#nathanielplimpton

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This scene broke my heart

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Understanding the Fear of Vulnerability

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has always done a great job at emphasising the importance of embracing vulnerability through Nathaniel’s character, but S03E11 “Nathaniel and I are Just Friends” also gives us a glimpse into Rebecca’s own confrontations with her vulnerabilities, namely her fear of allowing herself to fall in love again. After everything that’s happened with Robert, Greg, and Josh, it’s easy for Rebecca to assume that she is going to ruin any relationship that she gets into. Between burning her ex-boyfriend’s house down and her suicide attempt, it’s completely understandable that Rebecca is afraid of pursuing her love for Nathaniel. Her new diagnosis of borderline personality disorder no doubt also reinforces her belief that she can only experience unstable relationships. When people get hurt, they build up emotional walls to protect themselves from future pain. It’s a very natural human defence mechanism that most if not all of us are guilty of, yet we don’t realise how damaging such a fear of vulnerability can be. 

As Dr. Akopian says in her therapy session with Rebecca, we all “need and deserve love”. These emotional walls that we build up after past heartbreaks aren’t protecting us, they’re products of fear that are keeping us from achieving real, genuine and healthy love. Rebecca’s fear of intimacy has certainly manifested in her desperate attempts to distance herself from Nathaniel, but as viewers we can also see that she is still very much in love with him, and is subconsciously finding ways to stay close to him (e.g. the lawsuit, the office arrangement, the sex etc.). Rebecca can deny her feelings for Nathaniel, but she can’t erase them, because love is ultimately so much stronger than fear. It’s the perfect use of a reprise of the season 1 song “Face Your Fears” when Rebecca stands in front of Nathaniel’s apartment, contemplating whether or not to admit her love for him, because that’s exactly what love is. Love is about facing our fears of vulnerability and letting go of the emotional walls that we’ve built in the past to make way for a chance at love, no matter how scary and unfamiliar it may feel. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend may be a comedy, but more often than not I find myself in tears after realising how stunningly honest and relatable the show is, and I am constantly in awe of the wisdom that the writers manage to express through this show. 

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Redefining Breakups

Disney princess movies and conventional rom coms have always followed synonymously traditional definitions of relationships. If you love someone, you get into a relationship with them; If you don’t, you break up with them. It’s clear cut, easy to follow, and makes sense on a surface level of understanding– but therein lies the problem. Love isn’t clear cut, it isn’t easy to follow, and it most definitely does not make sense.

The complicated aftermath of Rebecca and Nathaniel’s breakup is heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time, and it is precisely through its paradoxical nature that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend manages to portray the honesty and accuracy of love and heartbreak. Rebecca wasn’t lying when she said to Nathaniel: “I really care about you, I hope you know that”. Breaking up with someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you stop loving them or caring about them. In fact, it can very well mean the opposite. Tears welled up in my eyes when Rebecca told Nathaniel: “I’m happy that you found someone else”, because loving someone means wanting nothing more than for them to be happy, even if it means they find that with someone else. Hats off to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for educating its viewers that breakups don’t have to be a dreaded, terrible thing. It can be (and many times is) honest, mature, and full of love.

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