4B — Thursday, March 24, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

EPISODE REVIEW

Since the beginning of CW’s 

excellent first season of the 
musical comedy “Crazy Ex-Girl-
friend,” we have watched pro-
tagonist 
Rebecca 
Bunch 
(Rachel 
Bloom, 
“Robot 
Chicken”) 
develop 
from a 
delusional, 
depressed New York lawyer into 
a sunny, self-aware California 
woman. In this week’s episode 
“Josh Has No Idea Where I Am!,” 
the show focuses on the interplay 
between Rebecca and her friends, 
where Rebecca’s doubts about 
her ability to maintain loving 
relationships are literally mani-
fested in a hysterical yet poignant 
dream sequence.

After last week’s cliffhanger 

— Rebecca leaves on a plane and 
is seated next to her therapist 
Dr. Akopian (Michael Hyatt, 
“Nightcrawler”) — it’s quickly 
revealed that Rebecca is in fact 
not on her way to Hawaii to be 
with Josh, but back to New York 
City in hopes of getting her job 
and old life back. Disillusioned by 
Josh’s rejection of her, Rebecca 
has lost all hope in justifying why 

she moved to West Covina in the 
first place. But after falling asleep 
from ingesting a huge amount of 
sleeping pills and a Bloody Mary, 
Rebecca finds some insight from 
her subconscious, portrayed by 
Dr. Akopian. Together, the two 
women look through Rebecca’s 
memories of her childhood and 
college years to examine her 
relationship with her estranged 
father and a fling with a preten-
tious theatre major.

By contrasting the memories 

with her current life, Dr. Ako-
pian shows Rebecca that she in 
fact has people in her life who 
care about her well-being. Grad-
ually, Rebecca realizes those 
people are her best work friend 
Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin, 
“The Good Wife”), her boss Dar-
ryl (Pete Gardner, “The Brink”), 
her cynical on-and-off again 
love interest Greg (Santino Fon-

tana, “Frozen”) and her summer 
camp crush Josh Chan (Vincent 
Rodriguez III, “Hostages”).

Like many of “Crazy Ex-

Girlfriend” ’s episodes, “Josh 
Has No Idea Where I Am!” 
works on all levels, from Bloom 
and Aline Brosh McKenna’s 
incredible writing to Steven 
Tsuchida’s sensitive direction 
to the typically fantastic act-
ing of the ensemble cast. The 
episode’s only musical number, 
“Dream Ghost,” is a riveting 
treat as well, with Hyatt singing 
alongside welcome guest stars 
Amber Riley (“Glee”) and Nicki 
Lake (“Hairspray”). Its deft bal-
ance between sincere drama 
and witty comedy only furthers 
the story’s progression and the 
show’s status as one of the best 
and most underrated TV pro-
grams in the 2015-16 season.

- SAM ROSENBERG

A

Crazy 
Ex-Girlfriend

Season 1 
Episode 15

GILLIAN 

JAKAB

By JOEY SCHUMAN

For the Daily

Yung Lean is wack to the 

fullest extent. Wack enough, 
apparently, to have his tour bus 
shot at, which happened Mar. 18 
after a Pittsburgh show. Scary, 
yes, but more than anything this 
shooting seemed to signal to the 
music world that the 19-year-old 
was somehow still relevant after 
two studio album releases that 
ranged from shaky (Unknown 
Memory) to flat out questionable 
(Warlord). 
Much 
has 
been 

written about the enigmatic 
19-year old Swede; Lean (real 
name: Jonatan Aron Leandoer 
Håstad) initially unearthed a 
hotbed of rap fandom through his 
use of early to mid-2000s cultural 
references and proved sneakily 
introspective while spitting out 
lines that scream in the language 
of phony — on “Kyoto,” off of 
Lavender EP (2013), he claims, “I 
got an empire of emotional squad 
/ see me cruisin,’ cruisin,’ in my 
go kart / I’m War ho, I’m Warhol 
/ I’m Wario when I’m in Mario 
Kart.”

The first time I heard Yung 

Lean was, appropriately, during 
my December 2013 trip to Israel. 
My first thought was that it 

was kind of funny. My second 
thought was questioning why I 
was listening to a 17-year-old rap 
about getting his balls licked by a 
Zooey Deschanel lookalike. My 
final thought was questioning 
why I was listening to this 
adolescent rap about getting his 
balls licked by a Zooey Deschanel 
lookalike while I was in a car ride 
from Masada to Jerusalem. My 
scenery consisted of beautiful, 
pure landscapes en route to 
arguably the world’s holiest city, 
and nothing about life at that 
moment felt kosher. Listening 
to “Ginseng Strip 2002” felt so 
wrong, yet so right, and I loved 
it. It was then that I understood 
the true essence of Yung Lean; he 
was the best type of joke.

