KD^3C^3 - 20251026 She's got a bag of gambits
I haven't talked about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in a while on here. I stopped doing the Song of the Week not because I ran out of songs, but more because it started to feel perfunctory. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend feels like a show from the before times. I watch a lot of older television. My mother outlaw is often surprised when I mention i enjoy watching The Rockford Files or shows of a similar vintage. But those shows are from long enough ago that they feel like they come from outside of time. but there is media that is from my specific past that feels both more immediate and farther away. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of those shows.
Emily St. James wrote a piece about how there was a moment in the 2000s where the story that the united states promises itself seemed to have already come true. That wasn't really true then and it's not really true now. What has changed is how we (for a given value of 'we") see it. The problems are not new, but they are more blatantly obvious than they have been, assuming you were sheltered enough to have never seen them first hand. I think in a lot of ways you can bookend this moment with two musicals, Avenue Q and Hamilton. But I was talking about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
CXG (I get tired of typing out the whole thing) is a show that is much narrower in scope than either Hamilton or Avenue Q, but they're all musicals so there's some shared DNA. But where Avenue Q and Hamilton use the trappings of other formats (puppet show and hip-hop biography respectively) to create what seems like a subversive critique or at least satire of society, both end up re-entrenching particular aspects of that US story. The presentation is doing the subverting, but the message is perhaps a little too pat.
CXG, in part because it gets to be a TV show instead of a single 2-3 hours long Broadway musical, does almost the opposite. It starts of with a premise that feels familiar, a woman makes the "Crazy" decision to move across the country to California because she runs into her summer-camp boyfriend in a particularly low moment. But over four seasons of the show we learn the situation is a lot more nuanced than that. And even as the show reaches it's natural conclusion there's not a lot in the way of resolution. Things are not wrapped up neat and tidy. It's a song deliberately left unfinished because that's what life is.
OK, I've convinced myself the show might be more relevant than I originally thought. I should probably watch it again. Sure would be nice if there was a blu-ray release of the entire show. Since it's not currently streaming anywhere.
When I sat down to write this I wanted to talk about the butter ads that appear in the show a couple times, but I didn't get there. Anyway, it's got some of the most non-sequiter butter advertisements, on of which is actually plot relevant. Here's the 4 slogans for butter, yes butter, that appear in the show:
Emily St. James wrote a piece about how there was a moment in the 2000s where the story that the united states promises itself seemed to have already come true. That wasn't really true then and it's not really true now. What has changed is how we (for a given value of 'we") see it. The problems are not new, but they are more blatantly obvious than they have been, assuming you were sheltered enough to have never seen them first hand. I think in a lot of ways you can bookend this moment with two musicals, Avenue Q and Hamilton. But I was talking about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
CXG (I get tired of typing out the whole thing) is a show that is much narrower in scope than either Hamilton or Avenue Q, but they're all musicals so there's some shared DNA. But where Avenue Q and Hamilton use the trappings of other formats (puppet show and hip-hop biography respectively) to create what seems like a subversive critique or at least satire of society, both end up re-entrenching particular aspects of that US story. The presentation is doing the subverting, but the message is perhaps a little too pat.
CXG, in part because it gets to be a TV show instead of a single 2-3 hours long Broadway musical, does almost the opposite. It starts of with a premise that feels familiar, a woman makes the "Crazy" decision to move across the country to California because she runs into her summer-camp boyfriend in a particularly low moment. But over four seasons of the show we learn the situation is a lot more nuanced than that. And even as the show reaches it's natural conclusion there's not a lot in the way of resolution. Things are not wrapped up neat and tidy. It's a song deliberately left unfinished because that's what life is.
OK, I've convinced myself the show might be more relevant than I originally thought. I should probably watch it again. Sure would be nice if there was a blu-ray release of the entire show. Since it's not currently streaming anywhere.
When I sat down to write this I wanted to talk about the butter ads that appear in the show a couple times, but I didn't get there. Anyway, it's got some of the most non-sequiter butter advertisements, on of which is actually plot relevant. Here's the 4 slogans for butter, yes butter, that appear in the show:
- When was the last time you were truly happy?
- Your future is in your hands...And on the edge of your knife...
- Are you making healthy choices?
- Butter can’t save you now
And for old time's sake, this week's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Song of the Week is: The Darkness