DianeDobbler

Heather actually won that contest where all the women looked like mermaids with feet who went to Coachella. Valencia hasn't been acknowledged as hot recently, that was something that happened when she was Josh's girlfriend and Rebecca got obsessed with her weight, her skin, her look.

Because their songs were relevant to their lives, their stories, and their roles on the show. Valencia's was a one-off that did nothing to serve her own character but deliver a poop joke.

I like Paula, but you've made good points, particularly her blowing off all of Rebecca's other heinous actions to focus on the least of Rebecca's crimes, the fact that she lied to Paula. I found her outrage a bit OTT but I didn't put it on the acting but the script and direction. The show was desperately trying to inflate the importance of the Paula/Rebecca rift without having done the work to earn it, and I just think they played it up to let us know this was a big deal. The acting would have been fine with a build up. Given the script, the organic way to act it should have been lower key, but I have a feeling the show runners wanted it big because they were trying to get over and convince us of something they hadn't properly set up.

It's been mentioned that the first two and a half seasons had a goal - win Josh. It had two obstacles - one being he was in a relationship, the other being Rebecca was unraveling and didn't really want Josh. The obstacles sort of secured the story and reinforced each other - the narrative could go all over the map and remain coherent. It seems to me the goal for the half season and Season 4 is Rebecca wants to get better. CEG has failed to establish that in any way. She feels guilty and handles it like an ass, she does a lot of grandstanding, she tries to fast talk the people in her group when the therapist isn't around, she's still fast talking Akopian - and I don't recall a single moment other than the one with all the parallels between Nathaniel and Josh where Rebecca took her recovery seriously. And all of those parallels have evaporated since immediately after that we did an eight month time jump and her feelings for Nathaniel became real. You can't have a push without a pull. If Rebecca truly wanted to get better, then her backsliding would impact her. She'd feel distress and fear - two emotions that gave the first couple of seasons a lot of juice. But as far as I can tell, her recovery is a game to her, she's impatient with it, and it's just another angle to manipulate. Any time CEG has paid lip service to recovery, they've tied it into her relationship with Nathaniel. Worse, abruptly, her NOT being with Nathaniel was a sign of her either denying her recovery, or not feeling secure in it. When previously, she SHOULDN'T be with him cause she was repeating her Josh pattern. Yeah, an 8 month jump, but there was no attempt to tie the two angles on Nathaniel together and justify the reversal. Further muddying the waters was he is as poorly written as everyone says he is, has no stance on Rebecca's horrific treatment of other people, including his own girlfriend, he's overly glib, and we don't know where the hell he's coming from except that as long as he has Rebecca, he doesn't give two shits. And where the hell does THAT come from? His reasons for wanting to be with her are inconsistent. If Rebecca were invested in her recovery, which she certainly is not, any time she felt the pull towards backsliding, we should be able to see her Super Ego, informed by her new awareness, attempt to head her ID or her impulses or her dysfunctional needs/wants off at the pass. Emergency calls to the therapist even - heartfelt ones. Or to a supportive member of group. Not just cause she'd be backsliding, but because she knew she'd feel like crap if she gave in to old habits, and she dreads feeling that way. But then she gives in, and she does feel like crap. That's what we should be seeing. Remember pre-diagnosis, how she'd crash after a manic episode? Out would come the wine, the living room would only be lit by the TV, she's in sweats, etc.? I don't mean do that again, but man, show something of the STRUGGLE to recover. Not this glib shit where they try to cue us with call backs to when the show had a heart, play "Stupid bitch" but have guilty Rebecca cleanse her guilt by calling three people into a conference room, blindsiding them with lists of stuff she's done to them (so she's also violating their individual privacy), and then having no cares about how anyone reacts except Paula. Well, Nathaniel literally didn't care - again, nothing affects him whatsoever where Rebecca is concerned, so her confession didn't matter. Paula had an OTT meltdown, and of course there was no point in confessing even more shit to Josh because Rebecca couldn't care less how he receives the news. I don't recall that the confession came with an apology either.

