Why Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's Greg recasting worked

Vox

"Greg’s recasting wouldn’t work as a metaphor if Crazy Ex-Girlfriend weren’t already given to frequently breaking the fourth wall," says Constance Grady of The CW series tapping Skylar Astin to play the new Greg. "Not all of the show’s meta jokes land... but they’ve become part of the vocabulary of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. This is a show that is heavily filtered through Rebecca’s perspective, and it consistently nods to that fact: That’s how it pulls off its musical numbers, and its theme songs, and its movie trailer parodies. All of which means that it was perfectly positioned to make lemonade out of the lemons of having to recast Greg."