Review: The show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend defies the stereotype one would expect
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a wickedly clever, hugely funny take on mental illness, womanhood and what it means to be happy
PHOTO: WEB
The bare bones of the new, critically acclaimed musical comedy show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which won a Golden Globe and was nominated for three Television Critics’ Association awards last week, makes it appear as a misogynistic nightmare. The title itself has certain negative connotations – in pop culture the term ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ is what sexist men use to dismiss women they do not like or understand. The plot of the show can seem similarly cringe-worthy: a high-powered, successful attorney moves across the country to a small suburban town to chase after a man she used to date and still loves. It appears as a bunch of sexist tropes cobbled together to make a TV show. Instead, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a wickedly clever, hugely funny take on mental illness, womanhood and what it means to be happy in today’s increasingly complicated world. And it does all that while its characters periodically burst into songs.
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The theme song of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend sums up what the show does so well. Quickly sketching out our protagonist Rebecca Bloom’s (Rachel Bloom, who is also the co-creator of the show) backstory, the song explains the show’s plot while recognising its ludicrousness. Rebecca, a high-strung lawyer in Manhattan becomes a partner at her law firm but the promotion just leads to more anxiety – she has just had a panic attack outside her office building when she runs into Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III), a guy she dated briefly years ago at summer camp. Josh explains he lives in a small town in California now and impulsively, Rebecca quits her job and moves across the country to his town to win his heart. But while other characters in the theme song try to categorise Rebecca’s crazy move, “she’s a crazy ex-girlfriend/she’s so broken inside!”, Rebecca insists, mid-song, “the situation’s a lot more nuanced than that”, after pointing out “that’s a sexist term” anyway.
And the show makes clear the situation is a lot more nuanced than just a crazy girl having a nervous breakdown and chasing after a guy. It is not just Josh that Rebecca is chasing, but the happiness she felt when she was with him and which is missing from her present life. In New York, Rebecca leads a lonely life, with no friends and only her stressful job. In West Covina, the town she moves to, she becomes friends with Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin), the paralegal at the small law firm she joins who encourages her in all her hare-brained schemes to win back Josh. There is also Greg (Santino Fontana), a bitter but funny bartender who is best friends with Josh, and Heather (Vella Lovell), Rebecca’s college-going neighbour who initially pegs Rebecca as a case study for her psych class but then decides she likes her too much to diagnose her.
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In fact, the show’s attitude towards the protagonist’s struggles with mental illness is much like Heather’s: it is clear Rebecca has anxiety and some form of mood disorder. But the show takes pains to not let this define her whole character and treats her often self-destructive and impulsive actions with empathy and compassion, even while mining great comedy out of them. In a television landscape filled with tortured, brooding male characters whose destructive qualities we are encouraged to celebrate while female characters are allowed to only be flawed in an adorable way, Rebecca’s character, in all her unapologetic weirdness, eccentricities and tendency to make dumb decisions is refreshing. Rebecca manipulates Josh and others around her in order to get Josh to fall in love with her, often resorting to deplorable acts. However, we cannot help but sympathise with her, as well as relate to her in her moments of uncomfortable self-awareness and self-loathing.
The fact that the show is a musical is not incidental to the brilliance of the show. In fact, the songs are an integral part of what makes Crazy Ex-Girlfriend so good. They are smart and laugh-out-loud funny, parodying different forms of music while simultaneously exploring everything from issues of sexism, the popular tendency to romanticise and glamorise depression these days and the unrealistic pressure we place on romantic love to solve all our problems. “Baby you can kiss all your childhood traumas goodbye/You’re never gonna miss all that stress you’ve been keeping inside”.
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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the kind of show that seems wacky or silly but feels incredibly grounded, with an ability to simultaneously understand and laugh at difficult human behaviour. It balances comedy and drama deftly, and each episode of the first season is filled with equal amounts of heart and humour. With the new season beginning in October, it is a show that anyone who is not watching is definitely missing out on.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Nudrat Kamal is freelance writer. She tweets @Nudratkamal
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The theme song of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend sums up what the show does so well. Quickly sketching out our protagonist Rebecca Bloom’s (Rachel Bloom, who is also the co-creator of the show) backstory, the song explains the show’s plot while recognising its ludicrousness. Rebecca, a high-strung lawyer in Manhattan becomes a partner at her law firm but the promotion just leads to more anxiety – she has just had a panic attack outside her office building when she runs into Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III), a guy she dated briefly years ago at summer camp. Josh explains he lives in a small town in California now and impulsively, Rebecca quits her job and moves across the country to his town to win his heart. But while other characters in the theme song try to categorise Rebecca’s crazy move, “she’s a crazy ex-girlfriend/she’s so broken inside!”, Rebecca insists, mid-song, “the situation’s a lot more nuanced than that”, after pointing out “that’s a sexist term” anyway.
And the show makes clear the situation is a lot more nuanced than just a crazy girl having a nervous breakdown and chasing after a guy. It is not just Josh that Rebecca is chasing, but the happiness she felt when she was with him and which is missing from her present life. In New York, Rebecca leads a lonely life, with no friends and only her stressful job. In West Covina, the town she moves to, she becomes friends with Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin), the paralegal at the small law firm she joins who encourages her in all her hare-brained schemes to win back Josh. There is also Greg (Santino Fontana), a bitter but funny bartender who is best friends with Josh, and Heather (Vella Lovell), Rebecca’s college-going neighbour who initially pegs Rebecca as a case study for her psych class but then decides she likes her too much to diagnose her.
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In fact, the show’s attitude towards the protagonist’s struggles with mental illness is much like Heather’s: it is clear Rebecca has anxiety and some form of mood disorder. But the show takes pains to not let this define her whole character and treats her often self-destructive and impulsive actions with empathy and compassion, even while mining great comedy out of them. In a television landscape filled with tortured, brooding male characters whose destructive qualities we are encouraged to celebrate while female characters are allowed to only be flawed in an adorable way, Rebecca’s character, in all her unapologetic weirdness, eccentricities and tendency to make dumb decisions is refreshing. Rebecca manipulates Josh and others around her in order to get Josh to fall in love with her, often resorting to deplorable acts. However, we cannot help but sympathise with her, as well as relate to her in her moments of uncomfortable self-awareness and self-loathing.
The fact that the show is a musical is not incidental to the brilliance of the show. In fact, the songs are an integral part of what makes Crazy Ex-Girlfriend so good. They are smart and laugh-out-loud funny, parodying different forms of music while simultaneously exploring everything from issues of sexism, the popular tendency to romanticise and glamorise depression these days and the unrealistic pressure we place on romantic love to solve all our problems. “Baby you can kiss all your childhood traumas goodbye/You’re never gonna miss all that stress you’ve been keeping inside”.
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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the kind of show that seems wacky or silly but feels incredibly grounded, with an ability to simultaneously understand and laugh at difficult human behaviour. It balances comedy and drama deftly, and each episode of the first season is filled with equal amounts of heart and humour. With the new season beginning in October, it is a show that anyone who is not watching is definitely missing out on.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Nudrat Kamal is freelance writer. She tweets @Nudratkamal