#but actually UPPING the percentage appearance rates for characters (like nathaniel)

[candymayvary]

will you come back to writing again? i really love your work and would like to see it again

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[pass-the-bechdel]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season four full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (seventeen of seventeen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

47.22%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Thirteen, distinctly over half, and with nine of those hitting or exceeding 50%, and two of those making it to/over the 60% line.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero, unsurprisingly.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-nine. Sixteen who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Forty-three. Twenty who appeared in more than one episode, seven who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Nothing to write home about. It isn’t devoid of good qualities, but it also isn’t half as good as it seems to think it is, and it rarely makes any genuine effort to try (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Patchy. Never regained the highs of the series-best third season, though it showed some potential now and then; likewise, never dragged down the way the show did at its worst in series-low season two, but still definitely wandered in that direction time and again. Comes to a conclusion as predictable as it is boring.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Ok, since full-season reviews for the final season of a show have a tendency to take on strong full-series overtones, I’m gonna keep this simple, and just focus on the way the character’s storylines came around (or didn’t) by the last episode. Considering that they used that abominable time-skip technique to neatly skip major developments yet again, they made it very easy to reflect on what the narrative has positioned as core to the character’s lives.

First, a note on time skips: like any technique, they have their place in a storyteller’s toolbox, and it is completely possible to use them to strong effect. Time skips, in and of themselves, are not the devil, nor are they automatic signs of lazy storytelling - they just need to exist for a good reason. Having serious changes take place in the interim, and dropping the audience into the chaos on the other side so that they can unravel all that change and work out how things developed and how they fit together now after the fact? Great use of a time skip, because it still uses the interim developments for active storytelling, and drives viewer engagement by making you pay attention to put the pieces together. There’s heaps of potential in that, plus you can bring vitality to plot development that might actually have been laborious to watch in real-time; when viewed in retrospect, it can become much more interesting than it would have been as a chronological thread. The two big time skips we had in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? Categorically not that. The first one, in season three, was essentially a way of going ‘nothing interesting whatsoever happened in these character’s lives for eight entire months’, which is just abysmal storytelling, and the only real explanation for why they bothered with the time skip at all was that they wanted to fast-track the pregnancy plot (which, I’ll say again, I am still really disturbed by - it meant declaring that absolutely nothing that happened - for Heather, as a pregnant person, or for Darryl as an expectant parent, or for Rebecca as the egg donor who never really addressed her own feelings about her decision (this season limply acknowledged that in one episode, but you know what would have been better? The inclusion of emotional ups and downs over time! It’s only EXACTLY the kind of thing which is deeply pertinent to Rebecca’s mental state!) - none of it was meaningful enough to be worth telling a story about, and that’s depressingly lazy and insulting to the characters, frankly, and NOT just because of my own pregnancy-related feelings). Skipping eight months of your own story without using that missing time for anything is ridiculous (and if you don’t want to waste time on a plot thread, don’t include it in the first place - since the entire baby storyline came to a big zero on character and narrative development anyway, they might as well have not bothered pretending). The entire year they time-skipped in the final episode of this season? Kinda the exact same problem, even though they did include little flashback scenes this time to pretend that anything meaningful happened. If it actually mattered, you shoulda built it into the course of the actual season, instead of handwaving it in at the eleventh hour without any development or fallout. This is not how storytelling works.

And what did we get as the sum total of our character development in the time-skipped year, what action was jumped over and then treated as the culmination of each individual’s life and time on the show? Well, Josh got a new serious girlfriend. One of the better characters on the whole show, a highlight when there was sometimes little light to be had, and he...got a girlfriend. Wow. Josh’s story really went places, huh? Nathaniel? Quit his job and went to work at his favourite place, the zoo, which is a much more interesting development and easily my favourite one, but also, they didn’t build towards that at all. You could be forgiven for forgetting that Nathaniel likes going to the zoo when he’s sad, because that was just a bit from a song one episode, long ago, and the show never reinforced his interest in the zoo outside of that. Objectively, I love this as an end-place for his character, but in the context of his development on-show, it’s kinda out of left field, they did not incorporate it in to his narrative the way they should have if they were gonna use it in this way. Similar problem: Paula, whose Great Achievement was bringing pro bono work to her firm, only, we’d never had any real indication that she was passionate about it before, it was just something she started doing to support Rebecca. This doesn’t feel like a development that actually has anything to do with Paula at all, and it certainly doesn’t bring things around on any part of her personal plot in a way that could be considered meaningful. Valencia finally gets to be engaged, she makes it happen for herself by being the one to propose, and that’s nice but hardly less of a bland culmination than ‘and Josh has a girlfriend’. Darryl’s relationship and child-in-the-making is also ho-hum, and kinda reinforces the idea that they coulda just skipped the stupid Hebecca plot since it was seemingly just a way to preoccupy Darryl while they couldn’t come up with any real story for him, only to have his story end with achieving the same thing he had already spent the previous season achieving, just with a partner involved this time. Heather, Hector, White Josh? No meaningful developments, they were never important. Greg? Something restaurant related? I literally can’t even remember already, that’s how much I don’t care. Why was he even here? Nope, still don’t care.

