When most shows change their theme song it’s a cosmetic difference, just a little something to freshen the old girl up. When Crazy Ex-Girlfriend changes the song it’s a whole new mission statement. Rachel Bloom’s hilarious relationship show (with musical numbers!) may be a little bit more focused for its second outing and that makes this often overlooked gem twice as good.
The original theme song recapped the logline for the program each week, telling the audience that Rebecca Bunch (Bloom) was working hard at a New York job but it made her blue. After a chance encounter on the street with her middle school ex Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III), she decides to quit her career at a white-shoe law firm and move to West Covina, California, a dumpy suburb that just happens to be Josh’s hometown. She repeatedly tells everyone – including her new bestie and co-worker Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin), her low-energy neighbor Heather (Vella Lovell) and Josh’s best friend Greg (Santino Fontana) – that she didn’t move there for Josh, it’s just a coincidence. However, we all know that she’s kind of crazy.
The new theme song tries to mitigate Rebecca’s insanity. “I’m just a girl in love,” Rebecca sings in an Andrews Sisters style. “I can’t be held accountable for my actions.” It’s not Rebecca that’s crazy, it’s love that is making her crazy. The chorus echoes her sentiment. “They say loves makes you crazy,” they sing. “When you’re calling her crazy, you’re calling her in love.”
After the first season finale, when Rebecca and Josh finally have sex and she confesses that she moved to West Covina to be with him, their relationship entered an entirely new phase, one that is just as difficult to navigate as the high-level stalking of season one. What it says in the song is true. So much time is spent on the courtship and trying to figure out how to get someone close enough that love can blossom, but what are any of us supposed to do once we get it. Rebecca and Josh certainly don’t know. It’s doubly hard for them watching their romantic ideals get crushed.
Since Josh’s ex kicked him out when he dumped her, he’s crashing at Rebecca’s, but he’s sleeping on the couch and refusing to admit they sleep together. Rebecca is trying to make him comfortable, but they’re both struggling with intimacy. Josh has sex with her every night – Paula says he’s “F-sploiting” her for sex – but he refuses to let her in emotionally. Rebecca finds herself no closer to her ideal of romantic love even though she’s landed him, which was supposed to be the hard part.
The first several episodes of this season are about the characters dealing with getting what they wanted all along. Rebecca conquered Josh, but didn’t expect their union to be so complicated. The first musical number in the premiere is called Love Kernels, and Rebecca sings about how she takes every compliment, nice gesture and kind word from Josh and binges on them in her memory when she’s insecure about the trajectory of their partnership.
Rebecca isn’t the only one struggling. Paula got Rebecca and Josh together and it fixed her marriage and got her a new friend. So why does she still feel like her life is lacking meaning? Greg wanted his life to have a wake-up call, so he decided to join AA and get sober (with all the casual drinking that happens on TV, it was hard to realize he was a drunk until it was pointed out). But now that he’s getting his act together, dealing with his emotions rather than drinking them away is a lot trickier than he expected.
This all makes the show sound like a dreary treatise on romance. While it is (a treatise on romance, that is, certainly not dreary) what makes it one of the best shows on television is that it is so much more. There are still the campy if emotional music numbers (early highlights include a Snow White-esque number for Paula and Greg, singing an Irish folk song about what would happen when he got drunk) and more than enough comedy to cover over those deep feelings that are bubbling right below the surface.
Still it’s Rebecca’s craziness that keeps this train chugging along. As the comparison of the theme songs suggest, this new season is a contrast between the anxiety of acquiring love and the anxiety of holding on to it, but they’re all symptoms of the broken way that we all think about relationships. Even as they progress, Rebecca is finding out that the song stays the same.
