-One of the best jokes in the first season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a scene where Paula finally explains to Scott exactly what's going on with Rebecca and the two do a line-for-line spoken rendition of the season 1 theme song. It's a great joke that comes out of nowhere and brings the song into the world of the show. All of season 2 I wondered if something similar might be attempted with season 2 theme "I'm Just A Girl in Love" and sure enough, lines of "I'm Just A Girl In Love" did turn up in the show tonight but in a darker and more surprising context than anyone could have expected. It turns out that Josh isn't the first time Rebecca has put our hopes for happiness onto a man who wasn't right for her and the emotional thesis statement Rebecca has been following all season that's worded to sound like a legal argument has roots in the actual legal argument made in the fallout of the last time Rebecca was just a "girl in love".
-From that moment in the pilot where Rebecca cheerfully throws away all of her medication, it's been clear that she has some serious mental health issues that she isn't properly dealing with but tonight is the first time we're shown the full extent of those issues and how dangerous this really is. It turns out that back in Harvard, Rebecca had an affair with a married professor named Robert who was going to leave his wife and marry her until he suddenly decided he couldn't. As a result Rebecca set fire to his house and was committed to a mental hospital to avoid conviction, despite her protestations that she "has no underlying issues to address". It's a brilliant, brutal twist that comes out of nowhere but makes total sense. Suddenly everything about Rebecca starts to add up from the fact that she went to Harvard and Yale Law to her aversion to therapy and medication to why her mother pushed Josh to marry her to those musical numbers she escapes into whenever reality becomes too much to bear (The one flash we get to her time in the mental hospital has a nurse commenting that a heavily medicated Rebecca is always singing to herself) has a fresh context. Rebecca is caught in a destructive cycle of seeking love and validation from men who always wind up abandoning her because she doesn't believe she's worthy of love. It's a cycle that goes back to the moment her well-meaning but emotionally unavailable father walked out the door and now the latest cycle is over and rather than burn down Josh's house (Or rather, his parents house), Rebecca tries to throw herself off of a cliff.
-Rebecca's daddy issues were introduced to us in a throwaway line from "I'm So Good At Yoga", way back in the second episode of the show. Rebecca envisions Valencia as everything Rebecca isn't, rubbing her perfection in Rebecca's face with a series of taunts culminating in "My father didn't lea-ve me". The next episode went further into this showing us the moment Silas Bunch walked out on his wife and young daughter as the basis for Rebecca's fear of throwing a party. After that the daddy stuff was mostly backgrounded before becoming a key part of Rebecca's dream ghost journey and then going back to the background until last week but it's always been there informing who Rebecca is and what she wanted. Now everything wrong with Rebecca can't completely be attributed to her father issues, particularly her need to throw herself into fantasy and narrative whenever she has to confront real life, but they do affect a large amount of her behaviour whether she knows it or not. The episode begins with her composing a text to her father that's almost exactly like the text she sent to Josh in the pilot but whereas Josh's eventual reply is a request to grab dinner sometime, her father's is a rejection, a delay until the rehearsal dinner he's obligated to attend and it crushes her. Rebecca knows her father is bad news but she can't help but feel that if he were to accept her, then everything would be OK.
-Silas Bunch is a complicated figure and he's perfectly played by John Allen Nelson. Lesser hands might make Silas into a purely despicable figure, unworthy of Rebecca's love but Nelson brings a lot of charm and affection to the guy. He's mostly there to hit his daughter up for money but he doesn't leave after he gets what he wants. He tries to give Rebecca what she wants and you understand why Rebecca wants him to love her so much. He's a toxic parent and he's not emotionally available enough to understand Rebecca or give her what she needs but he doesn't want to hurt his daughter and you can't help but feel for the guy a little (until the end at least). He's pretty similar to Josh and it makes sense that they'd hit it off.
-Josh spends much of the episode trying to get to the bottom of the "Robert" mystery set up when Rebecca accidentally says "I'm sorry Robert" in front of him and passes it off with an easily debunked lie. Josh should confront Rebecca once he figures out it's a lie and have an honest conversation with her where they get to the bottom of this, but instead he keeps looking for reasons he doesn't understand, inching closer and closer to a valid reason to back out of this marriage he doesn't really want. Then Trent shows up with an envelope containing all of the answers he needs and he becomes even more conflicted.