And then of course, Rebecca. She sure did ‘resolve’ her BPD as a plot point by taking medication, so, not impressed by the way they handled that in the end, and in the meantime she finally realised that her happiness was not and should not be defined by relationships and that she should pursue the things in life which actually make her happy within herself, and that is...exactly the basic conclusion that I assumed this show would come to back when it started. I somehow foolishly thought they would have to have something more up their sleeves than ‘don’t define yourself through your relationship with someone else’, especially after they doubled and tripled down (get it, tripled? Because of the three guys?) on the idea that romance was part of the endgame for Rebecca, literally to the last episode; turning around and pulling a ‘but romance isn’t the most important thing!’ after THAT MUCH time and energy spent on forefronting it in the late stages of the show doesn’t feel like some kind of clever twist, it’s something really obvious that the show had various leaned on at other points in its run, only to return to the romantic centre with a greater and greater vengeance. By this point, blowing off the romances with all three of these other characters that Rebecca had already blown off - numerous times! - in the past isn’t some revelation of character development, it’s just pattern repetition. For the sprinkling of other plot threads they wrapped up for Rebecca this season, each of them applauded to some extent for whatever catharsis they brought, this ultimately ended her story in the most redundant of ways, placing at the core of her story the very same thing that the show had already denounced and restored time and time again. But anyway. This all sounds awfully series-review-ish. The moral of the story is, I hated the final episode with a passion and it made me feel like the entire show was largely pointless viewing, and that’s unfortunate because there were various glimmers of thoughtful wrap-ups across the rest of the season. Anything else, I guess I’ll talk it out in the only place left for it: the full series review.

[pass-the-bechdel]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season three full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

41.16%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Seven, so just over half. Three of those are 50%+.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-four. Thirteen who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-nine. Eighteen who appeared in more than one episode, seven who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Not nearly as good as you might expect or hope. As with previous seasons, the show’s most impressive content is not the feminist stuff at all, and on the feminist front it feels sometimes as if the show spends more time denouncing different aspects of the feminist movement as ‘the wrong kind of feminism’ than it does declaring and upholding the aspects it does approve. I tend to feel that it spends time talking the talk on women’s issues, but doesn’t often get up to walk the walk (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Easily better than the previous two seasons, despite a deflated ending. It takes a much more focused approach to its storytelling in the beginning of the season, in a manner which briskly becomes refreshingly confronting and leads in to a powerful middle. Unfortunately, it never sustains quality for very long, and overall the show still suffers for being too easily distracted. It’s not infuriating, but it can be frustrating.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Ok, let me explain something about myself first, something I’ve mentioned in other (non-Crazy Ex) posts which have gone live long before this one will, but for anyone who missed it in any of those other places, here it is: I am, right now, pregnant. In fact, I am pregnant with a child conceived non-traditionally with a gay friend of mine, and as such, Darryl’s non-traditional quest for biological parenthood in this season struck a very personal chord (though, unlike Darryl, I used the phone-a-friend option as my first choice, not a fallback. Would recommend, if it’s ever relevant to your life). I bring all of this up because I can categorically declare that there are certain plot threads that you absolutely will NOT have the same reaction to if you don’t have that very personal chord being struck, and even moreso if that chord is relevant to your life right now, rather than being something that you’ve experienced in the past but has since slipped from the forefront of your attention. Thus, when I talked about feeling like the emphasis was in all the wrong places for Darryl’s part of the narrative, and expressed irritation with Heather’s pregnancy and birth? I sure ain’t mad about it for no reason. I am extremely, extremely aware of what those processes are actually like right the heck now.

