The Songs of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Stubbornness Through Song

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Rebecca (Rachel Bloom) solves her problems with three things: fiscal irresponsibility, overreaction, and songs. In “Is Josh Free In Two Weeks?” Rebecca’s frantic scramble to plan a wedding in two weeks encompasses all of the above. This season has had its ebbs and flows, but now the tides have hit the mutual cap of its characters’ persistent refusal to learn from mistakes. The pressure has begun to build.

This stubbornness is partially helmed by Rebecca’s sexy, health-nut boss, Nathaniel (Scott Michael Foster), who accidentally poisons himself with some bad kale. After a roll of shame to the bathroom because of self-soiled slacks, Nathaniel still refuses to take a sick day. One replacement suit and nap-focused pep talk later, Nathaniel’s masculinity needs reassurance. So, serenading a dysenteric man dressed in a hand-me-down suit two sizes too big, Darryl (Pete Gardner), Tim (Michael McMillian) and Jim (Burl Moseley) unleash some questionably gendered hair metal.

The huge wigs, heavy makeup, and low-cut shirts that accompany their shredding are the perfect personification of the mixed gender norms of the “Man Nap.” Darryl uses the mic stand as a penis while talking about the loss of testosterone that accompanies aging, strutting his stuff while emasculating said stuff. The song’s focus on repositioning “manly” things (a suit jacket becomes a blanket, a double-rider motorcycle jacket becomes a sleeveless leather vest) is the same sort of impetus that married glam to metal. Mötley Crüe, Stryper, and Def Leppard lived this strange balance between hyper-feminine and hyper-masculine that wasn’t the beautifully flamboyant androgyny of David Bowie, but the loud bluntness of electric sex.

The song ends its celebration of both naps and men (the series’ complex, nuanced depiction of men, that is) with three sleepy, pillow-wielding rockers dozing beneath three trees set ablaze by their concert’s pyrotechnics. Destruction may be something natural to both sexes, but so are naps. Metal is just how they have to sell it to someone that’s the kind of surface-level bro Nathaniel purports to be—the same way less progressive rockers understood and approached less binary gender roles thanks to Twisted Sister or Kiss.