from its very inception crazy ex-girlfriend is concerned with labels. the title of the
show itself plucks an offhand remark about that girl you used to date who was
"so weird, right" and then gives you a four season delve into her mind in her life.
labels are useful at describing things but they can also be misleading,
imperfect especially those we ascribe to ourselves in search of the clarity we think they'll bring us
"i'm a student." tv show opening themes are themselves something of a label, telling
you implicitly and explicitly what to expect and when i see one done well it's hard to look away
throughout its near flawless four season tenure crazy ex-girlfriend employs opening songs both in
the conventional way and is just one addition to its intricate lattice work of storytelling
our protagonist rebecca bunch is one such person obsessed with labels, or to put in another way
narratives. from the first opening song we know she's telling her story as she recounts with a
quirky animated background how this all came to be and by season 4 it's something else entirely. star,
co-creator and co-composer rachel bloom even says the reason the theme songs change is because the
story rebecca is telling herself each season changes so if crazy ex-girlfriend is about
rebecca learning to tell her own story then the opening songs might be the titles of the chapters
segmented in a way that she can organize parts for life and more specifically her search for a self
season one sets the tone. this is a story. okay, well obviously this is a story, but this is a
story about a story. rebecca's making sure that we know what's what. listen to the cadence: it's rushed,
frantic, like someone coming up with an explanation on the spot for why they're 60 minutes late with
bbq to a dnd session. why did she come to west covina? of course people ask her, because of course
it's a little out of the ordinary: a well-to-do lawyer dropping a six-figure salary like hot
rocks for a california town where she knows no one with not even the beach as a viable excuse.
and of course we can tell from her tone and just, the basic narrative, that she's come here for josh
but every episode opens with this blatant denial of that fact in the opening. and each episode title
shares two things josh's name and an exclamation point encapsulating at once the season's over
enthusiasm and the josh tunnel vision. this is rebecca's square one: a life framed by a lie she
can't even bear to look at so she decorates it with a bouncy little song and a cartoon backdrop
pay no attention to the subtext behind the curtain. the song is the only one of the four
to be animated. as rebecca's first step this is the period of her life most disconnected from reality
farthest away from the introspection we know she'll get to. but for now things as they are are
a little too much for her to face interesting too that despite the denial her friends to be or at
least the caricatures of them seem to know better paula daryl greg and heather all back up rebecca's
rapid fire "let me explain" with some "she's the crazy ex-girlfriend!" "what no i'm not" ...brutal honesty?
in this opening the title of the show was sung in this sort of high-school-bully-greek-chorus way
and above each person is well, a label: new bestie new neighbor. she hasn't just pigeonholed herself
she's gone a step further and given everyone else their clear role specifically one in relation to
her. as of now they are just buttresses in her story but they aren't really there of course so
this like everything else is in rebecca's mind and it's clear her subconscious knows more than
she lets on her breathless delivery combined with the imaginary taunts reveals her sense of paranoia
that somehow people must know what she secretly does she's so broken and they must be chanting it
behind her back. no matter how much she weaves her tale, something's nagging in the back of
her mind. and we see the theme of rebecca's life at this time crystal clear in these 60 seconds:
discord. she is unsettled and not in agreement with herself she assigns the crazy ex-girlfriend label
to herself but she's already uncomfortable with the implications. the unsavory parts of herself
that she can't face yet are well crazy tied up in her meeting with josh this means that
she must be the crazy ex-girlfriend-- that's the only logical conclusion. the eponymous
woman so hung up on lost romantic love that she constructs a fantasy that's more bearable.
maybe the catchiest of the bunch? i don't know, just my opinion. off the tail end of season 1
her fantasy came true: she did what you do in a two and a half star movie and got the guy
took him rightfully back from that nightmarish one-dimensional b word he was with who should have
treated him better. she's giddy a little too giddy pink covered in hearts back up dancer singing la
dee da surrounded by all the trappings of love as she sees it a flighty overcompensation for
the terror underneath we see immediately from episode 1 and her one-woman show has now become
a little ensemble she's employed backup dancers now her brain puppets don't look like her friends
impossible now that these people are starting to know her better so now they've been demoted to
mere constructions of her imagination and there's even a little joke at this one at one point this
also reminds me of another song in the same season interestingly enough also a song about rebecca's
simple perception of love and a song that also involves rebecca dumbing herself down for that
perception rebecca's lingering self-awareness has traipsed into the lyrics themselves gone is the
frenetic explanation of season one she's got her story down now she's just a girl in love and it's
no wonder remember when in season one paula told her oh you hear me you're not crazy you're in love
and that is that is totally different and paulo's words are an external explanation one that we'll
learn isn't even about rebecca but about paula's own life rebecca's not alone in her projections
or idealization of life but maybe to some degree that's true plenty of people do irrational things
for love but here that's maybe not the whole story and rebecca knows it too she's just supplanted one
narrative for another borrowing someone else's justification for her behavior she can't be
crazy she must be in love but for that to be the case to warrant these actions that anyone would
consider absurd her love must be legitimate so now she's got to prove it she is in love she's in
love josh is the man of her dreams right now the episode titles reflect that snowballing anxiety
each episode is still titled around josh but now it's followed by a question mark her relation to
josh as part of her story has had two settings so far first hyperenthusiasm and now hyperinsecurity
so naturally what follows is at its core of performance an over-the-top imitation of what
rebecca believes love looks like or maybe more accurately which she believes will convince
her and those around her is love. but as the performance grows in scale, the nagging voices
grow louder too. "i can't be held responsible for my actions" and "i have no underlying issues to address"
she sings, in the same saccharine tone. and of course, we know from future seasons that these
words are not her own, but her mother's -- a plea to a judge that her daughter was too incapacitated by
uncontrolled, naive, love -- but love nonetheless -- to be held accountable.