What initially cultivated his 

brand was his expert tiptoeing 
of the line between innovation 
and idiocy. He started a bucket 
hat-wearing, 
probably 
not 

lean-consuming cult by taking 
what other rappers didn’t take 
seriously and making it his own. 
There wasn’t much substance 
in his raps, but his absurdity, 
heavily complemented by fairly 
unpredictable 
production 

from buds Yung Gud and Yung 
Sherman, presented a different, 
totally welcome total rap package.

Everything since then has 

been, for lack of a better word, 
confusing. He’s started taking 
himself more seriously, which 
is probably a good thing for his 
natural 
human 
development, 

but definitely a bad thing for his 
career prospects.

When he put out Warlord in 

February, I finished listening to it 
in a state of disarray. On “Hoover” 
he quipped, “Wake up with some 
liquor in me / wake up, and the 
world is empty / wake up, bet my 
bag is empty / wake up, take a trip 
to Paris.” What came out of this 
album was just dread — I wasn’t 
expecting a Justin Bieber-esque 
character shift for the worse, I 
didn’t want such dark, trappy 
production and I definitely wasn’t 
comfortable with a seemingly 
alcoholic Yung Lean.

If the young rapper wants 

to maintain his unique spot in 
hip hop, the most sensible move 
would be to halt such a transition. 
Yung Lean is fun, but he’s most 
fun when he’s making the type 
of “meme rap” that people don’t 
really need to take seriously. 
The current climate of the genre 
allows room for something like 
this, and hopefully he provides it. 
There’ll continue to be quite a few 
“sadboys” alongside me if not.

Bummer Yung Lean

Dear Gillian,
This past Friday I went to a bar 

with some friends. When we finally 
escaped the line outside and entered 
this underground space, I imme-
diately 
headed to 
the bar for 
a 
drink. 

It 
was 

there that 
I saw him. 
Brown 
silky 
hair 

and green 
eyes. I was 
instantly 
mesmer-
ized 
by 

this complete stranger. I spent the 
entire night trying to come up with a 
line or something to say to him, but 
at the end of the night I went home 
without even speaking to this man. 
This is why I am writing to you. I 
have never been good at approaching 
people at bars. The idea of rejection 
terrifies me; maybe he already has a 
partner, maybe he has no intention 
of speaking to strangers at a public 
bar or maybe he too wanted to speak 
to me, but was just as nervous. As I 
headed home, I thought that if I was 
perhaps in a class with this man or if 
he was attending a house party that 
I was at, I would have approached 
him. Something about being at a bar 
and talking to stranger has always 
intimidated me. How can I over-
come this fear of rejection?

 – Lust at First Sight
Dear Lust,
From the tabernae along the 

Appian Way to Beowulf’s Mead 
Hall to the Mos Eisley Cantina 
of Star Wars, bars have always 
served as places of edgy, vaguely 
dangerous adventure. Whether 
they lead to anything or not, there’s 
an excitement to encounters with 
the unintroduced. Though not 
everyone you approach will be 
available or interested, neither 
will anyone judge you for testing 
the waters and sussing out your 
stranger.

Unlike your counterexamples 

from class or a house party, 
encounters at a bar are based 
on having very little in common 
besides what’s assumed by venue 
choice. The crowd at Aut Bar is way 
different from that at Skeeps, and 
both are different from that at Rush 
Street. Then again, we’ve been to 
them all; the smaller the city, the 
less niche-y its spots can afford to 
be. At a house party, you have the 
hosts in common, or at least run into 
the same groups of friends; in class, 
you share an intellectual interest or 
at least a desire to pass. Bar patrons 
can be anyone from anywhere, and 
connections tend toward the lowest 
common denominator. (The fact 
that those might be too low for your 

instincts, Lust, is not a bad thing.) 
For these reasons, bars as pick-up 
spots tend to conjure images of 
uncertainty, romantic emptiness 
or even sleaze.

So why do you keep regarding 

bars 
as 
places 
of 
romantic 

potential? Jay McInerney sums up 
the paradox in his novel “Bright 
Lights, Big City”: “The problem is, 
for some reason you think you are 
going to meet the kind of girl who 
is not the kind of girl who would 
be at a place like this at this time of 
the morning.” 

Depending on the vibe of your 

spot, though, it may be a really 
nice place for some flirtatious 
chat. Then comes your next 
problem: a dearth of information. 
Is he interested in your gender? Is 
he interested in you? Is he single? 
Does he remember last week when 
you made eye contact at the other 
end of the bar? Look at Archibald 
Motley Jr.’s painting “Nightlife.” 
Documenting the Black social life 
of Bronzeville, Chicago’s South 
Side community, the background 
of the painting is injected with 
the exuberance and rhythm of 
the jazz age. In the foreground 
Motley captures the disjointed 
and thorny drama of the scene: a 
man at the bar can summon only 
enough courage to get his upper 
body to beckon, his hips and feet 
still unmoved facing the bar. This 
hesitancy results in an ambiguous 
gesture that leaves the three 
women confused about who he 
wants — one who’s taken, one who 
wants him and one who hasn’t 
even noticed.

