Just based on the title, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend may not seem like a worthy addition to your list of must-watch TV. However, after watching just ten minutes of the first episode you will find yourself hooked, and, before long, obsessed.
The season three premiere of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend just aired this past Friday on The CW, so get ready to play catch-up with a little help from Netflix! Trust me, this musical comedy created by Rachel Bloom (discovered due to her YouTube music videos, most notably “F*** Me, Ray Bradbury”) and Aline Brosh McKenna (writer of The Devil Wears Prada) makes for a great Netflix binge. At first glance, it may just be taken at face-value: a goofy rom-com with some songs thrown in. However, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend deconstructs the romantic comedy genre and takes a closer look at what causes women to be labelled as ‘crazy,’ whether it’s legitimate mental illness, media narratives, or toxic masculinity. Or all three, and more!
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend starts off by introducing us to sixteen-year-old Rebecca Bunch (played by Rachel Bloom herself) eager to see her summer camp romance with Josh Chan continue, only for her to be disappointed. Fast-forward ten years, we see that Rebecca is now a successful lawyer at a prestigious firm in New York City, but she’s deeply unhappy. Rebecca runs into her old crush, Josh Chan, and is hit with the idea to move to his hometown of West Covina, California, completely unrelated, she claims, to the fact that he lives there. What follows may seem like a traditional ‘woman tries to win over dream guy’ narrative, but is actually a quest for Rebecca’s own happiness, no matter how much she misinterprets her own journey. Along the way, she meets a cast of characters, each revealed to be more than what they appear and challenged by Rebecca’s presence to reevaluate their own lives.
And we haven’t even discussed the music yet! There are parodies of everything from boy bands to Disney villain songs; every theater nerd will be rewarded. It seems like Rachel Bloom and her staff should run out of ideas, but each episode contains new music guaranteed to make you second-guess which ones make your personal top ten.
The show has also won praise for its diversity, which transcends tokenism. The healthiest relationship on the show is between a bi character and a gay character (no spoilers!), Josh Chan is Filipino and a rare Asian-American romantic lead, and there are many more examples to be found. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend takes issues of diversity seriously, while making us laugh out loud
As aforementioned, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend dives headfirst into issues that seemly cannot be addressed so adeptly by a musical comedy, but it handles women’s issues, mental health, and other weighty topics with grace and dark humor. The show can get a little dark, but in a way that is entirely relatable. There’s a little Rebecca Bunch in all of us, for better or for worse. So what are you waiting for? Get watching!