Did Rebecca even run her confession past either of her therapists, or was her decision made in the unmoderated gathering of the group? From what I've read, the main idea CEG had for the post-diagnosis Rebecca was "backsliding." She'd be tempted by a lot of stuff, primarily the "Strong physical connection" they tell us she has with Nathaniel. So her getting better would be a slow process. All of that is fine, but it also needs a framework. We can't just have a show of Rebecca acting out all over the place and it being, oh, they're using green light and nutty music - guess that means this isn't healthy! Or the whatever mess that is Nathan's character - it's a healthy relationship if she only had the courage to risk it, except for the parts where he doesn't care she put a hit out on his girlfriend because he was going to kill Josh's grandfather, deport his dad, and ruin his sister's academic career? We have no organizing principle anymore. This thing they did at the end - Rebecca "Taking responsibility" for something she was more or less justified doing (forget the plot ridiculousness, just the math of the thing itself - Trent about to kill Nathaniel/Rebecca pushes Trent) is a common cop out and something I would have thought was completely beneath Crazy Ex Girlfriend. She needs to take responsibility for bad stuff she actually did, like when she sang her confession to Josh. Of course, she bore no consequences for that either, just managed to wreck his employment and trash his life so he'd look like the bad guy and she could CYA. The show has shuffled in a few moments of what we're meant to believe is guilty conscience, but the way Rebecca has responded to those moments of conscience has been so callous that her supposed guilty conscience seems like another facet of her illness, not something that's pulling her back to sanity. Who do I root for? Honestly, it has become Josh. And Paula. Paula was mostly minding her business in the back half of the season - I think. After the o.d., we saw Rebecca work with George instead of Paula, and Paula more focused on her own life and job. I also root for Valencia but she's never on. ETA, I have no idea whatsoever why Josh Chan was in the courtroom. He and Rebecca have not maintained a friendship. His actual friends, like WhiJo, are barely friends w/Rebecca themselves. Sure, Nathaniel quickly claiming responsibility for the various hits on Josh's family prevented Josh from absorbing that Nathaniel was following Rebecca's requests, but there is no relationship there. Me neither.

Not only is Santino not exactly an ogre, but SMF isn't exactly the Adonis CEG insists he is either. I didn't consider until recently how problematic Nathaniel's character has been. I had an easier time dealing with Paula's crimes, since hers are pretty much all data manipulation via her apparently wizard-like mastery of all things digital. But when Rebecca put a hit out on Mona - and I can't remember why she wanted to do that - she was supposedly wacked out on hormones. When she wanted Nathaniel to help her get revenge on Josh, she was en route to a nervous breakdown/attempted suicide. What was Nathaniel's excuse, though? I took it as an extended joke when it aired, but since they've called back to it and made it an actual thing, I'm wondering why it's supposedly ok, and exactly what Rebecca's therapists would tell her about being in a relationship with this guy. Anyway, Rebecca's confession was far from heartfelt. She dealt out her list of transgressions and was very cavalier.

Well, CEG wouldn't have changed the final two episodes if their research showed the fans were on board. The web is its own thing - most viewers aren't on the web. CEG has what - less than a million viewers? There are tracking programs - during this part of the show, how many were watching? Where did viewing spike? Etc. It's not simply a gut call. Sure, Brosh McKenna describes reading the two final scripts to an exhausted Bloom, and Bloom having a negative reaction to everything, so that they re-set everything. It's a nice story, and I do believe it, but no matter what Bloom's reaction, if the data had reported something else, they'd have gone ahead with the two final episodes "as is." I don't blame some fans for thinking Rebecca and Nathaniel are sweet and perfect. The relationship is a mess, and CEG has played both ends against the middle. Are Nathaniel's bad actions for real or just comedy? Were his OTT decisions re Josh's family who he really is (a monster, basically) or a joke? What about the poor little rich boy Nathaniel - is he getting validation from Rebecca for his brattiness or is his heart growing three times its size? What about the Nathaniel we're meant to equate with obvious good guy WhiJo? It's completely unclear. Viewers can choose what they want to believe - CEG hasn't made a choice.

I think that's why I dislike her now, and find her smug and nasty. Her vulnerability is nonexistent. There's no touchstone. We just don't know when she's doing something that's ok, and when she's doing something that's backsliding. Her attitude towards Trent, within the universe of the show, was total asshole. "Asshole" is also kind of an underpinning of the tone of the show since her diagnosis, frankly. Very self-satisfied. I was on her team the entire first two and a half seasons. I never lost track of why she did what she did, no matter how terrible it might have been. I always saw the moment when she refused to deal with her inner life; I always saw what triggered her behavior. She was transparent, you could see how irresistible her feelings were, how things affected her. Thanks! I keep thinking Scott Michael Thomas for some reason.

