complicate an issue by picking between two very different things that she appreciates.  There’s nothing at stake or risk by deciding between two options, just as there’s nothing to lose by not picking between Jimmy and Ty right now.  Once she settles on one option, she fears that she’ll stick with it and, heaven forbid, get used to it.

That would take away the fun of being able to just do as she pleases instead of being shackled down to one person because she made a choice.  Gretchen shows a lot of patience towards Jimmy’s ridiculous talks of choice, but that’s because she’s willing to tolerate his bullshit after putting up with it for so long already.  She has a connection with him, which makes the thought of them spending years together all the more plausible, and much scarier than she imagined.  That’s not a reality she wants to live in.

But it’s a reality that Lindsay already lives in and hates.  Lindsay is married to a man who has a decent job, but that’s not good enough because she hates her relationship with Paul.  She’s already settled with a man she thought she loved, but, as she tells Gretchen, the years went on and she realized that this was her future: dullness.  Paul may not be the most engaging or exciting of husbands, but we see his devotion to Lindsay, who could care less about him.

Lindsay wants what Gretchen has: the freedom to not settle for one option.  She expected more, but as years passed, her life became less exciting.  Though Lindsay took the more adult approach compared to Gretchen, it’s not a life she’s happy with, unlike Gretchen, who hasn’t settled yet, but enjoys being able to like what she wants and not feel compelled to make a choice.

Though we’ve known it for some time, Lindsay realizes what a horrible decision she’s made in marrying Paul.  There’s no joy in her marriage.  And when she sees Paul holding a baby, the very idea of her having a child with him is horrifying.  It’s maddening, but shows how Lindsay, like Gretchen, wants to have it both ways.  She’s unemployed, but likes the security of being married to someone like Paul, but she wants to explore.

Side-note, I loved Jimmy’s reaction when Gretchen said that some people want both, as if he became suddenly engaged with the idea of her wanting to take it in the butt.

Edgar’s subplot with Sunday Funday was made all the more enjoyable with his rivalry with the hipsters.  I enjoyed how competitive he made things between the two of them.  Each time there’s a confrontation between the two sides, the screen narrows to a theatrical release ratio.  Also, given how neither Edgar nor Lindsay has a job, I have to wonder how they spend the rest of the week outside of Sundays.

And Thomas Middleditch was good as the hipster rival leader.  These characters haven’t appeared again in the series so far, but they’re quirky enough that I’d want to see them reappear.

“Sunday Funday” showed the challenges, or lack thereof, in making decisions.  Jimmy realizes that everyone doesn’t have to line up with one or the other, while Gretchen stays just the way she is, embracing the freedom to pick and choose as she pleases.  And, as of now, that’s just the way she likes it.  Just like Lindsay said, sometimes you want both.