DianeDobbler

I had always read that BPD was the most difficult to treat. One of my sisters is getting her clinical social worker credentials working for a woman who specializes in DBT with a mostly borderline clientele - adolescents. The woman has to turn away clients because there are so few social workers and psychologists who work with borderlines effectively. I recently had a psychologist tell me they'd rather have a patient with anything else on the DSM. Everything Rebecca read on the internet is stuff I've heard directly from people who work in the sector. Just that it's enormously, enormously challenging. OTOH, I think Rebecca is a more promising borderline client than most because of her age, her education, her high intelligence, her ability to learn, her love of research, and just being ready. She hit the proverbial bottom. She wants to get better. She "gets" it. I think if she'd been diagnosed as a teen it would have been pretty daunting given her home life and her age. She's also truly compassionate and empathetic with the people in her life, not simply with "humanity". She hasn't cut off anybody that I've seen (something apparently common with borderline personality). I think her empathy and her compassion are huge assets.

Paula isn't destroying Rebecca. As the show runner said, there's a lot of love there, but also boundary problems. I think we're accustomed to Rebecca's boundary issues, but maybe more disconcerted by Paula's since the package is a more conventional wife/mom thing, and there's the age difference. So it looks more incongruent in a Paula than in a Rebecca. Paula was an enabler, but until she got help, Rebecca was going to be doing what she was doing anyway, with or without Paula's help, and at least Rebecca had unconditional love, which Paula did provide. This episode hit the boundary issues SO hard I think it's obviously setting up us learning more about Paula and why she is channeling so much of HER stuff into Rebecca. It seems to me we see that she has a supportive family and a good marriage - I say this despite her husband cheating that time. I get that maybe she always wanted a daughter, so there's that. And I get that Rebecca probably has a lot of drive and "go for it" willingness that Paula wishes she had had. She's alluded to missed opportunities in her youth, roads not taken, so she may be living a bit vicariously. I'm a bit curious as to why she's channeling so much into Rebecca when it seems to me she's kept up with her law studies and has taken on an expanded role at work (her work with the time share client was strong enough for it to give her a standing invitation), so she is creating a better life for herself. I suspect with next week's episode, we're going to circle around to Paula's childhood and the messages she tells herself. She loves Rebecca, but Rebecca is also clearly an escape for her and is maybe an opportunity for Paula to relive similar stuff that happened when she was young. I think Naomi is written very inconsistently, usually in service of a necessary plot point instead of in character. Her complete disregard for Rebecca's wedding last season doesn't match up with her overinvolvement in Rebecca's life at other times. When I look at Naomi I remember what Doris Roberts said about her character in Everybody Loves Raymond - that she was the nudge and PITA she was for fear of being irrelevant. If everybody was doing a good job, then who needed her? I see Naomi as someone whose husband deserted her when her child was young, and that was a psychological blow, and she has this brilliant, passionate daughter she has trouble understanding, but loves (remember the tears in her eyes when she asked Rebecca if she was coming home for the holidays)? And let's not forget that many anxiety issues and personality disorders run in families, so Naomi may just be part of a cycle, not an originater. In flashbacks we have seen that Naomi was there for Rebecca, however imperfectly, after the Robert debacle. I believe she worries about her, doesn't understand her, and also incessantly criticizes her because that's how she keeps herself relevant. If she validated Rebecca, then why would Rebecca need her? What use would Naomi be? Rebecca can't see it.

