#i also love that something in David seems to expand whenever he is around Michael

[ingravinoveritas]

We always talk about Michael looking like he wants to kiss David, but I love that David now keeps looking like he wants to kiss Michael...

[ethanalter]

'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' postmortem: Scott Michael Foster also likes going to the zoo

Scott Michael Foster as Nathaniel in his happy place, the zoo. (Photo: Tyler Golden/The CW)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the “Josh Is a Liar” episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Move over, Simon & Garfunkel: 50 years after that legendary duo released their beloved ditty “At the Zoo,” this week’s episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend unveiled a zoo-related anthem for the “Hotline Bling” generation. Besides being the flat-out funniest song of the show’s third season (though the oh-so-timely “Let’s Generalize About Men” remains the all-around gold standard so far), “I Go to the Zoo” is also a great showcase for Scott Michael Foster, who joined the show midway through Season 2 as Nathaniel, the fitness-obsessed, feelings-challenged new boss/love interest for Rebecca Bunch (Rachel Bloom).

Since his arrival came on the heels of fan favorite Santino Fontana’s departure, it’s safe to say that CEXG fans were a little skeptical of Nathaniel at first. But musical numbers like last season’s “Dirty Dancing” homage and now “I Go to the Zoo” have earned him our affection … as well as Rebecca’s. After literally dancing around each other for the past half-season, the two fell into each other’s arms on last week’s episode. In this week’s hour, they seemed poised to take their relationship further, with Nathaniel showing up to whisk Rebecca away just as she’s about to be confronted by her friend over her various deceptions. “I’ve seen fans saying, ‘He’s doing a good job,’ which makes me feel good,” Foster tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I’ve had a lot of fun playing Nathaniel. It’s a challenging, fun role.”

The actor filled us in on his own feelings about zoos and provides some hints about the show’s highly anticipated 100th song, coming later this season.

So the obvious first question is: how much do you love the zoo? [Laughs] Oh, man. Listen, I don’t think I go as often as Nathaniel does, but every time I do go to the zoo I definitely enjoy myself.

What was your first reaction when you learned about this number? The first thing they tell us is the name of the song. And in this case, Aline [Brosh McKenna, the co-creator] actually named the song, so she was very excited to tell me. Then they were like, “We’re going to do it as a music video in the style of Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling.'” So I was like, “I can’t fail miserably at Drake’s dance moves!” So I was 80 percent excited and 20 percent scared. I had seen the video a couple of times already, but I watched it again and thought, “How close can we do it?” We never actually parody anybody; we’re just sort of loosely basing our song off a popular music video.

What was your approach to vocalizing the song? We had a couple different takes when we were in the booth recording it. The whole point of the song is that he’s upset, so he goes to the zoo. We did it a few ways where I sang it supersad and barely moved my lips. Then we did more where I spoke it, like a slow rap. It was terrible! [Laughs] It sounded like early R&B, just really bad. So we ultimately decided to go with the “singing full out and having sadness on my face” approach.

One of the things I like about the song is that it’s just another way that Nathaniel keeps surprising us. Looking at him, you wouldn’t think that his happy place would be the zoo. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by him. Whenever I learn a new thing about him, I don’t think “I don’t agree with this.” Everything definitely tracks with the character they’ve been writing. There’s a lot of emotion with him and Rebecca this season, and we definitely do more delving into his family and finding out where he’s come from.

Last week’s episode ended the “will they or won’t they” phase of Rebecca and Nathaniel’s relationship when they slept together. That’s always a risky move — were you nervous about where they were headed next? I’ve definitely had the conversation with Rachel and Aline [about] not doing the typical trope of “Will they or won’t they.” That’s why they were like, “Let’s just get that out of the way [early on], and then they can focus on other things.” I really like the direction we’re going with that relationship. Without giving too much away, there are roads that each of them go down that you don’t typically find in a rom-com situation. They’ve got a really fresh and unique perspective on the relationship, and I’m excited for everyone to see it. I mean, Nathaniel isn’t used to having working relationships anyway. He comes from a family with terrible relationships. So the fact that Rebecca can bring these emotions out of him — and he likes it — is completely foreign to him.

