You know how therapists try to create a safe space for their patients, telling them they can say anything in a session? Most people understand that means it's okay to reveal anything about themselves or their experiences. Well, Gretchen is not most people (remember: she doesn't wash her legs). When her new therapist (Samira Wiley, Orange Is the New Black) tells her to say anything, she unleashes a string of creatively hurtful profanities. This is her retaliation for being told to open the mail.
But lets go back: The show is dealing with Gretchen's depression this season not by sweeping it under the rug but by sending her to therapy, and putting her on the drugs she could have been taking all along but chose not to. Now, she'll have to learn to work through her problems. One of the methods her therapist recommends is working through the big pile of mail she's been procrastinating on opening. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful love/hate relationship whose boundaries will be pushed far beyond what's appropriate. It's only a matter of time until some serious therapy-driven word vomit happens here.
Meanwhile, Lindsay, queen of costumes, is in her nurse's outfit to make taking care of Paul after stabbing him more bearable. By taking care of him, I mean medicating him into unconsciousness. She comes out to the gang over pancakes at their diner (that's the real life hipster joint, Brite Spot, in Echo Park if you're jealous of their always delicious-looking breakfast foods), admitting that she stabbed him...but not even that hard. Insert gif of Edgar dunking his fries in a milkshake without saying a word here.
Dorothy moves into her new apartment with a little help from Edgar. The show is paying little heed to how well she's taking Edgar's decision not to move in with her (still haven't explained what happened there, guys) and emphasizing how she keeps unknowingly "digging the knife" into their sex life. Edgar kind of checks out of that whole scene to explore the tent city next door. He uses his improv skills to help them write better panhandling signs, all the while worrying about how he used to be one of them and if he's giving back enough now that he's not.
Jimmy can't stop taking advice on his book proposal. Strangely no one advises him to burn that terrible sounding book of erotic fiction masquerading as historical fiction. The seamen/stockings joke makes him The Worst this week. Well, right up until Gretchen opens that letter telling him his dad died. Oh, therapist...!