Do we ever consciously make good decisions?
It’s an honest question: in our lives, do we actually make good decisions on a regular basis? Like, consistently enough to be satisfied with ourselves? The answer’s obviously no, unless you’re some kind of paranoid narcissist: the best things in our lives, be it jobs, people, experiences, or fortune, are almost always a byproduct of some form of luck. Sure, we can guide ourselves into the right place with a stiff adherence to personal philosophy, but that’s not a recipe for success – really all we can do is hope the chaos of life puts in the place we “belong,” or at least are comfortable existing in. Most of the time, we’re not explicitly there because of any single or group of decisions we made, contrary to what we might think: more often than not, when we do that is when we tend to make a huge mess of things, a point Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is surprisingly keen to.
“I’m Going On A Date With Josh’s Friend!” centers around Rebecca trying to change her life: in her pursuit of making healthier decisions, she’s not eating meat, she buys a treadmill desk, and she agrees to go on a date with Greg. Not realizing that she’s still trying to deal with the emotional fallout of her last attempt to reinvent herself (which brought her to West Covina), she trudges forth, confident that this time, she’ll be able to make the right decisions with men, with her diet, and with her life in general. By doing this, her feelings for Josh will just naturally dissipate, and her mother will stop harassing her over FaceTime about leaving New York, right?
Of course not. Thanks to this little thing called “our lives,” reinvention often isn’t an option. Progression? Sure, but reinvention is destined to fail; we cannot control what we cannot see, and the chemicals in our body and the universe are what’s really in charge of our emotions and choices. Rebecca can convince herself to settle for the increasingly-charming Greg – a perfectly logical choice, given their chemistry and synchronized dancing potential – but there’s still something that sends her aflutter when Josh is in the room, and also sends her running into the arms of a hippie vegan when she realizes what she’s doing.
And that’s where the genius of this episode comes to light: Rebecca’s not perfect, sure, but her experiences thus far have been exaggerated versions of any typical mid-life or post-relationship crises, when one’s self-definition comes into play. In these cases, reinvention is really just more of a distraction, and ends up with us indulging ourselves in the guiltiest pleasures of them all: in this case, it’s sleeping with the random taco stand worker she met at the fair, abandoning Greg in the middle of their date, which he discovers himself a few moments after said hippie leaves.
That scene is a tough one for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to pull off, but it’s an important one: it neither shames or applauds Rebecca’s choices, holding back on the type of judgment most dramatic shows would want to definitively make. It doesn’t ask for sympathy or anger: only empathy that another human being could drive themselves to such a dark place, in their misguided attempts to “improve” themselves. Until we accept that we aren’t broken, and we can’t immediately change our lives by making different, somehow “better” decisions (unless that choice is “rob a store or not,” of course – that’s obvious) Life is a complex, ever-changing organism, and one we don’t have control over: we may be able to harness its power, or manipulate it for a moment here or there, but it’s an unpredictable animal all to itself, one we cannot control – or more importantly, allow ourselves to be defined by.
Driven by that epitaph, “I’m Going On A Date With Josh’s Friend!” is one the most unapologetic, heartwarming hours of television in recent memory, with a hilarious, unforgiving episode willing to engage its emotional highs and lows with equal importance, a rarity in any form of television, comedic or dramatic. And Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continues to find new ways to straddle that line between genres, accentuating its musical numbers and constant stream of jokes with an emotional undercurrent and exploration of self unparalleled by most shows on television. It’s too bad the show’s audience is so small to this point – they’re not only missing a hell of a performance from Rachel Bloom, but an incredibly forward-thinking, versatile little gem.
Other thoughts/observations:
- Rebecca trying to skateboard is a visual gag I can’t get enough of. Those elbow pads!
- Josh doesn’t want to work in the radiology lab because it’s “all cancer, all the time” in there.
- Speaking of Josh, he’s got a whole subplot where he can’t get a job at the local tech store because Rachel writes him an awesome Harvard-grad level essay on his application. Whatever – their chemistry remains terrific, and Josh’s character continues to be a pleasant surprise, a character way more nuanced than most stories of this ilk would give him.
- “PORK!”
- The tag with Gary the copywriter is dark and hilarious. “I broke up with my wife for a prostitute!”
[Photo credit: Greg Ganye/The CW]
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