Editor’s Note: Explicit content and spoilers
Ludicrous and offensive content remains ludicrous and offensive, even when it’s set to music.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on the CW network is meant to be a comedic, musical tale of female obsession with a former flame. Left-wing Slate.com said the show that made a joke about teen abortions and included a gross-out nether regions waxing was “charming,” and “very funny.” The Los Angeles Times called it “intoxicating” and “daffy.”
In reality, the show is sexually explicit, profane and crude (Watch the trailer). It tells the story of a woman who moves across the country after running into her high-school ex. The story was punctuated by musical interludes which presumably represented the internal monologue of the main character: Rebecca Bunch.
Bunch is played by Rachel Bloom, a comedienne with a host of videos on her website including “You Can Touch My Boobies,” “Die When I’m Young,” “HIstorically Accurate Disney Princess Song,” and a number of Robot Chicken sketches.
Bunch, an Ivy-league educated lawyer, is beautiful and successful, although also an unhappy workaholic. She is the “crazy” ex who packs up and moves to a small town in California after running into Josh Chan. Ten years earlier, Bunch lost her virginity to Chan at summer camp when she was 16.
In the flashback breakup scene from the end of that summer, teenage Rebecca was shown screaming at her mother and calling her a “C---” which was conveniently bleeped by the honking of her mother’s car horn. After she got into the car, her mother pushed the standard liberal pro-abortion line, saying if anything happened “we go straight to the abortionist” because “nothing is gonna ruin your future.”
To many liberals, babies always ruin your future.
Back in the present, after learning she’s about to be offered a junior partnership at her fancy New York City law firm, Bunch nearly had a panic attack and prayed a prayer likely to offend any true theists: “Dear God, I don’t normally pray to you because I believe in science. Give me guidance.”
She immediately saw Chan on the street and considered it a sign. He said he was leaving the Big Apple for home in West Covina, Calif. So she refused the partnership, quit her firm and moved to West Covina.
At least the LA Times reviewer noted, “Here we must pause and sigh and ask when, Lord, will we ever get a story about woman with a high-powered career who isn't torn in two or a heartless witch? Not, alas, today.”
Bunch sang the first musical number about how great West Covina was in all sorts of places like the courtyard of a mall and, of course, a strip club.
In the second musical number, “The Sexy, Getting Ready Song,” she narrated all the plucking, tweezing, scrubbing and squeezing necessary to get her body into date-readiness. However, the visualization of waxing her butt was a gratuitous gross-out moment. At one point a rapper joined her in song (which she is singing in her bathroom) until he sees the process. He called it “horrifying,” and “nasty-ass patriarchal bullshit” that she was going through for a date and leaves to “go apologize to some ‘bitches.’” But that nod to feminist empowerment did nothing to counter the rest of the storyline.
Desperation is not empowerment, nor is it funny. Slate claims the show is trying to “reclaim rude terms about women,” but it’s difficult to see from the premiere how it will do anything but reinforce negative stereotypes of women as “crazy,” obsessive, insecure or desperate.
In the real world, obsessive behavior leads to restraining orders or worse, not laughs.
