I really didn’t want to review the new CW television show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The title is self-evidently anti-feminist and the entire premise of the show sounded unpleasant to me: First, it is a musical romantic comedy. Ick. My apologies to my stereotypical gay pals but musical rom-coms make me want to blame those Canadian Uncle Fuckers for loosing Satan on Earth. You know what I mean.
Second, years ago I was stalked by a crazy ex in an omnipresent Honda. She got my then new girlfriend fired from her job; I was happy to return the favor, after which crazy finally stopped messing with me. A lot of men find the MRM after a bad experience like mine and I was in no rush to rehash that.
Third, the scrappy CW Network has a lot of kooky, off-the-wall shows that appeal to nerdy guys, and I was willing to grant them one misfire.
But then; this mouth-breather misandrist named Samantha Allen at The Daily Beast wrote a bullshit review, “‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Is Smart, Sexy, Unapologetic Feminist TV,” that desperately tried to frame “Crazy” as a worthy feminist show despite it being a direct parody of everything feminist.
I have no choice: this “Balrog” shall not pass unchallenged.
Who is Samantha Allen? We featured one of her man-hating blog posts last November 7th here at AVFM:
What misandry means to me
I’m a misandrist. that means I hate men. I’m not a cute misandrist, I don’t have a fridge magnet that says, “boys are stupid, throw rocks at them.” My loathing cannot be contained by a fridge magnet.
I am not an equality feminist. I don’t believe that an asymmetrical world will be cured by polite obsequence to male-dominated systems. I am not a liberal humanist. I don’t believe that I need to stand up for men when they’ve been standing on top of everyone else….
What a difference a year makes: Once a proud man-hating feminist, Samantha has been gut-punched repeatedly as feminist rape hoaxes like Jackie Coakley’s wad of lies at Rolling Stone have blown feminism to bits. Samantha is now a tamed shrew so desperate for any bit of credibility for feminism she will try to find it in an unabashedly ANTI-feminist show called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a suitable designation for feminist rape hoaxers Coakley and Emma Sulkowicz alike.
But, on to the show.
The story opens with “Rebecca Bunch” (Rachel Bloom) at age 16 saying her chatty monologue goodbyes to her first summer love, an emotional tampon and hymen-buster named “Josh Chan” who is obviously annoyed with her and is relieved to be making his escape. Josh is of some indeterminate background that might be Chinese or Hispanic = how intersectional! Fast forward to 2015: Rebecca, a Harvard/Yale graduate, is a high-powered attorney who is about to be promoted to Junior Partner at a prestigious NY firm that is as cold and inhumane as any workplace governed by feminist-inspired harassment abatement rules that clobber all normal human social interaction.
But, wow, there is a problem: she hates her feminist fantasy; she is lonely and desperately unhappy – so unhappy that when she sees an ad that asks “when was the last time you were truly happy?” her body literally stops her brain from functioning. So unhappy that babies are talking to her from billboards. Yes, her biological clock just pinged – it is spinster o’clock!
A chance meeting with now muscular Josh on the street, complete with her cat-calling him, gives her personal life a sliver of hope until she learns that Josh is moving to West Covina, California to escape the big city rat race. Yes, Josh is Going His Own Way!
What is a girl to do? Dump her job, her promotion, her feminist pretension and her clothing and start singing. The first musical number starts on the streets of NYC, moves to a stripper bar in West Covina, and ends in a strip mall. The symbolic transition of feminist to dick grabber to wannabe wife happens all in a single musical flourish. This is feminism?
Uh, no.
As it happens, Rebecca’s feminism was propped up by a feedbag full of blue pills that allowed her to function as a feminist Borg drone lawyer while muting her femininity. She gleefully spills half a dozen bottles of pills down the drain, determined to rediscover the lusty, spontaneous woman who feminism taught her was repressing her with internalized misogyny. Tossing the pills is another indicator that she is baby-crazy – can’t take that shit while preggers.
But there is another problem – Josh has a girlfriend – so Rebecca tries to hook up with his friend, a bartender named Greg – whom she lured into Josh’s bedroom on the off-chance that Josh will catch them in the act and have his jealousy triggered.
Is there anything feminist in this show that is treated sympathetically? Rebecca does agree to help with her boss’s divorce, but the hitch is that she’s trying to help him get custody of his daughter, something feminists, despite all their equality bluster, never, ever support in real life.
The one purportedly feminist themed song, The Sexy Gettin’ Ready Song, depicts Rebecca waxing her crotch and ramming herself into some flesh-colored camel-toe Spanx as she preps for her hookup. A black male feminist rapper regards her collection of beauty products with horror as somehow “patriarchal bullshit” when the girl is voluntarily doing it to herself. Later, he phones his backup dancers to apologize for throwing money and jobs at them. The girls look at their phones as if this crazy male feminist is the craziest one of all.
Ah, poor reviewer Samantha Allen. You were once such a proud man-hater. Enjoy your feast of ashes, loser.
