Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I'm Almost Over You (4x11)

Aww Nathaniel... you're killing me with this. I'm seriously so very sad and I don't know what to do about it.

Cons:

I'm starting to ever-so-slightly change my opinion about this new Greg. I think the actor is doing a great job, and I think he's playing a character that is realistically what Greg would be like after everything he's been through. But the energy between Rebecca and Greg is not the same as it was between Rebecca and... Greg. It feels like I'm watching Rebecca fall in love and start a relationship with someone completely new, not the same guy she had such a confusing relationship with in the past. I don't want to feel that way. I want to be 100% on board. But I have to be honest.

Pros:

After last week, I realized I really needed this episode. A full episode of Nathaniel working through his feelings and reconciling this new performative "good guy" thing with the realities of what that means for his relationship with Rebecca. If he's being a better person in order to get with Rebecca, then it's not real. But this episode shows him doing the hard emotional work, and coming to understand that he needs to move on with his life, and he needs to let Rebecca do the same. I personally am still kind of devastated about it... I think if I had to pick a romance that I would want to win in the end, I'd still pick Nathaniel. And maybe that's a weakness of this narrative, or maybe it's a strength, because I sincerely wish the best for Nathaniel and hope he finds happiness in his life, even if it's not with Rebecca.

Sometimes, when a story does a parody of another type of story, it can come across flat, because the only joke is "hey, this is meta - you recognize it so therefore it's funny!" I see it all the time with genre-bending stories. A thing isn't good comedy just because you recognize it. But that's what Crazy Ex-Girlfriend always does so well. The framing of this episode is funny - Nathaniel imagines himself inside of a romantic comedy in order to work out his feelings about Rebecca. But the individual jokes also work so well, and there's real effort put in to calling out all of the tropes. There's the obvious ones, like Nathaniel realizing who the right girl is at the last minute, and running to her, or the makeover scene, or the fake-dating-turned-to-actual-feelings thing. But there are also the less obvious call-outs, like the fact that there are conveniently timed public gatherings for various important plot points to occur, that couldn't possibly be organized so quickly. Or Paula's character, the person heavily invested in the important presentation for the big client, who has no other real role in the movie. It was hilarious on its own.

And then there are the one-off jokes. I can't tell you how great the comedy in this episode was. I could list the parts that I laughed at, but I'll distill it down to just a few. I loved everything that Maya did in this episode, but I think my favorite was during the montage where Nathaniel and Maya work on the "big presentation," we hear snippets of Maya's sad mom backstory: "I never had a real mom. Just a dead mom." That cracked me up. Another favorite moment was when Paula is elated about the big presentation happening, and then stares off into the distance in horror, wondering what her purpose is now.

Oh, and another thing: this kind of progressive storytelling is par for the course in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but I think sometimes it's important to call it out. We learned that Maya is bi in a one-off joke a few seasons ago, when Darryl has his big coming out song. Here, in Nathaniel's imagined rom-com, she's bi, and her romantic goal is a woman, while of course along the way she's falling in love with Nathaniel. Her sexuality is not a big issue, it's totally not called out, it's completely normalized inside of the narrative. In all of those movies Nathaniel watched the first half of, I'm willing to bet there were not many (if any) queer characters, and certainly not ones in the leading role.

This episode was for Nathaniel, and Nathaniel stole the show in the best way. I want to focus on that moment at the end, when Nathaniel talks to Rebecca. We're not in his rom-com anymore, this is reality - he goes up to Rebecca and he tells her about how he imagined himself in a popular genre in order to contextualize his experiences, and he learned some hard truths about himself. Ummm... sound familiar? Rebecca sure seems to think so. It's brilliant, because this episode is very unlike the rest of the show in terms of the tone, the camera work, the music, everything. Even the protagonist has shifted. But at the same time, this little moment at the end shows us that this episode is quintessentially representative of everything this show is doing. I loved that.

I also just have to go back to what I was saying at the beginning - I feel so genuinely bad for Nathaniel, it's breaking my heart just a little bit! The moment when he is talking to Maya/Rebecca inside his mind, and she says he has to let her go, and her voice breaks a little bit when he says "really?" Aw man. And he just sobs while hugging that poor pizza delivery guy. He's so genuinely distraught, but he really does love Rebecca, and he's gotten to a place where he can love her in an unselfish way, and let her go. It's quite the character arc. Look at how far he's come since he entered this show back in Season Two!

So that's all I've got. I'm still really in love with this show, and I can't wait to see the final seven episodes. I'm going to cry when it's all over, I just know it!

9.5/10