I’m not going to linger on all the details, but I am particularly annoyed at the writers for dropping the ball on the pregnancy/birth part, specifically because it’s something which is so often badly dramatised in tv and film already, and the writers not only know that, they openly reference it as if they’re somehow doing better. The same way that medical professionals sometimes find it too frustrating to watch hospital dramas because of all their inaccuracies, or someone in law enforcement might cringe their way through all the egregious breaches in procedure in a cop show, there’s always a significant risk that anything depicted in fiction will make you want to tear your hair out over the way the plot warps or disregards reality that is pertinent to your life, either through a lack of proper research or understanding of the subject matter, or a conscious choice to prioritise desired storytelling beats/developments over actual logic and realism. Suffice to say there are a LOT of concessions Crazy Ex-Girlfriend asked me to make to their storytelling with this little subplot, some of which most people who have never been pregnant wouldn’t notice, and yes, some of which I would probably dismiss if I were not in the midst of the reality right now. I’m someone who has been present at actual births before and has been raised with an above-average understanding of what’s involved, so I’m used to gritting my teeth and hoping to just not be too annoyed by the way pregnancy and birth is typically depicted on screen. The fact that I am currently immersed in the reality of preparing to give birth makes me less forgiving of fictional contrivances, yes, but in the case of this show’s approach, it’s also more than that: it’s the fact that this show actively promotes itself as a feminist text. And if you’re gonna do that, and criticise the way other things (”written by men!”) depict labour, but then you also choose not to include any education/empowerment of your pregnant character, rattle off a variety of (uneducated, disempowered) cliches anyway, and then handwave it all with ‘nevermind, she just got an epidural!’ as if that ‘solves’ the difficulties of birth (and post-birth recovery, for that matter), frankly that’s just...a really unimpressive failure of feminist storytelling. Congratulations, you neglected the subject completely, at the same time as actively claiming your intent to do better than all that written-by-men schlock out there! What a tiresome charade this turned out to be.

Setting that aside though (difficult for me, as I am...very preoccupied with it), there was actually a good lot of things to like about this season, even if I do still feel that I ultimately have more criticisms than I do praise. Having Rebecca actually reach crisis point in the form of a suicide attempt, and consequently getting a diagnosis for her mental disorder and finally being able to move forward in learning to live a balanced life with BPD? Frankly, it’s not a move that I anticipated, and if you’d asked me where I thought Rebecca’s mental health plot was heading, I probably would have just shrugged it off as an unfocused thread where the ultimate goal was just ‘figure out how to be happy on your own terms instead of defining happiness through someone else’ (which is solid advice, but generalised advice, not something that would require the show to commit to a genuine mental illness). Acknowledging that Rebecca’s behaviour comes from a more distinct source than just the nebulous idea of being ‘crazy’ is a vitally important development, and it ushered in some of the best storytelling the show has offered thus far, at least when the plot maintained steady focus and made an effort to be responsible and mature in its exploration of the issue. As ever, there were still times when the show used Rebecca’s mental state for comic relief in a manner which made me uncomfortable, and times when I couldn’t interpret the intentions of the narrative - I have come to the conclusion that this show and I are on completely different wavelengths, which makes us a bad match, regardless of any elements which I do appreciate. 

On the subject of things I appreciate, I’m going to discuss the true character highlight of the show, someone I wanted to talk about after last season, not realising that if I held off until this review instead, he was gonna wind up so terribly underused in the meantime that it’s almost weird that he’s still technically part of the main cast at this point: Josh Chan. Josh Chan is...kinda the most believable part of this show, both in the bumbling good-natured balance of the character himself, and in other character’s feelings about him. Being able to buy the idea that someone would give up their whole life as they knew it to chase after this guy is kinda important to selling the concept of the show from the outset, and honestly, Josh Chan is the only time I’ve ever seen a central male love interest for whom the hype seemed to make sense. Is he perfect? Not by a long shot, but that’s fine because ‘perfection’ is as conditional as it is unattainable. The problem with male love interests, often, is that they’re written by heterosexual men who treat the character as some kind of masculine wish-fulfillment, a combination of ‘guy I wish I could be’ and ‘guy I think women should want (me)’. Josh Chan is a great example of a love interest written by women for women: he displays positive masculine-coded traits (protective, physically capable), while rejecting negative, toxic-masculine elements (aggression, possessiveness), and he embraces key ‘feminine’ traits (non-threatening, kind, soft, emotionally expressive, family-oriented), while his flaws are unobtrusive and potentially even endearing (the main one is that he’s quite stupid, which is something a lot of straight women will happily admit to liking (at least in theory), and other traits such as Josh’s childish streak can be a source of joy under some circumstances, as well as being something Josh mostly keeps a hold on so that it doesn’t become a burden to his partners). Also, it would be remiss of me to neglect to mention how refreshing and meaningful it is to have an Asian male love interest. I really enjoy not being bored to death by Josh Chan, and I am annoyed at how little of him we got this season while we wasted time with that generic slice of white bread, Nathaniel. Bring back the Chan plots, season four. Do it for me.

