Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse Royce.

Courtney: Together we are The Ace Couple, and today we are talking about a show that I am so profoundly in love with. We obviously talk a lot about asexual representation on this show, aroace rep when we can get it. But we’ve also from time to time talked about shows that are not explicitly asexual or aromantic or have characters by those specific labels, but sort of spiritually align with a lot of themes that are very important to our community.

Courtney: And that is what I would consider the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to be.

Royce: Which is interesting because I feel like a lot of times when we recommend this show to people, we have to be like, okay, so hold on a second about the title.

Courtney: I mean, that was my thought before we ever watched it too. I had no interest just because it’s called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Royce: But—

Courtney: and we didn’t go into it expecting any sort of deep unraveling of tropes or anything like that, but when I say it is spiritually aligned with themes important to our community, like, it so beautifully dismantles a lot of the problematic tropes about romance and relationships and love that we so often see in media, and that our community is especially prone to, shall we say, wishing there was a little more variety. It’s actually, um, a very roundabout way that this show got on my radar in the first place, as someone who was not even on TikTok at the time and was not even like a ravenous fan of the Try Guys. This fully as a TV show came on my radar because of the Ned Fulmer Try Guys scandal, because one of the employees at that company made a TikTok using a song from this show, the lyrics being like “you ruined everything, you stupid bitch.”

Courtney: And getting this like third-hand from other people, because I wasn’t even on TikTok, I’m still not, so I didn’t see this TikTok organically. Someone put it on another platform in front of me as I’m just tangentially getting all of these bits of drama from other places of the internet during that scandal.

Courtney: And I thought, not only is it hilarious that an employee at a company is using a song with this language for someone who I believe was still their boss at the time, but also I was just like, what is this song? This is hilarious.

Courtney: And so I did some searching and found out it’s from a TV show called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That was the first time this was ever put on my radar. And upon seeing that title, I was like, oh well, I’m probably not gonna like it, but this song...

Courtney: Sounds really funny. So very cautiously, we decided to give it a try. And I’m so glad we did, because it wasn’t too long after we finished all— what is it, four seasons?

Royce: Four seasons, about 60 episodes, yeah.

Courtney: So it wasn’t too long after we actually finished the show that I connected with ace author Michele Kirichanskaya, who has been on the podcast before, so definitely go Listen to that episode if you have not already. And Michele wrote the book Ace Notes: Tips and Tricks on Existing in an Allo World. And I thought it was just such an enormous coincidence as I was reading this book for the first time, having just so recently finished the show, that there is a chapter entitled Sacks of Yellow Fat.

Courtney: And I will just quote the first paragraph to let Michele tell you, um, give you a primer about this show. They write, ever seen that show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? Despite the awful name, the show is actually pretty brilliant, dismantling sexist, ableist tropes like the crazy ex-girlfriend trope, in addition to thoughtful commentary on subjects such as mental health, Jewish identity, and more. And much of it through the lens of musical comedy.

Courtney: The quote sacks of yellow fat comes from a song called Heavy Boobs in the show, which absolutely made me lose it the first time I heard it. Because as someone with heavy boobs, it was quite relatable. But before we get into the sort of trope-defying twists that come in later seasons of the show, and some of the specific songs, uh, much like Heavy Boobs, uh, that resonated with me in particular, Royce, why don’t you give us just like a quick plot summary of how the show opens?

Royce: So the show’s creator, Rachel Bloom, plays the starring role, Rebecca Bunch, who is in this story the titular character.

Courtney: And if you were like me wincing at the title Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, they’re very, um, the way they handle and use problematic tropes is so interesting to me because even in the opening song, like title sequence for season one. Yeah, they’re making fun of it or poking or calling attention to it in a self-aware way because they’re singing about like, oh, she’s the crazy ex-girlfriend, and she’s sitting here going, that’s a sexist term, no.

Courtney: And so it, it’s good, trust me.

Royce: So at the series open, Rebecca is a big-time lawyer at a law firm in New York City and is up for some kind of big promotion. She sort of panics a bit about what’s going on in her life and her future and all of that and leaves the building and finds someone that she dated briefly back as a teenager at a summer camp. Learning that this ex, Josh, is moving back home to West Covina, California, she decides to uproot her whole life and go find a job there and move there pursuing Josh while denying that that is exactly what she is doing. She takes a sizable pay cut to go to a much smaller-time law firm that is conveniently in the area she wants to be in and tries to, I guess, get her footing in the area.

Courtney: Ingratiate herself into Josh’s life.

Royce: Yes. Much of the first, and I guess probably second season too, knowingly play off of, like, rom-com tropes, as in Rebecca is sort of trying to set those up but is often taking things way too far or causing complications.