Rachel Bloom as Rebecca and Scott Michael Foster as Nathaniel in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. (Photo: Tyler Golden/The CW)

What balance did you want to strike in terms of him giving into his obsession with Rebecca while still demonstrating some modicum of self-control? Nathaniel’s entrance last season was very methodical: He knew what he wanted and what he was doing. Having this relationship with Rebecca is sort of a wrench in his wheel. You get to see how different he is, and that’s something that I enjoyed playing. I couldn’t forget the person that’s always been there, but to have this new person who wants to be around Rebecca instead of being flustered by her was like walking a tightrope. Not to mention the singing and dancing and all that jazz! You think, “Oh, this is just a musical comedy, it’s easy,” but a lot of times, I’m like, “God, this is actually difficult!”

Besides Rebecca, we’ve also seen Nathaniel’s relationships expand with the other people in the office. For example, his dynamic with George (played by Danny Jolles) is really fun to watch. That relationship cracks me up. I was very excited when they brought Danny back for more. We always talk about how Nathaniel and George are kind of like Gaston and LeFou from Beauty and the Beast. And I get more scenes with Paula [Donna Lynne Champlin], which is great.

Scott Michael Foster as Nathaniel and Danny Jolles as George in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. (Photo: Tyler Golden/The CW)

At the end of “Josh is a Liar,” Rebecca’s secrets have been exposed to Paula and a few other people, but Nathaniel doesn’t know yet. Can you tease where it goes from there? Like you said, he doesn’t know what’s going on with her at all, so I think he just wants to embrace this new relationship that he has. The next episode picks up pretty much from where that cliffhanger leaves off. There’s a big confrontation that gets pretty crazy. He doesn’t know what’s going on, so he feels like she’s ganged up on for no reason. So he’s definitely her champion. And I’ll say that I had to hold Rachel in that cradling position for practically two days. You know how you pick somebody up romantically and walk them through the door? When you have to hold them in that position for two days, it’s like, “Oh my God!” [Laughs] My back was starting to give out.

What can you reveal about the songs you have coming up? We have a couple of different numbers. I get to have some fun with David Hull, who plays White Josh, and Rebecca and Nathaniel have another number that we’re shooting now. It’ll definitely have some sexual innuendos! And, you know, we actually just hit our 100th original song on the show, which is bananas. It’s a song about love, and was very inspired by Hair. We’re all dancing around and it’s very musical theater-y. That’s going to be a good number.

Minus the nude scene in Hair, I imagine. No, I don’t think there’s that. [Laughs]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend airs Fridays at 8 p.m. on the CW.

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[mchenryjd]

2017 in Review

Necessarily incomplete, mostly for my personal record. I will probably regret this.

MOVIES

10.  mother!

Got to a screening late, had to sit in the third show, could barely tell what was happening and spent most of the movie staring at J. Law’s flared nostrils. An ideal viewing experience.

9.     Personal Shopper

Nothing captures the purposeful emptiness of spending time online like Kristen Stewart texting a ghost.

8.     Get Out

I kept telling my dad this movie was funny to get him to see it, not realizing he didn’t already know it was a horror movie. Afterwards, he texted me, “that was not a comedy!” Feels like that’s enough a metaphor. Daniel Kaluuya for best actor.

7.     Star Wars: The Last Jedi

A Star Wars movie about loving Star Wars movies, which means loving the epic, silly struggle between good and epic, loving the spiral staircase that is John Williams’s force theme, loving it when character always do the coolest possible thing followed by the next coolest possible thing, loving dumb furry creatures and sarcastic slimy ones, loving it when characters kiss when you want them to kiss, loving the hundred-million-dollar sandbox of it all. After the constricted dance steps of The Force Awakens and Rogue One, give me this bleeding freestyle any day.

6.     Phantom Thread

Finally, proof that everyone in a serious relationship has lost it.

5.     Call Me By Your Name

I refuse to believe that being stuck in rural Italy would be anything other than deadly boring and if my father insisted on turning everything into a lecture on classical art, I would run away. Also, there’s a contrast between the book (vague on the details of place and time, vividly specific on matters of sex) and the film (more contextually specific, sexier, but less horny than the original). Also, who am I kidding, I was moved and unsettled by the force of the thing. *Michael Stuhlbarg voice* Pray you get a chance to fall in love like this.

4.     Dunkirk

Having your tense, churning, clanking, thrumming, score transform into Elgar right when the beautiful, imperiled young heroes are reading a stirring speech (and Tom Hardy is heroically sacrificing himself in what looks like the middle of a Turner painting) is a level of craft so deft if feels like cheating, but it works.