does rebecca remember this? or is this memory surfacing of its own volition? judging from events
in the season, i'm to believe it's the latter. regardless it's her mother's words, her mother's
denial of her agency taking over the framing of her life in a show that will continually address
the role that formative and parental figures have in establishing our worldview and values and core
beliefs about ourselves so it fits perfectly that the song rebecca uses to convince herself
would be directly borrowing her mother's words and DAMN rachel bloom do you want to get a beer??(PLEASE LET ME ASK YOU SO MANY QUESTIONS)
and in true prolonged-adolescence fashion, rebecca's concluding statement is a "la la
la la i can't hear you" sticking her fingers in her ears -- finally the bubblegum pop love fest is
halted abruptly by an uncomfortable, hanging silence as rebecca stares with this forced
plastered smile. first of all, i love this decision because it's just,
really funny. but it's also the last thing the song leaves you with:
discomfort. rebecca's smile won't go away, she looks in pain, it's too quiet... and josh's face is broken
in season three we've fully surpassed denial, she embraces the word crazy. it's the first word in the
opening statement that is the theme song. "fine, i'm not in love. so i must be the other thing"
but as she attempts to reclaim the word that was hurled at her with so much venom she struggles to
identify what exactly that means. crazy must apply to her why else would she do these things, these
terrible, incomprehensible things. why else would the world make so little sense to her the way
it does others, the way things refuse to come easy for her no matter how well she follows the script
set out for her. so she's crazy. she uses the word crazy SEVEN times in this song. and as prevalent as
the word itself are costumes. performance is given key focus. in each of her four personas rebecca is
imitating some variation on a recognizable pop culture genre. is craziness scary? is it sexy? is
it romantic? she cannot recognize, or cannot trust her own perception of the world, so she leans on
those that have been taught to her. she shifts from using first person in season 1 in season
2 song where she gave the second person to her brain-concoction-backup-dancers and now rebecca
is talking to herself about herself. what. the hell. is going. on. but while the four rebeccas share the
same stage, they in no way seem to want to be there together, and actually regard each other with this
unconcealed disdain. and it tracks! season 3 is full of change -- disjointed, full of revelations, and
rock bottoms, and back again. after all, life doesn't make narrative sense. as for the episode titles, now
they're as disjointed as the opening. the season opens with a handful of josh titles but they now
end in a period (see this is why periods at the end of texts are so ominous) then is followed up by the
fist pump 'josh is irrelevant,' swings back to TRENT?! and even gives paula the mic for a bit. finally
the season is capped off by titles following an accelerated nathaniel track that ends the same way
season 3 is also much slower in tempo but that doesn't necessarily make it more certain
so many emotions, so many questions, and so many desperate attempts to answer them. it's almost like...
"i don't know what story i'm in anymore, you know?" and the song even becomes half diegetic with the
jokey "what?" as she's watching herself perform on her phone -- once again breaking the fourth wall to
tell us, yes, rebecca is hearing these songs too and her subconscious surfacing as she becomes aware of
the role she plays. and as far as theatrics? season 3 by far has the most elaborate sets
this. is. professional. and there's an interesting repetition of mirrors. rebecca leaning against one
with a reflection that doesn't match, the mirrors surrounding her on all sides, the
carnival... fun house vibe... and, maybe a stretch but even the carrie underwood baseball bat to the car
door. now this may be as simple as communicating ideas about reflections and cognitive dissonance
and being able to look at yourself honestly etc but we also know rebecca, pretentious theater kid
she is, is not above a metaphor. ("these shards are a metaphor for my soul") so coincidental or not, the
glass motif paired with a grand performance after a rock bottom is something we saw all the way
back in season one. but what's missing? an audience not one that we can see. we've had one in cartoon
buddies and puppeted dancers and now we have the idea of an audience ("when i sang my solo i felt like, this palpable connection with the audience [...] it was like everyone was my mom") so while she's becoming
the most aware of her tendency to people please and project her own reality outward, she's still
not sure what kind of performer she is, or even more importantly who for. season three isn't doubt
creeping in, it's doubt barging in with the sudden inopportune full force of an overbearing parent
and by the end of the season rebecca's made a decision: in a nice little parallel, another
reckless act motivated by love has her facing a judge again, but
this time something's changed. not only is she not crazy,
she's responsible, making herself wholly an agent for the first time. (we hope this helps !!!)
