Farewell to "Superstore"

I came to "Superstore" when it was already several seasons in and loved it and then got concerned enough with one plot shift, that I wasn't able to enjoy the rest. It's mostly a me problem, so I won't go into it here. 

In addition to being a show that showed many of the weird truths about working retail, both good, bad, and just awkward, like the corporate cloud that was sad about racism, it did a thing that I really don't think has been done on TV before*. 

Sandra, who was played by Kaliko Kauahi was a part Hawaiian character who didn't happen live in Hawaii. Obviously I care about this because I am also a diaspora Hawaiian. But I want to note that this is fairly true across American media, the rare times Indigenous people are portrayed they are always just there because they have been in the same place for a few hundred years. Think about this, have you ever watched a show with a Cherokee character in Florida? An Inuit in California? I'm pretty sure I haven't. But there are characters from Florida in shows set in New York or Indiana.

And look, I've also never seen a show about Asian Americans set in the South, so there are lots of ways and axes along which media could do better. 

But Superstore did this one thing. And Sandra was odd and weird, but not because she was Hawaiian, she was a Hawaiian character who was odd and weird. Thanks to the show for letting me see that.

Here's a wonderful interview Indiginerd did a while back with Kauahi.

*I am happy to be wrong about this being the first.  Feel free to let me know.  Note that Sandra did become a main character, so the fact that several shows set in Hawaii have had supporting characters played by Hawaiians, which was nice but not what I was talking about here.  

Edited to correct typos.

Let's Go Steal a Podcast - The Queen's Gambit

In a failure to pay attention to days, I forgot to mention that I was back on "Let's Go Steal a Podcast" discussing "The Queen's Gambit" episode, aka the one with chess and Sterling.  Also, if you haven't been keeping up with the podcast, there's a disclaimer added at the start - with a content warning - with regards to the recent news about Timothy Hutton.  

7 Things: Chopped

I've been watching a lot of "Chopped" lately.  "Chopped" differs slightly from other cooking competitions in that the format is very unchangeable.  They have certainly done special episodes, but one of the challenges you find in some other cooking competitions is that a chef who watched 2-3 episodes to figure out what they were signing on for might see three challenges that end up being not applicable to their own experience.  Of course, it does mean that when "Chopped" does break format - like everything is breakfast, use chocolate in every dish, I have even less sympathy with the contestants. 

But I have - in addition to be a dude, which helps tremendously - https://theintersectionoffoodnetworkandgender.wordpress.com/about/ - I have come up with seven tips for contestants that my non-chef, just watching at home self has determined.  

1. If you nicked yourself get it taken care of. The chef who gets blood on the plate goes home. Seriously, they will have more sympathy for your dish being unfinished and not bloody, than they will for bloody.  There is more than one instance of a chef who did not think they were bleeding who got blood on the plate.  The clock is your enemy but inedible is inedible. 

2. Any meat you have or anything else you have that has a long cooking time, you will do better using small amounts and getting it fully cooked. Sure they might ding you for portions, but cooked correctly is going to work out better for you. The number of chefs who thing they can cook steak in thirty minutes and then forget that you have to factor in prep, in some cases butchering, marinating, and resting.  If you can't cook it in ten minutes, make a new plan.  

3. Taste it. In fairness, a lot of these boil down (lol) to time.  But if you haven't tasted all the things, then little things like two little or too much salt that you could have fixed will escape you.  And if they asked you if you tasted it and you have to say no, it's bad.  Not as bad as trying to pretend you meant to serve a salt lick. 

4. Count. You have four ingredients.  But limited time.  So, as you race to get the things you need for ingredients A and B and your station gets cluttered, it's so easy to misplace that little tiny bottle or just not see that bag of greens or whatever.  Count.  Make it part of your process so that you don't have that realization a minute after they called time.  

5. Don't be a dick. I know the chef world prizes arrogance and boldness.  I know the show is designed to constantly ask you why you think you're better than your competitors.  I know my personal wishes and desires as a person who does not hire and fire chefs, probably matters little.  But here's why I think you should avoid being a dick about it.  Because the editors at "Chopped" get to pick and choose clips after the show has been decided.  And sure, if you say things like, well, I was really proud of what I served but I'm up against some great competitors, you're right that they may never use that even if you end up the winner.  (Although the winner always gets to say the last few words.  Plus the winner gets money.)  But if you say, at least my dish didn't look like trash the way Susie's did, and you get cut that round, they are definitely using you saying that.  And you go out looking like a dick. 

