When it comes to musical moments, The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend provides at least two per episode, making it hard to choose. For straight laugh out loud funny, you could go with the show’s riff on the title theme “I’m Just a Boy In Love” or the not safe for TV “Fuckton of Cats.” But that would be ignoring Donna Lynne Champlin’s gorgeous (and also hilarious) torch song from Season 4’s “I’m So Happy For You.” When her character Paula’s son shocks her by revealing he’s not a total screw-up, she sends him off on his international non-profit journey with a song about how she always never believed in him.

Not only has Champlin’s enormously powerful and emotional singing voice always been the not-so-secret weapon of Crazy Ex, but the song, written by Rachel Bloom, Jack Dolgen, and Adam Schlesinger is relentlessly, cleverly structured to get to a basic truth of parenting. As much as you spend every day encouraging your kids to be anything their heart desires, deep down you add a little “well, except” to the end of those statements.

Add in that the song ends with a montage of all the other characters on the show moving towards their destinies (everything from moving to New York, to finally binge-watching a TV show on their own), and you get to the heart of what the series is all about: we don’t change in big leaps; it’s the small steps forward that are the most shocking. For a TV show that many viewers always never believed in, that’s a lot of pressure to place on one song. But Champlin’s singing crushes it, and the simple direction/performance bring it home. To paraphrase a lyric from the song, it’s feels strange to say it, but it’s true: I weirdly, shockingly, completely believe in the power of this song. — Alex Zalben

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