I was actually a little worried about this during some of the live performances, when Brosh McKenna and Bloom would squeal at everything Scott Michael Thomas did and said. It's like they thought they hit the jackpot. Brosh McKenna even said he gave the best audition she'd ever seen in her career. WTF? Given the script, I don't think that's even possible. They also said that the only reason he didn't get Greg when he'd auditioned for THAT part was he was so hot it would be too obvious the character was a love interest. Setting aside that, no, he was not "too hot" for that role, something was askew. I think maybe they weren't sure how to play out Rebecca's post-diagnosis, and were so sold on SMT they just leaned in on him and overhyped him in their heads, and failed to realize that trope-wise, they were getting themselves into trouble. His character, and the function he's supposed to play in the story, are just a big mess of contradictions. Again, that is a common soap opera pitfall. Writers who are tapped out grab onto some newbie and over-write them because coming up with fresh ideas for existing characters and relationships is too much like work. None of this is on SMT. When asked about his audition for Greg, he has demurred and said that he believes they were looking for someone with a stronger singing voice than he had. (And besides, it was obvious from Greg's first line that he was a potential love interest!). He was asked if the Nathaniel audition called for a super hot guy, and he said no, it called for a WASP guy with a sense of superiority. I believe SMT, so I think the show runners were hyping him for some agenda of their own. I also have come to believe the show needs Vincent Rodriguez III and Josh more than the writers and even maybe many viewers believe. He was really a great counterpart to Rebecca and made a lot of nonsense work that would have sunk another character. I am also thinking the reason Josh punching Nathaniel was so satisfying to many people was a visceral reaction to the nasty and smug way Josh has been written all season. Like - this guy! Can you believe that's who Rebecca liked? He's a JOKE! It was only in the "Trent" episode that the writers woke up and gave him a break via the comments made by Valencia's girlfriend. One would think that Josh had done all the shit to Rebecca, instead of Rebecca having done all the shit to Josh. I am sick and tired of hearing that he dumped her at the altar at a wedding that had no freaking business happening. Any less nice guy would have run away weeks prior, because she was out of her mind (and emotionally cheating on him). I'm sick of him getting dragged for running away when that's all Rebecca ever does, one way or the other, and a bit tired of his various odd jobs and gigs being played for a joke when Rebecca is, and remains, responsible for him losing a job he liked and was good at. These things that didn't make air were discussed extensively by the writers and Aline Brosh McKenna in a post-show article. Since a lot of this thread is discussing and critiquing the finale, that includes critiquing the mindset and ideas that led to this finale. A lot of that came to the fore in quotes from Brosh McKenna and the writers - revealing their perspective on the storyline. "Settle for her" was cut for time. The writers - correctly, IMO - felt it wasn't needed. It was also going to include a tap dance, but Scott Michael Thomas was too sick to really pull it off. Still, the mindset that created the number is still the way the writers view Nathaniel and Mona. AfterwardsTV, I actually think your idea of Trent trying to kill Josh WOULD have flowed better, for Trent, Rebecca, and the show. Rebecca single-mindedly going after Josh til Trent picks up the ball and thinks he can get in good with her by finishing him off. THAT's when she shoves Trent off the roof and has to reckon with the entire Josh thing (which she really hasn't done). I think she would have borne more legitimate guilt that way. It would have played better than a lot of exposition delivered during Rebecca and Nathaniel's pillow-talk where Nathaniel has arranged to kill, deport, and ruin Josh's family, and Rebecca has to call it off. And we're left not knowing if it's a joke or a real thing, and the show is trying to make it both. Man, dumpster fire is right. :(

Yes! And we need it to ground and structure the character, and understand her and her behavior. I totally assumed the show would research this and make it integral to the second half of S3 - color me gobsmacked. A lot of reviewers of the finale have pointed out that the past couple of episodes have been "set up/pay off" with no middle, but I really never expected this level of carelessness. Yeah. I also think they tried to make a bullshit virtue of their neglect. Valencia is bisexual - and we're not making a big deal because it's not a big deal! Sorry, the tell for all shows is if a character gets airtime and writing. To pretend NOT writing for a character is some kind of virtue is the most self-serving kind of crap. They didn't have any material for her - and I don't know why - so they did this, didn't write it, and then patted themselves on the back because not writing it proved how inclusive they are. I got kind of worried about Valencia when her big song for the season was "This is my moment" and there was no comedic reason for the extended poop joke - usually a double meaning like that reverbs off something current with the character, but the poop joke had nothing to do with Valencia and didn't expand her nonexistent story. I remember also being irritated that CEG did nothing to disguise the fact that Valencia (Ruiz) obviously could not play the piano. They did so many shots of her very poorly faking it, and it's a show's job to cover up and finesse stuff like that. They didn't care enough, it was so obvious. What story did CEG tell after her diagnosis? They failed to tell a lot of story - Valencia being bisexual, which nobody suspected if we go by Josh, and Darryl's baby, where they even blew right by Rebecca donating her egg? Darryl's plot defined: "The food is terrible and such small portions!" I'd bet anything that, like including Vinnie in "Fit Hot Guys" at the last minute, they made Valencia bi at the last minute because they had no ideas - too busy devoting the entire back half of the season to "Will Nathaniel and Rebecca ever get their act together and admit they're in love." There was also a whole bunch of "Hey - viewers! Remember when we did this thing in one of the past seasons and it was really funny? We're visiting it again and telling the same jokes!" In fairness, the show started doing one new thing at least, which was: "We think building up to a song is kind of a waste of time - let's just start launching right in instead!" I should have known when "The First Penis I saw" was pretty much ALL the material Paula got in that weak episode where she ran into her former boyfriend, but it was really about Rebecca and Paula's dad, and then Paula realized she was happy w/how her life turned out. How much was that? Three scenes?

