Relationship Spotlight: Paula Proctor & Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)

Yep, more Crazy Ex-Girlfriend!  Unlike with Josh and with Greg, there’s only platonic love going on between Rebecca and Paula, but like Rebecca’s relationships with the guys, there’s some messed-up stuff going on here, too (Rebecca-Paula-related spoilers.)

I was thrilled to see Paula turn from Rebecca’s potential nemesis into her 100% ally at the end of the pilot.  While Paula’s suspicion of Rebecca’s totally-weird incongruity in West Covina is funny, I almost always prefer to see female characters working together rather than trying to tear each down (not to mention, there’s already Valencia to contend with.)  When Paula reveals that she knows Rebecca’s Josh secret, you think it’s heading for a big humiliation fest where Paula rubs Rebecca’s nose in the fact that she quit her job and moved across the country for a guy she dated ten years ago, but then, Paula flips it.  It turns out, she’s all about “Bella and Edward, Carrie and Big, / Harry and Sally, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere,” and to her, Rebecca is brave, not crazy.  Convinced that Rebecca and Josh are a love story for the ages, Paula aligns herself with Team Rebecca and starts plotting how to make all of Rebecca’s Josh dreams come true.

Near unconditional support?  Check.  Knows about Rebecca’s assorted closet skeletons because she helped put many of them in there herself?  Check.  Ready for a harebrained scheme at any time of the day or night?  Check.  There to pick up the pieces and hold her tongue on the I-told-you-so’s when Rebecca crashes and burns?  Check.  Paula is all in.

The devotion is sweet and the antics are hilarious, but there are serious problems with this relationship.  First up is the fact that Paula real-person ships Rebecca and Josh, regarding them like romantic comedy characters and encouraging Rebecca not to think about whatever collateral damage might get in the way of her “you had me at hello” moment, like Valencia.  Rebecca/Josh is her satisfaction, and she uses her obsession with Rebecca’s love life to a) live vicariously through her younger friend and indulge in the risks she wishes she’d taken at that age and b) avoid dealing with the problems in her stagnating marriage.

It’s not healthy for Rebecca, either, because goodness knows she doesn’t need anyone fanning the flames of all things Josh (and, later, more generalized guy concerns.)  While Paula has plenty of her own issues, I don’t think she really gets how much is going on in Rebecca’s head, and thus, she doesn’t see why the whole thing is bad for Rebecca.  She thinks it’s all just fun, or wish fulfillment, or a romcom come to life, or else she’s so into it that she doesn’t notice how deep Rebecca is in.  Late in season 1, when Rebecca tries to get a handle on her Josh obsession and make better choices, Paula is the enabler trying to yank her off the wagon.  Partly because she thinks it’s what Rebecca needs, and partly because it’s what she wants, Paula can’t let go of the idea of Josh and doesn’t want Rebecca moving on or addressing the issues that led her to him.

The relationship has undergone a big shift in season 2.  While I wish we could’ve seen the moment when Paula truly realizes that she needs to stop pushing Rebecca toward something that isn’t good for her, that’s where we’ve ended up anyway.  Actually, what’s Paula’s realized is that it’s not good for her to get involved in crazy shenanigans with Rebecca.  It’s been really interesting to watch both of them try to navigate the new terms of their friendship, particularly Paula’s gradual assertion of her own wishes and concerns.  Excited to see where it goes!

Relationship Spotlight: Rebecca Bunch & Greg Serrano (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)

As I’ve already admitted, I ship Rebecca with Josh, but even though I hope those two crazy kids can make it work after a lot of personal growth on both of their parts, I can’t deny that Rebecca/Greg has potential, too.  This is an entirely different relationship with its own strengths and set of issues, and I’m pretty impressed at how engrossing the show makes Rebecca’s dynamics with both guys (some spoilers.)

