Awesome / Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Season One

• All her life, Rebecca has been controlled by her mother and has done everything her mother wants. However, when she moves to West Covina, we see her listening to her mother on the phone (as she merrily throws away her medication) and then hang up. That must have been supremely cathartic.
• In "I Hope Josh Comes to My Party!," Rebecca finally gets over her fear of parties when Josh helps her throw a good party. It all culminates in a song (of course), where four Joshes sing to her as a boy band. Both Rebecca and Young Rebecca are ecstatic.
• In "Josh and I Are Good People!," Rebecca is extremely cunning in getting Darryl sole custody of his daughter. She manages to screw it up later on, but nevertheless, it does show just how good a lawyer she is.
  • Rebecca and Darryl making Paula in charge of the office while they're away, leading to her immediately take her jerk co-workers down a peg before declaring that they're finally going to get some work done.
• In "My Mom, Greg's Mom and Josh's Sweet Dance Moves!," Rebecca completely rips into her mother for never supporting her...and then gets her mother's approval for doing so. Because her mother was trying to make her strong enough to survive "when the Cossacks come."
• Rebecca's fantastic pole dance on the bus.
  • Also, Rachel Bloom making sure to give credit (via posting pic) to her body double whose amazing resemblance had some fans thinking it was Bloom performing the moves.
• In "Josh and I Go to Los Angeles!," Rebecca manages to build a nearly airtight case against a Los Angeles water company, using plaintiffs from all over the San Gabriel Valley. There is a rousing song where every single person sings about being "flooded with justice" as they march, red flags waving, into the court house. Even though she loses the case, everyone is still impressed with her and gives her a Slow Clap.
  • What's especially impressive is why she loses the case. Rebecca's rival Audra exposes Rebecca's main witness Bert as a diagnosed schizophrenic, which seriously damages his credibility. Then Rebecca's quasi-stalker/would-be-boyfriend Trent hacks into the water company's email server, and prints out a folder full of incriminating emails, which amount to a whole new pile of fresh evidence against the water company. After a big internal struggle, Rebecca decides not to use the emails and pleads the case on the basis that she's a resident of the San Gabriel Valley and should hold herself to the same standards of integrity as the people she's representing, asking the judge to consider Bert's evidence anyway. The judge compliments her on her dedication and passion but finds for the water company, because Audra has raised enough doubt over Bert's reliability. Rebecca is disappointed, but she has the (for her, very rare) consolation of knowing that she's done the right thing, and that everyone else knows it.
• The minor fact that they say the word "bisexual" on tv. Not "fluid", not "I like all genders", not "I don't want to label" but full on "I am Bi." Which is huge in media as it's never said on tv. Complete with a musical number of one of the characters coming out to everyone proudly, owning his bisexuality, and dispelling all the harmful stereotypes a lot of people have about bisexuality - all at once. It's awesome. And for the cherry on the cake, we even get a minor character nonchalantly coming out as bi right after, and neither of these characters' sexualities are played for tokenism. Also, great song!
• Naomi taking the fall for Silas and letting Rebecca think that it was her mother’s fault that she didn’t have a relationship with her father instead of letting her know that he chose not to have one with her in “Josh Has No Idea Where I Am!” She’s far from a great mother, but that took a tremendous amount of selflessness.
• In "Paula Needs to Get Over Josh" When Darryl sees how sad Rebecca is at the wedding, he leaves and makes Paula come with him. Even though Paula and Rebecca weren't talking, Darryl manages to stick up to Paula, and convince her to dress up and come to the wedding to make up with Rebecca.

Season Two

• In Season 2, Paula finally decides to go to law school and become a lawyer. Unfortunately, just as she is about to do that, she gets pregnant again. So what does she do? Like a regular person in the real world, she gets an abortion. And it's not a big giant deal, but rather something that only affects her and is her decision, supported by her husband. And when it happens (in "When Will Josh and his Friend Leave Me Alone?") it's simply mentioned casually by her sons on the way to answer the door.
  • And it's not a Very Special Episode. It's not even the A-Plot of the episode. It's what Paula does in the B-Plot, while Rebecca is doing her crazy shit in the A-Plot. One of the quietest moments of awesome in TV.
    Rebecca: Look, I know something's been up with you lately and I want to know what it is. Really, I mean it this time.
    Paula: I just...you know, I had a thing. I figured it out.
• Whether or not it gets dialled back later, Valencia and Rebecca jointly confronting Josh about how he treated each of them, especially the fact that they each stick up for each other.
• Darryl's killer revenge after hearing Rebecca and Paula badmouthing him: spoiling Game of Thrones after she's just started watching.
• Maya has been a Butt-Monkey since she first appeared, always getting put down by Darryl (who is usually sweet to everyone). Unlike other Butt Monkeys, though, she finally has enough and calls Darryl out on creating a hostile work environment. Darryl admits that he was wrong and only making fun, because she reminds him of himself when he's needy. Then together, they create an awesome dance!
• When Rebecca thinks that Paula is upset because they're fighting and talks about them getting through it, the long-silent Mrs. Hernandez finally speaks...and tells Rebecca to "shut up, it's not all about you."
• In the S2 finale when Rebecca finally tells off her dad, and as he leaves, he expects Nathaniel to fly him home on his plane. Nathaniel responds, "Have fun flying coach, dick."
• Paula calling Rebecca's mother, and ripping into her for not helping her daughter in her time of need, and then demanding that Naomi pay for a wedding dress for Rebecca. Rebecca standing up to her in season one was great, but it's equally satisfying to see someone else call Naomi out for how she treats her daughter.
  Paula: No, you shut up, Naomi!