Now, Lust, in case you want 

some, the liberal arts offer some 
clever pick-up lines and here are 
several examples:

Sylvia Plath: “Kiss me and you’ll 

see how important I am.”

Patti Smith: “Will you pretend 

you’re my boyfriend?”

Pablo Neruda: “I’d like to do 

with you what Spring does with 
the cherry tree.”

Gary 
Shteyngart: 
“I’m 
the 

fortieth ugliest man in this bar. 
But so what! … Isn’t this how 
people used to fall in love?

F. Scott Fitzgerald: “I like large 

parties. They’re so intimate. At 
small parties, there’s no privacy.”

That reminds me: I’ve been 

meaning to warn you against 
adopting Gatsby’s game. Don’t rent 
out The Last Word, publicize it 
robustly and arrange the invite of 
your green-eyed hottie. Things go 
terribly wrong if you try to deploy 
contrivance 
after 
contrivance 

to draw your Daisy close. So 
even if you’ve taken a trip to the 
bathroom for a quick Facebook 
stalk after catching a glimpse of 
his signature as he closed out his 
tab, resist the urge to name-drop 

that mutual friend of yours or ask 
how he enjoyed last semester in 
Copenhagen.

You write of the moment when 

you were instantly mesmerized, 
Lust. There’s nothing that takes 
you out of the mundane like the 
non-verbal communication of a 
stranger’s gaze. For Baudelaire, 
this was at the heart of the 
experience of the modern city. You 
might give a read to his poem, “To 
a Passerby,” a meditation on the 
anonymous figure who walks into 
your life and right on by. While 
it’s great fodder for poetry, I’d 
suggest avoiding the fixation of a 
voyeuristic flâneur; it’ll be creepy. 
Let that moment stir you, but stop 
staring.

I’m assuming you’re not at this 

bar alone. Friends (his, yours) can 
help reduce the fear of rejection. 
It’s best, though, to avoid any overt 
competition or goofiness like the 
sailors on shore leave in Jerome 
Robbins’s ballet “Fancy Free.” 
The sailors don’t know what to 
do with their sea legs in the big 
city filled with beautiful broads. 
They fumble over each other (with 
exquisite choreography) for the 
poor gals’ attention.

If after all this you still want 

to get better at approaching guys 
in bars, you might watch Diane 
Keaton in the 1977 film “Looking 
For Mr. Goodbar,” based on the 
Judith Rossner novel of the same 
name. Her character seems to 
have no problem night after night. 
But it ends horribly.

I don’t know if this is the advice 

you want, Lust, but I believe your 
intimidation about approaching 
strangers at bars is healthy and 
noble. No matter how fine these 
strangers may be, hitting on them 
in that milieu is not naturally your 
thing, and there’s nothing wrong 
with that. I’d keep my ears alert 
and listen for an invitation to 
join the conversation, head to the 
dance floor or make come-hither 
eye contact. If nothing of the sort 
presents itself, all is not lost. When 
you get out of the bar, you can drop 
your intimidation like a bad Econ 
course and not rest until you find 
a way to meet this young man in a 
context that suits your style.

Send an email to deargillian@

michigandaily.com or anonymously 

here describing a quandary about 

love, relationships, existence or 

their opposites. Gillian will attempt 

to summon the wisdom of the arts 

(literary, visual, performing) to 

soothe your troubled soul. We may 

publish your letter in the biweekly 

column with your first name (or 

penname). Submissions should 

be 250 words or fewer and may 

be edited prior to publication.

CULTURAL CURES COLUMN

How do I talk to sexy 

strangers at bars?

MISHKA NYC

Don’t you hate it when your homeroom teacher is wack?

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

THE CW

By KELLY MARTINEK

Daily Arts Writer

On Saturday and Sunday at 7 

p.m., the Walgreen Drama Center 
on North Campus will transform 
into a diverse 
performance 
space. Walking 
room to room, 
audiences will 
move between 
the worlds of 
Shakespeare 
and 
Greek 

tragedy, 
experiencing 
dance 
performance, 
musical 
theatre 
and 

the 
original 

works of University of Michigan 
students.

The 
Wall-to-Wall 
Theatre 

Festival is three years old and 
producer, 
director 
and 
LSA 

graduate 
Clare 
Brennan 
has 

been involved since its inception. 
According to her, the festival 
serves as an opportunity for 
students to see a variety of 
different genres of theatre in one 
night.

