Here’s a great article with lots of spoilers for everything up to the finale of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which airs this Friday. Let’s face it: you either fall into the camp of never going to see the show or being completely caught up, so I don’t have to feel even a little bad for all the spoiling I’m about to do.
I won’t go deep into everything great about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Just trust me when I say that despite its RomCom trappings, it’s a show that’s willing to dive deep into some uncomfortable, but completely necessary stuff. If this wasn’t a Musical Comedy, I truly believe everything would have imploded long ago. It’s a huge credit to Rachel Bloom that everything has mostly worked.
But this season it feels like every aspect of the show is running out of steam. And while it probably has enough to get over the proverbial series-finale hill, we’re still firmly in ‘Little Train that May’ and not ‘Little Train that Could’ territory.
I’ll reserve final judgment until after the finale, but the biggest culprit here is the laser focus on who Rebecca is going to end up with, which has always been a core pillar of the show, but never the show’s singular focus. There’s still time to pull back and do something more interesting, but honestly even if it does, it’s too little, too late. If Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was going to have its Romantic Comedy-shaped cake and eat it too, it either needed Santino Fontana to return or spend the past ten episodes fleshing out Sklyar Astin’s new Greg.
Instead we’re left with a show that– at least in the past and there’s been no evidence in the final season to the contrary– wants us to want Rebecca to end up with Greg. But instead, I’m firmly on Team Nathaniel. And I’m sure there are some psychopaths out there on Team Josh.
That’s great for series finale drama, but I’m not sure it’s drama that the show is intending. Which means this could be a fairly unsatisfying ending and not in a purposeful, Don’t-Stop-Believin'-cut-to-black, kind of way.