6. If you make it to the dessert round, only one of you is going to have time to use the ice cream maker. Also, this isn't a real kitchen.  Even if your competitor makes it in and out in time, they aren't going to clean the ice cream maker.  You shouldn't ask.  And if you try to use it without cleaning, your results might end up gross.  Basically, I'm saying have a plan B that isn't ice cream.  

7. Putting a cold thing on a hot thing melts the cold thing. I know this seems self explanatory, but I have seen this come up multiple times. It's often a result of thinking of ingredients and not the whole plate. So if you baked something that you then want to put something cold on, you need to allow time for that baked thing to cool.  

Zoey Update

Here's the interesting thing. "Crazy Ex Girlfriend" and the movie version of "Chicago" both used a musical viewpoint as a thing the main character saw and everyone else didn't. "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" even tied it to the character's mental health. 

"Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist" keeps trying to have it's cake and eat it too. They also aren't picking songs that suit the voices of their cast. 

So, I am going to now spoil the hell out of this week's episode. 

I am all for Jane Levy getting a chance to sing. But spending this many episodes building up Zoey's ability to hear other people's inner songs as a super power, only to use it as a sign of suppression in the main character, well, it's ghost sex (to make a "Grey's Anatomy" reference). It's yanking the rug from under your viewers and telling them everything they have been told by the show is wrong, it isn't a cool trick. It sucks.

Also, sidenote. Apparently women are not allowed to not be romantically involved with a coworker. Platonic relationships don't exist. Also, their one LGBTQ character is barely making it past stereotype and that's mostly because of a stellar performance.

Back to the songs. In addition to the betrayal of the audience, its also a character betrayal. Zoey got a peek into folk's heart songs, but it was just Zoey. Zoey's songs were revealed to everyone. Uncontrollably. Zoey was embarrassed personally and professionally. 

Now I know these songs worked differently than the others. But then I'm back to the show needs rules. If the songs are sometimes in Zoey's head but sometimes not, without any rhyme or reason, then that's honestly a world building fail. In Broadway musicals people sing things that other can and cannot here, and there are clear ways to do that with staging.  The show is refusing to do this.  And then to use their lack of world building as an excuse to embarass their main character, it's pretty awful. Jane Levy is a wonderful performer.  I was thrilled to see this.  But there was not a convincing reason for her heart songs to work differently than other people's.  

I put up with a lot for good song and dance numbers. But this show is suffering an identity crisis.

Let's Go Steal a Podcast: The Hot Potato Job

I'm back on "Let's Go Steal a Podcast", discussing "The Hot Potato Job", a big farming related heist. 

"Fresh Off the Boat" - The End of an Era

"Fresh Off the Boat" was a show that was both extremely relevant and not at all relevant to me.  Eddie Huang, on whom the original concept is based, even though the family depicted is much more TV sitcom happy than Huang's, is about the same age as my brother.  I had not done the math on this previously, but watching this depiction of a teenager in the 1990's I had a sudden realization that my brother own that exact shirt in one of the episodes.  (Kudos to the costume designer for that level of specificity.)  Similarly my brother was a kid who at times grew quickly out, and up, who showed an interest in food, and who looked a little different from some of his classmates.

Of course, my parents are not immigrants, we are third generation Chinese, and more generations than you can count Hawaiian, along with some other European stuff thrown in.  My brother did not become a chef, and my brother was the youngest and not the oldest, and we didn't move out of DC, in fact, unlike my sister and I, my brother didn't even go to Maryland for middle school. 

But as someone old enough to remember "All American Girl" it was exciting to see Asian Americans on TV as Asian Americans.  I remember during the "All Things Considered" interview with Margaret Cho, they put "Fresh Off the Boat", "Crazy Rich Asians", and "Always Be My Maybe" up on screen and asked Cho about this Asian American comedy moment.  And I thought to myself, yay, but like, you could still fit the full size posters on the screen.  You didn't even need a second row.  (Yes, we could add "To All the Boys" and "PS I Love You". I want to run out of fingers.) 

All of this is to say, I am thrilled this show existed.  I hope we get more iterations.  I hope that nor just the folks in this show get more jobs, but also it just becomes normal to see various iterations of Asian Americans. 

