Trivia / Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

• Acclaimed Flop: Almost everyone who watches it seems to love the show: critics wrote glowing reviews and Rachel Bloom won both a Golden Globe and a Critics' Choice Award. And yet, only one episode, "That Text Was Not Meant for Josh!", gotten over a million viewers (1.02 million). One episode, "My Mom, Greg's Mom and Josh's Sweet Dance Moves!", got exactly one million, and every other episode got less than a million. That means it was one of the lowest-rated shows on the CW, a network already known for low-rated shows. When the CW renewed the show for its third season in 2017, it became the lowest-rated show to ever be renewed by a major American broadcast network. "Ever" as in "the entire history of the television medium." It is one of the lowest rated TV shows ever to be renewed through four seasons.
• Actor Allusion: As part of her campaign against him in season 3, Rebecca claims that Josh is a homophobe. Josh's actor, Vincent Rodriguez, is gay in real life.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Valencia wasn't originally written as Latina, but when Gabrielle Ruiz was cast they decided to make it part of her background. Ruiz has also said that she shares some of Valencia's traits, such as Brutal Honesty, a tendency to bossiness and a fondness for boxed water.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Rachel and Rebecca are both Jewish, both were considered "weird" as children, and both had anxiety and depression (although Rachel handled it slightly better than Rebecca). In fact, both have a lot in common, aside from the fact that Rachel grew up in Southern California and her parents didn't push her to be a lawyer. Bloom says that Rebecca is what she would be like if she hadn't discovered music and comedy.
  • When Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna were first developing the show as a pitch to Showtime, Bloom was also planning her wedding, and the resulting stress considerably boosted Bloom's own existing anxiety issues, which in turn she wrote into Rebecca's character.
  • Like Heather, Vella Lovell has Black and White heritage.
  • Josh and Vincent Rodriguez are both avid martial arts practitioners with Rodriguez holding black belts in Shotokan Karate and Taekwondo.
• Budget-Busting Element: At the end of the song "Love Kernels," Rebecca breaks the fourth wall to say that the artsy music video, with its various scene changes and costumes to symbolize Rebecca's Love Martyr status, ate up the show's production budget, so they now have to recast Darryl with a broom. Word of God confirmed this song actually did use a good chunk of the production budget.
  Rachel Bloom: But yes, that number was expensive — we went out to the desert for a day in preproduction to film those sweeping desert scenes, we built another set on stage with all that lavish, beautiful furniture. The costumes alone, I mean especially that cactus costume, it’s expensive.
• Cast Full of Writers: Rachel Bloom not only plays Rebecca Bunch, she is also the co-creator of the show and one of the writers and songwriters. Rene Gube (Father Brah) and Michael Hitchcock (Bert) are also writers.
• Cast the Expert: It was apparently by coincidence, but when casting for the show, they tended to get professional Broadway singers and dancers.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Yes, Santino Fontana is a rather good piano player.
  • Both Vincent Rodriguez III and Gabrielle Ruiz are trained dancers, and frequently get to show it off.
• Channel Hop: Originally developed for Showtime, the show was later picked up by The CW.
• Creator Cameo:
  • A subtle one: the dancer in the stinger for Season 2 Episode 1 who asks Rebecca what the dance is for, and who is disturbed to find that she isn't real but only in Rebecca's head, is Kathryn Burns, the show's choreographer (who won an Emmy for her work on Season 1.) Burns makes a brief return as herself in "Real Life Fighting Is Awkward" in Season 4.
  • Co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna appears as the opposing lawyer on Rebecca's case in the season three finale and season four premiere.
• Creator Couple: Rachel Bloom's husband, Dan Gregor, also writes for the show and has popped up as a minor character in a few episodes.
• Descended Creator: Rene Gube is one of the writers of the show. He's also an actor though, so when they need someone to play the Filipino priest, he was the perfect choice, so they cast him as Father Brah.
• Dueling Shows: With Jane the Virgin. In their lifespans they were the only Comedy-Drama shows with female leads on The CW and they both won Golden Globe awards when they were each on their first seasons. They also both finished their runs in the same season.
• Enforced Method Acting: The reason for White Josh's confused and half-hearted participation during "Flooded With Justice" is that David Hull didn't know he was going to be in the scenes until ten minutes prior.