Aline Bosh McKenna said they wrote Rebecca "by feel" for awhile, and only started to circle around a diagnosis after the show was up and running. I have mixed feelings about Nathanial. I always want to duck when I re-state this, but I really didn't like Santino Fontana's acting, not on this show, and I think Scott Michael Thomas's acting and his humor is a much better fit. I kind of disagree with Aline Bosh McKenna saying that in this episode we learn why Nathanial is so comfortable with Rebecca (i.e., his mom). Yes, they both had suicide attempts, but they're completely different women. If anything, Nathanial would be comfortable with Rebecca in reaction to his mother, not because she's similar. I know a really WASP guy who married a drama queen - there's upsides and downsides to that choice, but it was clear he went for someone passionate, who expresses affection and opinions, in some sort of reaction to his upbringing and to previous girlfriends. I've been looking back and the writing for Josh is all over the place. His "issue" - aversion to guilt, responsibility, and adult life in general - has been consistent, but the Josh in "Will Josh Come to My Party", the Josh in the Xmas episode, and the Josh who went to Scarsdale with Rebecca has a joy in him and social / emotional intelligence that you can see would make him very popular and a comfort, despite his issues. Since he decided to become a priest, they played the dumb of that so strongly he may as well have mid 2-digit IQ. I think the show has problems writing for Gabrielle Ruiz. Yes, she does the mean girl thing well, but I'd like them to tap into the part of her that held her own in "Feeling Kind of Naughty Tonight." She had nothing to do but dance and smile while Rebecca sang about Valencia, but she was completely in sync with Bloom and hit the exact right tone. I remember being really impressed that she was able to do her job in that number without being awkward at all. She was also excellent in the episode where they were stalking Anna, and IMO stole the "Let's Generalize about Men" number with her dancing and facial expressions. I didn't like her "This is my Movement" number because it was so obvious she doesn't play the piano, it was distracting.

I would have said that Erick Lopez (Hector) was expendable on the show, but he's not - he's really sharp. His conversation with Josh was excellent. The more I see of Josh this season, the more obvious it is how much he's not dealing with. His parents sort of roll their eyes instead of talking to him as well (such as when he announced he was going to ask for a raise). Recently watched an early episode of Crazy Ex Girlfriend when Josh and Rebecca were talking about camp. She mentioned he was the only one who ever went into the chapel at camp, and Josh talked about how even though nobody else does, he likes going to church. So that was genuinely part of him.

Social workers both in my family and a psychologist friend outside the family talk about BP exactly the way the internet does, so I don't blame Rebecca for being appalled. But, IMO, she has too much self-recrimination and compassion for me to experience her as a character with BP. She has so much remorse for what she does to others. She doesn't consistently undermine those around her in order to feel better about herself / keep a power position. She did it when she felt backed into a corner at the intervention, but in general she tends to be supportive to others, and consistently so. In one ten minute interview I saw with Princess Diana (speculated to have BP) she was toxic. She took pot shots at her sister, her father, Charles and the queen (for separate things), all the while portraying herself as the only genuine person she knew. Her only flaw was having faith in people. Rebecca has a compassion for those close to her. She's not a case of compassion for "people" but callous treatment of individuals. Yes, it's mixed up with the dysfunctional soup of her life, but her self-loathing is palpable. It's not tied up with making other people feel bad. The main person towards whom she behaves in a bp way, IMO, is her mom.

I wasn't surprised - neither Heather nor Valencia really have an independent story right now, nor does Josh. Paula usually has one. Very happy to see from screen caps that Valencia has her own B storyline next week. She looks gorgeous.

I used to think Jane the Virgin's writers were very creative but they've been completely stuck recycling the Marbella plot. That's their only Petra/Rafael plot. I like Xo and Rogelio a whole lot better since they got married. It feels less forced, and I think Xo handled the vastectomy very well. Yes, Rogelio is at least partially a macho dude (although I think his own confession that it was about aging was closer to the mark) but they're done having kids. Why should the burden be on Xo to take a pill or have an invasive procedure when a vasectomy is the safest option - and completely reversible per the doctor (I did not know that. I knew they could be reversed, but I didn't know it was such a sure thing). The bisexual storyline was done pretty well. I'm glad Jane admitted it was the fact of his bisexuality itself that was bothering her, not that he held off. I'd be the same way, and have similar questions. Not sure about why she spun off into fantasizing about different women - maybe she was just trying it on after Adam said it might be part of her and she hadn't been aware.

