I like musicals. How much you ask? I sat through Cats. And if that doesn’t prove my dedication, I don’t know what will. Like everyone else my age, who has been prescribed the Millennial generation label, my first interaction with the genre was from the Disney Renaissance. Movies like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty & the Beast helped reinvigorate an interest in a genre that was, for a while, dying out.

The musical hasn’t been on the forefront of most people’s minds for almost sixty years. They just haven’t been culturally significant outside of New York. Our attentions have been diverted for the most part by cookie-cutter superhero movies and gritty, sprawling television shows. When it comes to people singing their feelings, audiences just aren’t particularly interested. For the longest time, it seemed that the genre had been reduced to a niche, reserved for children’s cartoons and hoity-toity New Yorkers.

But the genre branched out, finding a foothold in television and only rising from there. Shows like Sesame Street, Fame, and even Cop Rock gave way to Glee, Flight of the Conchords, Viva Launghlin (ahem), and Empire, and various other shows with the rare musical numbers like Steven Universe, The Amazing World of Gumball, South Park, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena the Warrior Princess, and Portlandia. Hell, even American Horror Story had a tendency to break out the songbook every once in awhile.

But I don’t think any other show has captured the sense of obsessive nostalgia and indoctrination quite like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a story about a woman who breaks out into song while feminism dies around her. It features Rachel Bloom as Rebecca Bunch, a successful New York lawyer who leaves her job to pursue her former flame, Josh Chan (as explained by the show’s theme). Lies are said, misunderstandings occur, hijinks ensue, and the citizens of West Covina find their simple life rocked by the presence of the desperate, lonely, and pathological Rebecca Bunch.

Before having her own TV show, Rachel Bloom was perhaps known best for her Hugo Award-nominated song Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury.

Watching Rebecca week to week, you see someone who is socially liberal with a strict separation between her work and social life. She is insufferably intelligent, negligent to others thoughts and feelings, and very sheltered. In essence, she’s a millennial.  Rebecca has a can-do attitude that can turn self-destructive. She assumes that everything will work out for her and if all else fails, she can manipulate the situation to suit her end goals with a catchy song and dance number. She butts into Josh Chan’s relationships with his friends, family, and girlfriend, trying to make herself out to be the hero. Rebecca surrounds herself with enablers and views them as expendable while still pining for their approval. Rebecca Bunch is a Grade A sociopath.

But show creator Rachel Bloom isn’t dumb, and her makings of a yuppie turned unbearable, delusional manic-pixie is as much a character study as it is a critique of a more virulent and hazardous demographic: the Disney generation.

Although Crazy Ex-Girlfriend wouldn’t be Rachel Bloom’s first time skewering Disney.

Now I’m not saying that having an entire group of kids grow up to watch independent young women make choices for themselves in the face of adversity is anything bad, but negative repercussion exists. I’ve noticed they have a tendency to be obsessive, they cling to nostalgia, and while they’re explosive with creativity, they often use the work of others as a jumping pad. This isn’t inherently wrong, in fact looking at my own catalog of works, one can pick out a bevy of stories that are reinterpretations, reimaginings, or just ripoffs (I am a product of my generation after all), but it creates stagnation. It’s probably why we’re okay with seven Transformers sequels, and Disney ruining their own masterpieces.

In the world of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, there exist a dichotomy in the mind of Rebecca Bunch: those who are there to help Bunch attain Josh Chan, and those who are obstacles to getting Josh Chan. As the series progresses, Rebecca becomes accustomed to the idea that the existence of this duality is asinine and irrelevant, eventually coming to terms with the idea that she may, in fact, be crazy, if not the villain.

It’s only when Rebecca realizes that her life isn’t a Disney movie does the show have its truly great moments. She extends outside of the reality that she’s deluded herself into believing and grows up a little. It’s a slow burn to get there, but it’s entirely worth it (weirdly enough). It’s a pretty good metaphor, saying that if you want to grow up sometimes you have to leave the childish things behind.