KingofHearts , every TV show I've ever seen skips the period of discovery, the hearings as to the extent of discovery, all the prep before you even get to trial. They skip the motions to dismiss. Every single show. A crime is committed and then it seems that the legal teams frantically try to come up with their case before they are rushed into court, as if a trial or judgment hearing is set immediately after a crime. That's not how it works. Most of the legal process is case prep. Here's a mixed message about Nathaniel that I found very poorly done in the finale. Rebecca confesses she went to the dark web to put a hit out on Mona. As far as we know, she didn't explain that she was cuckoo due to excessive hormone intake, so as far as Nathaniel knows, this is just something she did. And she only "thinks" she managed to call it off. She was cavalier during the entire thing. It only got bad when Paula reacted badly. (And isn't it kind of weird that everybody only reacted to the stuff she did to them?) There's a follow up scene when Nathaniel rushes home to look for Mona, and is relieved that she's safe, and in the shower. So his mind isn't at ease that the hit isn't out there somewhere. But then he gets back together with the woman who put Mona in danger, and Mona might still be in danger. So I don't understand his rushing home to check on Mona at all.

My take is they had no clear story to tell after she was diagnosed. It was filler until she gets better. So they're vamping for time. I read an old interview that said if the show continued on after she was better she would get better veeerrrrry slowwwwwly because if she's well, there's no show. The first two and half seasons, there was a very specific story. I think they should have put more thought into her therapy, frankly. BPD is an interesting, frustrating disorder, and attracts some uncommon personality types as therapists. There is a woman one of my relatives works with who is just impossible as a human being, but succeeds because she has the stamina and persistence to work with this "population." I think it would have helped to take some time to ground us in what exactly Rebecca is meant to be doing during her recovery. How much of what she does is BPD, and how much her natural temperment? There's nothing wrong with being reserved, and nothing wrong with a natural exuberance and easy access to the inner child. More framework so we know the differnce between her BPD and her temperment would have certainly helped. Instead, whenever possible, they played her therapy for laughs - group therapy was always a big joke of Rebecca blowing it off. I never got a clear sense of what she was supposed to be doing in group. Before we make fun of it or mine it for comedy, I think we should know what it's actually supposed to be. Structure is essential for comedy. Prior to the second half of S3, I knew the structural purpose and grounding principle of every character in terms of the narrative, and the information we were meant to take on board. Prior to midseason, and no matter whether people enjoyed that premise or not, everything Rebecca did was propelled by her illness. She was sad and anxious inside. CEG always played that beat, re-grounded CEG in that knowledge, and then off she'd go on another pursuit. The Josh pursuit was the gift that kept on giving, it could be written from so many angles. It kept CEG grounded even when it did side stories, and when I look back, IMO Vincent Rodriguez III did a much better job than he gets credit for. He could do the dumb ass, he could do the guy that brightened up the room and made everything happy, he could have the heartfelt conversation, and was as exuberant as Bloom in the musical numbers. He was a strong part of the machinery, IMO, and the Greg piece of it gave everything breathing room in the structural sense - it naturally helped "stretch things out." I think a Greg character in the Josh role would have been a wet blanket, and a lot of story beats wouldn't have made sense, but with a leading man who had a childlike spirit, there was a lot of leeway and a lot of twists that were possible. The second half was very sloppy because all they're doing is having her get better verrry slowwwwwly without a clear rationale for existing besides that. The secondary stories were horrible, I agree. Darryl and the baby was the worst, Rebecca's love life was a mess of mixed messages. I also think they could have done more with her therapists - they don't all have to be saintly. Dr. Akopian has a nice edge to her, but is essentially supportive, Dr. Shin was a saint. It's not always so perfect in the therapeutic environment - there are bad fits, there are impatient therapists, etc., there are those patients don't like, personally, but who are effective.

That's a great point, Cthulhudrew , that using Paula cuts both ways. Maybe the show runners thought the penultimate episode and finale didn't work with its heavy lean into Nathaniel, but when they pulled in and re-set Paula, it didn't play as Rebecca taking responsibility so much as Rebecca making another huge dramatic move because she cares about her friendship with Paula. It would have been more significant if she and Paula were fine, but Rebecca on her own rejected Nathaniel's immoral reasoning. A note: Crazy Ex Girlfriend, the concept, is Aline Brosh McKenna's story and vision. She came across Bloom's youtube videos, specifically the Disney Princess animation that upended all the Disney tropes. Brosh McKenna offered Bloom collaboration on CEG, which had been in her idea file for awhile. They worked together on a pitch and then a pilot. Obviously Bloom and McKenna share a sensibility and an awareness. Don't know if CEG would have been a musical if Bloom had not become the project's co-creator. Bloom has an idea for a B'way show that's hers, but she has said the CEG idea - exploding and exploring the reasons behind the CEG trope, is McKenna's. They have a notion about what her arc should look like, but no fixed "end game" that calls for a particular romantic outcome. Brosh McKenna reiterates this in her end of season interview. One can see the problems in a romantic end game - a lot of people would see that as CEG affirming what it has spent 4 seasons deconstructing - that all you need is the right guy. CEG exists to destroy that premise. Not to say people don't need love and healthy relationships, but if the conclusion isn't done meticulously, it's going to come across as CEG betraying itself.

While criticizing the finale as saying the Paula/Rebecca stuff didn't feel as if it were the natural emotional core to their relationship, Entertainment Weekly goes on to say: I felt the same way. Haven't analyzed it yet, but it was sort of a meta fuck you.