The Zoo song was actually shot on location in an arboretum, and I guess the animal shots were inserts (the zoo thought a night shoot would disturb the animals). They did use green screen in The Zoo as well, with the bits that were supposed to take place in a club. I think the location and theme - and number of extras - will determine how cheap something looks. Josh's solo - "Head in the clouds" must have been pretty budget - an empty church was all they needed - but it was a great looking interior so it didn't come off cheap. I definitely didn't think "Maybe She's Not" came off cheap, because the production values were so close to what that era really did, and because the whole point was to have Rebecca move from black and white to color. Maybe there's something about green screen that just looks cheap, even if it isn't any cheaper than a shoot not using green screen. "Ugly Betty" started using green screen for most exteriors after a point, and it really got to be distracting. Now that you mention it, I agree. I feel that all of the direction went to Rebecca's arc. Donna Lynn Champlin and the guy who plays her husband, Scott (Steve Monroe) are such pros, they're director proof. In fact I've read Steve Monroe is also a stand-up and a psychotherapist! But the gang at the office really needed some help - that material wasn't strong enough to stand alone. It kind of felt that they ground it out.

I loved Cornelia's gingerly pat on Nathaniel's arm when he was crying. I read the show runner discussion about the Ronnettes, how simple the choreography was for that group. Crazy Ex Girlfriend changed things a bit by having all three do the same choreography, because the lead girl in the Ronnettes did her own thing, while her two back-up singers did something basic and coordinated. The Ronnettes video I saw (a live appearance) was even more bare bones than what we saw on the show. Don't think green screen was budget. The show wanted that effect we saw at the end, where the three singers are in the living room in black and white looking at Naomi and Rebecca on the couch. Anyway, even in the Ronnettes live (or maybe "live studio") appearance I saw, the only thing to see was the singers. Everything else was pretty bare. As good as Cornelia was, I agree the office was irritating. Everybody was reduced to one note, and IMO it didn't come off and felt very forced. One review mentioned how the episode's title, "I never want to see Josh again" hits harder after viewing the episode.

Audra noting Rebecca's circumstances and saying "It must make you want to DIE." is worth viewing again for Bloom's wince. I figure the taco casserole was just one of the things both women grew up with and Audra was bringing it over with an implicit snark. The anxiety medicine said "dolsosprine" or very close to that, an apparently nonexistent med? The AV club reviewed this episode, saying it was wonderful but flawed. The Rebecca stuff was so powerful I was waiting to see what about it was flawed, but I totally forgot about the B storylines. The actress playing Cornelia was wonderful, but I agree with the AV club that we got it in one, and the repetition of the theme had diminishing returns. Just rewatching it, I think the flight attendant was a grace note. I wonder what would have happened to Rebecca if that attendant hadn't shown such kindness to her - her demeanor more than anything else.

I consider Audra and Rebecca to be frenemies, as even the JAP Battle rap described it. Rebecca is the more talented. Audra, though, kept her shit together, and is living the life Rebecca's mother was aiming her towards. They have so much in common in terms of backgrounds, knowing each other's frames of reference, that Audra serves a purpose in Rebecca's life, and vice versa, nobody else does. Although Rebecca described Audra's husband as "Small dick, rotten lay", he seemed nice enough bonding with Josh at the wedding they all attended, although he may have winced when Josh said something about penis size being the thing that matters. Anyway, I'm glad Audra's victories aren't presented as purely pyrrhic. Also at the same wedding, Audra and Rebecca acknowledged that their sniping wasn't as fun as it used to be. It's just fun for ME to see another super sharp - in the same WAY - woman talk with Rebecca, because there's a great shorthand. Good points about the house - both that Rebecca's mother would take over all the bedrooms for her own purposes - exercise room, maybe expanded closet or office, AND that Rebecca would just settle in on the couch because all she's doing is eating and sleeping, and it's closer to the kitchen.

