In some ways, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s focus on spoofing rom-com clichés has always made it seem like an anti-romantic comedy. After all, when the show first aired in 2015, the show’s heroine, Rebecca Bunch, played by the effervescent Rachel Bloom, was so obsessed with a chance encounter with an ex that she uprooted her entire life in New York City in order to follow him to the far humbler city of West Covina, California.

Over the course of four seasons, we’ve seen Rebecca resort to all sorts of hilarious, yet also illogical, immoral – and, at times, illegal – behavior in the name of love, all of which have gotten her into various kinds of trouble, and none of which have made her particularly happy.

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One of the show’s most powerful aspects has been the way the writers refuse to treat Rebecca with condescension or kid gloves, and, in doing so, it’s become one of the most genuinely compassionate shows on television, especially when it comes to looking at issues of mental health. In the fourth and final season of the series, which premiered last month, the delightful and quirky musical comedy goes even deeper in showing how Rebecca truly is a full person, and not just a series of zany cliches.

This is true even in the evolution of the show’s theme song, which has gone from spoofing the way Rebecca is “crazy in love” in the first two seasons, to looking at the ways that “crazy girls” are both fetishized and maligned in season three, to showing how Rebecca is more than just a “crazy ex-girlfriend” in the final season.

“Meet Rebecca”, we hear a singer trill, as we see an image of a young woman who looks vaguely like our real heroine zipping around on a pink bicycle, before the camera pulls away to the image of actual Rebecca sitting on a park bench. The song goes on to point out all the various aspects of Rebecca that make her who she is – how she’s kind and sweet, but also sometimes mean, and maybe a little sex-obsessed too. “She’s too hard to summarize!” the song continues before pulling us back to “fake Rebecca,” who is obviously not the true star of the show.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donna Lynne Champlin and Rachel Bloom in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Photograph: The CW

In season four, we see how a large part of Rebecca regaining agency over her life comes from her ability to see herself as a complete person, rather than just the sum of the various identities that she constructs for herself, often through song. In many traditional rom-coms, a heroine often needs to change in order to get the guy, or, in the rare cases where she doesn’t need to change, she also needs a guy to show her that she is actually deserving of care and affection. But in the world of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, viewers increasingly see how Rebecca doesn’t need a romantic relationship to be happy. Instead, it’s the care and compassion of friends (as well as a good therapist) that are the catalyst for personal growth and change.

One of the reasons that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend works as a series is precisely because it’s a show that is intent on skewering the sexism that keeps women shoving themselves into various boxes rather than embracing their identity as fully complex people. “Push them boobs up just for yourself!” a group of teen girls encourage Rebecca in one song, as they give her a makeover so that she can attract a man’s attention. “It’s the sexy getting ready song,” Rebecca coos at the camera in another song, as she describes waxing, plucking, and Spanx-ing her body into submission in order to look pretty for a date.

It’s not just unfair body standards that get the Bloom treatment either: it’s also the sisterhood itself. In one song, Women Got To Stick Together, Rebecca’s one-time frenemy Valencia sings about the importance of female support, while callously tearing down every woman she encounters, and in one of the most hilarious songs of the series, we see Rebecca and three of her closest female friends bond on the joys of male bashing, “Let’s generalize about men!” they sing exuberantly, at least until Paula remembers that she has sons.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend may not be the first show to tackle sexism with comedy, but it is one of the few series that does so with joy and tenderness, rather than despair. With a show like Inside Amy Schumer, you might laugh at the self-deprecating humor, but you’re also wincing. In contrast, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s whimsical musical numbers are charming, catchy, sweet, and, in the case of some songs, such as A Diagnosis where, after a harrowing mental health crisis, Rebecca excitedly wonders whether her new mental health diagnosis will help her overcome her issues, exceptionally earnest.

In a world where women are sold a constant slew of self-help mantras, one of the joys of watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is seeing a female character mature, rather than fundamentally change. In season four, Rebecca remains charming, silly, and prone to outrageous fantasies, but she’s also become more self-aware, willing to listen and learn, and ready to apply the skills she’s learned in therapy.

In this way, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s insistence that women don’t have to be perfect to have a chance at happiness doesn’t merely upend our assumptions about women’s roles in romantic comedies; it radically reimagines romance altogether, not as a fantasy we pine for, but a world that we ourselves help to create.