‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Finale: An Admission, a Wedding, and Lots of Romantic Confusion

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Spoiler alert! Don’t continue reading until you’ve seen the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season finale.

It’s a whole new world on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend after Monday’s season finale.

The hour sees Rebecca (Rachel Bloom) responsibly attempt to pursue a relationship with Greg (Santino Fontana), but unfortunately for both of them, he’s still thinking about the talk he has with Josh (Vincent Rodrigues III) at the hospital where his friend tells him he’s not good enough for Rebecca. This, along with him catching sight of Rebecca and Josh talking at Josh’s sister’s wedding prompts Greg to lie and tell Rebecca that their relationship is simply casual—even though he later admits to himself that he does love her.

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Meanwhile, at the wedding reception, Josh realizes that he does indeed have feelings for Rebecca—ones he’s free to pursue after Valencia (Gabrielle Ruiz) breaks up with him, having realized that she and Josh both want very different things. So Josh and Rebecca finally give in to their feelings and drive away. However the night doesn’t end there for the lovebirds. After some passionate love-making, a blissful Rebecca admits that not only is she in love with Josh Chan, but that she in fact moved to West Covina for him.

Elsewhere in the season-ending hour, Paula and Rebecca get into a big argument after Paula finally admits all the things she did to get Rebecca and Josh together. However, Darryl (Pete Gardner) sees how miserable the friends are without each other, so he convinces Paula to also attend the wedding reception so she can make up with, and be there for, Rebecca.

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With so much happening in the season finale, TV Insider spoke to executive producer Aline Brosh McKenna about Rebecca’s big reveal, Josh’s final thoughts and that possible Aladdin reference.

Rebecca could have gotten away with never telling Josh she moved there for him. How did you decide this is the right time for Rebecca to reveal that she’d moved to West Covina for him?
Well, she thinks this is their ultimate moment of connection and they’ve transcended all those petty concerns and now they can be honest with each other and tell each other the truth. You know when you get together with someone and you’re like, “I was thinking of you then,” “I called you then,” “I liked you from this moment on.” That’s where she thinks they are. She doesn’t quite understand what’s actually happened and where he is or what his expectations are. She thinks this is the fairy tale ending that she has been seeking the whole episode.

When we see Josh’s face in those last few moments, what’s going through his mind?
“S–t, oh s–t.” That’s what’s going through his mind. I will say that the men in our writer’s room and the men who worked on the episode, when she says, “You’re the solution to all my problems.” That was the line that really, really got them. [It’s] rather misguided, but we tell women that love is the answer. We tell women that love relationships are the answer. We tell people that insanity is just a normal part of courtship. You go to weddings and people have these elaborate stories now of all the complicated things they went through in their courtship to get to where they are and they sound like stalker stories.

So in her mind every love story, romantic comedy, Disney love story everything everyone does is psychotic. It’s all okay because in the end everybody works out. It’s really sold to us that the end justifies the means. So if you end up together, it doesn’t matter how many obstacles, how many crazy things you did for love along the way. That’s what we’re told.

I really appreciated that Valencia recognized that she and Josh were both in different places in their relationship.  What did it mean for her to realize that at the wedding?
I like that it’s a strong moment for her where she just realizes, “Oh I thought it was you … I thought it was her. I thought I had a romantic rival. That’s not the problem. The problem is that you can’t commit.” It’s true. He’s not fully committed to her, he’s preoccupied with someone else. Once she’s broken up with him, he’s able to explore that. [Josh]’s very, very passive. So he doesn’t think after that point. He really needed Valencia to make that decision and that rupture for him.

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I’ve never thought of Josh as “passive.” But it’s true!
Oh, he’s super passive. If you look back on his behaviour on the show, it’s always, Rebecca gets him his job. Valencia tells him what to do and where to go. His struggle as a character is to really like make his own decisions and live his life.

It was an interesting change to see that Paula is the one who’s really rooting for Rebecca’s relationship with Josh, while Rebecca herself has kind of moved on. What made you like explore that route instead of the opposite?
Well, Paula is Rebecca’s id. So when she says to her, “If you think you’re over Josh, you’re wrong…” She’s right. Paula’s often right in her way. So the truth about Rebecca’s feelings for Josh is more complicated and he remains kind of the central love object that she’s fixated on. In the finale, she tries to move past it, but she is still vying for that kind of fantasy love. She’s still longing for that perfect fantasy princess love, that is what Josh represents to her and that really truly is the the thing she’s struggling to get to work through and get past more than Josh himself.

If Josh is the ideal, what does Greg represent to Rebecca?
Greg’s a real person with real problems and we’ve tried to show through the whole season. He has issues with his mother and with his father. He’s a complicated guy. He’s somebody who’s in the real world and has real problems and she is a child in a lot of ways. She’s very immature, so she doesn’t have the skills to be in a relationship with somebody, especially somebody as complicated as Greg. Truly, Greg really disappoints her in a very profound way because of his own insecurities.

RELATED: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Pete Gardner on His Newfound Love for White Josh

When Greg tells Rebecca that their relationship is casual, what’s motivating him in that moment? Is it Josh’s words?
He just can’t get past it. He can’t get past when he looks at him. He knows right away how she feels very early in the series. He’s one of the first people to get hip to it, so he can’t get past it. Also, Josh has been his lifelong rival. Josh has outshone him his entire life. So it’s a very scary place for him to be and he doesn’t want to confess his feelings and then be made a fool of.

What does it mean for Greg to kind of admit to himself that he does love Rebecca?
It’s too little, too late, unfortunately. We’ll have to see what happens after that. What he doesn’t realise in that moment was that when he disappointed her, he lost an opportunity. She was telling him how she felt. She was ready to take that next move.

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How did the theme for the wedding come about? Was that just like, “Oh we have Lea Salonga, we have to do an Aladdin reference?
No, that’s funny. That actually came about before. We were just sort of exploring fairy tale shots and we wanted to do the hover board thing. So it came out of the flying carpet thing at the end. Once we had Lea it sort of took on an extra meaning. The one thing everybody always loves about the show is that Southern California kind of pastiche of you take all these cultures and you whirl them together, mix them together without any concern for authenticity, which I kind of love.

Everybody has responded really well to Darryl coming out as bi and his and White Josh’s relationship. How did you guys approach crafting that side of Darryl?
It was a choice that we made for the character that we felt was perfect for Darryl. It was a choice we made for the character. It wasn’t a choice we made from the outside. We did want to make the truest, most specific choice for him and then it resonated with a lot of people. That’s been really wonderful. We’re going to explore their relationship next season for sure.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has been renewed for a second season.