But we saw the exterior of Naomi's home in several establishing shots. It's a very large Tudor-style home, at least two stories. It's clearly the family home and there is no way that's a one bedroom, or even two. It's at least three. Bloom's work on the plane was excellent. I'm glad the episode ended with her reaching out, instead of her being found unconscious in her seat. I, also, enjoyed that Paula went over and yelled at her co-workers instead of ducking and hiding. All the writing fo Paula, AND her family, skirts the expected tropes. The show is a musical dramedy, but the biggest trope it plays with is the office environment where everyone is just like family. I don't mind. :)

I enjoyed Paula and her family. I know Heather and Valencia said Paula is an inattentive Mom, but her kid are the same way. They all have a snarky sense of humor about family stuff, look out for their own self-interest, and roll their eyes about family bonding, but also got into the boardgame. I think Paula's doing fine. I like the family stuff of the past two episodes not because she's spending time with them and being better, but because her family gets her. Like her, they're grudging when they have to step up, but when they do, they manage to have a good time. Caveat - Rebecca's mom's house is a substantial size, and I imagine at least three bedrooms. Why was Rebecca sleeping on a pull out sofa? Love Audra Levine.

When Paula insisted her husband Steve pass increasingly arduous lie detector tests, I was annoyed. Steve cheated, but he told her about it probably less than 24-hours later. He's not a liar. The issue between them isn't trust. The issue is why whatever space opened between them that left room for him to cheat with Tanya and her to very nearly cheat with the client. I think that issue is not making time for each other, their energy being consumed by managing the family, and mistiming with their separate interests (him with singing, her with law). He had lost his connection with her, and when she didn't show for the barber shop singing thing, he felt un-seen. Her thing is she's bored out of her mind, channeled a lot of it into Rebecca, re-channeled it into the study of law, and didn't circle back to connect with him. I like Steve and I like Paula, and think they'll be fine. However, IMO, she can trust him.

Well, good reasons for him to run like the wind came to light before the fact - in fact, that's why he ran. His mounting unease as Rebecca became more and more hysterical and manic. What happened AFTER the fact is he felt less guilty. That's where he is still wrong. It doesn't matter if he was anxious beforehand and had every reason to call off the wedding. It doesn't matter if afterwards he feels validated about calling off the wedding. And it doesn't matter that Rebecca is "crazy" - that doesn't excuse him from talking to her himself, no matter how she would have reacted. The show knows this. But, avoiding guilt, avoiding responsibility, and avoiding confrontation has been Josh's issue since day one. I think it showed the first day we met him when he was leaving NYC because it was too hard. So I guess I'm just agreeing with Rinaldo - nobody's giving him a free pass. Father Brah wanted him to talk to Rebecca. Rebecca wanted him to talk to Rebecca. This season, his friends raised the point that he still hadn't talked to Rebecca. His avoidance of responsibility and confrontation is a plot driver for the show, though, so I doubt it's going to be resolved any time soon. I am really curious to see what that conversation would look like - if they didn't talk at each other. I haven't seen anyone giving Josh a free pass either. However, I did want to point out that he wasn't oblivious through all of last season. He was reading the warning signs loud and clear. What he wasn't doing was dealing with them maturely. Josh is as motivated by his lack of awareness and his own issues as every other character on CEG.

