Further Thoughts on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

In my ongoing attempts to figure out how to pitch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to friends, I’m trying to articulate why the premise doesn’t bother me.  By all rights, it should.  “Woman throws away huge career opportunity to uproot her life for the sake of an ex” sounds awful, no two ways about it.  But when I see it play out on this show, I can’t take my eyes of it.  The series makes a few very smart moves in handling this potentially-very-alienating subject matter (some spoilers.)

First, there’s the ingrained understanding that moving to West Covina for Josh is a legitimately-unbalanced decision for Rebecca to make.  It isn’t painted as romantic.  It’s portrayed as it should be, not a healthy thing to do, and the only way Rebecca copes with that fact is by denying that that’s why she did it.  Her impulsive move and pursuit of Josh are both indicative of the damage that she avoids addressing (not that pursuing Josh is an inherently bad thing to do, but the way Rebecca goes about it, latching onto the idea of him as this perfect “something” that will fix everything she feels is wrong with her, is definitely not good for her.)

Because Rebecca isn’t just a hopeless romantic or a lovable oddball.  The show never loses sight of the fact that, adorable and quirky as she is, she is in fact stalking Josh and doing a ton of ill-advised things that are hurting both her and people she cares about.  She’s a pro at lying to herself and others, but the series is about her very slowly learning to recognize her bad patterns and self-destructive actions and trying to get better.  She has to go too far (way too far) before she can see what she’s doing to herself and those around her.  It’s a lot of “half a step forward, three steps back” with her, and though that journey can be painful to watch, I still just love it.

Another important element at work here might seem a bit contradictory, but bear with me.  I’ll say it again – moving to West Covina to Josh is not a healthy thing to do.  That said, it’s absolutely right for Rebecca to make a change in her life.  The pilot makes it clear that she’s been depressed for quite a while, numbing herself with too many mood stabilizers while she throws herself into work to distract herself from how empty she feels.  When she hears she’s up for a promotion, she freaks out because she knows she’s supposed to be happy about it but she’s not.  She’s spent ten years going after a life she’s been told she’s supposed to want, but it hasn’t brought her any fulfillment.  I’m not saying she had to move to West Covina (and she of course shouldn’t have done it for Josh,) but it wouldn’t have been right for her to take the promotion, either.  And really, the big mid-season 1 closer “California Christmastime” shows that, whatever her reasons were for coming, West Covina is where Rebecca ought to be.  Josh or no Josh, she’s making friends there, she’s enjoying her work, and she’s making the decisions she wants to make instead the ones her mother has been dictating to her.  Even when those decisions aren’t good, they’re still coming from her, which is the only way she can really figure out what she needs.

And on a related note, while the series opens on a flashback to Rebecca’s time at camp with Josh and then segues directly to adult Rebecca in New York being hit by the “When was the last time you were truly happy?” question, I think it’s crucial that the very opening scene isn’t about Rebecca/Josh.  Instead, it’s about Rebecca doing her “solo” in a show the camp is putting – she’s featured on a single line of “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy” from South Pacific, and it absolutely floors her.  By bringing us into her world this way, the show is telling us that it isn’t just about Josh, or even Rebecca’s idealization of Josh.  One of the many things Josh represents for her is “the last time she was truly happy”:  summer camp.  And while Josh was a big part of that, he wasn’t the only part.  It was also a time when she was doing something she loved that made her happy – and, notably, she did it despite her mother’s insistence that she spend her summer doing mock trial instead.  So yes, it’s Josh, but it’s her, too.  Who she was and what she did when she was with him.