Courtney: And throughout every episode there are all of these musical breaks, which are obviously like— I’m not going to recommend this to someone who doesn’t like musicals or hates musicals because it is a musical. But I—

Royce: There, there are a few numbers in each episode.

Courtney: I do think it’s done in a really interesting way because it sort of cycles through all these different genres, and there are so many direct, like, parodies of certain songs or certain groups. But the main character was a theater kid, loves musical theater. And the songs are very often used as a tool to poke fun at the genres and tropes that they are implementing in the broader show. So even when there is like a will-they-won’t-they kind of a thing, or love triangle kind of a thing, which are very often things that, if not done exceedingly well or in a unique way, I often find very tedious in media. But to take the love triangle as an example, like yes, she came here for Josh, but she ends up meeting— Another guy who, while she’s laser-focused on Josh, she is not thinking as an immediate romantic prospect, but he ends up having a thing for her, asks her out a little bit, and— During the times when she doesn’t think Josh is gonna happen, she’ll sorta, you know, cautiously or begrudgingly pursue that.

Courtney: And since these are like old-school seasons of TV that have more than like seven episodes, all of these plots and characters and threads like have more time to breathe than a lot of modern shows we’ve been watching lately. So we get a lot of time to see how these relationship dynamics grow. And in instances where there’s like a love triangle, for example-

Royce: Or square.

Courtney: Or square. Yeah, that happens later. They add, they add a 4th to the mix.

Courtney: Uh, there is a musical number that is a direct parody of Marilyn Monroe, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, and it’s Rachel Bloom as Rebecca Bunch in a different but similar enough sort of dress and hair and makeup and singing in The same kind of style as Marilyn does singing about the love triangle. And so that already puts it in this sort of campy world that does make those tropes more easily digestible for me, because the really melodramatic, like, lovey-dovey romance things don’t always work for me. But it also serves the broader purpose of the show where at the end of the day it is building up to A really satisfying conclusion where not only what we’re seeing on the screen where we’re falling into these tropes, we’re doing the will they, won’t they, the love triangles, the obsessive pursuit of love, those kinds of things, with all of the joking like, these are just tropes, this is not real, uh, this should not be real.

Courtney: Those two worlds kind of end up converging in the end. So it ends up becoming a lot more cohesive over time than just, here’s the trope and we’re being self-aware about it. So since this character does start as the obsessive, quote, crazy ex-girlfriend, there are, usually with a humorous twist, examples of like plotting, scheming, stalking. She gets the sort of best friend sidekick kind of character who’s— super invested in their love story and trying to help.

Royce: These schemes often get blown way out of proportion. It’s not uncommon for them to be quite distinctly illegal, and at some points and times in the show they’re played up for absurdist humor, and at other points and times they turn and actually look at this realistically and say like, this whole thing we’ve been doing is way too much. It’s wrong. We need to stop doing this.

Courtney: Yes. And this often is a very sexually charged character. So there is a lot of sex that is planned or discussed or sung about dramatically. But we don’t really see anything very graphically.

Courtney: And I think this show, probably above all others, actually does use a pattern of sexual behavior in a way that serves the broader purpose. In a way that works for me more so than a lot of other shows do. And part of that is the self-awareness.

Courtney: Like, yes, there are songs about like getting sexy, songs about getting ready. In fact, the sexy getting ready song is one of those songs. Like, getting ready for a hot date, gotta shave everything, gotta do X, Y, and Z, and all the things women do that men don’t, you know?

Royce: Yeah, it isn’t consistently this way. Not every song is this way, but there are certainly some songs about either sex explicitly or some aspects of relationships that are very performative.

Courtney: Yes. And then there are moments like Heavy Boobs where in real life as well as the show, boobs are very sexualized. A lot of people who have sexual attraction have sexual attraction to boobs, or so I hear. And here is a well-endowed woman singing about how, uh, these are actually really heavy. It’s hard to run.

Courtney: Uh, my boobs are each the size of a toddler’s head. You might think that I look really sexy, but if I bludgeoned you in the head with my boob, it would hurt real bad.

Courtney: Like, that, that is the tone of this song. And then it goes on to say, like, yeah, you might, you might think it’s sexy, but actually if you cut them open, they’re just sacks of yellow fat. And they’re technically supposed to feed babies. Uh, there is actually a biological function there, but you just think, wow, boobs, hot. Like, that is so good. It’s so good.

Courtney: But the calling attention to tropes from music videos, from musicals, from other historical movies and TV shows, it also really resonates with me on a On like an allo-performativity level, because I’ve told this story where, as a literal child, I was performing what it looks like to have a crush, because everyone all the time, who’s your crush? Who’s your crush? If you say you don’t have one, they don’t believe you, because everyone has a crush. And so my method of performing a crush was just, what have I seen on TV? What have I seen on movies?

Courtney: What does it look like to be a person who has a crush? And when you boil it down to that, it’s kind of creepy. It’s kind of obsessive. There are behaviors that if you did that in the real world, that’s kind of not okay. So I saw elements of this— yes, clearly this is not okay in a real-life situation, but I also see this is a dramatization of how these things are usually portrayed in media in a way that’s now trying to have like a little self-awareness about that.

Royce: Yeah. And some of that was very much in character, too, because there was a little arc in one of the seasons where she was very fixated on a movie she saw as a kid and the tropes that were in that movie and was trying to basically replicate those in her life.

Courtney: Mm-hmm. And even a lot of the side characters, like, even though she is not an ace character, she’s not an aro character, we do have other examples of queer rep. Uh, Josh has a friend named White Josh. ‘Cause I guess they’re both buff and stocky, but one of them is white and the other is Filipino. So white Josh is gay, and he’s not a perfect person by any means. Like, he is also flawed as a human, but he is very much like the straight man of the entire series who starts as a more minor character and we see him a little more often in later seasons.

Courtney: And I love it so much. He is just like the gay best friend off to the side here who is the one who just never at any point likes Rebecca. He’s just like, why do any of you like her? Why are you all going out of your way to do these things for her?

Courtney: Both before and after all of the like obsessive behaviors are really brought to light. But as the straight man, like, he’s— the gay man is the straight man in this situation.

Courtney: He’s very funny and I like him a lot. Rebecca’s boss, who thought he was straight until very recently, has a bi awakening and ends up having a relationship with White Josh for a period of time. And his song about realizing that he’s bisexual is so good. It’s called like Getting Bi. He’s like, I’m getting bi. I like women and I like guys.

Courtney: And it’s just very, very good. And I think about that episode, not only that song, but also his dialogue before that song happens so often.

Courtney: Because there’s this big, like, water conspiracy where they’re thinking, you know, water’s being siphoned away from this town to a larger area. And Rebecca’s trying to pursue this as a legal endeavor and is trying to get the scoop on it. They get someone to show them, like, pipes under the ground, and he’s like, you see here, with this pipe, it’s supposed to go both ways. And Darryl, this guy who has recently been shown to go like, oh no, I think I like men too, he’s like, both ways? Interesting! It’s really funny.

Royce: Yeah, this pipe that is supposed to send water both ways Is only sending water— is only being allowed to send water in one way.

Courtney: Well, that’s not fair!

Royce: That’s not fair at all!

Courtney: So even just characters’ self-discovery moments, like, in those little bits of dialogue, are just written so cleverly. And then you have these really banger songs.

Courtney: So we do have the queer representation. I would argue that just the campy musical theater nature of it is also just Genre-wise, uh, very queer.

Courtney: And over the span of seasons— I mean, the first season is very much focused on trying to get in a relationship with Josh, but there are some periods of time where she is in a relationship with Josh and we’re exploring what that looks like. And sometimes things blow up with Josh, so sometimes there’s a totally new love interest and he’s the new temporary obsession kind of a thing.

Courtney: There’s definitely room for more of these tropes to come in and get played with. Like, there’s definitely an enemies-to-lovers kind of a thing that happens at one point. And there’s one song that above all others I would like to talk about in the context of this episode.

Courtney: Because it is called Without Love You Can Save the World. And it is so good.

Courtney: Because it’s the moment where Rebecca is lying to herself Or so she thinks, to say like, I don’t need love, I don’t need any relationship at all, actually. It opens with her ruminating that 10,000 hours in anything makes you an expert. And I’ve spent way more time than that fretting over guys. So she’s like, if I wasn’t fretting over guys this time, what else could I have done?

Courtney: I could have cured cancer. I could have cleaned the oceans. I could become an environmentalist. I could— You know, save the bees, I could work with troubled teens, and she’s going over all these things. And yeah, the refrain is, without love, you can save the world. Clear space in your brain for better things.

Courtney: And it’s such a funny, because she’s in like, a white robe with a heart on the chest with a big X over it. And then the entire cast comes in, all wearing the same robe with these hearts with an X over it. And as they’re singing about, without love you can save the world, there’s one little line that just comes in at one point where someone goes, it’s an asexual utopia! And it is so good because— I’ll tell you why it’s so good.

Courtney: First of all, they’re not pretending this is real and that she internally in her heart of hearts believes this. She’s trying to convince herself. That this is the case. She’s trying to chart a new path, but she hasn’t internalized it yet, so she’s just logically like, yeah, if I’m not having sex, what am I gonna do with all this time?

Courtney: Which, how many times, listeners, if you are an ace, have you heard things like that? There are some people who, like, maybe they’re very well-meaning, but they just don’t necessarily get it, at least not right away, where they’re like, Wow, must be so easy being asexual. Must be so easy. What do you do with all your free time?

Courtney: And sometimes, you know, aces and aros will embrace that in like our own intercommunity joking, like, yes, while you were out having sex, I was doing all these things. Uh, there is a common joke In my circle of allosexual friends that, quote, while we were all getting laid, Courtney was studying the blade. As I am literally out practicing my sword forms on a daily basis.

Courtney: So there are different ways to spin that joke. It was really refreshing to see it from an allo perspective sort of making fun of themselves for doing this. ’Cause I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.

Courtney: I even— my grandmother even, after I got her tipsy on margaritas so that I could come out to her, she cycled through a few different, like, well-meaning and supportive but not fully getting it iterations over the span of an entire night. But she did eventually land on, mind you, as a woman who was divorced thrice, Was like, life would have been so much easier if I was asexual.

Courtney: Which, nope, Grandma, not necessarily. That’s a sort of line that can either be like, you know, she’s trying, that’s kind of endearing, if it’s coming from like an elderly relative who is trying to be supportive. Or it could be used as a type of aphobia where people will, in a very nasty way, be like, you don’t have any problems. That’s the kind of camp who might also say, you’re not queer at all, this is not what queerness looks like. So I certainly understand when some folks in our community who have been on the worse end of that spectrum can be really sensitive to it and might hear us discussing this and be like, well, that’s not funny at all, because people actually say this and sometimes in a way that’s used against us.

Courtney: But the way I saw this scene and the entire plot leading up to this point was—

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: This is the allos making fun of themselves for when they do these things. This is someone who’s saying, man, I wish I could be asexual, so yeah, I’m just gonna do it, and then making fun of that because that’s not how that works. If that is not how you are naturally wired, you can’t just decide to turn something off.

Courtney: But it’s also in this complex mix of, you know, she does have mental health problems, she does have—

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Symptoms that get aggravated in these romantic contexts. So she has a very good reason for wanting to take a break and focus on herself before putting herself in a romantic situation. But she’s trying to find the easy narrative to decide, this is my quick, easy shortcut.

Courtney: Like, yeah, I’ll just swear off guys. I don’t need love at all. In fact, look at all these other things I could be instead of in love. So that worked for me on so, so many levels.

Courtney: And I’m sure there are folks in our community who would also be disappointed in the fact that it’s Without Love You Can Save the World with one little jump in of like, it’s an asexual utopia, because I know some folks are very sensitive to the conflation of Aromanticism and asexuality. But here, I don’t see it being an issue because this is not trying to teach people what aromanticism or asexuality are.

Courtney: It’s not pretending to be a PSA. It’s not pretending to depict a character like this. This is allos who don’t get it, who are making fun of themselves. And I live for it. I really, really do.

Courtney: We also have an endgame sapphic relationship that blooms later on in the show. Just in terms of general queerness, we don’t have an ace and/or aro character, no. However, for the main character and the main plot being, here is someone obsessively pursuing love, we get this big twist—

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: In the narrative when her mental health sinks lower and lower and lower. It does get very real. It does get very heavy. It’s not straight comedy all the time. It does get very dark where there are attempts at self-harm.

Courtney: There are these bits of her past that we get in little snippets, whether they be memories or new people in her life learning about her past. So we start to then see, as her mental health is actively tanking modern day, we start to get an even fuller picture by hearing about what her past looked like and how this has been a more ongoing pattern of behavior and mental health issues. And I guess spoiler alert for a relatively older show.

Royce: It ran from 2015 to 2019.

Courtney: Okay, so it started more than a decade ago. I guess if you don’t want spoilers, come back later. I do recommend watching the show. I really, really enjoy it.

Courtney: But in a very dark moment, after a suicide attempt, she does end up hospitalized, seeing a new psychiatrist. The way therapy is handled in the show is very interesting in a, you know, I think humor is best done when it is outlandish but telling really hard truths at the same time. And that’s something this show does brilliantly. And the way therapy is treated over the course of multiple seasons is magnificent for this, because when she first starts seeing a therapist, it’s very unserious. She’s not actually prepared to do the work she needs to do. She’s not actually willing to hear what the therapist has to say. And so we also get to see how that develops over time, and when she actually fully internally realizes, oh, I actually need to put in this work, I need to do this for myself and everyone else around me.

Courtney: So the therapist character is great, and that trajectory is done really well, I think, in a way that I also think is relatively unique in TV. ’Cause I’ve seen several pieces of media where either therapy is completely not shown in a good light, demonized, and like, mind you, not all therapy is a good thing. Sometimes therapy or individual therapists are bad on individual bases, but then there are also situations where people know how real and important mental health is and they want to just almost like a PSA talk about like, therapy’s so important, everyone should go to therapy, and that actually fully flattens it into a very one-dimensional concept that I don’t actually think does anyone any favors, whether that’s being depicted that way in media or flippantly discussed online or in social talking points.

Courtney: But in seeing this new psychiatrist, with the aid of her now-becoming long-term therapist, she gets a new diagnosis. She’s been diagnosed with a variety of things over the years, taken a variety of medications over the years. They actually find that she has borderline personality disorder. And I thought from the people I know who have gone through a diagnostic process of becoming diagnosed with BPD, a lot of that I think was also depicted in a very real way.

Courtney: Like the psychiatrist saying, don’t Google this, and her immediately like going into a bathroom stall and Googling it and seeing just vicious, vile things about it. It is such a heavily stigmatized diagnosis.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: And they don’t shy away from that when depicting it. And throughout the diagnostic process, I think anyone who has either chronic illness, mental health diagnosis, or anything that just took a long time to figure out, or if someone was misdiagnosed with something first, I think that is really realistic. Because she has a song about, um, before she’s told what this diagnosis is, she’s in the hospital, obviously in a very, very low place in her life, And she gets a little bit of hope where she has a doctor now saying, I think you’ve been misdiagnosed. I think your treatment has been misguided. I think I have a better way for you.

Courtney: And she gets this profound sense of hope and sings a song about like, I’ve got a diagnosis.

Royce: It’s a very uplifting song to a diagnosis that she does not handle well.

Courtney: Yeah, like that.

Royce: Before the diagnosis.

Courtney: Before the diagnosis, she’s like, oh my gosh, this is going to be the answer. I have a diagnosis, someone actually knows what’s happening, I’m going to get better.

Courtney: And that, like, bit of hope is very realistic. But also hearing you have something that is so stigmatized as BPD and then reacting very negatively to that— very real and common experience. The show really has a way of speaking about very true things and making fun of the problematic aspects of it without, like, disregarding the importance of certain tropes or elements or habits to individuals. People, people, like— there’s a song I listen to over and over again called Let’s Generalize About Men, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It is a group of four girls getting together, a lot of them have been burned, one has been burned by her husband, one has been burned by her long-term boyfriend, one, you know, is Rebecca, who is sometimes the one doing the burning. And they’re having a girl night, they’re having wine, they’re getting together, they’re bitching, they’re venting, and the song is Let’s Generalize About Men.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: And it’s so funny, but it’s, it’s talking about all the things that, like, yeah, a lot of women who have been hurt by, abused by, seen their friends abused by men, like, do get together and, yeah, say like, ah, men, we hate them! But this song is, like, it’s almost paying an homage to that, like, this is a cathartic thing that sometimes women just have to get together to do, and it’s showing that, like, camaraderie and sisterhood. But it’s also saying like, this isn’t great because it’s not all men, but in a very not not all men way, if, if that makes any sense to any of you who haven’t heard this song.

Royce: Well, the “not all men reaction” is inherently defensive. This is both saying this thing happens, and yes, it is somewhat like— I think the song itself calls it like ritualistic in nature.

Courtney: Yes. And someone even says in the song, like, wait, but what about gay men? And they’re like, oh no, gay men are all awesome.

Royce: 100%.

Courtney: Every single one of them. They’re not mean, they’re just sassy. They’re adorable, they’re sweet. We love every single gay man. So when we say we hate men, we’re only talking about the straight men. And it’s done in a way that’s not taking itself seriously.

Courtney: So I think a lot of women can listen to this song and be like, yes, I have felt the catharsis of being in the room going, ahh, the men, but also, yeah, I see, I see the, the cracks here. And that’s really the show as a whole. Like, that is the tone of the entire show if I had to point to one. It is an homage to catharsis and nostalgia in a way that is both endearing and critical. Because, going back to my further point about all of these parallel lines of storytelling in the dialogue and the non-diegetic songs that spring forth as a musical, they end up converging in such an interesting way because they very realistically show that just getting the diagnosis is not a cure. There’s still a lot of work to be done.

Courtney: There is a little bit of backsliding that she does while she’s going through treatment. And she’s trying to, like, rediscover herself. And part of this is, you know, being reminded, like, you really love musical theater. Why did you stop doing this? And so she sees a flyer for a local community theater audition, and she’s like, yes, I’m gonna do this. I love this thing. I miss doing this thing. This is something I’m gonna do just for me.

Courtney: And the rug kind of gets pulled out from under her when they’re doing a review of songs from old musicals, and it’s very, like, Oklahoma! era coded, where she’s like, I grew up with these songs, I love these, but now as an adult, years later, she’s coming back and she’s so excited, she’s like, I love this musical, I love this work, I love these composers, and she’s reading the lyrics and they’re just hitting differently now. And she’s like, wait, actually this is really sexist. This is actually very problematic.

Courtney: Which I think a lot of us have experienced, whether we’re musical theater lovers or if it’s a favorite movie or TV show, like, not everything ages well. And we all have to kind of grapple with what do we do about this when the thing we loved so much starts hitting differently as we grow and as we age.

Courtney: So what she ends up doing is, while she’s sitting here trying to rehearse her part, memorize the words, think about how she’s gonna act it out on stage, she just like gets a pencil and she’s like, Wait, wouldn’t this be a lot better if this were the line? And this would feel less problematic. And so she just starts like rewriting the song. And of course the director of the show hates it, forbids her from doing it.

Courtney: But it was something she really— it was like a big roller coaster of emotion that for one of the first times wasn’t a roller coaster pertaining to her relationship or proximity to a man. So now she’s excited to get back to her passion. Her passion was not the way she envisioned it. It wasn’t the way she remembered it. She found a new way to get excited about it, and then that was totally shut down and she was forbidden from pursuing that.

Courtney: And in what I think is one of the most brilliant endings of any TV series ever, in keeping in line with the self-awareness, like singing a song about love triangles, there’s another really good song with, um, I mentioned Darryl and White Josh. They were not endgame, as we say, but I do love their entire relationship trajectory beginning to end and remaining friends at the end. But because they remained friends, there’s a song about like the hive mind has decided that you’re in love, and it’s really poking fun at shipping. ‘Cause everyone is saying like, no, no, no, you’re still totally in love, and they’re like, no, we’re actually just friends, we’re in a good place right now. They’re like, no, but you have to be in love. We need you to be in love! But the final season, not only is she trying to rediscover herself, but she’s also kind of trying to decide who her romantic interest is going to be now, who she’s going to start dating, because they have Josh who is back in the picture, they have, uh, his name’s Nathaniel, who is her boss for a short period of time and like, really rich, Asshole lawyer type who secretly has a heart of gold or something.

Courtney: Uh, he’s still kind of an asshole. Um, and then we have Greg, who left after the first season, so we haven’t even seen him for a while. He like moved away to go back to college. He ends up coming back home. So now she has three guys who all have a renewed interest in her. But also they all have their own history and their own baggage with her.

Courtney: And they do this like, you know, you gotta decide which of us is it going to be. And they do a, you know, let’s all go on one date, and after this date with all three of us, you can decide who it’s going to be. And it starts with Josh, who goes the nostalgia angle since they met at camp. He sets up a tent like in her backyard and they pretend to go Camping, and they reminisce about the good ol’ times, so you have that nostalgia.

Courtney: Then you have the big grand gesture from the wealthy lawyer type who was forbidden from spending too much money because they had to make everything even and fair as much as possible across these three men in this contest to try to win the girl. But he still finds a big, like, over-the-top big, like, mountain scenic sort of a thing and—

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: His plans didn’t go perfectly as hoped, but they managed to have a lot of fun and laugh about the mistakes that happened, and they start dancing on this big beautiful mountaintop. But in the background throughout all of this, they’re once again making fun of shipping.

Courtney: White Josh, who has been the straight man this whole time, I think this is his one and only song that he ever sings. Many of the other main characters have multiple songs. But he is singing about how love is not a game. Love’s not a game.

Courtney: But meanwhile, everyone in the cast who is not these immediate three guys and this girl are all placing bets. They’re placing bets, and they all have their favorite. They all have their own idea, like, well, he’s clearly the one. He’s the one for her. No, he— here’s why.

Courtney: And they’re all arguing and debating about why it’s going to be their favorite one. And they’re placing bets, they are like putting up a scoreboard as if it is a race. It is really funny because it also kind of seems like they’re probably actively making fun of their own audience, because I’m sure there are a lot of audience members who also, in their head, had their own favorite.

Courtney: I mean, that does tend to happen with love triangles and/or squares. I mean, goodness gracious, there was an entire culture that sprung forth from Team Edward or Team Jacob.

Courtney: Like, people were wearing buttons about it in the real world. So they’re making fun of that while the show is sort of actively encouraging it by showing like, look, this is a contest now. They’re seeing who’s gonna be the best.

Courtney: And then we end with Greg, who tried to plan this big gesture, which is very much not his style, and he’s clearly uncomfortable about it, but he feels like he has to do it.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: And all of that ends up completely falling apart, and they end up in like— is it a car dealership? Because the car broke down or something?

Royce: Something like that. I just remember them like sitting down in a back room somewhere and having a real genuine conversation where they’re both like laughing and referencing things about each other and whatnot.

Courtney: Yeah, and he’s like, I was gonna try to do this big date, but I really like, can’t, this isn’t me, this didn’t work. And she’s like, I’m honestly so sick of the big dates right now too. Even though like the first one, like one was— she described it as heaven, one she described as perfect.

Courtney: Like she loved these dates and they’re adjusting the chances of everyone’s bets winning based on her reaction to these dates. So it made it seem like one’s just better from the next. And now they’re just sitting in this like car dealership, everything went wrong and they’re just like—

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: You wanna just order takeout? And they’re like, yeah, I just wanna order takeout. And so they’re pulling up their phone to look at menus and like, oh, do you want— what kind of food do we want?

Courtney: Blah blah blah. And their conversation is just like so easy and real and like, oh, I remember you don’t like this, or do you remember my order here? And she’s like, oh, make sure you decide before I call because I can’t have you changing your order while I’m talking to them again like you always, always do.

Courtney: And so— It shows that they had this easy comfortability at one point when they were together, and it shows a little bit of that again. And it ends on this really sweet moment where it’s leading you as the viewer to believe that even after the nostalgia and history, and even after the big grand gesture, like, that comfortable day-to-day life is what really matters. So you think it’s going to be Greg when this all is said and done, and this is all right before Valentine’s Day, and so she’s like, going to make her decision on Valentine’s Day and tell them like, this is my decision.

Courtney: And I’m like, I kid you not, I’m actually crying right now. Royce is just watching me try to keep my voice stable while I’m wiping tears from my face. This is how much I love this show. The final episode, without any pre-indication that this is what they’re gonna do, jumps forward in time by a year.

Courtney: So it is once again Valentine’s Day, but it’s not the immediate one where she was gonna make her decision. And very recently, since we are sort of in the final act, we’re at the 11th hour, we’re at the penultimate episode, she does have this big reprise where she sort of goes into her head in this room and you’re seeing mannequins of all of the really iconic costumes from all of the songs and numbers they’ve done throughout these four seasons. And much like all the best musicals, there’s a song that’s sort of a mashup or has elements or musical refrains of all of these really memorable moments, like high highs and low lows within this character’s trajectory. And it flashes back to her best friend Paula, who is a wonderful character. I love Paula. She, for the sake of this episode, isn’t super relevant to talk about, but she’s amazing.

Courtney: I just love her so much. Paula is talking to her in her home, they’re just sitting down chatting, and after she has this musical number, Paula looks at her and like snaps her fingers in front of her face and is like, where did you just go? And she’s like, you do that all the time, you just stare off into space and I never know what’s happening with that. And that’s when Rebecca invites her into her own personal world and says like, I think of my life as a musical. And in these big moments, I’m thinking about what the stage and the costume and the music would look like if this was— if this was a show.

Courtney: And she’s like, I’ve never told anybody this. And Paula really encourages her. She’s like, this is actually amazing. This is something you clearly care about, and you shouldn’t keep this to yourself anymore. You should share this with people.

Courtney: And so that just totally reframes every single silly or emotional musical number we’ve had across four seasons of television as like, no, this wasn’t literally happening in the world, but it was happening in her inner world. And it’s not just a metaphor for how she’s feeling, she literally is thinking of the big moments in her life as a musical number, and this is the song that she wrote to pour all of her emotions and experiences into. And I just thought that was a very clever way to do that and to pull that all together.

Courtney: ’Cause that made even the most ridiculous, dramatic songs and moments real in a very personal way. And so this final episode is her getting on a stage at an open mic, and all of her friends are in the audience, and all of these three guys are in the audience, And you’re initially led to believe that she’s, you know, here to make her decision, it’s the big day. But no, actually it’s been an entire year.

Courtney: She said no to all of them. She did not make a choice, and instead she started taking piano lessons, she started taking singing lessons, she started writing all of her songs in her head down on paper, and she is pursuing her own passion. And now for the first time, she Is playing her music for an audience at an open mic.

Courtney: And I’m crying because it’s so good. Because yes, we have the romance. Yes, we have the sex. Yes, we have the unhealthy relationship patterns. Yes, we have the learning how to have healthier relationships, how to communicate, how to manage emotions. All of these skills that are important to maintaining healthy relationships. You have the actual assistance of therapy. You have the assistance of medication.

Courtney: There’s an entire song about how antidepressants are so not a big deal. Everyone’s on them. You shouldn’t feel like— this shouldn’t feel as stigmatized as it does. Everyone needs a little help sometimes.

Courtney: So you have all of those journeys that are done in not only a real but also an entertaining way. Because that’s something I’ve noticed, a lot of shows that are trying to say something very important about mental health about queer relationships do often, to me, start feeling like a PSA, like it’s trying to teach you something. And sometimes I think the entertainment value suffers because of it.