But back to the show.  I loved the show so much, but felt the changeover in the years started to show.  It became clear that it was turning into the kind of sitcom that barely remembered things they had set up for the characters.  (Remember Marvin's older daughter?  It's okay, the show clearly doesn't.)  Jessica held approximately seventeen different jobs throughout the show.  And it took a while for them to figure out a personality for Emery that wasn't neither Evan nor Eddie. 

But, those last two episodes, where we flashed forward and saw each kid having gotten a dream and the parents and grandma still happy and healthy, it was great. 

So, I wish all the folks involved in the show the best in their future endeavors.  

Revisiting "ER" - Again With This

And then I got to episode 5. Yeah, the thing I had suppressed about "ER" was its generally crappy treatment (no pun intended) of sexually transmitted infections. They generally happen to sluts, girls who like sex and are demonstrably unchoosy in their partners. Their male partners get them because they have made bad decisions, lured in by the siren. I remembered the horrible HIPAA violation episode much later in the series, also involving a male doctor who got involved with a female patient. I had forgotten that a variation of this played out with Carter in the first season, where a girl with sexy poison ivy apparently felt so magically cured by Carter she wanted to test the healing of her sensitive parts right away. 

Also in episode 5, Doug shows up at a patient's home in a move I'm sure I found caring the first time around and now find a little concerning. 

Overall the series is still wonderful. The echoes of how fast every show with medical stuff is now is all over film and TV. But wow, time and perspective don't always make everything better. 

Revisiting an Old Fave - ER

Hulu has had the complete series of "ER" for a while. I turned it back on and realized a few things. Anytime you revisit the start of a series its a reset. You the viewer now know tons of things about the characters that you didn't at the beginning. But in this case, I suspect the biggest change might be me. See, at the time "ER" started I was closer in age to Dr. Carter, our new med student who actually doesn't even show up until about halfway through the episode. He seemed kind and well willing to learn and so my sympathies went to him. My vague recollection is that I thought of Dr. Benton as arrogant, but eventually revealed to be a marshmallow. In fact Dr. Benton - while yes, not lacking in confidence - is quite reasonable to Carter. When Carter reveals minimal skills, he puts him on some easier stuff and even guides him through the first one. Benton's not super kind when Carter gets a little nauseous, but ultimately let's it go. 

So it was nice to revisit but wow, I was not expecting some life stage evaluation along with it. 

7 Posts: Bonus Bonus Bonus Post - The Top Twenty Songs

It's been popular to rank the songs season by season, but I decided to wait for the whole thing and try to come up with a list.  I ranked this on a combination of could I still remember the song, did the song offer some sort of useful commentary and surprise, as well as being fun to couch dance too.  Okay, some of these are not couch dancers.  Some of them are super weird and that's what makes them great. 

-A Boy Band Made Up of Four Joshes - This song is just pure joy in it's 

-A Diagnosis - It's a great song, and a song that survives outside the context of the show, and yet is more meaningful if you've been on this journey with Rebecca. 

- Don't Be A Lawyer - This one falls into the mostly fun side.  It's also the culmination of a journey for Rebecca as we've been watching her struggle to like this job she clearly hates.  

- Dream Ghost - Dream Ghost hits on multiple levels.  It's a fun tune, it pokes fun at a common method of change for fictional characters, and the dream ghost also has great advice.  

-Face Your Fears - This song remains the moment I went from cautiously interested in the show to fully on board.  Much like the "Sexy Getting Ready Song" it makes use of challenging the text within the song to make sure you understand that the metaphor is terrible, but also involves a back up children's choir because why wouldn't it.  

-First Penis I Saw - It's a catchy tune about a moment we all come to recognize has special significance and yet also maybe shouldn't. 

-Friendtopia - It's hard for me to choose between "Friendtopia" and "Let's Generalize About Men" but to me both fall into girl group bonding stuff, and yet, this one is just a little more of a bop.  

-Gettin' Bi - This was a delightful song, and also did a thing that is sadly unexpected it network TV right now.  Darryl realized he was attracted to someone of the same gender and didn't decide he was gay, he decided he was bisexual.  Obviously, all paths are valid, but it was so nice to see a show represent bisexuality as even an option.  Plus it is fun to couch dance too. 

-The Group Mind Has Decided You're in Love - Again I think this works on many levels, although I have some friends who disagree with me.  I think the send up of shipping along with the typical declaration of group peer pressure towards a specific coupling in musicals, the we won't be falling in love (followed of course by the couple always falling in love).

