Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
When it was announced back in August that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend planned to bring back Greg, the beloved Season 1 (and a small portion of Season 2) character, there was likely a momentary feeling of excitement among fans. After all, Santino Fontana, the impishly charming actor who played him, was pretty solid and it would be great to know what Greg’s been up to these past couple of years at business school. Of course, any initial enthusiasm for the idea went down the drain the minute we realized that it wasn’t Fontana returning, nor was it Greg as we initially knew him. Instead, Greg was being “reimagined” and would now be portrayed by Pitch Perfect alum Skylar Astin. Yikes.
No offense to Astin, of course—he’s OK and clearly has the musical and dance chops required of a role on the CW musical comedy series. The problem here is more the decision to bring back the character at all given that the original actor is either unavailable or uninterested in reprising the role and that Greg’s storyline wasn’t left with any particularly loose ends. In a situation like this, the smart move would have been to table the “Bring Greg Back!” campaign and head in another direction. Clearly that didn’t happen here.
While Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star and co-creator Rachel Bloom has justified the decision by asserting that it’s a “great statement on how our perception of people changes,” it’s an idea that’s still a bit hard to buy into. The only statement the idea seems to be making is that the writers room has run out of ideas for the show’s final season. Of course, the impetus to bring back a beloved character is understandable, especially as the curtain is closing on the series. Nostalgia is a very powerful thing, but there are a few reasons that doesn’t really hold up here.
First and foremost, Rebecca (Bloom) and Greg were awful together. They spent most of Season 1 being terrible to and for each other in equal measures at different times. Greg was an immature commitment-phobe with a masochistic streak—one of his most memorable musical numbers was the infamous “Settle For Me,” lest we forget—while Rebecca used Greg to feel better whenever things weren’t going well with Josh and treated him like crap until it was too late. Greg moving to Atlanta to attend Emory University (“the Harvard of the south!”) was the best thing for both of them, and while it was sad to see him leave the show, the whole thing was wrapped up pretty nicely.
At this point, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is pretty busy. The initial close-knit cast of main characters has expanded considerably over the past couple of seasons, and while this has allowed some additional complexity and emotional depth to come forward, it also doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for Greg, to be honest. From a storywriting perspective, it’s also unlikely that after moving to a major US city and getting a degree in a field he always wanted to study in and experiencing life away from his dad’s house in West Covina, he’d come rushing back to, what, get his job back at the bar? Pine after Rebecca some more? No thanks.
Perhaps the return would be a more welcome one if Fontana himself were reprising the role, but even then the aforementioned issues would remain. As it stands, Astin’s on board and Greg is coming back whether we like it or not, so we’ll have to deal with it. But then, that’s the other problem: how do we wrap our heads around a new interpretation of a character that was very much brought to life via Fontana’s individual quirks and acting style? Why should we have to?
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend isn’t the first show to recast a main character and it’s certainly not the end of the world, but it’s a decision that many may find it hard to swallow. Since the writers seem committed to following through with it, maybe the best approach would be to keep Greg’s role on the show as short and minor as possible—bring him back for a quick wedding or funeral and wave goodbye again as he walks off into the sunset and back to his new, undoubtedly better life in Atlanta—and then move on. It’s unclear how expansive Astin’s role on the show will be, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Jennifer Still is a writer and editor from New York who cares too way much about fictional characters and spends her time writing about them.