I didn't see her hook-up as being desperate to FEEL connected to Greg. Greg's role is her ace in the hole. She even said it in the episode - he's the one who's there when she has no other options. When she HAS other options, he's not on her radar. He doesn't rank high, and he knew it, and got out. Bloom asked us to remember that right before Rebecca chased Josh to the airport, she tried to convince Josh she was pregnant, speculated with him about the baby, then immediately tried to have sex with him when it turned out she wasn't pregnant. It was only when he walked out that it was OMG - I have no one. Well no, there's always Greg. I think "There's always Greg" is the role Greg rightly ran away from (as well as going towards a future that was about him and not someone else). Everybody wants a safety net, but I don't think it's fun for the human safety net. When she was in that bar, she had nothing left, and of course it made her think of the consolation prize who had always been available to her. And there's his dad! She can push the dad to give her the girlfriend's details, and then Rebecca can start chasing down the girlfriend, and then Rebecca has a channel for her mania, her desperation (even though at that point, IMO she was about to hit whatever peak mania is, which means the next step was to crash). However, Greg's dad complimented her figure, the camera shoots in on Rebecca's face. I think that hook-up was hysteria on Rebecca's part and only lust on the dad's part (of course) and then she crashed. Rebecca was postponing as long as possible the crash that would leave her feeling the way she felt when she walked down the street. She'd have felt that way, I think, even if she hadn't "banged her ex boyfriend's dad." She had, as said above, permanently alienated her friends (she thinks). She'd been revealed as a psycho and a fraud and a liar. And now that her anger was at least temporarily spent, she was miserable, because Rebecca has always been miserable and depressed, and every move she's made for two - three years has been running from that and managing that. On that street, she had no place to run or hide, Greg's dad or no Greg's dad. I just think it's interesting that even when Rebecca has what she wants, it's not a solution. She had Josh. He even went along with her pushing the wedding up so that it was going to happen in two weeks. But she did that because she was sexually attracted to her boss, and was suddenly using Josh as a vehicle to manage her attraction to Nathaniel, just as she'd used Greg when Josh was out of reach. And if she had BEEN with Nathaniel, suddenly she'd have been pining after Josh again. She's spinning. All these guys are symptoms of that. It's herself she's running from, obviously. I suspect that, in NYC, she went to a bunch of different doctors and got prescriptions for a bunch of different tranquilizers. She's obviously academically and professionally brilliant, and from the premiere episode, it seemed to me she was channeling all of her desperate energy into her work, using that to hide from herself, whereas when she went to West Covina she used her romantic life to avoid herself. In NYC, as I see it, she was on prescription meds that stuffed her feelings way down. She lived in a large apartment, and when we see her waking up before work, there is an empty bottle of wine on her windowsill, and she gets another upsetting, unsupportive call from her mom. She had insomnia (she had googled how little sleep a human could survive on). She obviously had tremendous anxiety / emotional claustrophobia. She kind of rock bottomed in NYC when she's offered a partnership and can only run out the door. It's all variations on the same thing. I don't think the show got darker, I just think we see more and more of who she's been all along, who she is when she's run out of ways to run. In a lot of ways this is probably Rebecca's healthiest episode because you have to get to that bottom - or at least she does, before things can change for the better. Wanted to add somewhere in this post that I really enjoyed Josh Groban's performance, particularly that "whoa oh" for emphasis between "it's really messed up that you banged your ex-boyfriend's dad" and "Never bang your ex boyfriend's dad." And one last thing - I knew every line of dialogue before it was said in the Darryl / White Josh scene. That was as predictable an episode coda as it gets, right down to "I don't know."

It's cool that Scott Michael Foster is such a fan of Pete Gardner's that he put Gardner in his own movie!

Josh did not blithely ignore the warning signs, nor was he unaware of them. He was in denial about what he should do about it. He was talking to Father Brah constantly, asking him leading questions. Of course Father Brah's advice was always "Talk to Rebecca." and Josh didn't do that, but unaware, Josh was not. He was aware that Rebecca was railroading a wedding theme -Josh tried to contribute to the wedding but couldn't fit in with Rebecca's pinterest vision - she even had a groom suit made for him that mimicked the one her pinterest groom had worn. These are all adults, and so they're responsible for their own actions, BUT. I have seen comments that said "If such and such a character hadn't said this or that, or acted this way, then Rebecca would have/wouldn't have (whatever)." Well, Rebecca was freaking Josh out. Josh was taking his misgivings to Father Brah, and also somewhat to the female peer / co-coach of the team he was coaching. Rebecca was doing one manic thing after another. Josh would feebly push back, but be railroaded again. But what he started doing was looking for a way out. He had anxiety, he has fear. But we've already seen he's a guy who avoids introspection, who doesn't like being alone with his thoughts, who dislikes confrontation. These are not excuses, but Josh's flaws are no more egregious than Rebecca's flaws. I am convinced that if he'd talked to her before the wedding, and called it off, she'd have lashed out, felt rejected, felt that he was ripping love away from her, that once again she wasn't good enough - pretty much the same reaction she had over being left at the altar. It sucked, and she is legitimately furious that he did it the way he did it, but let's not forget that in the very same episode we saw Robert tell Rebecca to her FACE, and she burned his house down. When Rebecca is obsessive and manic, HOW she's thwarted doesn't make a difference - it's the fact that she's been rejected that triggers her, she loses her OCD supply or whatever it is that she thinks gives meaning to her life. Josh owes Rebecca an apology and an explanation, but I do not think he is in any way responsible for how she felt and how she reacted, simply because look at how she reacted when Robert stepped up and told her in person. She feels tremendous rage, despair and shame when she's rejected, and the manner of it doesn't seem to matter. A decent human being will explain no matter what type of issue is driving Rebecca, and I think Josh's own "journey" is getting to the point where he can confront his own issues like a grown up. Rebecca seems to want to talk Josh. I am very curious about what that conversation would look like. If he outlines why he felt anxiety about the wedding and couldn't go through with it, would she accept it or would she to override it? I really don't know.

