When we last saw Rebecca Bunch, the title character in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, she had just been dumped at the altar. Her crush of crushes, Josh Chan, decided at the very last minute to become a priest rather than marry her. Ouch. But our crazy girl, played by the show's producer/writer/creator Rachel Bloom, was not going to take that lying down. Well, actually she was, but that comes later.
When we pick up Season 3 of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, still on the CW but now moved to Fridays, Rebecca is AWOL in the wake of the wedding that wasn't, and her friends and co-workers are wondering what happened to her. They get together for a musical number where they are dressed like the village folk in a Disney flick like Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast and sing, "Where's Rebecca Bunch?" At the end of the number, Rebecca sings, too, from her bed (lying down No. 1), ultimately deciding to "Fight back!" As part of her plan to go from a victim to a "woman scorned," she's buying dark nail polish and hair dye and renting movies like Fatal Attraction.
Her best friend Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin) also has a plan, but hers involves lie detector tests and sign-in sheets to make sure she can trust her husband, who had an affair last season. And Rebecca's sweet but dim boss at the law firm, Darryl Whitefeather (Pete Gardner) is trying to convince his boyfriend White Josh (David Hull) that the two should raise a baby together, while White Josh is focused on a new venture with power bars made of ants.
In the meantime, Rebecca does show up at the office, with darker hair and a hot white dress, à la Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. She also gets together with the rest of her friend squad (deadpan neighbor Heather, played by Vella Lovell, and another of Josh's exes, perfect Valencia, played by Gabrielle Ruiz), cluing them in on her plan to get revenge. Since it involves poop cupcakes, they nix it quickly, so she turns to a fake porno/sex tape idea and starts auditioning actors to find a Josh Chan stand-in to have fake-sex with. That also strikes her friends as wrong wrong wrong, but they pretend to go along for awhile, until Rachel finds a perfect Josh replica (also played by Vincent Rodriguez III, presumably to give him something to do in the otherwise Josh-less episode). When Rachel gets naked with every intention to really get it on in front of the cameras, Paula steps up and shuts it down.
And then we get a slam-bang 80s girl-group number called "Let's Generalize About Men," with the Girl Squad in bright-colored power suits, with short skirts, big earrings and giant shoulder pads, as they bash the male half of the population in the catchiest possible way. Except for gay men. They are specifically excepted from the bash. It's pretty nifty all around, with the self-aware, snarky, fizzy-pop edge this show does so well.
By the end of the episode, White Josh and Darryl have sorted out their issues, Paula has reached a rapprochement with her husband, and the Girl Squad has come up with a much better plot for revenge wherein Rebecca takes Josh to court. But Rebecca... Yeah, she's still firmly ensconced in Crazyville, right back in the bathroom with the feces-laced cupcakes.
What's next? "To Josh, With Love" airs next Friday, and since that's what Rebecca wrote on the lid of the container for her meadow muffins, presumably there will be some fallout from her crappy revenge idea.
I admit I pretty much hate scatalogical humor, so I'm hoping there isn't much on that score, and we jump right to what's happening with Josh in his ill-advised attempt to become a priest.
"To Josh, With Love" is set for Friday October 20 at 7 pm Central time on the CW.
This episode contained perhaps my favorite spoken line of the whole series. After a season or so of "coincidentally" planting herself where Josh will happen to be, Rebecca now finds that new boss Nathaniel seems to be coincidentally popping up while she's holding her auditions. And she's not buying his protestations of innocence for a moment: "I am the queen of 'just happening to be somewhere'!"
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