-How to Clean Up - Cracked me up in it's brief simplicity. 

-I Hate Everything But You - It is a delightful song.  Yes, I love snarky dude, as established, but this song is great.  

-I've Always Never Believed in You - I do love a Paula song, but also, I love a song about how you might not really have known if your kid was going to be great, but are glad they kind of did. 

-JAP Battle and the JAP Battle Reprise - Both delightful.  The songs both thread a very careful line of acknowledging and yet not playing into stereotypes.  Besides we all need a good frenemy song. 

-One Indescribable Instant - I swear it's not the Lea Salonga of it all.  Okay, it's totally the Lea Salonga of it, but still, this song again captures these songs that outlast the movies they are from such that you can still hum the song even when your memory of the characters is muddled.  

- Remember That We Suffered - I know there's a lot of love for "Where's the Bathroom?" but for me "Remember That We Suffered"  manged to be both funny and poignant in equal measure. 

-Settle for Me - This song was an early entry, demonstrating character notes, as well as a willingness to use multiple styles.  

-Sex With a Stranger - This song demonstrated some wonderful sex positivity as well as nice balance of concern and excitement, in other ways it felt very real. 

-The Buzzing From the Bathroom - This is one of those things where if I told you there was a "Les Miserables" style song about realizing your spouse has not been getting orgasms from sex with you, but this worked and managed to be funny and tragic.  Well, tragic for Tim.  And his wife.  

-The Moment is Me - Heather hated all of this, but the song rolled on regardless of her feeling about songs about realizing she had everything she needed to move on. 

-The Sexy Getting Ready Song - It's just amazing.  It showed the layered, knowing, and quirky vibe the show was going for.  And captured a very real thing. 

7 Posts: Bonus Plus Post - I Had a Theory

The show creators have always been pretty transparent that "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" was a show about someone raised on the rom-coms who tried to take them literally.  Which is to say it's a look at what it would mean if you watched some of the crazy stalkery manipulation that gets passed off as adorable when in pursuit of love.  I listened to a podcast once where two dudes said, unironically, the only difference between a rom-com and a stalker movie is that it's positively received behavior.  And here's the thing, they are not wrong.  But it sounded to me that they were sort of saying if she likes it, then you're cool.  And if she doesn't and you don't back down, then you're wrong.  Not, hey, we shouldn't engage in this behavior ever.  

Over four seasons, Rebecca has upended her life, engaged in terrible behavior, been the victim of terrible behavior, dated three different men for long enough for them to be considered contenders, made new friends, changed her career, gotten into therapy, and worked on her mental health.  In many ways the trajectory of the show had already been a lot and enough.  

I confess, I am often the person who tries not to pick sides, pick ships, especially in a show that had a whole song about shipping people who don't want to be shipped.  It's not because I can't decide, it's that I have often seen shows do things I would not have predicted and they made me believe.  So I kept an open mind as they brought in Greg 2.0, revisited Josh, and Nathan.  I watched people do polls about which she should choose.  But as I mentioned in the post about the rom-com episode, by the end of that episode they almost had me convinced that Nathan should be with Maya, so I try to enjoy the ride.  

But I also wondered.  Early on, Dr. Akopian had said true love doesn't have to be a person.  And I wondered if that was the message.  Not that Rachel doesn't deserve love, but that that love doesn't have to reside in a person.  People often say to me, oh but you read and write romance, you want the happy ending. I do. But I am also well aware that ending a story with characters smooching doesn't always feel like the happiest choice.  

So, yeah, my theory was what if the back and forth between Josh, Greg, and Nathan wasn't the typical final season stuff about drawing out the decision.  What if the point was that this wasn't really the thing that was going to make her happy.  This was the distraction.  

And after going "The Bachelor" style with dates, and choices, Rebecca realized that her true love was the songs.  The thing that had always been there for her.  And that's who she ended up with.  

7 Posts: Bonus Post - The Community Around You

By titling the show "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" it focused on how Rebecca upended her life in pursuit of Josh.  But, of course, the Josh pursuit, was a metaphor. (Sorry, Josh.  You deserve love too!)  Because what Rebecca, and anyone who watched the panic attack caused by success in her prior life, knew, was that her life back in New York had sucked.  And yes, moving across the country to reconnect with your camp boyfriend is not a great choice.  And it won't always work out.  But it is very true, much like that are you emotionally stable enough to get bangs quiz, there are moments when you know something isn't working and you reach out to change something to make it better.  