This episode definitely felt earned to me, wanted to say that. I don't think anything was retconned. The entire story has been about a woman with underlying issues to address - her issues are not what she insists they are. This episode is in the very title of the series. It's a woman trying to explain her problems with the cultural tropes women are fed about themselves. So it critiques those tropes through that. Rebecca judges herself by them. I remember on the plane with her shrink, the shrink was letting her know about the love she had in her life, particularly from her mother, who allowed herself to be seen as the bad guy when her father rejected her. Rebecca was all "Blah blah blah blah" - she didn't CARE about that lesson. She meant romantic love. She'd internalized all of that and she refused to consider her issues outside that context. To her, all of her problems have to do with her failure to find fulfilling romantic love, and to be loved by the person she wants and loves, and she doesn't understand why she is forever outside what she wants, when other people appear to be able to find it and have it. Of course the reason she struggles with romantic love is she's not dealing with herself at all. She's externalized her problems, and the show critiques a culture that encourages women to do that. We saw that when she WAS engaged to Josh, she was still having mania, still having meltdowns, and almost immediately found herself in an inappropriate sexual tension situation with her boss. She doesn't see this stuff though - her answer to that problem was to speed up the wedding. She runs from herself so hard because I think she's terrified she's going to find out she's a monster. I think that's really common in people who are miserable and running from themselves. Obviously, the right kind of therapy will lead to self-acceptance and she'll then see herself as "normal." Probably meds too. What we saw of her flashback when she was in an institution is she took her pills w/out looking at them, so possibly that stint in the facility did nothing for her. I don't think the show is going to move on from Josh. I believe CEG really likes the actor and the character, and will remain consistent with what he represents to Rebecca. I think at some point Josh will start to work on himself. I don't necessarily think that will mean they'll end up together, but I think he's long game as far as his function in the narrative.

Now that I think again about Josh and Greg, I think CEG cheats a bit by showing aimless, underachieving 30something guys. It puts all the onus on the guys, where IMO, in real life, there are often there are economic issues that come into play. For awhile we were meant to believe Greg was thwarted by his dad's medical expenses, but then we met his mom and her family, clearly extremely well off, and how willing they were to help Greg out with anything $$$ he might need, he had only to say the word. Sure, his dad selling the house and forking over half the proceeds so Greg could go to Emory was a great story beat, but to accept it, we had to forget that his mom and stepmom had told him they would be delighted to support anything he chose to do. Going by the extravagance of his sister's wedding, Josh's parents are very well off, and the sister in college is, at least, a high achiever. So any time Josh gets himself together, he'll have the $$ backing of his family, and of course, the family home to live in until he's on his feet. I can see it's expedient to situate her love interests like this, but it's also a bit having it both ways. I've said before I'm not a Greg fan, but I don't think her sleeping with his dad is a deal breaker. Weird things happen in life, and people get past weird things. That social circle is already incestuous.