Season Three

• Rebecca proving in the second episode of season three that, despite not doing too good a job at it in the previous episode, she is in fact capable of being scarily effective at being The Vamp.
  Rebecca: If you help me destroy Josh Chan, I will let you do anything you want to me. And I mean anything.
  (Nathaniel looks distracted for a split second before recovering himself)
  Rebecca: Yes, that. Whatever just crossed your mind: that. You're telling me you don't want to do that?
• After Josh believes Rebecca has kidnapped his mother, he sternly tells her he's had enough of her shit and that if she need to stay out of his life and if ever comes close to him or his family again he will call the police on her. Pretty impressive coming from someone as passive as Josh.
• Who did they get to perform "The End of the Movie"? Josh frickin' Groban! And he, as always, knocks it out of the park.
• After George says the line, "If I were her, I'd kill meself!" in the Season 3 premiere, Nathaniel tells George that he's fired again because he doesn’t think suicide is something to be spoken of lightly.
• Josh punching Nathaniel after finding out he tried to have his father deported in "Nathaniel is Irrelevant".
  • Rebecca saving Nathaniel's life, even though she wasn't invited to his party, in the same episode.
• Rebecca recognizing and welcoming the consequences for her actions in the season three finale. Unlike in the first two seasons, she didn't try to deflect the blame onto her being "just a girl in love". She didn't even try to pass it off as being because of mental illness. The fact that she did it specifically with Paula, someone whose time, money, and morals she's been consuming for a while, in mind, makes the whole thing feel very satisfying and long overdue, even if we're sad for Rebecca and hoping for the best.

Season Four

• Paula manages what Rebecca never did in three seasons and actually gets the better of Trent, tricking him into revealing he's faking his coma and forcing him to reveal Rebecca really was acting to stop him from killing Nathaniel.
• Rebecca realizing that law was never truly her passion, even if she was good at it, and choosing a new career path by opening her own pretzel shop.
• While helping Paula transport a desk for her upcoming law work, Josh gets tired of her stalling and goes to pick it up by himself. Just as you're expecting a gag of him not being able to budge it, he instead effortlessly lifts the thing up with one arm and uses the other one to do some other tasks, even managing to not hit anything as the huge desk swings around. Paula and the seller have a quite understandable Jaw Drop reaction. And he follows it up by perfectly nailing the reason Paula is avoiding finishing the deal, because of her fear of going after success.
• A very subtle one in season four: Rebecca spends an entire episode trying to get laid. She chooses a guy she likes, Jason, who's normal and friendly. They finally meet up but Rebecca gets a yeast infection, which forces her to cancel the date. She self-medicates for the yeast infection and cures it, but the result is that her vagina has a very powerful smell. Unable to do anything about this, she cancels the date again. On the third attempt to have a date, Greg and Nathaniel show up at her apartment, wanting to see her. This causes Jason to leave, and Greg and Nathaniel leave too. Season one Rebecca would have found a way to blame herself for all this, but season four Rebecca is just normally exasperated, and goes for a drink with Valencia instead.
  Valencia: Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. After everything you've been through this week with your vagina.
  Rebecca: I know, and I didn't do anything wrong!
  Valencia: No.
  Rebecca: I was just trying to get laid. Which now, apparently, will never happen.
  Valencia: God.
  Rebecca: Men! Can't live with 'em...can't kill 'em.
  Valencia: Yeah. —We get to say that.
  Rebecca: We do.
• Rebecca, Paula, Heather and Valencia go to Vegas to stop Audra Levine from throwing her life away with a sleazy loser called Jesse. In the course of the episode, Jesse loses all his money and Paula, who only came to Vegas because she's got her first fat bonus check from her new job and has been dying to gamble, sits down at the table to win the money back. And she does.
• Nathaniel finally telling his abusive, controlling father that he's a grown man and he's done living the life his father wants rather than what he wants, then quitting his job and going to work with the zoo he's always loved.
• While Paula loves her new, prestigious, high-paying job, she feels unfulfilled because she doesn't get to help people who really need her, so she approaches her boss about opening a pro bono arm of the firm to help indigent prisoners. Her boss politely refuses her, so Paula thanks her for the job offer, but decides she can't work there under those circumstances. It turns out the firm wants Paula so badly that they're willing to relent and negotiate the point with her.
  • Made extra awesome when you remember that in the first episode ever, Paula says that she wished she could be brave like Rebecca. That took a lot of bravery.