How 'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' Gives Us A Masterclass In Using Repetition
Image; Hollywood Reporter
I love the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–2019). It combines many of my favorite elements: strong female protagonists, "problematic" women, musical numbers, and uproarious comedy. I still sing the soundtracks to this show three years after it has ended. Some of its lines have become inside jokes between my partner and me. No other show has so much staying power in my head.
The show is about a young lawyer named Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom) moving across the country to pursue her obsession with a guy. We slowly learn that this fixation is not because of some inherent awfulness but due to unaddressed mental illness partially brought on by familial abuse. Rebecca has been attempting to mask these destructive behaviors her entire life, and throughout the show, her primary coping mechanism is processing her feelings as musical numbers inside her head.
I normally deconstruct harmful things in media, but today I wanted to focus on something that this show does right, specifically how Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a masterclass in using repetition to make both great jokes and themes all in one stroke. If you love the show or want to learn more about using repetition in your work, stay tuned until the end.
Repetition of Theme Songs
The first significant repetition you as the viewer will probably notice is the show's theme song, which changes from season to season, but is repeated during the start of every episode. Most shows only try to capture the tone or aesthetic in their theme songs, assuming they even have one at all. These theme songs usually solely rely on visuals to convey to the viewer who our lead characters are and what the show is about (think Law & Order, Friends, The Simpsons, etc.).
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, however, does something rare in media — it forecasts its themes and character arcs in the lyrics of the opening theme song. The first season's jingle involves Rebecca in complete denial, describing how she has moved to West Covina because she's sad and not due to her fixation with hunk Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III). She's being called crazy by a chorus and reflexively rejecting those labels as "sexist" and lacking "nuance." In the second season, she has repressed this obsessive tendency even further with the lyrics, "I'm just a girl in love (La la la lovey dove). I can't be held responsible for my actions."
The third season is where we see a shift. She has gone from denial and repression to doubt. Her idea of crazy is buckling at the seams, highlighting Rebecca's own struggle with these terms. As the chorus of the song mocks beautifully: "You do (you don't!) wanna be crazy. And you don't (you do!) wanna be "crazy." To clarify: yes, no on the crazy. We hope this helps!."
By the time we get to the fourth season, the theme song's lyrics show us that Rebecca is a fully actualized person. She's not only capable of the emotion of love, but happiness, sadness, and cruelty. We have gone through an entire emotional journey, just through the evolution of the show's opening theme song, highlighting how it uses repetitive jingles (something that is usually an afterthought to most TV shows) and makes them a core aspect of its storytelling.
Take note, writers: no element of your story should be an afterthought. Even seemingly benign aspects of a work can be vital to the story you are trying to tell.
Repetition of Lyrics and Dialogue
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, however, is more than just its theme songs. This show put out on average three musical numbers per episode, and many of these are reprised in a way that recontextualizes the song so that it takes on a new meaning.
For example, the song "I am a Villain In My Own Story" was initially sung by Rebecca to signify how her obsession with Josh had caused her to do some terrible things to those around her, but it serves as the background music for Josh's ex Valencia Perez (Gabrielle Ruiz) as a way for her to process her breakup with him (see Why Is Josh's Ex-Girlfriend Eating Carbs?). Good musicals (and just good stories in general) know how to take an emotionally-resonate theme and remix it for the appropriate moment (see also Centaurworld season one for another example).
This repetition isn't always in the background of Crazy-Ex Girlfriend but is frequently included in the dialogue as well. The lyrics of the first season's theme song are repeated line for line as a joke between characters Paula Proctor (Donna Lynne Champlin) and her husband, Scott. We also see frenemy character Audra Levine (Rachel Grate) repeat the closing line of season 2's I’m Just A Girl In Love, symbolizing to the viewer that she is in the middle of a breakdown. "You can't call me crazy," Audra rationalizes, "because when you call me crazy, you are calling me in love. Blam." It's a funny button to a joke because we know exactly what that line means by this point in the series — we've only listened to it over a dozen times.
These repetitions can highlight serious themes, too, not just jokes. We learn that the lyrics of the second season's theme song are word for word what Rebecca's mother told a judge after Rebecca burned down a former obsessions house. "Your honor," her mother tells the judge, "She's just a girl in love. She can't be held responsible for her actions." We understand that these words are a justification imparted to Rebecca by her mother on how she should perceive her unhealthy attachments with men. It goes into this theme of how Rebecca is caught in this negative cycle that has detrimentally impacted her mental health.
In another example, when Rebecca texts her father in the season two finale to see if he will come to her wedding, it's the exact same message she sent to Josh Chan when she first arrived at West Covina in season one. It symbolizes how her obsession with Josh partly stems from the unhealthy attachment she has with her father, whose abandonment led to some significant insecurities about men.
This show is adept at first introducing a concept to the viewer in a humorous way only to reveal that that quirk is part of a larger, more dysfunctional form of behavior. We think her obsessiveness is just a quirk of her "craziness," but really, it points to a far more painful and poignant history.
This is good screenwriting 101. When you introduce something in a banal or humorous way, it lowers your audience's guard. When a turn happens in the narrative, it's not something that we can claim comes out of left-field — it was there in the theme song of the first season.
Conclusion
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is not the only show to use repetition to its advantage. The idea of a motif (i.e., a repeating feature or idea) has been around in literature for hundreds of years and used in art thousands of years before it went by that name. It's not revolutionary to suggest that you repeat resonating themes and symbolism for your viewers to make your work more impactful.
While all good stories should try to do this, it's awe-inspiring how much Crazy Ex-Girlfriend does with repetition. There's not a single scrap that the show doesn't seem to tuck away to build upon later. From the repetition of its theme songs to its score to its lyrics, I have always found myself continuously delighted by how things will return to me.
If you are looking for something to hone your craft, I highly recommend giving Crazy Ex-Girlfriend a binge. It might just be what the doctor ordered.