This week, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continues its sob fest over men’s problems, and I mean that literally. After Dr Shin encourages her to spend her free time helping others, Rebecca decides to save an engaged man from a bad marriage, no matter the cost. Darryl continues to struggle with the ramifications of deciding to have a baby alone. Nathaniel and White Josh bond over their romantic break ups, because no one understands the problems of hot, sensitive guys. Josh joins the party for a while, because he has problems, too. Rebecca stays away from the ex-boyfriends, for now, but she does decide to rescue Darryl. I don’t think she’s quite gotten the message about this whole “Stop obsessing about men” thing.
The episode picks up with Rebecca and Nathaniel’s break up scene. Except Rebecca explains that it’s not a break up. She just needs to avoid falling into old obsessive patterns again, so she can’t see him any more.
But now she doesn’t have anything to do all day. Dr Shin suggests that she find some kind of volunteer work to occupy her. He describes one of his patients who volunteered at a library and ended up writing a book. He’s just given her an impossible standard to reach for with her own volunteer work, and told her that she needs to reach that level to gain his approval. Not healthy.
Dr Shin asks her to think about how much time she’s spent on romantic relationships, and how productive she could be if she put that time into something else. Cue the series 100th song, a Hair take off called “Without Love You Can Save the World.” The entire cast dances in a park while wearing fringe. It’s a depressing song that includes the phrase “asexual utopia” to describe a world without love, which has offended many asexuals, since they, in fact, do fall in love, and live with lots of love in their lives.
This used to be a queer friendly show, back when it was also a feminist show. Promoting hurtful stereotypes of a marginalized minority is not where I expected them to go with their 100th song. But the song is also of the opinion that you can either do good in the world or be in a relationship, so the writers, Dr Shin and Rebecca are pretty f*cked up to begin with. This wasn’t a sentiment worth writing a song about, just like so many of the songs this season.
Rebecca takes her newfound altruism and searches for someone she can help. But most charities involve too much grossness, hard work, or too many complications for this snowflake to cope with. She finds her target when Valencia tells her that the party planning business is floundering. Valencia has an engagement party to plan, but can’t afford an assistant.
Rebecca to the rescue. She balances Valencia’s books and accompanies her to a meeting with the happy couple, a pair of grocery store managers that we met in season 1. Marty is sweet, open and in love. Ally is closed, overly worried about PDA and seems bored half of the time. Alarm bells ring in Rebecca’s head. She’s sure Ally doesn’t really want to marry Marty and takes it upon herself to save him from a bad marriage. She wishes someone had warned her this way. Heather and Valencia both point out that EVERYONE warned Rebecca. Rebecca doesn’t listen, because she never listens.
Valencia begs and threatens, trying to impress upon Rebecca that ruining this event will ruin her party planning business for good. It doesn’t matter. Rebecca’s already forgotten that she was supposed to be helping her friend build a business that would be her main source of income. All that matters is that she save the male near stranger.
To that end, she follows Ally around the party, and discovers that she’s cheating on Marty with the beverage manager, a hot blonde. Rebecca runs right out to take the mic from Marty’s grandmother and announce their affair to the entire party, instead of quietly pulling Marty aside after the party, which is what any caring friend who felt they had to warn him would do.
Marty is angry and humiliated. He’s known about the affair all along, and he accepts it. He loves Ally and will take her however he can get her. Ally wants to get married, like her friends, but beverage guy isn’t ready to settle down. Open relationships are a thing grown ups sometimes do, Rebecca, but they don’t always tell their grandmothers about it. I’d think a girl from NYC like you would have heard of that.
So, Rebecca ruined Marty and Ally’s party, and her good friend Valencia’s business. The show emphasized the effect of her actions on Marty. We were given the impression that Ally was a cheating cheater, so her feelings don’t matter, even though she was excited about the wedding and she and Marty have an arrangement.