I never even heard of Swimfan, but I enjoyed it. The credits were hilarious. I agree with AV Club that Vincent Rodriguez did a great job in this show. I also felt guilt subtext from how frightened he was, and how he answered his parents' questions. He's the second character where I "felt" subtext - not sure it was written. For Nathanial, I felt that his experience w/Rebecca plus his crush on her helped him be part of the group, which he enjoyed, so he likes her in her own right, but the standing it gives him with "the gang" feels equally important. With Josh, I feel that he has made a decision not to feel guilty, but he feels guilty all over the place and has never dealt with guilt in the past. He's always been able to escape it, one time via horrible behavior (when he was living w/Rebecca and off Rebecca, but refusing to engage emotionally, as if that demonstrated any loyalty to Greg). Rebecca so far has given him reason not to have the conversation with her she so desperately wants. The first time she dumped all of her insanity on him in one go, sending him reeling, and the second she had threatened his mom after a night of terrorizing HIM and causing him to lose his job, so when she begged him to talk, he had every reason to shut her down. I think the writers are very aware of what they're doing with this though.

If their hook-up weren't so obviously completely unpremeditated, I'd guess part of the reason he banged Rebecca was to protect his son. She had gone into stalker mode, since Greg had always been her failsafe. So the dad bangs her, and takes her out of the picture, just in case. Too bad it was really hard to read that in the scene. It was ugly, but also realistic. Rebecca has always acted injudiciously. She's always done some horrible shit. This was bad, but it was sort of wrong place, wrong time sort of bad, not inevitable. Just unfortunate proximity, personality and timing, and for that reason I believed it 100%. But it was also a plot. I'd be interested to see what rock bottom actually looked like if Greg's dad hadn't conveniently been in that bar. Watched it again and the episode does have a kind of bipolar rhythm to it. Rebecca is driven, driven, driven, but then crashes at the end. Saying again I like the writing for Nathanial, that he's more accessible, more in need, more obviously messed up than he was last season. This allows him to do things like hang out at Rebecca's apartment with George and "Penny" waiting up for her, it allows him to be unable to resist bragging that he and Rebecca had sex twice and therefore he thinks he knows her better than her friends do, and it very believeably, IMO, makes him one of the gang, because he's willingly showed them his vulnerabilities, something the character as drawn last season would not have done (willingly). In fact, the subtext, for me, is that is crush on Rebecca facilitates his bond with the others. He's enjoying being part of things.

I agree that the show is intentionally oblique about how Josh feels. Everything he's said about Rebecca, not one line of dialogue indicated how he felt about her. It's clearly intentional. It's a little annoying to me because I like Josh, and I like Vincent Rodriguez, and IMO this damages the character. For this season, the show runners have said two things, they've said the other side of hate is love, and you don't have the intensity of hatred and need for revenge that Rebecca has for Josh if you're not still strongly invested in that person. But they've also said this is a romantic comedy but not necessarily a love story, so we shouldn't necessarily be trying to spot the guy she'll end up with. I still tend to cut Josh slack because I remember how awful the build up to the wedding was. And yes, he should have talked to her. But once they were in the same space, both times there was no room for a conversation. In the church she steamrolled over him, and considering she had threatened his mother and he still didn't know what happened to his mom, the carnival was not the place to say, "Hey Rebecca, I'm really sorry I ran out on the wedding. That was wrong to leave you to face everyone by yourself - I should have talked to you and been there." when the next question would be, "Where the hell is my mother - did you hurt her?" Trent and Nathaniel are the only men Rebecca's been with who were remotely in her league as far as her presumed educational and professional status. Greg was as big an underachiever as Josh and nowhere near Rebecca's league. He lacked the education he should have pursued, and he lacked an actual career. When I first saw the show, I, too, assumed Greg was endgame, but very quickly I realized the show was different than the set up that had the woman pursuing someone else while the right guy was "right there" and I also found Greg incredibly toxic and offputting in his own right. I felt Rebecca's growing claustrophobia during the taco festival date, how hard she tried with it, how she tried to give herself a pep talk in the porta-potty "Settle for him" but just couldn't, and ran away to hook up with the vegan guy. Nothing about that set-up told me she was running away from her real feelings, couldn't cope with having a real relationship instead of a fantasy one, etc. Nope. I thought it was the very reality-based claustrophobia of going out with a guy who was into her but she wasn't into him (sex is a different deal, I'm talking relationship wise). Later she liked him enough to have a relationship with him, but at that point she didn't. It was one of those "I SHOULD like him, I mean I do, and on paper it makes sense, and it's the healthy thing....." but just wrong, because she wasn't feeling it. I like how this show writes sex. There are a lot of girls like Rebecca who are struggling in relationships with people they care about, or can't get what they want from, or other kinds of drama with people they "love", and then a recurring theme is impulsive hook-ups with whomever. I like that it has her say stuff like, "Look, you're upset we didn't have sex - we can have sex right now!" It's a really good portrait of somebody who is very comfortable with herself sexually, but who also uses it as a kind of wild card to navigate through the obstacles in her life. Oh, another show I like, "Chewing Gum", also used the "boyfriend's dad" plotline, but for a supporting character. The show had set it up without putting it in your face, but when it happened, I think most viewers went "Oh FUCK." but totally believed it. And then it was anyone's guess what the fallout would be, given the dynamic between the girl and the boyfriend, and how it played out was really really well done.