I definitely have doubts Greg would have been endgame. Plenty. The show has been altered. The penultimate episode and the finale were re-written to put the emotional stakes on the Paula/Rebecca relationship and take the emphasis off Nathaniel/Rebecca. There's an entire Vulture article on it. Aline Josh McKenna reports that when she read the finale script to Bloom, Bloom was exhausted and could only report her feelings. "Blah, don't care, WTF, what does that even MEAN, etc." They recognized the problem was that the penultimate and finale were Nathaniel-centric emotionally, and, apparently, they thought it didn't work and wasn't worth caring about. They re-wrote everything, starting with "Trent", changed Paula's reaction to spying on Trent from enthusiastic to reluctant, and changed the song. They wanted to set it up so the big event in the finale was Paula and Rebecca's rift and not Nathaniel/Rebecca. In another article, Brosh McKenna said they also made changes because there was too much emphasis on Rebecca's love life and not her overall journey. I take the show at its word that it is a romantic comedy but not a love story. It is also clear that the show is working within limited time, limited budget, that the creators often verge on burnout, and the creators themselves say they don't often analyze once a decision has been made. I think this season they lost the forest for the trees, and only realized it at the end. They had less of a template for post-diagnosis Rebecca than they did for pre-diagnosis Rebecca, and it is basically a hustle for material. Nathaniel, IMO, is very easy, so they went there, recognized it was a mistake, and tried to re-set in the final two episodes, including a song that was Nathaniel/Rebecca bonding over not taking responsibility for their behavior. Out of the blue, we get a Nathaniel who has "learned" from Rebecca that nothing is his fault. That, too, is a change from the learning, growing, more vulnerable Nathaniel. We get a Nathaniel who breaks up with Mona the evening they celebrate moving into together, and who sings a song to Rebecca about how the reason he likes being with her is she makes immorality ok. We have the show runners' own word about why that happened. Bloom is not the only show runner. Brosh McKenna writes and directs, and there are other writers. The Vulture article also made a big deal about how exhausted Bloom was, and how the narrative arc for the season happened. Brosh McKenna herself says she has to clear her head space for S4, knows that Rebecca needs to start again, but has no freaking idea what that will look like, just a general one about sort of where it will start. This is not always some master plan where they know every beat. They are often trying to catch up with themselves, and when that happens, they get conventional. I think they got extremely careless this season after Rebecca's diagnosis, not only as regards too much leaning into Nathaniel, but story fundamentals. One review said the show resorted to "Because I said so." story points too often. Another criticism I've been reading a lot is CEG not dealing with things - just hustling them off camera (such as no media reaction to Trent being pushed off a roof). AllyB , the Trent as waiter thing bugged me as well. He is unimaginably wealthy, so that was a big tip off to the police. One review said the "Trent" episode and this finale were all beginning and end with no middle. It was completely result driven, and IMO, clearly showed that re-writes were inserted at the last minute. I never felt Rebecca and Greg fit at all. Bloom has said the scene at Beans' party is the relationship in a nutshell, Rebecca giving Greg a handjob while pumping him (literally) for information about Josh. There's all these tropes about how he was "smart" and she is "smart" as if that defines who she should be with. Rebecca is also wildly exuberant, still loves Raging Waters, I can see her as somebody who would still enjoy a "feminist pole dance", and who is NOT meant to be in the corporate world (Bloom has said that specifically - that Rebecca should not be a lawyer), who loves fantasy and self-expression, not as a extension of her illness, but as part of her personality. Greg was an underachieving, early 30s bartender - how that makes him a better fit, I have no idea. But most of all with Greg, I felt he was cerebral, that was who he naturally was. And Rebecca, for all her academic brilliance, is not fundamentally cerebral. She's physically and emotionally out there - that's her. It gets nuts when she's in the grip of illness, but I don't think the real her is self-contained and cerebral like Nathaniel and like Greg. My final takeaway on Greg, beyond my not enjoying Santino Fontana's acting very much, is he was bored out of his mind, didn't like or respect Rebecca very much, but did want to f*ck her. I don't know what his sex life was like before Rebecca, but he seemed obsessed with fucking her mostly for ego validation reasons. It verged on Nice Guy ickiness a few times, but I think CEG went out of its way to help out the character there and make sure it didn't go all the way into that. I always felt he liked and respected Heather much more, but she didn't appeal to him sexually - and to his ego - as much as Rebecca. When he finally got himself to Emory, I completely believed it was such a total change from the first 30ish years of his life that he transformed. He was finally unstuck. He could be himself. I believe he actually tries at Emory and does well. I think he likes himself now and his girlfriend probably reflects that.

