1

“Crazy for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”

TV Fandom and the Critical Reception
of a “Nutty” Network Series

David Scott Diffrient

A few days prior to and immediately following the October 12, 2015 pre-
miere of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–19), dozens of American television
critics weighed in on this latest addition to The CW’s youth-skewing Mon-
day night programming block. Created by Aline Brosh McKenna and the
show’s star, Rachel Bloom, this “most unusual” amalgam of comedy, melo-
drama, musical, and romance was greeted as “an out-of-the-blue surprise
and an out-of-the-box treasure” by those who, already fatigued by a “fairly
dismal fall TV season,” found it to be a refreshing break from “normal-
ity.”1 Paired with another of the network’s critically praised series, Jane the
Virgin (The CW, 2014–19), which mixes genres with equal aplomb and
Copyright © 2021. Syracuse University Press. All rights reserved.

adopts a parodic stance toward tropes associated with the telenovela, Crazy
Ex-Girlfriend (hereafter CXG) was described by several of the nation’s top
reviewers as “clever,” “fresh,” “inventive,” “original,” “quirky,” “unfamil-
iar,” and “unique.”2 Such discourse attests to the overwhelmingly positive
reception of a program whose most distinguishing feature (aside from the
lavishly designed, lyrically audacious musical numbers that pepper each
episode) is its unconventional protagonist: a “wonderfully flawed, dement-
edly romantic” young woman who—even as early as the pilot episode
(“Josh Just Happens to Live Here!”)—was already being labeled as “totally
insane” and “certifiably cracked” by many of the same critics who were
29

Perspectives on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend : Nuanced Postnetwork Television, edited by Amanda Konkle, and Charles Burnetts,
Syracuse University Press, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csu/detail.action?docID=6721612.
Created from csu on 2021-10-06 12:30:44.