[pass-the-bechdel]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season two full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

39.94%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Seven, just over half, and three of those were 50%+.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

One (episode two, ‘When Will Josh See How Cool I Am?’ (18.75%)).

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Nineteen. Thirteen who appeared in more than one episode, four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-six. Twenty-two who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Has brighter spots than your average network show, certainly, and there’s generally more to be happy about than not. That said, the sometimes mocking tone still gets me on the wrong foot and not sure how to interpret the intent of certain comments, and I rarely feel that this is a show I could promote to others on the grounds of progressive content (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Unpredictably bad. It hits a few high notes here and there and is not a total loss, but it never sustains quality for long and the low points are pretty drudging. Unfortunately, it is not an improvement on the first season.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Confession: I’m gonna have to beg off a proper review this time ‘round, I finished season two with various thoughts and plans for what I was gonna discuss here, but then life intervened in a big way and I’m coming back to this more than six weeks later, with the season far from fresh in my mind and the comments I was planning to make even less defined. I’m gonna make a basic go of it anyway, but I’m not gonna push myself; I figure I just gotta get this one outta the way so I can get back on the horse with watching the actual show, and hopefully I’ll remember/pick back up on the more nuanced comments I had intended to make as we move into season three and beyond. Sorry, y’all. Life is like that sometimes.

I feel like this season was kinda disconnected from itself and from its lead character, and that was the major issue at the heart of it. While season one occasionally had me concerned that I was being asked to laugh at a mentally ill woman but was otherwise generally understanding and sympathetic toward Rebecca’s struggles, exploring the reasons for her neuroses without trying to excuse her behaviour, season two felt like it forgot that all-important centering. I felt that the story was often approaching Rebecca from outside and then recoiling, not just laughing at her but actively positioning her as an object of spectacle and NOT the lead character on a show which had explicitly made the deconstruction of her mental/emotional state into a prime directive. I felt like the insightfulness was gone, and what was left behind was rarely flattering. 

I wonder if the reason for this has anything to do with Greg. It’s no secret that I despised his character and delighted in his departure from the show, but the drawn-out fashion in which he left and the circular narrative wastefulness surrounding the awkward adjustment period at the beginning of the season leads me to speculate that perhaps, Greg’s departure was not originally part of the plan at all. The answer to this musing is probably easily found in behind-the-scenes trivia, but I’m not gonna look that up because that sounds like a great way to accidentally spoil myself for future seasons, and also, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Maybe the season is disconnected and wishy-washy because the original planned arc was significantly tied to a character who became unavailable suddenly, forcing them to mock up an entire new season arc on the fly. Maybe they had no such difficulty and it was actually all smooth sailing and they just bungled it despite everything. Maybe there was some other, different problem I haven’t gleaned but which nevertheless threw them a huge curve-ball that they spent the season scrambling to get a handle on. Whatever the reason, at the end of the day, we’re here to look at the show that was made and delivered to us, and to evaluate whether or not it was a worthy thing. And for the most part, I didn’t really feel like it was. It wasn’t a complete disaster - Paula got some story of her own that mostly felt meaningful and true to her character, though I’m not sure how much it actually advanced anything, I’m still suspicious of a certain amount of treading-water and circular-wastefulness - Josh is still really refreshing as a primary love interest and I do intend to explore that further in the future - also I still love Darryl and White Josh, and I am much happier having Valencia as a friendly character instead of a cliche antagonist. But, those highlights could not rescue a supremely messy season, the disconnection from Rebecca is borderline show-threatening, and I remain deeply unimpressed by the introduction of Nathaniel. I really hoped that Greg’s departure would fix a lot of my initial irritation with the show from the first season, but they went and wallowed in all sorts of new problems instead (and without really fixing up the original gripes, either). Oh well. I do sincerely hope that they put this behind them and churn out a strong third season, because I still see so much potential in this show.