Favorite Characters: Greg Serrano (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend)

Although I’ve talked before about how Greg’s position in the show frequently made me nervous as a Josh fan, I do like him as a character. The show takes him places that aren’t always expected, and even if the “Greg 2.0” stuff in the last season isn’t entirely successful for me, we’ll always have Paris/Original Recipe Greg Serrano. (Some Greg-related spoilers.)

At very first glimpse, Greg seems like the obvious “real” candidate for Rebecca’s affections.  It seems all but a foregone conclusion that she’ll ultimately get a wakeup call about Josh, open her eyes, and see the nice-guy bartender standing beside her.  Fortunately, though, the show doesn’t keep things that simple.  While Josh’s persona gets retooled quite a bit in the early episodes, Greg’s opens up to reveal much more complexity than we find in the beginning.  What emerges is a sort-of friend/possible lover for Rebecca who is much more aware of her issues than others, at least in part because he’s dealing with a host of issues himself.

To be sure, Greg is a bartender, though he’d prefer not to be.  He’d love to get out of West Covina, go to business school, and “make something” of himself, but he put his dreams on hold to take care of his sick dad.  And in case that last point didn’t tip you off, it’s also true that Greg’s a nice-guy type, but again, it’s not quite than clear-cut.  I wouldn’t go nearly as far as to call him a Nice Guy, but Greg does have a tendency to rue his niceness a bit.  While he’s certainly not going to leave his dad when he’s needed (even if his dad doesn’t particularly want to be the fall guy for Greg not following his dreams,) he laments that he’s such a stand-up guy who can’t go after what he wants, and with Rebecca, he convinces himself that the only way to win her over is act like he doesn’t care about her.

Right around here is where we start to see Greg’s big bundle of insecurities.  He takes it as gospel that Rebecca’s disinterest in him is the surest proof that she’s his type, he looks down on his work, he has a warped view of his difficult relationship with his mother, and while he talks a big game about wanting to do something more with his life, he keeps one foot out of the water instead of taking a wholehearted plunge.  He carries a lot of negativity around with him – mostly concerning his views of himself, his bad breaks, and the town he lives in – and his coping mechanism of choice, sarcasm, can be sharper than his friends are prepared to deal with.

But just like I love Rebecca for being such a beautiful mess, I really like Greg in all of his flaws.  His screw-ups feel true to life and his self-sabotage can be painful.  Even as I sympathize with some of the more unfortunate hands he’s been dealt, I totally get why his friends occasionally need a break from his moods, but that’s okay.  It all works for me.  For one, I’m way more about characterization than character, and I’ll gladly take a messed-up guy who’s more sensitive than he lets on and is good at pretending not to care about things that matter to him over some bland guy-next-door with no discernible wrinkles to his characterization.  Simply put, one feels real, and that’s what I look for in my fiction.  But beyond that, another reason Greg’s issues work for me is because he does have plenty of good qualities to balance them out.  Despite the frequently-cartoonish tone, no one on this show is just one thing, and that includes Greg.  I love the moments when he can let the aloof-sarcasm routine drop and be real with someone about how he feels, for good or ill.  I love that he works on his problems, trying to recognize when he falls into dynamics that he knows aren’t good for him and trying not to self-fulfill his often-defeatist prophecies. But by the same token, I love that his progress on that front isn’t a straight line.

Part of the reason why I struggle with Greg 2.0 is that quite a few of those wrinkles feel ironed out, and I’m not altogether sure how to take it. It’s true that Greg disappears from the show for about two seasons, not returning until he really has done serious work on himself (including AA and actually going to business school.) As a character, he’s changed a lot, and the show lampshades recasting the no-longer-available Santino Fontana with Skylar Astin by Rebecca insisting that Greg has become “a completely different person.”

I get what the show is trying to do with it, and I am glad about Greg being in a healthier place. But my problem is that I can’t tell whether or not that’s what a healthier Greg looks like. Something feels off, and I don’t know if it’s because the writing isn’t believably-Greg or because Astin doesn’t quite sell me on him being the same character, albeit one who’s grown quite a bit since he was played by Fontana. A wire got crossed somewhere, and it never fully comes together for me.

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.