Television series

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Name: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Genre: Comedy, Music
Released: 2015
Cast: Rachel Bloom, Donna Lynne Champlin, Vincent Rodriguez III, Pete Gardner, Vella Lovell

A network sitcom that smuggled a genuine reckoning with mental illness inside big, gleeful musical numbers. Rebecca chases a rom-com ending west, and the show spends four seasons dismantling the myth that love fixes anything. Funny, structurally audacious, and often devastating — pastiche songs (Disney, hip-hop, Sondheim) do real emotional work. Watch it if you like your comedy with teeth and your feelings actually addressed.

TVMaze rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love musical comedies where the songs do real emotional work, and a character's worst impulses get skewered with sharp, affectionate detail that stings and tickles in the same breath.

Skip it if you want a show that plays its premise straight, since the romance is deliberately absurd and the tone swings hard between cringe, sincerity and full-cast production numbers.

What it asks of you: Each episode runs about an hour and the story keeps accumulating over four seasons, so it rewards sticking with it through its more ridiculous stretches.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

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BoJack Horseman2014

Animated sitcom about a washed-up sitcom horse that turns out to be one of the most honest shows ever made about depression, addiction and the lies we tell to keep functioning.

But Talking animals and absurdist gags sit next to genuinely bleak material — the tonal whiplash isn't for everyone, and it gets darker before it gets better.

Jane the Virgin2014

Same network, same commitment to loving a genre while making fun of it — telenovela absurdity played completely straight, with a narrator winking at you the whole time.

But Zero musical numbers and a soapier plot engine — if the songs were the draw, this trades them for narration and melodrama instead.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Ingrid Goes West2017

Swap the rom-com fantasy for social-media stalking and you get the same diagnosis — a woman convinced that fusing herself to someone else's life will finally make her whole.

A pitch-black comedy about Instagram envy curdling into obsession, with Aubrey Plaza terrifying and pathetic in equal measure — funny until it very much isn't.

But Much bleaker and more claustrophobic — there's no ensemble of friends to soften the loneliness, and no songs to make the descent bearable.

Schmigadoon!2021

A married couple stumbles into a town that only exists inside golden-age musicals, unable to leave until they fall in love — pastiche numbers this loving and this funny are rare.

But Only two short seasons and a broader, gentler satire — it's spoofing musical theatre history rather than doing therapy through song.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt2015

Trauma processed at top speed and top volume — a woman rebuilding a life after captivity, told through relentless jokes and a sunniness that's somehow never dishonest about the damage underneath.

But The joke-per-minute density can feel exhausting, and it's less interested in sitting with feelings than in outrunning them.

Flight of the Conchords2007

Two deadpan musicians in New York, an original song almost every episode, comedy that trusts a tune to say what dialogue can't — the direct ancestor of the songwriting instinct here.

But Much smaller scale and stakes — no real emotional arc, just deadpan vibes and shaggy plots stitched loosely together.

Search Party2016

Starts as a millennial mystery-comedy and mutates, season by season, into something darker about obsession, denial and the stories people tell to avoid looking at themselves.

But The tone shift across seasons is a gamble some viewers won't follow — it gets considerably nastier and stranger than where it starts.

The Mindy Project2012

A rom-com obsessive living inside her own rom-com brain, played for laughs and self-awareness — lighter fare, but poking at the same fantasy Rebecca is chasing.

But Considerably softer and safer — the show rarely risks the discomfort or darkness that gives Crazy Ex-Girlfriend its bite.

Girls2012

An unflinching look at a self-absorbed young woman making one bad decision after another, narrated with a total lack of vanity about how unlikeable she can be.

But No music, no genre satire, and a slower, more naturalistic pace — the humor is drier and the empathy harder-won.

The Apartment1960

Billy Wilder's rom-com hides a suicide attempt inside its jokes decades before this show made that combination its whole method — proof the trick is older than you think.

A dazzling, quietly devastating comedy about loneliness, complicity and Christmas parties — the blueprint for balancing genuine pain against genuinely funny dialogue, done in 1960 with total confidence.

But Black-and-white, slow by modern pacing, and its gender politics are very much of their moment — this is old Hollywood, not a streaming binge.

In Treatment2008

The show's therapist, Dr. Akopian, is doing real work — this is what that work actually looks like when the jokes and the songs get stripped away entirely.

Single-set, half-hour sessions between a therapist and his patients, told with total seriousness — if the therapy scenes were your favorite part, this is that idea taken all the way.

But No music, no comedy, no relief — it's intense, dialogue-only drama that asks real patience and offers none of the sugar.