Rebecca acts out sexually, is driven by a rollercoaster of emotions in her head, but she doesn't tend to externalize blame, which a lot of borderlines do. "You ruined everything, you stupid bitch" isn't something that would be sung by a borderline, in my understanding. Maybe she's bipolar. She has a lot of mania, then crashes. And of course, depression. She lashed out at her friends, but even though she was terribly mean, she wasn't blaming them for the state she was in, she was saying, you can't judge because you're no better. We've also seen signs of her drinking to medicate more than maybe the usual. In S1, when she woke up in the morning we saw a drained bottle of wine in her room on a work morning, and we've seen her sit back with a bottle a bunch of times. Josh catches a lot of shit for lacking direction and drifting, but that has applied to numerous characters on Crazy Ex Girlfriend - Heather, Hector, Greg. Rebecca has credentials that may shield her from appearing aimless - principally, her Ivy League degrees. But she's working in a small time law firm -if "working" is even the word for what she does. I agree that Nathanial has to be really messed up - in fact, Brosh McKenna has implied that he might be the most screwed up. He looks like one thing - the white ten that the world bends over backwards to accommodate - but here he is exiled to a dumpy law firm in a dumpy town and his father treated him like a loser. I get the feeling he was cast to fill the straight white guy love interest slot, but that they didn't decide on the best angle for the actor's talents until they wrote S3. I think where they landed is correct, and I think giving him George as his sidekick was brilliant. The angle they used, I think, was to make Nathanial's vulnerability and lack of status a bit more blatant, and for him to be more aware of it, than he was in S2, where he was supercilious and you only saw flashes of insecurity when the subject of his father came up. About Trent, I assume Trent bribed someone to get the files, he broke in the old fashioned way, or he did some sort of hack. He's a resourceful guy, rich, a genius in his own way, and not overly aware of boundaries. Sure I think Greg's dad would sleep with Rebecca. Maybe not have a relationship, but with his son out of town, in love with someone else, doing well, and he, the dad, makes a connection with the messed up ex who was never a defined relationship for very long, but as far as an outsider could see, more a recurring fixation? Greg's dad, at least as the actor plays him, just reads former alcoholic or dry drunk or something. It's great he woke up enough to move forward and help his son move forward, but sure he'd do that. I actually thought that plot twist was brilliant. It is the exactly right sort of OMG, rock bottom ick move that would happen to someone like Rebecca. She always has acted out sexually, and this dude was at least "safe" - he wasn't the same type of pick-up as a stranger. I thought the way they came into the room was very funny - the actor playing the dad is very good. But wasn't he buying into a retirement community with a swim-up pool where he could make time with all the other retirement babes? What room did he and Rebecca hook up in?

I bet we see Dr. Akopian when we get Rebecca's diagnosis, but not until then. And speaking of Paula's son, Rebecca dealt with him on an equal level. That's how she treats everybody.