Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Star Rachel Bloom Explains the Show's Insanity

The CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is without a doubt the most insane new show this season. It makes The Player look downright reasonable. Monday's series premiere is jam-packed with full-scale musical numbers, a slathering of suicide references, with few choice Jew jokes sprinkled in. But the comedy's star, Rachel Bloom, is so damn charming it's impossible to completely write the series off right away.

Bloom plays Rebecca Bunch, a lawyer about to become partner at a big New York law firm, but in the midst of a nervous breakdown, she realizes she isn't happy. At the exact moment of this epiphany, Rebecca runs into her old camp boyfriend Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III), whom she hasn't seen since he unceremoniously dumped her 10 years ago because she was too dramatic and he didn't know she'd "turn out to be so successful and hot."

Josh "represents the last time Rebecca was happy," Bloom tells TVGuide.com. "And so deciding that he's the solution to her happiness ... she decides to drop everything and move where he lives, which is West Covina, California."

That's right. Rebecca gives up her job as a high-powered attorney in one of the greatest cities in the world to work at a rinky-dink firm in a small California town that isn't even beach adjacent. But rather than force Rebecca to see her insanity for what it is, her move to West Covina only pushes her further over the edge. "I think if you feed the monster, the monster gets bigger. And so moving to West Covina is definitely giving that monster some trail mix," Bloom explains. "And I think as we go on, should the show get more seasons, you will see that monster grow and grow and grow."

What's up with that insane Crazy Ex-Girlfriend trailer?

Rebecca's over-the-top craziness is paired with equally absurd musical numbers spanning all genres, which Bloom hopes will feel organic to the storytelling. "The musical numbers come out of extreme emotion. I want to earn them," she says. "I don't think we can earn the musical numbers if we're not grounded in our scene work. ... That way, when we go into these heightened worlds and heightened musical numbers that are comedic, we earn it and you get where she's coming from."

While there are many instances in the premiere that make you think Rebecca may have an actual mental illness, Bloom says it's simply that love can make anyone crazy. Reflecting on her own experience as a crazy ex-girlfriend, the actress says, "Often my craziness or my obsession was a reaction to the fact that ... I wasn't happy in other aspects of my life, so I was using love as an escape and kind of getting addicted to it as a drug.

"Also, when an ex-boyfriend makes you crazy, it implies you've broken up. So it's not [that] they've been a saint," Bloom continues. "They've broken up with you. A lot of times when someone says, 'Oh, my crazy bitch ex,' that guy's been a douchebag in his own right and he just doesn't realize it. So we'll be exploring things like that."

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend premieres Monday at 8/7c on The CW.

(Full disclosure: TVGuide.com is owned by CBS, one of The CW's parent companies.)