Regardless of how Rebecca's relationship with Josh did or didn't work out, her life got better in West Covina less because of Josh, but because Rebecca found community (and also, therapy, a diagnosis, and some medication).  Early on it looked like they were quickly wrapping up the folks around Rebecca, much the way that shows often do to get some resolutions out of the way to clear space for the finale.  But they weren't done.  Heather and Hector got married and moved into their own place and figured out how to negotiate life as adults.  Kind of.  Valencia and Beth move to New York, but struggled with being ready for commitment on the same timeline.  (Valencia's joy at realizing she could propose was a thing to behold.) Nathaniel decided to be nice, a thing he told many people, because that's exactly how that works.  Paula passed the bar and sent her kid off to the non-Peace Corps thing.  Greg figured out that West Covina and his dad's restaurant were actually kind of great, and a lot of his negativity had to do with his dad having been a drunk who mishandled the business.  Darryl and white Josh figured out that they were leaning on each other for emotional support too much, and white Josh got back in the dating game and Darryl found April in the hospital waiting room.  

There were further developments in finale episode, but in many ways, despite the decision that Rebecca revealed, the thing she really found by going after the wrong thing in the wrong ways, was a really great community.  (Well, white Josh still isn't sold on her, but really who could blame him.)  

7 Posts: Everything is Under Control

The show makes this point so beautifully, that it almost seems repetitive to discuss it, but I still loved the parallels created in the episode in which both Rebecca and Paula tried to power and/or positive outlook their way through their differing health needs.  In many ways this season, and even the series has looked at the circumstances that allowed Rebecca to get to this part of her life, with plenty of success and sure some failures behind her and not have fully recognized her brain and her were at odds. Paula got married young ended up adjacent to the life she truly wanted and is so, so close to getting it.  In the way of many of us of a certain age, it won't be everything she dreamed, but it's a dream about to be realized, and having had to give up so many dreams she is not willing to listen to people who tell her she looks bad, and she might need to take a rest, and she could take the bar next time.  Paula has seen success come to her when she powers through, so she keeps powering through the sweat, through the fatigue, through the pain, until finally she admits she might need a teeny tiny bit of help and goes to her gynecologist assuming she's experiencing menopause, to discover she is actually having a heart attack.  

Similarly, Rebecca has been doing all the work - going to therapy, having changed her job, and now having done a new thing, entered into a relationship with someone who already knows all the worst things she has done.  So, yes, romance has been a crutch for her before, but not this time, because she has done the work.  And she doesn't need medication because she has done the work.  And yes, also, because she let her mom drug her and it ended badly, so medication is wrapped up in some really bad baggage for her.  And so she gets Greg to go to a water park.  And while Greg looks like a totally different person, he is still Greg.  Water parks and Greg are not going to be a happy joint outing.  And so it doesn't go the way Rebecca had envisioned and so she reverts to alcohol and bad behavior and in a way that was super real to life but less so to TV, the folks she tries to throw her self into realize this is Rebecca in pain not Rebecca in love with them again and they send her on her way.  

Both Rebecca and Paula are forced to realize that sometimes pushing your body and your brain and trying to power through your illness doesn't work.  Sometimes you have to stop, or let the drugs get your brain chemistry closer to where it needs to be, and that's not cheating or slacking, it's just what you need at the moment.  

And I think it's a lesson we all need sometimes.  

7 Posts: That Rom-Com Episode

It's not uncommon for shows to to an episode where they dive into a side character.  Within the world of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" we've known who Nathan is since he showed up, and we know who Maya is too.  But this Nathan realizes that Rebecca loves romantic comedies and that perhaps by watching some he could learn something works on a number of levels.  First, learning about something the woman you profess to love has loved and tried to share with you all along well after the fact is in itself rom-commy.  As is dreaming about the thing.  Obviously totally happy and functional couples have interests the other doesn't (see also, water parks, but I digress).  But Nathan wasn't checking out rom-coms to see if by dismissing an entire genre of film, he had missed out on something he might enjoy.  Nathan was looking for research he could use to hijack his way back into Rebecca's life, much the way he had thought about using the diary that her half brother had used.  He was, in fact, using season 1 (and yeah, okay, the other seasons too) Rebecca behavior.  In prior seasons, Trent had been the mirror for how over the top Rebecca's behavior was.  But Nathan also had a lot to learn about being appropriate.  