morgan, reading between the lines of the "making of the episode" it comes across that only in the penultimate episode did the CEG writers realize the entire show had become about Nathaniel and Rebecca's supposed love story, and that was why the penultimate episode and the finale had to be tweaked by re-emphasizing Paula. I mean, Aline Brosh McKenna doesn't say it explicitly, but she pretty much acknowledges the last two episodes were not working, were boring, and had no viable stakes, and they fixed it by bringing in Paula. It does feel as if her plot points were rushed in, as in "Hey, remember when these two were super tight - well, they were so now lets set up stakes really fast and have Rebecca betray her!" It definitely felt rushed in. I hope though, that they've had a larger recognition that they spent the back half of the season marginalizing everything but Nathaniel and whatever B plot was going on - the baby mostly. I really resented seeing Josh and Valencia dragged in as extras for the courtroom scene - it really made no sense for Josh to be there, but it just came off as if they were looking for places to squeeze both of them in, which is kind of insulting. I hope they don't make the same mistake in S4 - what CEG did with the the Nathaniel thing REALLY rankles, especially for this show of all shows.

The seasons don't have that many episodes, but as a former soap opera viewer, the entire back half of this season, and particularly the finale, has the feel of tapped out soap opera writers deconstructing everything and making overt what was only implicit, AND rushing things to shock value without earning them, because they're out of ideas. Trent was a brilliant character where there was the sense he could be dangerous, but also the idea that he was just on the spectrum, took advantage, but didn't have it in him to be the explicit cartoon monster he became in this finale. So they ruined that character. "I'm a sexy scary man?" Come on. Even Paula's reaction to Rebecca's lies felt overblown, because it came off one episode, with no season-long build up, so the whole thing felt over-acted and forced to me. It wasn't earned this time, not as far as building it up dramatically. I don't know, it felt both padded AND as if the writers were throwing every gimmick, cheap joke and cheap call back into the script they could. I'm super tired of Nathaniel, but it's not even him. It's the way it's written is so pedestrian. I hate to say Greg was better, but Greg was better, including his relationship with Heather. He actually liked Heather, and the way they ended made sense since Greg's focus on Rebecca, and the psychological reasons for it, had been established over two seasons. Mona is just your conventional "Good on paper" girlfriend where the dude makes the sad "I'm not feeling it" face while trying to nobly go through the motions. Also, if they were moving into his apartment, why were they shopping for apartment stuff? I thought this season would at least somewhat deal with Josh, but he was made into a joke. There was even a water cooler joke that viewers were supposed to remember from a season and a half back? It's not fair to the character. Back when Rebecca was after him, the big contrast was he didn't understand 99% of her frame of references, which included everything from academic studies to great movies and books. So now she's into a guy where she shares Harry Potter references, so that's a big step up. It could certainly just be on me, but I had a hard time staying with this episode until the end, right from the beginning. And one final thing, the show used to build up to a song throughout the episode, but now they don't bother with the build up. They just rush to the pay off or joke. I'm now thinking it was a mistake to diagnose Rebecca this season because the writers don't know how to write this show without the underpinning that Rebecca has undiagnosed disorders and, most importantly, is in severe denial. The denial that drove her to act out was what grounded CEG. Now she's aware, but rationalizing, which is a whole other thing and a mess.

As to whether they're decent lawyers or not, we've heard Nathaniel, Paula, Rebecca, even Sunil (who was playing both sides of the street in this episode) say the staff was incompetent. Some of it is a sitcom joke, I get it, but don't play it seriously when Paula steps up and addresses what the show has been telling us. The story opened with two guys playing air hockey, blowing a piece of paper across the conference room by huffing and puffing it along. That doesn't say "professional." Not to mention the sorts of details Paula is talking about, which are as basic as electricboogaloo notes, mean that when the font is wrong, or when something is a zillion pages instead of concise, the staff isn't doing their job. They're being lazy, sloppy and careless. Half-assed. ITA with idea CEG was also trying to have it both ways in a knee-jerk way. Sometimes the writing for Paula really teeters on the that "middle-aged woman is a bitch" trope, and I really object. Initially she was seen as just sort of discouraged at both work and home. Remember the dialogue about "Honey, do we have any [whatever it was]?" and Paula saying, "I don't know, did you buy any?" That was her situation. But subsequently we've seen her husband really step up, while CEG has told us she's not cutting it at home or being a good mom. And then comes this office bitch nonsense, that, as possibilities notes, does not add up. So it feels lazy, and to me it's disturbing when a show whose brand is enlightenment and insight about this stuff knee jerks its way into that scenario with the Paula character. Particularly in the times we live in, to introduce that issue a bit, I don't think it's great to reinforce - oh let's make the heavier-set middle-aged lady the office bitch.