• Hollywood Homely: Young Rebecca is this; all the frizzy hair and fake acne can't make Ava Acres actually ugly. (Exaggerated when we learn that at one point in her childhood/adolescence, Rebecca suffered from a hormone imbalance which made people mistake her for a guy.)
• Irony as She Is Cast: Vella Lovell has commented on the irony of playing underachieving slacker Heather when she herself was a very driven person who graduated from Juilliard and NYU.
• Network to the Rescue: It was consistently the lowest rated show on the CW, despite critical acclaim. Most people thought it would get cancelled. The network eventually renewed it for a fourth and final season.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Silas Bunch, Rebecca's father, is played by Jay Huguley in his first appearance and John Allen Nelson in subsequent appearances.
  • Paula's older son, Brendan, was originally portrayed by Zayne Emory in season 1, then replaced by Elijah Nelson in season 2, but Emory returned to the role for the rest of the series.
  • Greg Serrano was played by Santino Fontana for the show's first two seasons, until the character was Put on a Bus so the actor could spend more time with his family. When Greg returned in Season 4, he was played by Skylar Astin. Notably, the show acknowledged the switch by using it to show how Rebecca's perception of Greg had changed since they'd last seen each other.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: On a show where gay actors play straight characters (Vincent Rodriguez as Josh Chan) as well as vice-versa (David Hull as White Josh), Emma Willmann as Beth is the exception as both actress and character are openly lesbian.
• Reality Subtext: In "Josh is Going to Hawaii!," the mayor of West Covina gives Rebecca the key to the city due to her work in the previous episode. This was inspired by the fact that Aline Brosh McKenna and the show actually got the key to the city of West Covina for prominently including the city in the show.
• Saved from Development Hell: The show was originally developed by Showtime...who then passed after the pilot was made. Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna sent the pilot to network after network and it was rejected by each one. At one point, it was rejected six times in one day. But then McKenna saw Jane the Virgin and realized the CW might be a good fit, so sent it there and they ordered the show to series.
• Star-Making Role: Rachel Bloom. Before this, she was known as the person who made "You Can Touch My Boobies" (still her most well known comedy music video). Now she has a Golden Globe.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Rachel Bloom and Luca Padovan really look like they could be siblings.
• Stunt Casting: In "I'm So Happy That Josh is So Happy!," Rebecca hallucinates Dr. Phil due to her depression (And in exchange, Rachel Bloom appeared in Dr. Phil's show.)
• Throw It In!: It was John Allen Nelson's idea that after Rebecca's father bilks her out of her money, he should pocket the check without even looking at it.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Rachel Bloom was originally supposed to go in a diet to get a more shapely body for the show, however, she decided against it, feeling that Rebecca would better represent the struggles of a normal woman with a more average body type.
  • The show was originally commissioned by Showtime and thus had more adult content. In the pilot, instead of kissing Greg and asking him about Josh, Rebecca was supposed to ask him about Josh while giving him a handjob. And in the second episode, the song "Feeling Kinda Naughty" was originally titled "I Want to Grow a Dick and Fuck You With My Jealousy Dick," before Rachel and the songwriters reworked it.
  • Comedian Michael McDonald (the one from MADtv (1995), not that Michael McDonald,) was originally cast as Darryl. He appeared in the series finale as the open mic MC.
  • Carrie Brownstein was announced to be directing an episode for the fourth season, and Bloom was originally announced as making her directorial debut as the director of "I Have a Date Tonight". Unfortunately, Brownstein didn't direct any episode and "I Have a Date Tonight" ended up being directed by Bloom's husband, Dan Gregor, who wrote and directed a few previous episodes.
  • Rachel Bloom felt that "Heavy Boobs" would ideally have been performed both topless and in silhouette, but the network wouldn't let them do it. She admitted, however, that she was amazed with some of the things the network did let them get away with, such as the "finishing on her chest" gag in "We Tapped That Ass".
• Write What You Know: Rachel Bloom grew up in Southern California (specifically Manhattan Beach) and didn't see many shows that were set in the small towns around Los Angeles County. So she created one. She also used to have a crush on a boy in middle school who lived in a town next to West Covina and she would find any excuse to go to that town, which is why she chose West Covina, and she knew a lot of "Asian bros" and knew that they weren't really represented on television, hence Josh Chan being an Asian bro. Coping with mental health issues being a central theme of the series was heavily inspired by Bloom's own experiences.