So, dream Nathan and dream Maya fake dated in order to make both their exes jealous and in a testament to the wonderful writing and acting in the show, by the time they got to the building karaoke scene, even though I knew this was a rom-com set up, and I still knew there were lots of reasons Maya and Nathan were not the appropriate choices for each other, I was kinda ready to buy into it.  

It was a dream, so we don't have to worry about if Nathan is still technically Maya's boss, or the other various power differentials that make this a bad choice.  Instead, we got a dream rom-com.  But that episode also served as a reminder to both the viewers and to Nathan, that it's easy to get swept up in the moment, it's easy to feel like all the forces of the universe must be behind you. It's easy to justify a long line of terrible choices in service of one good ending.  Nothing is ever perfect, but that doesn't mean that bad behavior should be rewarded, even when people sing delightfully about it.  

7 Posts: The Sex Ed Chat

"Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" from "The Sexy Getting Ready Song" to "Sex With a Stranger" has always been sex positive and sex informative at the same time.  (See, it is possible!)  So, I particularly enjoyed the balance, or "Cats" episode.  To distract herself from what would later be referred to as the love quadrangle of Josh, Greg, and Nathaniel, Rebecca decided to up her exercise and get back on the dating apps.  Valencia warns her about cheap leggings, but Rebecca continues on, only to end up with a yeast infection.  She reschedules her date, but then attempts to overtreat it, and ends up with bacterial vaginosis. 

In an odd parallel Greg and Nathaniel meet at the gym and become buddies, putting white Josh in the uncomfortable position of knowing a thing that would affect their bonding, but not wanting to have his day job infected (pun intended) with Rebecca stuff.  

So Rebecca tries to not tell her date why they can't meet, and white Josh tries to not see what's happening with Greg and Nathaniel, and in the end neither of these strategies work.  Rebecca ends up confessing the infection to Jason, who turns out to be the kid of a gynecologist who would have preferred honesty anyway.  Greg and Nathaniel both decide to declare themselves to Rebecca, and meeting outside her apartment realize they have her in common.  They also run into mostly naked Josh who has also decided to declare himself and the noise outside means Jason discovers the love quadrangle and opts out.  

The show has done a lot of great things to normalize some really common and hopefully uncommon things.  (I wouldn't wish a love quadrangle or a Trent on an enemy.)  But the idea that hiding the truth instead of owning it, while not uncommon in TV shows as a message, is applied here to things like yeast infections in a really lovely way.  

7 Posts: That Casting Change

"Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" did a thing that used to be more common. They brought back a character with a different actor.  Obviously, as adults we know that people have to take jobs and opportunities on the table, and if your show would like you back in a future season, but you book, say a Broadway show, well, we all get it.  But of course, just as a show makes side notes about the new guy this season, season meaning the quarterly one because of course anything else would be a weird way to talk about you life, they weren't going to do it and not talk about it.  

It was time for a high school reunion.  And of course that meant Josh had assigned extra importance to his role as prom king.  And it meant Rebecca pondered - as her friends all made big life changes, if maybe she had overanalyzed and missed out on a true love.  Heather and Valencia both said of course it was Greg, which seemed, maybe not entirely in keeping with Heather and Valencia.  Rebecca said well, except for how they were toxic and brought out the worst in each other, so basically only if he was like an entirely different person.  And then an entirely different person walked through the door.  

It is a credit to many things, casting, writing, and the acting skills of Skylar Astin that by the end of the season (and by this I mean TV season) I had to keep reminding myself that Santino Fontana originated this role.  It isn't that I will ever forget "Settle For Me" or let's get drunk and make fun of people, because I will not. But the show made me believe that sober, getting his life back together Greg looked like Skylar Astin.  

7 Posts: Singing to the Darkness

Early on in "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend", the show made it clear that the songs are in Rebecca's head, that she's not even that good at singing in real life.  Nevertheless the songs are a delight.  Even when things are hard, or sad, or everything in between.  The "Sexy Getting Ready Song" was weird and strange, and I've told people over time that it took until "Face Your Fears" to see the vibe that the show was going for, but it was all there from the beginning.  The songs are a sign that Rebecca doesn't see the world clearly, not because they are songs per se, but because the songs contain an awareness, both of realities Rebecca isn't ready to see, but also clues to the larger pop culture landscape.  