Like with Rebecca/Josh, Rebecca/Greg don’t work at present.  They’re two people with fairly similar damage, and in their first go at it, that damage gets in the way big-time.  Rebecca jumps into something with Greg when she’s not ready (despite her claims to the contrary, she’s not over Josh,) but even as she starts to really like him, he’s too gunshy from his previous run-ins with her to let his guard down.  Naturally, neither of them are open about what’s going on, so she tries to push him for something more, he feigns indifference out of a misguided attempt to keep her around – he thinks she only likes him when he doesn’t show how much he cares – and the situation just implodes.

In order for Rebecca and Greg to get together for the long haul, they both need to learn not to hurt one another with their own defense mechanisms.  Both are pretty sensitive but very good at pretending they’re not.  Rebecca goes big into denial and Greg can be darkly sarcastic, so when they’re respective backs are up, she comes across like a dismissive liar to him, and she thinks he enjoys criticizing/mocking her.  Fear, deflection, misunderstanding, anger, heartbreak, repeat – that’s the cycle they have to break.  If they’re going to work, both have to let their guard down somewhat and trust that the other is there for them.  They have to talk about what worries them, and they have to come with a plan to address those fears together rather than retreating into their own destructive patterns.

But then, of course, there’s the flipside.  What is it about Rebecca and Greg that would make people root for them?  Even though, again, I personally don’t ship them, I can see plenty of reasons why others do.  Really, they have a lot in common.  Both are more on the intellectual/sophisticated side, at least compared to a lot of their friends – while she likes the beach, Rebecca is probably the only one in the friend group who would get behind going to a museum with Greg.  Greg’s ambitions, wanting to go to business school and quit bartending, seem compatible with Rebecca’s high-achieving career (that said, I do think they’d struggle to make it work if Greg doesn’t see some positive movement on his career goals, because I think having a long-term girlfriend who’s significantly more successful than he is would get under his skin; Greg has some problems with his masculinity and how he thinks he’s supposed to be.)  They like some of the same oddball things, and each has a fairly good understanding of the other’s issues.  Rebecca has a lot of bright shininess about her, but there’s darkness, too, and I think Greg can identify more with that latter side.  Because each has the other’s number when it comes to their personal brands of self-sabotage, each can challenge the other.  They can force each other to confront the stuff they’d prefer to avoid, which is no small matter.  And when all the struggles and insecurities get out of the way for a minute or two, they do have fun together.  Every once in a while, the defenses come down, and they can just be.

Relationship Spotlight: Josh Chan & Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s love triangle is interesting to me because, with either Rebecca/Josh or Rebecca/Greg, both participants are at present definitely wrong for each other, but in my opinion, either could be very right given some growth on the part of the characters in question.  We’re looking at Rebecca with Josh today, but I’ll also cover her and Greg before the show starts up again this Friday (some spoilers.)

Starting with the major elephant in the room:  at the moment, Rebecca and Josh should not be together because she’s obsessed with and has been stalking him and that’s not healthy for either one of them.  Instead of a person, Josh has become a symbol to Rebecca, a perfect specimen of perfect love that will “fix” her life.  She can’t see him objectively, because really, she’s not seeing him at all.  She’s only seeing the role she’s assigned for him in her head.  Meanwhile, Josh doesn’t know who Rebecca really is, either, because she spends so much of the first season hiding her “crazy” from him and trying to be the sort of person she thinks he would want.  Josh is working under the assumption that Rebecca grew out of her “dramatic and weird” tendencies after summer camp and has no idea of the heavy stuff Rebecca struggles with.

As such, any relationship between them hinges on both learning to see the other as they actually are.  Rebecca has to stop idealizing Josh and start to get comfortable letting him see the real her, and once Josh sees that, he has to recognize that a relationship doesn’t have to be “easy” to be worth it.  After an initial, major flame-out on a relationship attempt (because their issues and this disconnect between fantasy/appearance and reality will seriously mess things up, and that’s assuming everything doesn’t immediately crash and burn the instant season 2 starts,) I think it’d be cool to see them learning to be a couple as they really are instead of as each perceives the other to be.  Online, I see Rebecca/Greg shippers predicting that, when Rebecca learns to see Josh not through her infatuation-tinted lenses, she’ll realize that he’s wrong for her and that’s when she’s wind up with Greg.  Personally, though, I’m rooting for Rebecca/Josh in part because I think there’s a neat story to be told in forging a stronger, deeper relationship after the imagined perfection has been swept away.  (Granted, this would be way down the line – again, issues.)