3.     BPM

A film about a community in danger that acts as both a memorial to and rallying cry for that community. Uncompromising, accommodating, queer in the best way, BPM makes you want to cry and go dancing at the same time.

2.     Columbus

The kind of movie that makes you want to get in a car and keep driving until you find something beautiful, it has stuck and expanded in my memory ever since I saw it over the summer. Like the architecture that looms large in the setting, the plot can feel uncomfortably schematic – John Cho wants to leave and gets  stuck, Haley Lu Richardson is stuck and gets to leave. The question is how people live within, and blur the edges of, those confines. John Cho has a winning, curdled decency; Haley Lu Richardson gives the hardest kind of performance, in that she often seems unaware of her character’s own wants. I’d watch her quietly assemble dinner for hours on end.

1.     Lady Bird  

A movie that feels less plotted and more prefigured – every fight between Lady Bird has happened before, every high school landmark lumbers by with inevitability, every boy disappoints in the way you expect. What redeems all this? Paying attention, which is also love, in this movie’s pseudo-religious sense. Between Lady Bird and Marion, between Lady Bird and Julie, between Lady Bird and Sacramento. Watch people closely, as Greta Gerwig does, and they reveal glimmers of themselves (I know so little, and yet everything, about Stephen McKinley Henderson’s drama teacher from a few moments that feel perfect, in the sense of contained, past-tense completeness). It’ll all so ordinary. Fall in love with it.

Honorable mentions: Regina Hall’s speech about friendship in Girls Trip, Sally Hawkins tracing a droplet with her finger in The Shape of Water, Meryl Streep on the phone in The Post, Cara Delevingne in Valerian, Rihanna in Valerian, the part where the ghost jumped off the building in A Ghost Story, the fact that Power Rangers was surprisingly good, the soldier who gasps as Diana whips out her hair in the trenches in Wonder Woman, Ansel Elgort’s jacket in Baby Driver, whenever anyone tried to explain anything in Alien: Covenant, Elisabeth Moss in The Square, Anh Seo-hyun feeding Okja in Okja, Lois Smith being in movies, the kids eating ice cream in The Florida Project, the Game of Thrones joke in Logan Lucky, Vella Lovell in The Big Sick, and finally, most preciously, the moment in Home Again where Reese Witherspoon kissed Michael Sheen and someone in my theater shouted “she’s not feeling it!”

TELEVISION

10.  The Good Doctor

Listen, he’s a good doctor.

9.     Riverdale

They’re hot. They’re angsty. They do drugs that look like Pixy-Stix. They never seem to do homework. They love to hook-up in weird locations. They have terrible taste in karaoke songs. They love hair dye, and a well-defined eyebrow. They have really hot parents. They’re TV teens! I love it.

8.     Insecure

This is just to say that I am far too invested in Molly’s happiness as a person. I would also like to view a full season of Due North.

7.     American Vandal

From Alex Trimboli to Christa Carlyle, the best names on TV are on this show. Also the best reenactments, and somehow the most incisive take on what fuels, and results from TV’s true-crime obsession. Jimmy Tatro mumbling!

6.     Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

More shows should take the opportunity to explode in their third seasons, rocket forward at full speed, diagnose their main characters, and give Josh Groban wonderful, unexplainable cameos.

5.     Alias Grace

A show that conjured a performance for the ages out of Sarah Gadon and somehow made Zachary Levi palatable as a dramatic actor, this miracle of collaboration between Mary Harron and Sarah Polley is all the better for being binged. Down it in an afternoon, think of Grace under her black veil, daring you to disbelieve her, for years to come.

4.     Twin Peaks: The Return

A show that drove nostalgia into itself like a knife to the chest. Totally absurd. The best revival/exorcism yet on TV.

3.     Please Like Me

“Sorry about your life.” “I’m sorry about your life.” In a time when things tend to peter out, what a final season, in which everything goes to shit and then some. Maybe TV’s most prickly comedy, Please Like Me’s heart is of the “stumble along and keep going” sort and never does it test itself as much as it did with this bleak, pastel final statement.

2.     The Leftovers

Do you believe Nora Durst’s story? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think it sounds ridiculous. Sometimes I relax in the comfortable, academic premise that it only matters that Kevin does. It’s a haunting idea, though, this image of world even emptier than The Leftovers’s own, where it’s possible to wander for untold time in darkness. Carrie Coon’s description of it is a kind of journey to the underworld – we’re there with her, maybe, and then we make it back, maybe. The trick of The Leftovers is the wound’s never fully healed.

