& # 39; Ex-girlfriend crazy & # 39; place his characters on the road to redemption: NPR

This play contains revelations about the first episode of season four Ex-girlfriend crazy, which will air on Friday, October 12 on CW.

In the last three seasons of the CW series Crazy ex-girlfriendRebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom) has gone through, event after event, a hectic life, at a pace and intensity that would leave the Spanish most happily knocked out telenovela panting. (For those with fuzzy memories, and in the unlikely event that new brave spectators might come on board late in the game, the first episode of his fourth and final season, broadcast on Friday night, kicks off with extensive catch-up.)

Last season culminated with Rebecca throwing a stalker out of a roof to save her problem, Nathaniel (Scott Michael Foster, one of the centers of interest of his love, is that ########################################################### One of the impressive frames of the series, men pitilessly symmetrical and capable of singing).

But the series is vast, disproportionate, I have-costumes-in-the-barn (show) busy – after all, these characters still experience emotions so strong that they are forced to start singing – conceals the fact that in the center of the show, there is something softer, sadder and darker. Yes, the people in this series, especially Rebecca, behave impulsively and selfishly. Yes it's funny.

But the series has always striven to show that every self-destructive choice has consequences. Last season, one of these consequences was, almost, the literal self-destruction of Rebecca: she tried to commit suicide. The events that preceded this heartbreaking moment, as well as its ramifications, have been handled with skill and responsibly described. It was not a simple conspiracy. It was not sensational or, worse, romantic. It was a hard, cold and ugly look in the darkness that was hiding in the heart of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend; in a very real sense, under the hands of jazz, this uncomfortable darkness is what the show has always been.

Rebecca is working on herself now, in the manner of non-comic real-world characters. And it's happening like that, in the real world. Which means: not perfectly. She goes wild, she wallows, she recoils, and she grasp easy answers (as in the song of season 3 "A Diagnosis", in which she tried to convince herself that the mere fact of learning the medical name of her state would solve this problem, and not simply represents the first step in a long and difficult process).

She does the work she needs for herself – but the show is always funny, sometimes even light, because she knows something important. Rebecca can growing up – she can begin to recognize her mistakes, ask for her emotional baggage, question her choices and practice mindfulness. And she can also to be a self-obsessed fool, just as always.

Because? Is always funny.

Producers said in interviews that this season would take the form of a redemption bow for Rebecca – that they were directing her to a place that, for this show so dark and so witty anyway, could at less like a happy ending. In this first episode, Rebecca embraces too strongly the notion of redemption, insisting on serving a prison sentence for the offense of criminal harassment, despite extenuating and rather exculpatory circumstances, because "it's what I deserve".

She is right about it. As the smiling reactions of her friends Paula (Donna Lynn Champlin) and Heather (Vella Lovell) show, she is very very wrong – at least in the way she chose to tackle it.

The script cleverly states that a Rebecca who recognizes her mental illness can be as funny as Rebecca who has denied her mental illness, because one thing about her – her forgetfulness of others' experiences – is so cunning and resilient. She is always looking for easy, hilarious solutions in the musical issue "What's your story?" in which she demands, despite the thwarted reluctance of her captive companions, that they empower themselves by the power of … the musical autobiography?

But that 's in the second episode song, "No one else sings my song," where the series addresses an essential truth of mental illness. The joke of this issue is that three of the characters in the series make a moving and melodic complaint about their unique feeling of complete isolation, without any of them realizing that they are all singing exactly the same song, in perfect harmony with three voices One and the other.

Finally, when the number reaches its peak, two of the three become aware of each other.

But not Rebecca.

The power of his depression simply prevents him from realizing that the other two have been by his side, joining their voices to his, from the beginning. It's something that the viewer only realizes gradually, and in the beginning, it's funny – there's again Rebecca's characteristic self-obsession at work, ah ah.

But then meaning from that moment, the scary nature of Rebecca 's isolation, finally registers. It's so small, and perfect, and powerful, and by essence Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Streetful funny.

Heart ripping.