I'll say. I think CEG did an impeccable job up to her diagnosis. It was such a relief to Rebecca to have a diagnosis, as her song expressed, and she entered therapy with great relief. Also tried to overachieve, because that's her. But, after that one insight where she realized she was doing w/Nathaniel what she did w/Josh, it's more than backsliding. It's as if her suicide attempt and her breakthrough never happened. Whenever we see her in therapy she's not taking it seriously, she's dismissing it right in front of the therapist! Which was basically what she did before her o.d. I mean Dr. Akopian can't possibly be fooled or enabling because we've seen Rebecca in therapy and she's all "Bunch and Akopes!" and fast talking her way past any concerns Dr. Akopian brings up. She's obviously not taking group therapy seriously either, from what we're shown. So all of this is, to me, negating the story they told before, since her breakthrough is a big joke. There should be a tension between Rebecca's new awareness and the drives / habits she has yet to fully manage. I'm sure she doesn't want to o.d. again, and if that episode was truly as serious as it was presented, she remembers it - she won't trivialize it. However, we have seen her trivialize it, w/George. I'd accept that as black humor - I think people actually do that - except that there's no other sign she takes her so-called diagnosis seriously. Yet, she must have made some authentic progress in eight months - we are told she did, and that was a good program. I refuse to believe she's so clever she fooled a program that knows all about borderlines like her. I don't see Rebecca recognizing her patterns and struggling to break through much at all. She felt guilty about Paula, as she should, but that was it, and nothing she wouldn't have felt guilty about pre-therapy. I do think if CEG is actually telling a story and not stringing us along that it should incorporate the framework - this is a post-diagnosis Rebecca w/more information than before, who survived a suicide attempt and deep depression. She's no different in therapy than she was before, and that's the one place we were outright informed she had progressed.

AfterwardsTV, :) I agree with most of your post. Rachel *has* said Rebecca shouldn't be a lawyer, so maybe Rebecca will move onto something else. I'd like to believe that "Nathaniel is irrelevant" has the same meaning it did w/Josh, but man the show has been unclear - they've lapsed into filler and doing stuff like "Remember when we did this before? We're doing it again here!" - w/out bothering to earn it. I think Scott Michael Thomas is a good actor, and a decent fit w/CEG, but I'm not buying Rebecca/Nathaniel. I wonder if part of it is that the "Raging Waters" loving part of Rebecca is always more convincing to me than whatever the hell the dynamic is supposed to be with Nathaniel. Don't know how to pin it down, but I believed completely she had a good time hanging out with Paula's dad, while I can barely imagine her and Nathaniel's pillow talk. Also looking back, as crazy as Ping Pong Girl was as a song and a conceit, that's kind of her. Have Nathaniel and Rebecca shared any real experiences that weren't sexual? Any memorable conversations besides the aborted plot to kill Josh's family? He's had more sincerely grounded conversations with WiJo. Also, Nathaniel isn't convincing me that he really wants to do the emotionally expressive thing. Vulnerable and emotionally honest, sure, why not, but Rebecca's exuberance seems like it would exhaust him on the regular. Just the vibe. He's not that guy. Not to mention a flaw in the concept - if you want to do the emotionally honest thing, Rebecca is not your woman. Again, it seems to me CEG is sort of confusing "dramatic" and even the occasional bout of emotional terrorism with emotional availability. I'm not sure that the people around her like Rebecca because they love her and think of themselves as good people, so therefore the person they love must be good. I think she was more endearing in the past. She put up a front, but even the lamest at Whitefeather could see through it at times. How often things blew up in her face, and how she persevered. Now she's pretty nasty. It's hard to make an argument for a stalker like Trent, but in the world of CEG, she was not just mean and brutal, she dripped with contempt. I guess I can see it as a manifestation of her self-loathing, but I was still taken aback when she said him ruining her wedding ruined her life.

The dialogue was actually "OMG it's so nice to connect with someone. I feel so much less alone now." So before they showed each other their cat photos, they were each stereotypically lonely cat ladies. They were sparked into a bond just at that moment by sharing photos of their cats. Bigger picture - in the past, when Rebecca would sing something like "Buttload of cats" I saw it as the lens of a woman who used romantic tropes to manage her emotions. Romantic love was the biggest validation. Remember Dream Ghost, when Dr. Akopian showed Rebecca that she did have love in her life, and Rebecca totally hand-waved it and said, "No, I mean kissy kissy, love I love you love!" During that same episode, I believe, Dr. Akopian said something like "Why is it always about guys!" While Rebecca was undiagnosed and untreated, she was always going to see her life that way - romantic love would cure everything. Now she's been in therapy for over eight months, and been cleared to go back to Dr. Akopian. She presumably has a different perspective on her life, even if she's not always able to live it. So I'm looking at "Buttload of cats" through the lens of a more evolved Rebecca, and that's why I disliked it, because it was still hammering obnoxious lonely lady tropes, and it's not clear we were meant to understand this as a distortion. Comedic hyperbole, yes, but a distortion? Not sure. If you don't find a romantic partner and you're female you're going to not only be lonely and pathetic, your life will be dingy (Why would a single woman necessarily live in a sad walk-up apartment - and why are walk-ups sad, blah blah). Then there was her treatment of Trent. I've never seen her be that contemptuous before. She accused him of "Ruining my wedding, which led to a suicide attempt." I thought she'd realized "Josh is irrelevant", since that was her pretty damn fundamental post-overdose insight. By now, I'd expect her to be able to articulate healthy stuff, even as her living it remained a work in progress. In this episode, she had a lot of dialogue that came off as if she didn't even have the talking points. CEG has not been as clear about framing and context as it has been. In the past it wouldn't even do Greg and Rebecca meeting at the bridge without cutting in a voice over of Dr. Akopian framing this as the WRONG thing to do, versus a rom com happily ever after. Now we're more or less left to our own devices and I'm not sure why. Lately when I read stuff about CEG, I wonder if it was always written on the fly (which can be great if there's a strong arc underpinning it) or some of the ad hoc stuff is new. They changed the title of the male stripper song to "Fit Hot Guys" when at the last minute they decided to include Vinnie. To me that's, "Oh here's a place where we can fit Vinnie in." because they didn't previously have much of a plan for him this season besides placeholding. And Aline Brosh McKenna described changing the tone of "Back in Action" because she thought the episode was too much about how things affected Rebecca's love life and not enough about her overall journey. I wonder if she's realized the entire back half of this season has appeared to be about Nathaniel/Rebecca. Yet even that remains underwritten, because, while I disliked Greg, I can think of a million scenes between them that weren't "Are they going to fuck." and the same goes to Josh. Nathaniel "knows her really well." but what have they actually experienced together besides doing it in storage closets or bragging about how great the sex is? I haven't seen it.