"Crazy -Ex-Girlfriend" isn't blaming pop culture per se, but it is taking a look at the behavior that gets held up as romantic, at how these things look different when done by people of different genders or different sexualities.  Whether it's the idea that a woman who truly wants love would of course mold and wax and pluck herself into a better, skinnier, hotter version of herself, that shipping people who have told you they can't make a relationship work, or that folks who are sarcastic and mean might actually need deep therapeutic work and possibly addiction counseling before they are ready for a relationship, and all sorts of things in between, "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" has addressed both the deep dark scary stuff and the oh my gosh excitement of bonding with friends through song.  

Certainly many of Rebecca's various coping mechanisms have been shown to be unhealthy, but the singing, real or imagined has helped this show seem wonderful and often bright as it addressed a range of things, many of them dark.  

It's possible you could argue the songs are another mask, but I think the songs provide a useful balance.  Musicals often go places that would be fairly unbearable in pure play form, whether it's failed revolutions or mental health struggles, or more successful revolutions.  I always talk about telling someone I was seeing "Fun Home" and "Hamilton" the same week and they thought "Fun Home" sounded dark, and I was like, but you know lots of people, like lots more people die in "Hamilton" right?  "Fun Home" had songs too, which is honestly part of why I added it to the list.  (In fact it has a very sparkly song, and love song, and a longing song.)  

So, the songs in "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" helped keep the darkness away, even when the songs were about the darkness. 

7 Posts: The Mom Resolution

Since it was the final season of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" they had a lot of things to resolve.  One of them was Rebecca's relationship with her mom, a relationship that had often times fed into and exacerbated some of Rebecca's behavior.  The last time Rebecca had seen her mom had ended with Rebecca in the hospital, so, this was a test in many ways of how well Rebecca's therapy and work on herself had been successful.  Mental illness or no, I think we can all sympathize with the idea that this time we are so sure we are grown enough to handle being with our parents, around other adults who still think of us as kids, and who still want to view our lives through a specific marker of success or no. 

So Rebecca has a job she loves, but doesn't sound cool, she's unmarried, she's childless, and yet, for most people having a job and friends and being able to pay rent would be plenty.  But of course, Rebecca's mom is getting an award but it's about who will give it to her, and she has made a huge promise she kind of hasn't been able to live up to and had been hoping that will just come true.  Fortunately for all of them, Valencia is now on the East Coast and makes it happen for them.  So in the end Rebecca's mom gets the night of pretending she had always dreamed of, and Rebecca gets to see her mom happy and sometimes that's the best you can get from family.  

7 Posts: Car Trips

The fourth and final season of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" wrapped last week, so it's time again for 7 Posts.  For those not quite caught up, I'll alert you when I get into finale spoilers.  

I found the car trip episode, well, honestly a little like a car trip with someone you generally haven't been alone in a confined space with for a long stretch in a while.  It was partially an excuse to create usual character pairings.  Paula and Josh have known each other a while.  For a while Paula was so team Josh it was, well it was definitely not healthy.  And in the way of friends, Rebecca and Josh have figured things out and come to a good place, and Paula, the dedicated friend who had fought for him, had felt just as invested in him, but of course got none of the apology directly, was still meh on Josh. 

Rebecca of course hangs out with Darryl all the time.  Her concern here is that Darryl is the best friend to have when you want to dive deep into your feelings and therefore, as she warned him, not the best friend when you want to have a day where you pretend everything is okay.  And of course it was fair for Rebecca to state boundaries, but also endemic of these weird parameters we try to establish to maintain social norms.  Saying let's go on a trip but please don't be yourself is not super fair.  Rebecca is entirely within her rights to establish topics about herself that are off limits.  But they were both asking too much of each other in the end and probably would have both been better off not trying to piece together a trip that was never going to live up to their imagined version of it.  

Nathan and Heather obviously know each other and have mutual friends, but of course, Heather is a straight shooter to say the least, and Nathan is a pretty shallow well most days, so his interest in knowing who Heather was was pretty minimal.  I felt the Nathan turns out to have a deep connection to the nanny the weakest part of this.  It's a challenge because most of the time in this show goes to Rebecca, so Nathan's daddy issues had been clear and he certainly didn't have a good relationship with his mom, and it makes sense given what we know about his family that there would be a nanny. I just found the jerk has a squishy underside not as powerful as I felt like it was supposed to be.  However, it's very possible that this was the point.  Tons of shows have a character who seems mean, or shallow, or whatever suddenly reveal secret pain. ("Grey's Anatomy" even riffed on that, having Alex ask in an early season if he should reveal his secret pain to make everything okay.) 