Valencia’s feelings got one line, in a much later scene with Darryl, where Rebecca tells him that Val forgave her, even though she’s had to forgive Rebecca so many times. That’s it. No exploration of how Rebecca’s inability to stop putting men first is ruining her relationships. No look into how Valencia’s business will come out of this. Valencia was used as a throwaway plot device.
Rebecca also saves Darryl without thinking it through, which I’ll get to in a minute.
Without love, you can save the men of the world that you’re not in love with. Even if it means trashing the women.
Daryl has sold as much of his kitschy memorabilia as possible and funded another baby attempt, but his sperm are too fast and aimless to fertilize an egg. They race around, bumping into walls repeatedly like a bird instead. He can’t afford another egg. And he refuses to sell his fancy hairdryer, the key to his lustrous hair volume and superpowers. Eventually, he gets so desperate he even tries to sell that.
Tim and Jim invite Darryl to their weekly poker game, using code that confuses poor, innocent Darryl. Mrs Hernandez, who is now the town gossip and queen of judginess, and Father Brah are regulars too. The first week, Darryl wins big, making him think he’s a natural cardshark. The second week, he loses big, leaving him weeping with self-pity at the Sugar Shack, where Rebecca finds him. Since men in need are now her specialty, and Darryl’s always been so nice to her, she offers to donate an egg to him.
Paula questions the wisdom of this, but what could possibly go wrong, with someone else carrying the baby, and Darryl raising it? It’s not like Rebecca will be watching everything that Darryl does or like she has a history of meddling in other people’s lives and breaking promises.
Nathaniel and White Josh run into each other at Home Base, where french fries have mysteriously appeared in front of both of them. Once Heather shames them into admitting they ordered the fries, they decide to team up to do something more productive to get over their mutual break ups.
Nathaniel has the new at home gym set that White Josh hasn’t been able to get for his gym, so they embark on a 7 day cleanse and torture challenge. The home gym is in matt black and covered with spikes, to make sure we understand that real men are toxicly masculine. They encourage each other by yelling humiliating personal insults that cut to the bone, like how Nat needs to gain his father’s love.
At the end of the week, they’ve each lost more than 1% of their already nonexistent body fat. Anorexic girls have nothing on these two. They decide to take their new hot bodies out to a bar and show them off.
They meet at a gay bar chosen by White Josh. He figured Nat would be comfortable because straight girls have started taking it over. He and Nathaniel are rude to and about straight girls in gay bars for the rest of the bar sequence. I hate to burst your bubble kids, but straight women have been going to gay bars at least since the early 80s, and probably always, usually invited by their gay friends. Get over yourselves.
Josh can’t stand having women there, because a gay bar was one of the few “men only” places he could escape to. He doesn’t notice the irony of him bringing a straight man to the bar, a member of a group that’s much less friendly to gay men, because Nat is someone Josh enjoys looking at, while Josh has no use for women of any kind. (Think about it. How often has he been friendly with a woman?) Not even as breeders, since he doesn’t want kids.
White Josh and Nat continue to feel sorry for themselves once inside the bar. Other people are finding them attractive, but they aren’t interested. They manspread across the bar, until a group of women ask them to take their gloom somewhere else. Then we get a song about how hard life is for fit hot guys, because they’re sensitive too, and no one appreciates them for them, or notices what unique snowflakes they are, or dries their tears when they get sad.
Josh Chan joins halfway through, because it turns out that he’s not a firefighter like he’s been telling everyone. He’s a stripper go go dancer who starts out in a fire fighter costume. He’s been objectified and had his emotions forgotten, too! Plus, his mommy was mean to him!!
Nathaniel ends up remembering that he’s the male Rebecca and decides to go home with an acquaintance he runs into. Casual sex solves every problem. WhiJo goes home alone, still grumbling about the women in his bar. Denial is also a river in Egypt.
Don’t look at them, they’re not singing for you. You could never be sensitive enough to understand how hard their lives are. And give them their shirts back, you monsters. But wait until after they’ve taken their pants off, too. If you ladies are going to invade the bar, you might as well hold their clothing.
Metawitches 
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