“We have nine pieces, all being 

performed in different spaces in 
the Walgreen Drama Center,” 
Brennan said. “They’ll be in the 
lobby, they’ll be in classrooms, 
some pieces will be in hallways or 
in small practice rooms. Audiences 
show up at 7 p.m. and they can go 
to any of these nine pieces, and 
then see another show after the 
piece is done. So you can see five 
or six shows over the course of the 
night.”

Brennan’s piece is an original 

work, an amalgamation of 10 
of Shakespeare’s sonnets. She 
and her cast wove the sonnets 
together and created a storyline 
that links them, a romance that 
falls apart. Film work and other 
media are incorporated into the 
live performance as well.

Producer and School of Music, 

Theatre & Dance senior Allyssa 
Powell has also been involved in 
the festival since its beginning. 
Powell said the idea for the festival 
originally came from School of 
Music, Theatre & Dance graduate 

Neal Kelley.

“It started as kind of a passion 

project, and we involved people 
who had something they’ve been 
dying to perform,” she said. “It’s 
a very unique experience, and it’s 
one of a kind on this campus. It’s 
really cool to walk in the door and 
not know what to expect.”

Something that makes Wall-to-

Wall unique among on-campus 
theatre productions is the concept 
of “roaming theatre.” The nine, 
25-minute 
acts 
perform 
in 

different parts of the Walgreen 
Center and audiences roam the 
building, moving from act to 
act. School of Music, Theatre 
& Dance junior Leia Squillace, 
whose piece will be formed 
on the grand staircase in the 
lobby of the Walgreen Center, 
called the festival “site-specific,” 
emphasizing 
the 
importance 

of the diversity of performance 
spaces to this event.

“Wall-to-Wall really breathes 

this air of experimentation,” 
she said. “You’re forced to be 
experimental because you’re not 
in a conventional space. You have 
to figure out how to use that space 
to your advantage, and I think the 
shows that are the most successful 
are the ones that embrace that 
space for what it is, as opposed to 
trying to navigate around it.”

Squillace is involved in Wall-

to-Wall for the first time this 
year. She is directing a 25-minute 
condensed version of “Trojan 
Women,” 
a 
Greek 
tragedy 

originally written by Euripides 
and 
translated 
into 
modern 

English by Ellen McLaughlin. 
This translation was created in 
collaboration with a group of 
female refugees from the Bosnian 
War, and Squillace said the 
themes of community and how 
communities support each other 
through tragedy are important to 
her piece.

School of Music, Theatre & 

Dance junior Larissa Marten 
also emphasized the opportunity 
for 
experimentation 
afforded 

by Wall-to-Wall. Marten will be 
performing a 25-minute excerpt 
from an original one-woman 
show called “I Killed the Cow,” 
which she has been working on 
for six months.

“Each night you get to do your 

show four or five times, so you 
get really great feedback on what 
sections work, what part of your 
writing lands, what part of your 
writing doesn’t land,” she said. “So 
it’s great from my perspective as 
a workshop learning experience 
because you get to do your show 
so many times after another. And 
because the sections are so short, 
I feel like, especially for students, 
it’s a really great opportunity 
to create work, because it’s not 
that big pressure of ‘Oh, I have 
to create a full length show,’ and 
that’s why I think students really 
flourish.”

Marten said her piece will 

involve a large amount of audience 
participation. She aims to get her 
audience to think and talk about 
their memories of sex and to “take 
sex out of the dark.”

“The piece I’m performing 

is called ‘Lost, Shared, Taken,’ 
” Marten said. “It’s centered 
around the idea that, today, sex 
is not talked about enough for 
people to really feel comfortable. 
It’s the idea of how we become the 
sexual beings that we are.”

Other performances include 

“Good Intentions,” a satirical 
work directed by School of Music, 
Theatre & Dance sophomore 
Sam 
Hamashima 
and 
“By 

Candlelight,” a performance by 
student dance group Sitelines, 
directed by School of Music, 
Theatre & Dance junior Ellen 
Wallace. 
This 
diversity 
of 

performances, 
Squillace 
said, 

allows the festival to make theatre 
accessible to everyone.

“For people who don’t like 

theatre 
or 
aren’t 
typically 

exposed, I just think it’s the most 
genius idea,” she said. “One, it’s 
free, so no consequences. Two, 
you can stay as long or as short as 
you want.”

Powell agreed that Wall-to-

Wall has a unique ability to share 
new pieces and kinds of theatre, 
even to theatre junkies.

“It’s another way of arts 

education and instilling the arts 
in people’s lives, because that is 
often not the case,” she said. “It’s 
exposure to art forms you’ve 
never heard of, but also stretching 
the idea of what theatre can be.”

‘Wall-to-Wall’ fest

Wall-
to-Wall 
Theatre 
Festival

Sat. & Sun., 
7 p.m. 

Walgreen 
Drama Center

Free

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW