Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Review: Why is Josh’s Ex-Girlfriend Eating Carbs? (Season 2 Episode 5)
We’re finally, like, totally over Josh, right? And to prove it, let’s go to Burning Man and build new relationships.
The scariest thing about this episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 2 Episode 5 “Why is Josh’s Ex-Girlfriend Eating Carbs?” is the same scary thing about every episode: the precariousness of Rebecca’s schemes.
From the very beginning, there is the ever-looming fear that Rebecca will slowly begin successfully bonding with Valencia only to do something ridiculous, and simultaneously self-serving and self-sabotaging, to ruin any goodwill by the end of the episode.
Fortunately, Rebecca manages to earn and maintain the girl power camaraderie throughout. (Is “girl power” still an unironic phrase?)
Unfortunately, this seems to come at the expense of her friendship with Paula, who is also growing up and growing away.
Oh, boy. Rooting for Rebecca’s mental health really is an emotionally taxing game of whack-a-mole.
Now that Greg is gone, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, like Rebecca and Josh, is trying to move on without one of the defining characters that marked Rebecca’s journey.
The show now has to operate around a new dynamic; moving Heather into the best friend role and turning Valencia from an antagonist to a supporting member are things that were unfathomable last season, but are now the new reality.
To accomplish the building of this new reality, we choose to connect, refresh, and heal over at Electric Mesa and pair up two of the most unlikely partners this show can offer.
Or is it unlikely?
We’ve seen before that Valencia and Rebecca actually can get along, if only Rebecca could’ve dropped the pretense of pretending to be her friend. Well, now the pretense is dropped and while this new version of the relationship also exists because of Josh, it centers around his absence.
Psychology-wise, the most interesting bit of this episode is indubitably the Triceratops dream sequence, wherein our heroines both imagine themselves having to kill their love.
The differing ways which they imagine doing so, however, is very telling: Valencia sees herself as the delicate prima ballerina who must kill [her relationship with] TriceraJosh to save her own life.
Rebecca is, once again, the villain in her own story, a lazy, first-day-of-class dance student who can’t be bothered to wear the uniform. Her drug trip ends much less tragicromantically, with her becoming the triceratops and literally eating Josh’s still-beating heart.
One of these days, Bex, you’ll see yourself as the ballerina. Or at the very least, as not the triceratops.
While one relationship’s heart is eaten, two more form in their orbit.
Paula meets herself a nice widower with kids who is starting over at a late age just like she is. Bonding! Over law!
Paula deserves this, really. Her marriage is finally back on track, her career is just getting started, and, ss she said, this is the first time she gets to skulk for herself.
That does not, unfortunately, leave very much space and time for Rebecca, who has already gone through the excruciating process of obtaining a law degree and is too self-absorbed to notice until it’s too late. If I know my television, there will come a reckoning for this drifting friendship.
The best scenes of the episodes come from WhiJarryl (a name I swear I did not make up on my own), the most realistic couple on Crazy Ex Girlfriend.
WhiJo finally had an insecurity (“me likey”) and unlike other shows that either play up same-sex relationships as soap operas, or dress them down in heteronormativity, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend handles this storyline with a refreshing… banality (it’s almost as though they were like a normal couple!).
While I miss Greg, I have to believe that Crazy Ex Girlfriend will continue to find its footing and eventually make us all forget that Greg was ever a character until he returns for Season 4 in a surprise upset.
Sh*t Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Characters Say
Paula: “I get it. I’m Barb and she’s Nancy.”
Rebecca: “You’re not fat. You’re like most people’s wedding goal weight.”
Rebecca: “I eat three muffins a day. It’s NBD for me. For you, it’s a cry for help.”
Josh: “If I can’t hit the gym, how will I ever be a good father?”
Valencia: “Postmates won’t deliver to me anymore.” (Lies. I know for a fact, Postmates does not give enough of a damn about their drivers to blackball anyone.)
Rebecca: “It’s what Easter would have been like if I had been allowed to believe in Jesus. I saw a woman with a bikini top made of the Bill of Rights.”
Darryl: “All of your boyfriends could have been in Cocoon.”
Heather: “You’re basic in an enjoyable way.”
What did you think of this episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? Will Rebecca spiral after losing Paula the way she did when she lost Josh? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend airs Fridays at 9/8c on the CW.
James A. Windley
James A. Windley, Writer, Virgo, Loaded couch potato. James' love of television began at the intersection when Saturday morning cartoons met to Xena: Warrior Princess syndications, and his head has been a mess ever since. He loves superheroes, drama (in life, not television), and misses when very special episodes were a thing.