Welcome to my piece on the tv show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, serving as the inaugural entry in What You Should Be Watchin’, a series in which I call your attention to a piece of art I think deserves more attention. My plan is to run this series twice a month after my big MCU Re-View Project is done.

However, you get a special sneak peek today because I want to call attention to a series near and dear to my heart that just so happened to finish its run this past Friday. I will be sprinkling some of my favorite clips from the show throughout this post for your enjoyment. The show itself can explain the appeal of the music and visual elements far better than I could hope to. Just be prepared. While the text will be light on spoilers, the videos are loaded with them. So if you’re cool with that, buckle up and prepare for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

This is the story of Rebecca Bunch, played to perfection by Rachel Bloom (who created the show alongside Aline Brosh McKenna). Rebecca is a high-powered corporate attorney in New York. But there’s something missing in her life. She unfulfilled, she knows it, and she’s teetering on the precipice of doing something rash to make the empty feeling go away. That last push comes during a vulnerable moment, as Rebecca hits a crisis point in her life mere moments before a chance encounter with Josh Chan, a guy she went to summer camp with as a teenager. On that flimsiest of excuses, Rebecca torpedoes her life in New York to follow Josh all the way across the country to West Covina, California.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend lives and dies by the strength of its characters. There is no overarching plot except what arises from the explorations of and interactions between the cast. And some of Rebecca’s most important relationships are with her female friends. They form a tight-knit group that realistically toes the line between supportive and enabling.

The Girl Gang

One of the most consistent presences on the show is Donna Lynne Champlin as Paula Proctor. Champlin is the show’s secret weapon. In a lesser show, Paula would be relegated to the comic relief sidekick position. But in this show, she gets her own desires, dreams, and development.

Paula’s arc is one of my favorite in the show. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Champlin is a fantastic performer and gets some standout musical numbers.

Vella Lovell is incredible as the deliberately underplayed and delightfully sardonic Heather. Heather is the distillation of the disaffected younger millennial/older Gen Z. And that doesn’t just mean the negative stereotypes. She also possesses an impressive perceptiveness and emotional intelligence.

Even the negative parts of those generational tropes are explored. But instead of just taking cheap shots at her perpetual student-hood and general listlessness, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend explores why Heather acts as she does and helps her grow as a person.

Gabrielle Ruiz kills it as Valencia. Valencia is a deconstruction of the Alpha Bitch trope, mainly because she’s Josh Chan’s long term girlfriend. She is initially depicted as rude and self-absorbed.

But the show wisely flips the script and reveals that much of the audience’s perception of Valencia is a function of Rebecca’s status as an unreliable narrator. The show manages to deftly humanize her without blunting the attitude that made her so fun to watch in the first place. She and Rebecca even manage to find common ground and eventually real friendship, although it does start out in predictably toxic way.

The Love Interests

Of course, we have to address the elephant in the room. Because this show shares some fundamental DNA with the romcom, some of the most critically important characters are Rebecca’s romantic partners. A big part of the show is Rebecca’s attempts to sort out her love life.

There is, of course, Josh Chan, the whole reason she moved West in the first place. At the start of the show, Josh seems happy-go-lucky and content with his lot in life. But there are more complex feelings beneath the surface.

Josh’s growing discontent leads him to seek out meaning wherever he can find it, with…unfortunate results.

Then there’s Greg Serrano, one of Josh’s friends that Rebecca meets early into her time in West Covina. Greg is the ultimate cynic, a pessimist with an old soul who is looking to fix his own persistent discontent.

Much like Rebecca, Greg might be his own worst enemy. Maybe that’s why he and Rebecca have undeniable chemistry. Rebecca is devastated when he leaves West Covina for business school during the second season, even though their relationship was…tumultuous, to say the least.

Rounding out the cast of potential partners, there’s Nathaniel Plimpton III, a second season addition to the show who is initially completely uninterested in Rebecca and her nonsense. This makes him a bit of an antagonist to the rest of the cast at first. Of course, character development then ensues, and Nathaniel becomes a well-rounded addition to the show with a complex, but mutual, attraction to Rebecca.

And then even more character development ensues, revealing that Nathaniel is every bit the off-kilter weirdo as the rest of the cast.

The Other Guys

There are also a few major male characters who aren’t romantically connected to Rebecca. There’s also Darryl (played by Pete Gardner), Rebecca’s new boss who is discovering some exciting new things about himself rather late in life.

And then there’s White Josh, the frequent background player holding together a lot of the show’s secondary character arcs. He has major connections to Josh, Greg, and Darryl. As a persistent background character with a level head and no time for Rebecca’s nonsense, he’s one of the most consistent straight men on the show, which is hilarious considering he’s actually very gay.

The Star

All in all, it’s an absolutely fantastic cast. But none of this would work if the main character couldn’t keep it locked down. Luckily, Rachel Bloom is on the case. By the strength of Bloom’s performance, Rebecca Bunch has become one of the greatest television characters of all-time.

Rebecca contains multitudes. On the surface, she’s carefree and optimistic. And she is consistently desperate to maintain that self-image.

But the show is not shy about revealing the less glamorous parts of her personality lurking beneath the surface. She’s arrogant and self-absorbed.

Rebecca manipulates.

She lacks clarity regarding her own wants and needs.

Our heroine manages to slut-shame herself via intricate tap choreography inside her own head.

She’s always on the precipice of generalized self-loathing.

The important thing is that she’s a female character who gets to be flawed. Rebecca gets to be all these things and more. She gets to play the kind of anti-hero/villain protagonist that has so traditionally been reserved for men. And yet Bloom is such a strong performer it’s easy to forget and still root for Rebecca unironically.

Rebecca does a lot of deeply selfish things throughout the show. Yet the core of her humanity is so strong that we, the audience, don’t want her to be punished, we want her to be better. And that’s true of pretty much all the major characters to a greater or lesser extent. They all have some bad tendencies, and they all have to actually change as people to address them.

The Magic

Ultimately, just like Rebecca, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a lot of things. Whip-smart satire:

Brutal deconstruction of the romantic comedy:

Touching exploration of the realities of living with a mental illness:

Biting commentary on the nature of dating and relationships, and the expectations that go along with the whole deal:

Preeminent example of the power of cringe comedy:

Meta commentary on common television tropes:

Sincere tribute to the enduring power of the musical as a narrative form, even when applied to relatively mundane day to day life experiences:

But above all, it’s just really, really good.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Peak TV?

For the longest time, I’ve heard people discussing the new golden age of television in the past tense. And every time I’ve heard it, it’s struck me as being fundamentally wrong. This show is a big part of the reason why I’ve felt that way. This may be seen as heresy in some critical circles, but you can keep your Walter Whites and your Tony Sopranos. The television landscape has been dominated by prestige dramas focused on “complicated” men behaving badly for long enough. Why don’t you switch gears and enjoy a musical number about a man coming to a haunting realization.

PS- If you read this piece and you liked what you saw, consider donating to my Patreon! Donations from readers like you make this site possible.

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