Courtney: This show threads the needle perfectly and takes some really wide swings, but in my opinion almost never misses. And so to have four seasons of television, each looking very different and unique from one another because they have sort of different shifting focuses as the character does evolve, As her relationships evolve, culminating in the fact that, hey, I thought, and the show thought, and the viewers thought, this was about a woman obsessively pursuing love. This was about finding love. And even if it wasn’t my initial crush, even if it wasn’t this guy, it was trying to figure out who— which guy it was! Only for the answer to be none of them.

Courtney: I had to do what’s right for me. I had to find myself. I had to connect with my passions. I needed to do what I love.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: While pursuing mental health and finding what my personal joy means before even considering bringing someone else into this was just so beautifully done. And I would say, as much as I adored watching this show the very first time I did, knowing where it was going and rewatching it from the beginning almost even made it better. Because I saw all these little things that were foreshadowed much earlier than I ever realized they were. And watching it all with the hindsight of knowing that all these songs in her head are her like, buried deep-down passion that she hasn’t let herself pursue yet, just added a new layer of complexity to it that I really enjoyed a second viewing after knowing.

Courtney: Where that all ended. And so in a way, the show itself, its big final takeaway is love and relationships are not the end-all be-all. Which is such a far cry from how it started, where this woman is totally uprooting her life, blowing up her career, moving across the country, all on a whim based off of a glamorized, idealized—

Royce: Romance.

Courtney: image in her head of what a relationship with this guy would look like when it really wasn’t real. She didn’t even know him very well yet. She didn’t even know— she— he had a girlfriend. She moved all the way across the country and found out he has a girlfriend. Uh, that sort of thing. Like, you don’t actually know him, this image in your head is not real.

Courtney: And it retroactively made the Without Love song even better to me. Because that was the hope and the prayer that she could just tell herself that she doesn’t care about love and she could just do something else. But she hadn’t done the work to actually internalize that yet. But she did by the end. So it’s really a parallel of, this is the right answer, but you’re going about it all wrong. You haven’t figured it out yet.

Courtney: Versus the end where she has done the work, she has been thoughtful about this and made the right decisions for her. So even though it’s called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the premise is, I’m obsessively pursuing my ex, it’s really a story about self-discovery and self-healing through the lens of somebody who doesn’t know who she is, who hasn’t allowed herself to pursue her interests and passions and only really recognizes this false sense of herself through the lens of relationships with other people.

Courtney: And it’s such a layered, complex, nuanced show because all of the side characters also have really interesting lives that we see to various degrees. We have— I mean, the fact that Darryl in midlife is having his queer awakening, that’s very real and very interesting to see.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: We see a character grappling with alcoholism. We see a character who is single but wants to have another child, and what does that look like for him? We have a mother who doesn’t really know her teenage children, and how do those relationships end up looking and how do they develop?

Courtney: It’s a diverse cast of people, and because of that, I think there are elements of Someone’s plotline that I think just about anyone can relate to personally. But the full realization of not needing another person to complete you, not needing a relationship to understand who you are, not needing love to be happy.

Courtney: Even though in the ace and aro communities, our journey to understanding that might look drastically different from what Rebecca’s did.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: That profound truth is something that a lot of us can relate to. And to those of us who are struggling or have struggled with accepting that fact purely because society tells us in so many ways that we need a life that looks a certain way, we need a relationship that looks a certain way. There certainly are people in our community who, even if they don’t personally want a relationship, or maybe they want a romantic relationship that is not a sexual one, there can still be a lot of grief or confusion or concern that we might not be able to have access to that. So, really internalizing that wisdom is something that we all often do have our own personal journey with.

Courtney: So I just love seeing that depicted in TV. And I love seeing it in a show that started on the complete opposite side of things, so that It can not only defy those tropes, but also show us what one example of a realistic journey to getting to that realization can look like, through the lens in her case as a Jewish woman with a history of family trauma, a BPD diagnosis. And I think we get a really interesting look at all the nuances that come with that particular experience.

Courtney: So with that, I am going to leave you all with today’s featured Marketplace vendor. Just like I mentioned at the top of the episode this week, it is going to be Ace Notes: Tips and Tricks for Existing in an Allo World. It is a nonfiction book about asexuality as written by an ace author. Of course, you’re always more than welcome to go back and listen to our episode with the author Michele, and if you would like to order the book itself, I’m going to put a link in all the usual places. That means the show notes on our website, where you can also find a full transcript of this and all previous episodes, as well as the description box if you happen to be listening to us on YouTube. As always, thank you all so much for listening, and we will talk to you all next time.