With Eyes East

When Rachel Bloom talks about Darryl, one of the things I feel like she points out is that he’s a very lonely character who has this fundamental sadness and of course didn’t know why until meeting White Josh. As we see, he’s on a kind of desperate quest to be friends with someone. On paper, that sounds pretty tragic, but like Rebecca, he’s just too sunny to bring the tone of the show down. … More Darryl and Friends | Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Analysis

Media analysis can be rough, when you dig really deep you got to make sure you remember how and why you got there. This YouTube channel started under a simple banner: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is so good and so smart. But it’s been a few months since I was initially struck by the show’s unexpected good and smartness, “unexpected” measured not by a show that looks like this but by television itself, and in the time since, I’ve witnessed various negativity — one scathing review, a number of issues raised by the fan community, things like that. … More Crazy Ex-Girlfriend | Issues to Address

I love this episode because it exists both within and without, so meaningfully, very much a part of its own arc as the setup to the final arc, then becoming essential to the season, and yet also as a singular experience which feels unique even in the context of an endlessly inventive series. … More Sitcom’s End | Crazy Ex-Girlfriend #206 Analysis

“Implicit bias” is something that comes up here every once in a while; it’s pretty foundational to important things like sexism and racism, and if we say that the first step to defeating your intolerance is understanding it’s there, understanding the possibility that unknown biases could exist is that process revealed. In this video, I’d like to talk about implicit bias, appropriately the B story, while the A story is making a case for Affirmative Action in Hollywood. … More Our Implicit Bias Holds the Remote

By Rebecca’s definition, Heather is the cool one. And it isn’t hard to see why: she’s got style, she’s very chill, and when standing next to Rebecca, the chill is certainly amplified. Her easygoing nature is facility, though, as Rebecca and all sitcom protagonists require either encouragement or discouragement to move forward, and Heather’s good with pretty much anything. … More Heather: A Definition of Cool | Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Analysis

The bros and alpha males and studs of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are like the vain yoga instructors, dreamboat fantasies and crazy ex-girlfriends — not what they seem. White Josh is the responsible friend, Hector loves his mom. But unlike specifically the crazy ex-girlfriend label, are men so desperately in need of a second look? … More Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Masculinity

If a TV character leaves a show without having died, we’ll always wonder if they’ll return, and sometimes even if they did die, especially if we have such a powerful emotional connection to them. For people who watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the idea that Greg was endgame is as reasonable as it is prevalent, and I say ‘most people’ because I read a headline that Greg left the show before I saw episode 3, so it was never my experience. … More Was It Supposed to be Greg? | Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Theory

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a sexist term, and deconstructing it is the name of the game for a show named Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a dark comedy/drama you can watch on The CW and Netflix, among other places. … More What is “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”?

One of the great things about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is how it surprises you, setting you up for one thing and then giving you the ol’ shim-sham, beginning with the title. You have a character like Valencia, who you might think you’ll hate or have to hate, and that’s proven false over the course of the season. Furthering the greatness then is how the surprises don’t stop at hello. Valencia continues to reveal compelling layers and do unexpected, hilarious things, and somewhere in the back of our minds we think, she’s supposed to be the bad guy. The vain yoga instructor. … More Valencia: The Other Woman | Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Analysis

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s first season was perfect, as television. Now in the context of season 2, it seems, perhaps, not fully realized as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but merely prelude. Season 2 is a more direct approach to the same story and mission, with explicit indictment of the funny bad stuff we had grown to love in spite of ourselves. In weighing both instances of the show, which is better? And do they point toward an identity for season 3? … More Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Season 2 Recap