First Impressions: Crazy Ex Girlfriend

Premise: A woman abandons her successful career to move across country in pursuit of her ex. Yeah… crazy.

Verdict: This a show trying to be a Tina Fey show, but you can’t be Tina Fey if you are not Tina Fey.

I was planning to skip this one due to irrational TV hatred [and lack of interest], but I guess that is a moot point now… Let’s just say that in the spirit of TV fairness I watched the pilot a few days back and decided to recap it before the new episode hits the airwaves.

Crazy Ex Girlfriend has a certain charm, I’ll admit, which is probably the reason critics haven’t completely dismissed it. Having said that… if I had to use a word to describe it, it would be “mess”.

There are so many things on Crazy Ex Girlfriend that are just not right. First… the premise. This is basically a show about a stalker. A woman that gets so obsessed with the guy she dated for two minutes in summer camp that she quits her job and moves to a small town in California because he “makes her feel warm inside”. OK… crazy premises sometimes make good shows, but nothing in the pilot indicated that this might be the case.

I was expecting the “following the ex” plotline to be a departure point. Something akin to Felicity who moves to NY after a boy only to realize that she was not chasing him, she just wanted to have a life of her own and be able to make her own mistakes. Ben was just an excuse. Felicity comes to this conclusion by the end of the pilot. However, this type of epiphany never came for Rebecca - the ‘heroine’ of Crazy ex - which makes me think that the show is truly going to be about a crazy ex with no redeemable story [I might be wrong, but that’s the impression I got]. Also, let’s not forget that Felicity was 18 not a grown woman. She was allowed to make stupid mistakes.

OK… a show about a crazy character could still work as a quirky comedy. Just take a look at Arrested Development and Community or even Happy Endings. Those characters are definitely dysfunctional. I believe Crazy Ex Girlfriend was trying to go there, but it doesn’t take it far enough. The show has a surreal element to it… but it is too vanilla to be considered edgy.

Which brings me to the other thing that drove me crazy [no pun intended]: the musical numbers. The R & B parody was pretty funny, but it looked like an SNL sketch rather than a scene out of a dramedy. The rest of the “break into song” moments were just flat out annoying. And I don’t think I have a prejudice against music numbers, I watched Glee and used to love the flash mobs on Eli Stone…but that was part of the plot. Here, it just felt like a girl singing for no good reason.

At the end of the day, this show felt like something trying to be similar to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt without the quirk that makes it special.

Should you watch it? I feel bad about this, because there is always the possibility of the show “finding itself” but… I am going to say no. Sorry Crazy Ex…