So why, for me, are Josh and Rebecca worth the hard work it would take to be together?  I have two major reasons.  The first is fairly basic, but I still think it’s important; they simply seem to enjoy one another so much.  Over the course of the first season, we see them hanging out a ton, making each other laugh, helping each other out, and just having fun together.  One of the first scenes that comes to mind when I think of Rebecca/Josh in a romantic context is their adorable dancing in “California Christmastime,” because they both look like they’re having such a blast.  My second reason is that I love how they build each other up and believe the best in one another.  On the surface, Josh is cool and confident, but he has his insecurities like any other character on the show, and he places so much value on the fact that Rebecca believes in him.  And so often, when Rebecca has been self-doubting or self-berating, just when she thinks she’s lost her last shot with Josh, he responds with kindness and understanding.  Although this aspect of their relationship would change a little once they start relating to one another in a more clear-eyed manner – Rebecca wouldn’t have the same dreamy adoration for Josh, and Josh would have to contend with the full extent of Rebecca’s insecurities – but I think the core of it would remain the same, which is something both of them need.

Favorite Characters: Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)

Keeping up the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend love fest with our leading lady, the wonderful, awful, crazy, hurting, tenacious, sunshiny, depressed, wildly imaginative Rebecca.  She pretty much immediately joined the ranks of my favorite Beautiful Mess characters (a comment on the beauty of their messiness, not their physical appearance, even though Rebecca does happen to be gorgeous) – I just love rooting for her to make good (premise spoilers.)

If someone had told me I would fall so hard for a female character who moves across the country to be near an old crush, I would not have believed them, but Rebecca absolutely works for me in a way that defies all logic.  I’d say that, in large part, it’s crucial that the show makes no bones about how messed-up this motivation is, and honestly, Rebecca does the same.  It’s why she’s in such deep denial for so long about why she really moved to West Covina, because she’s just done something she’s never thought herself capable of and it takes time for her to cut through her own excuses and admit the truth.

Because Rebecca is screwed up, majorly so.  She’s incredibly impulsive, lies expertly to herself and others, carries around a ton of unresolved parental issues, crafts a shiny fantasy world that’s easier for her to deal with than her depression and anxiety, and is a master of self-sabotage.  Over the course of season 1, she does some unambiguously terrible things that hurt herself as much as they do those around her; when she sings songs of self-disgust like “You Stupid Bitch” and “I’m the Villain in My Own Story,” she’s come by them honestly.  It can seem like, for every inch she crawls forward, she jumps a foot back.

But she is working on it.  By fits and starts, with lots of relapses and tangents, but she does attempt to be better – again, both to herself and others.  Rebecca reminds me of a quote from Pushing Daisies where Vivian says, “I think it’s brave to try to be happy.”  That’s what I see Rebecca ultimately trying (and struggling) to do.  She’s trying to come to terms with herself and find some kind of contentment in her life.  At present, one of her main problems is the fact that she’s tied the entire concept of happiness to one guy.  Until she realizes that Josh can’t “fix” her, she’s not going to be able to truly move forward, but I’m excited to see her make steps toward the sort of happiness that comes from within, not from an external source.

And really?  I just love her.  I love that she imagines life as a musical to help her make sense of it.  I love that she enjoys reading about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.  I love that she has a passion for creative donut flavors.  I love that she casually calls out sexism, racism, and ableism she encounters.  I love that she’s trying to figure out what she wants for herself in life, and that she’s finally trying to do it on her own terms instead of living the life her mom mapped out for her.  I love that she can’t solve all her problems on a dime, and I love it when she finally comes clean to someone about the hurt she’s caused them, even when that someone is herself.

Rebecca may have a long way to go, but I hope I can watch her try to get there for many seasons to come!