I do get that, but it still plays to me as something they invented on the fly to throw Valencia a bone and rack up more cred.

I got the opposite message. Two lonely cat ladies lucky to find each other after each living stereotypically lonely lives.

When we met Valencia she was so stereotypically the "mean girl" other woman it seemed beneath the show, according to some reviewers, and then they showed us more of her in S1. She wanted Rebecca's friendship in S1 and responded when Rebecca reached out. She just shut down when it became obvious something was off, and then when it was obvious Rebecca was after Josh. We overheard Valencia on the phone to her parents, keeping her fingers crossed that he was about to propose. We heard from Josh that she had bad credit. Rebecca overheard Valencia and Josh talking after he confessed he and Rebecca had kissed. Valencia asked him if he loved Rebecca, and even said that she could understand it, as Rebecca was smart and interesting. Valencia is the opposite of Rebecca in being very stiff emotionally, and I think they've overdone it. I continue to think they threw in this bisexuality at the last minute to give her something to do and also get points, to tell the truth, as there was no sign of it before. She had enthusiastic sex with Josh (they were practically doing it standing up on the party bus, and then Rebecca overheard them in the spare bedroom during Thanksgiving), she and Rebecca got sidetracked for a few seconds while stalking Anna as they reminisced about Josh's skin and face, and she was an equal participant in "Let's Talk About Men."

Trent has been on six episodes including the one this season. If Rebecca had been confronted by Josh the way she confronted Trent, I think Rebecca would have slunk away as well. She never flat out confessed her love or confessed what she'd done to achieve it until they were completely done and she sang "After Everything I've Done For You" at the church. Trent, OTOH, came clean to Rebecca in this episode, not that she didn't already pretty much know the score. Rebecca's whole game was that Josh wouldn't know what she was doing, but if she worked proximity and all of her strategies, he'd fall in love. And truly, she succeeded in keeping it from him. So no matter how many close calls she experienced, she never had to face up to him saying "I know you love me, I know everything you've done, I don't love you, and stay away." I don't think she would have continued to pursue him after that. Maybe she would have hit rock bottom then. I, too, did "get" why both Josh and Greg liked Rebecca. I didn't necessarily buy Greg falling in love, but I got why she'd tick his boxes/push his buttons, particularly since he had to have been kind of bored with his life. This season I'm completely at a loss. I don't think she's looking her best (it might be the hair color), she's not vivacious and electric so much as overbearing and kind of mean, and surely there are other women in West Covina who are (presumably) wildcats in bed. Sort of petty, but I disliked the "Explicit" version of Buttload of Cats. To be clear, I think the explicit version of JAP Battle Rap is a 1,000x funnier than the network version, and I think the "fucks" in "I go to the zoo" sound more natural than the "hells" on network. So that said, "Fuckton" just isn't funny, and actually doesn't express the sentiment in the song as well, so it seems pointless. Buttload, in my head, is just the right amount of cats to make the point (even though I didn't like the song nor the tropes it reinforced). Fuckton is just "Saying fuck is always funnier than not saying fuck" and I don't agree. Something else just occurred to me - presumably Nathaniel likes Rebecca because she's the antithesis of his background. But how honest and open is she with him? We haven't seen it. All I get from them is that she's very dramatic - the opposite of his family, and is the presumable spitfire in the sack. Actual intimacy where he knows what's going on in her head and she's vulnerable to him? We haven't seen that, and, in fact, he has a tendency to minimize her situation. Drama and energy don't = intimacy, emotional openness and vulnerability, but it's like CEG equates them. Rebecca is really no more open than the most uptight WASP. She's always running some game. Edited - because despite the hints about love, and the occasional heartfelt-seeming couple of sentences they exchange, all they ever seem to do is fuck.