each opening song is different. each has some quality that the others don't, or a new
play on the idea of performance, or something. even so season 4 feels like the odd one out
firstly in its lyrics. for the first time the lyrics omit the word crazy altogether, and also
for the first time, they include rebecca's own name and secondly, rebecca is no longer the one singing
a third-party cheery sitcom voice introduces her using every adjective
but crazy. she and wanda really would be friends huh. it feels like a questioning train of thought,
getting at what this has always been about: not crazy, not strictly love, but who is rebecca?
and the first time that rebecca's name is in the opening sequence the titles of the season
to follow will all begin with the word "I." she has stopped performing and begun the process of being
gone are the declarations in first person of season one and two or the disjointed
accusatory "yous" of season three. the opening isn't an animation or a fantasy or acted out
on a stage. it's a series of vignettes, clips from the show itself. so not inventions or
costumes but reflections on things that rebecca has actually done. "looking back on all those times...
like that one time... and that other time." josh would like it. other people are no longer props, they're
actively included rebecca is actually considering her treatment of those around her and that's huge
for someone who had to sing the cognitive dissonance anthem "i'm a good person" three
seasons ago. now instead of telling others who she is or telling them that she's a good person, she's
allowing herself to honestly reflect including on those traits she might see as negative rather than
denying them as she did in the past you know we're not really seeing a common theme she's too hard to
summarize she concludes every time for 17 EPISODES MY BAD and maybe that's true. maybe she is, and we are
many things at once in different quantities that always have the potential to change. maybe
qualities we found so heinous in ourselves we're actually shared by other people in a different way
maybe those traits we can't stand someone else actually finds inspiring and it helps them
love parts of themselves too maybe when we're singing our songs someone else is singing along
wait. that's impossible. but as rebecca grapples very frankly with the reality of who she is:
spunky, sweet, generous friend, kinda mean, snarky, sarcastic, and... what ?
we see she's getting closer to the answer she's been looking for since she set foot
in west covina: who am i? season four is an interrogation, but differently from season
three which was frantic and reactive season four seems to be genuinely curious in season four we
also discovered that the songs we've been hearing since the beginning aren't just fourth wall breaks
but songs rebecca actually writes herself in her mind to digest emotional situations the opening
songs apparently not part of the episode proper are in fact no exception to this eleven o'clock
unambiguously acknowledges the opening songs as works of rebecca's own fiction too during
the show's most ambitious and elegant reprise (hey what's a reprise) the opening themes are a central
part of this mashup. these are the back of the book summaries for what she sees as significant periods
in her life. she sings season one with a fatigue of someone who's "been there done that," the bloated
lie of that song like an ill-fitting t-shirt. in i'm just a girl in love she amends the lyrics from
denial to honesty, i can't be held responsible to "didn't want to be held responsible for
my actions." notably absent of course in the mashup is the meet rebecca of season four. of course it is.
she's not casting herself in the part. it's her most actualized season and yet in the opening song
rebecca has no voice even in her beginning and end little frames she's miming she's totally silent
but i don't think it's because she's voiceless per se. (were you silent or were you silenced) the season
itself tells us otherwise. no one is speaking for her, rather, this season she's in active pursuit
to find her voice without inhibition-- especially for rebecca who for three seasons has been all
too eager to answer falsely out of fear or have someone else choose a reality for her
but this rebecca seems to be more okay with waiting pausing and it's okay if
she doesn't immediately have an answer who's rebecca? give her a sec. she's figuring it out.
in fact, it's not until the very last moments of the very last episode that she tells us:
it's like i just met myself. like i just met rebecca. that line lands like an
over-enthusiastic lap dog on my chest. and then she sits at a piano to play us a song. and this song,
rebecca's song, is unlike any of the ones we've heard. it's not she's the crazy ex-girlfriend,
it's not she's just a girl in love, it's not you do you don't want to be crazy, it's not meet rebecca.
rebecca's song lingers at the end of her fingertips held between her thoughts and her hands
existing for a final moment only in her mind before she shares it with the world.
okay. i'm being dramatic. who knows if this specific piece was some big revelational
composition of rebecca's life story. it probably isn't. or maybe it is. she's dramatic too.
whatever the actual tune and chords and lyrics are what follows is the first thing that rebecca
has created of her own inspiration without censor or attempt to please or catering to anyone else
season four begins with "meet rebecca." and in the end-- she did.
the whale is a symbol ahab though it's a chore i'll just mock the floor
ahab can't you see the whale is a metaphor