1.     Halt and Catch Fire

The world changes. People sorta don’t.

Honorable mentions: the twist in The Good Place, the Taylor Swift demon character in Neo Yokio, Claire Foy on The Crown, Vanessa Kirby on The Crown, the stand-up in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Cristin Milioti in Black Mirror, the televised Academy Awards ceremony, the weeks when Netflix didn’t release new TV shows I had to watch, Girls’s “American Bitch,” the fact that Adam Driver is both in Girls and Star Wars, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys performances on The Americans (and life in Brooklyn), the moments in Game of Thrones that were good enough to make me stop thinking about what people would write about Game of Thrones, season 2 of The Magicians’s resistance to any sort of plot logic, Jane the Virgin’s narrator, Nicole Kidman at therapy on Big Little Lies, Reese Witherspoon’s production of Avenue Q in Big Little Lies, Alexis Bledel holding things in The Handmaid’s Tale, Maggie Gyllenhaal directing porn in The Deuce, Alison Brie’s terrible Russian accent in Glow, Maya Rudolph in Big Mouth, Cush Jumbo miming oral sex with a pen in court in The Good Fight, the calming experience of watching new episodes of Superstore and Great News on Fridays, Eden Sher in The Middle, the fake books they make up for Younger, and Rihanna livestreaming herself watching Bates Motel.

THEATER

10.  Indecent

History, identity, community all mangled together in something that’s both excavation and revivification. I’m so mad I didn’t get to see it with my mom.

9.     Mary Jane

A nightmare that goes from bad to worse, which Carrie Coon performed with the endurance of a saint.

8.     SpongeBob SquarePants

Highlights: The tap number, the Fiddler on the Roof joke, the many uses of pool noodles, David Zinn’s design in general, the arms, the volcano setpiece, the fact that somehow I kept laughing for two-and-a-half hours at something SpongeBob SquarePants. Tina Landau, you’re a hero.

7.     Hello, Dolly!

I had a wonderful viewing experience like this, in that I sat alone on an aisle next to an older gay man who turned to me right when the curtain came down on the first act and said, “man, we love Bette.” (Shout out to any and all gags involving the whale.)

6.     Groundhog Day

Proof you can dig deeper into the material you’re adapting and still find more. Sometimes, the funniest gags come out of old-fashioned repetition. Andy Karl has the Rolex-like ability to make it all speed by without revealing any of the ticks, and then wallop you in the second act.  

5.     The Glass Menagerie

A lot of unconventional ideas piled onto each other that go so far into strange territory that they loop back around to being immediate. Maybe distant to some, but enough to unsettle me. I can still smell the onstage rain.

4.     The Wolves

A sign of a good play is probably that you remain invested in the characters long after you see it, and I’m going to spend so much time worrying about all the girls on the soccer team in The Wolves for the rest of my life.

3.     The Band’s Visit

Katrina Lenk has a gorgeous voice. Tony Shalhoub is restrained to the point that he could move his baton with nanometer accuracy. The songs are transporting. But most of all, The Band’s Visit manages to capture loneliness better than nearly any musical I’ve seen. Everyone, audience included, experiences something together, and then it all, slowly, both lingers and drifts apart.

2.     A Doll’s House, Part 2

What, you think I wasn’t going to include a play with a Laurie Metcalf performance? ADHP2 is perhaps clever to a fault in its set-up, but in the right hands, it turns into something both funny and moving – a story about what it takes to become a complete person, in or outside the influence of other people. Nora’s monologue about living in silence near the end is the full of the kind of simple statements that are so hard to act, and so brilliant when done just right.

1.     The Antipodes

Both an extended meditation on what it means to run out of stories and a brutal subtweet of Los Angeles, The Antipodes is my kind of play, in that it’s mostly people talking, Josh Charles is involved and very disgruntled, and everyone eats a lot of take out.

Honorable mentions: the music in Sunday in the Park With George, the pies in Sweeney Todd, the ensemble of Come From Away, seeing Dave Malloy in The Great Comet of 1812, Alex Newell’s “Mama Will Provide” in Once on This Island, Cate Blanchet having fun in The Present, Imelda Staunton in the NTLive Follies, Michael Urie in Torch Song, Patti LuPone’s accent(s) in War Paint, Ashley Park in KPOP, and Gleb.