Hey, bingers we are back. In honor of the craziness of finals we are featuring season three of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” Warning: This article definitely contains spoilers and this season is a wild ride, so stop reading now if you haven’t seen it. Then come back and we will discuss. I promise it’s worth talking about. Newsflash: Is Rebecca Bunch literally crazy?
Craziness abounds: Seasons 1 and 2
Let’s all take a second and recall the situation poor Rebecca Bunch has landed herself in. Long ago and far away, like across the country, Rebecca was a hot-shot New York lawyer, powerful, single and sad. Then she randomly sees her summer camp crush, Josh Chan, and decides to move to West Covina, California to be with him. This goes fairly well, she gets a job and has a pretty nice apartment, but Josh has a girlfriend/fiance, Valencia, and that just won’t do. Rebecca eventually splits them up and wins Josh’s heart. Except she doesn’t win it all the way because halfway through season 2 they, Josh and Rebecca, decide to get married to prove how in love they are. This is a super great plan which ends exactly how you expect: with Josh leaving Rebecca at the altar to become a priest.
Binge it now!
If you aren’t intrigued already, go start watching. This show is a musical comedy of ridiculously hilarious proportions. All of the actors are professional singers so they sound amazing and the songs are parodies of famous tunes. It’s like an interactive game of “Guess that Song” with entertainment thrown in. The show also addresses some major current issues like women’s rights, body image and media, millennials’ reputation and the LGBTQ+ community and their rights to marry and adopt children. Most importantly, this show is very real about how much dating can suck.
Season 3 follows all of these trends with a twist. It starts off with Rebecca’s decision to destroy Josh Chan. A perfectly reasonable course of action if you ask me. She comes up with a lot of plans to do so aided by her best friend, Paula. When these ultimately fail the season takes a turn. Rebecca spirals into severe depression and returns to New York to stay with her mother. She eventually attempts suicide and ends up in the hospital. This leads to a new diagnosis. As it turns out Rebecca Bunch is actually clinically crazy and has to spend the rest of the season going to therapy and coming to terms with who she is.
This is where a fun and funny show gets unexpectedly serious. She fails. A lot. And it’s beautiful. This show suddenly shows mental illness without trying to make it pretty or cute. It’s real and kind of awful at times and Rebecca makes horrible decisions, but she is portrayed as human and maybe we need to be seeing humans with mental illness on television. This show takes on every stereotype of being “crazy” and comes out with a lot of heart. You feel for Rebecca Bunch whether she does the right thing or not. That, if nothing else, is worth watching.
Best Episode: There are honestly too many good episodes to pick one. Instead I am picking songs. My favorites are “Fit hot guys have problems, too” which has a lovely strip show from our leading men Nathaniel and Josh Chan and “The Miracle of Birth” which is so horrifying it’s funny.
Similar Shows: There really isn’t anything else out there like this show, much to my disappointment. So instead I am going to rant. As someone who has spent years of their life training to be a performer, it is absolutely infuriating when big production companies hire amateurs and auto-tune their singing or add taps over their dancing so they sound better. There are hundreds of astoundingly talented professionals out there just waiting to get paid for their art so stop hiring names and watch good singers who can dance and act at the same time. Rebecca Bunch is a genuinely talented singer with good technique. She is worth listening to, unlike other movies and T.V. specials recently released.
Trigger Warnings: This show deals with suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism and low self esteem to the point of self-destruction. This doesn’t mean it isn’t worth seeing but be aware some of the episodes in season 3 get very, very dark.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”
Available to stream on Netflix
13 episodes, approximately 13 hours
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