-This season of the show has made it clear that the problem with Josh is that he runs to a pretty girl to validate him every time he has to confront himself. Father Brah basically tells Josh as much tonight. When Sarah was introduced last week, I became wary that Josh was going to leave Rebecca for her and this episode definitely began seriously heading that direction before Josh suddenly stops and realizes that's his problem. So he decides to do the right thing and go talk to Rebecca about this envelope and her past. Until he doesn't. Josh's inability to be by himself has been in the foreground of his character, but quietly humming along in the background is his strong faith. There's a reason he runs to Father Brah whenever he's facing a moral crisis. So instead of running towards a new pretty girl, he replaces the girl with church and decides to suddenly become a priest. It's a stunning bait-and-switch that completely tracks with Josh's character. He's not fixing his destructive patterns, he's just replacing what he escapes with.
-Josh does get a crucial moment of character growth though when he chooses to not read the envelope on Rebecca's past. He knows if he reads it then he'll have some kind of a justification for leaving but he chooses not to. He's making a cowardly choice but he's owning that choice and it's kind of admirable. It's also dangerous because he has no idea what he's actually unleashing by leaving Rebecca but again, kind of admirable.
-Before everything goes to hell and she tries to throw herself off a cliff, Rebecca stands over that same cliff singing a song officially called "Rebecca's Reprise". It's a medley that combines "You Stupid Bitch", "I'm The Villain In My Own Story", "I Love My Daughter" and "We'll Never Have Problems Again" into a triumphant number about how Rebecca is on the precipice of having everything she's ever said she's wanted. It's a sad number because we know this won't be that simple and things are going to collapse, even if we don't know how they'll collapse yet. Rebecca doesn't know this though. She's at the height of her delusion, the climax of the narrative she's been building for herself the moment she moved to West Covina.
-Love and hate are almost exactly the same thing. They're both strong emotions driven by a focus/obsession with another human being and caring about their well-being. The only difference is intent. Do you want this person to be happy or do you want them to suffer? Rebecca spent two seasons trying to get Josh to love her and it's brought her to the edge of a cliff. Paula rushes in to support her because that's what Paula does but just like she's done throughout the show so far by encouraging Rebecca to chase Josh, she makes the wrong call in the advice she gives because she doesn't know the whole story. She doesn't know the kind of help Rebecca actually needs or that Rebecca has been institutionalized because of something just like this. She just knows to enable so she tells Rebecca not to blame herself (good call) but to blame Josh and her father. And just like that, love turns to hate and Rebecca has a new mission. Her father turns to leave and she finally, definitively rejects him. He calls her crazy and she replies "little bit" with a smirk, owning the label for the first time. Then with Paula, Heather, and Valencia all by her side she makes a vow to destroy Josh Chan. It's a strong, powerful moment to end the season on that opens up a lot of narrative possibilities for next season.
-Rebecca is just like Josh. She thinks that by rejecting her father, and by extension Josh, she's breaking the pattern that's causing her to be miserable but she's not breaking the pattern at all, she's merely replacing the focus of the pattern. Trying to ruin Josh's life won't make her happy just like becoming a priest won't make Josh happy. It's something they're both going to have to learn the hard way though.
-Rebecca focusing on destroying Josh also Chan brings us to the most traditional meaning of the phrase "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" so that'll be fun to explore.
-White Josh and Daryl are set up for trouble this episode when White Josh admits he's not someone who's interested in marriage. He gets why people have kids but he doesn't get why people get married. Daryl is able to come to terms with this but he also decides that he and White Josh should have a child and from the look on White Josh's face, that is definitely not something he's ready for. We'll see how this plays out next year but it doesn't look great for the longevity of that relationship.
-The other song in this episode is "What A Rush To Be A Bride", a heavy metal head-banger number that contrasts the beauty of marriage with a manic beat and screaming voices. It's a bit of a filler number, but it's a lot of fun and it shows that Paula and Rebecca are once again totally on the same page.
-So after weeks of focus, Nathaniel turned out to be mostly a non-factor in his finale, but him telling Silas to "Have fun flying coach, dick" after Silas assumes he can get a private plane back to Alaska was perfect. Nathaniel has really grown on me so I'm excited to see more Scott Michael Foster next season.
-Heather and Valencia is a really fun dynamic that gets a lot of play as Heather assists with Valencia's wedding planning, mostly by sardonically pointing out when things get ridiculous and apologizing for Valencia.
-As I said at the top, wow. I had high expectations for this finale and writer/director/show co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna exceeded every one. This has been a terrific season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and I'm incredibly thankful it's not the last one. The wait for season 3 is going to be hard.
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