Nathan then spent several episodes telling people he was nice now.  And the other characters reacted to that with a healthy amount of skepticism. Knowing he had secret depths of emotion for this one person in his life helped, but it didn't address or undo all the other behavior he had engaged in.  And it shouldn't.  

So much like a real car trip, there was good, there was bad, and we learned some things. 

7 Posts: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Taking Responsibility

The ultimate theme of season 3 turned out to be taking responsibility.  I am not a huge fan of big season finale's necessarily, because I feel they often create a scenario where the show constantly has to top itself and yet, "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" has managed to do that three times in ways that are both unexpected and predictable.  Anyone who watched the first episode would not have been terribly surprised to watch Rebecca stand up for herself in one relationship only to immediately turn around and make the choice to hook up with Josh mere seconds after they each left a relationship, and then just assume that this meant all the things were perfect.  

And it wasn't a surprise in retrospect that Josh would not marry her, would leave her at the altar, and vowing revenge was wonderful and right and also totally not the healthy choice.  

Rebecca realized that she felt guilty for having been absolved by her friends for the smaller transgressions, and decided in typical Rebecca fashion to go all in and confess all the things, leading to understandable hurt on the part of Paula, Nathan, and Josh.  Normally I would say the big gesture was Rebecca hoping to make herself feel better, and I think there was a little of that.  Confession is good for the soul, but there are some things that you confess to feel better about not having to keep the secret, not because anyone really needs to know what had happened.  And of course, there is always that hope that the truest of friends will hear the whole list and still forgive you.  Ultimately, I think it was partly Rebecca expecting to lose everyone, because she realized that she really had crossed boundaries (and legalities) and wanted to be punished because she doesn't really believe she deserves good things.  

So post confession, having been manipulated by Trent to show up at Nathan's housewarming party with his new girlfriend, because Trent threatened Nathan's life, she shoves Trent off a balcony and then ends up in a scenario where, as Nathan neatly sums it up, it looks like she showed up uninvited to one ex's party in order to attempt to kill another ex.  So, he suggests she make use of her new diagnosis and plead insanity.  But Rebecca, after singing an awesome duet with Nathan about how nothing is their fault, ultimately realizes that that's not the road she wants to take. So she pleads guilty.  

Season 4 is apparently the last season, so I fully expect that the creators are taking us on a final amazing journey. I'm so grateful for this show. 

7 Posts: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Trent

Oh Trent.  One of the things I think Trent does is take a look at how reversing the gender roles of an ex, changes the power dynamics.  Sure, you could argue that Trent and Rebecca never really dated, only fake dated to throw off Josh. But there are two things to note about that.  First, one could argue that boy I kissed while we were proximal to each other tens of years ago who then broke up with me and went back to his girlfriend is just as solid as girl who found my picture, used me as a stand in and then invited me to come visit her to make it look real.  Second, for every rom-com about a girl who does ridiculous things in pursuit of love, there is also one about folks who fake date and fall in love.  So, really, Trent's reasoning is flawed in exactly the same ways that Rebecca's is.  And quite honestly, nothing Trent has done, not researching her college experiences, not creating an intense data file, not trying to spike her wedding to Josh, and not even threatening Nathan to get her to show up somewhere, is really worse than any of the things Rebecca has done.  

The blackmailing Rebecca to let him live with her and bake them appetizers is possibly the only line Rebecca hasn't crossed, and I'm not even sure that is really true.  None of this is to suggest that Trent or Rebecca should engage in these behaviors.  But in the framework of the pursuit of love, we have been culturally conditioned to accept that a little boundary pushing is a sign of dedication.  I listened to a podcast with two screenwriters where they said rom-coms are where the hero does things that would be creepy if they weren't dating.  (Yeah, I deleted the rest of that episode.)  But that is a problem we are facing, there's a lot of pop culture premised on that idea.  You can say it's just a movie or just TV.  But it is not okay to stalk people.  It is not okay to threaten their friends and family, or blackmail them, or interfere in their relationships for the sole purpose of getting that person for yourself.  

Yes, the show is primarily through Rebecca's eyes, so the audience has a little bit more sympathy for her.  But Trent, in addition to being a wrench in Rebecca's plans, is also a mirror.