Very big spoilers ahead for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
The second season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is already available to stream on Netflix, just a week after the finale aired. Whether you’re watching for the first time or settling in for a full rewatch, you won’t want to miss the show’s torrent of running gags and callbacks. To guide you along the way, Vulture put together this complete roundup of the season’s many inside jokes, from “Period Sex” to … uh, Gene? Or is it Glen?
“Period Sex”
“Period Sex” is easily the season’s most popular recurring joke. Rebecca desperately wants to sing a song about period sex (“Put down a towel, party ’til it’s dry”), but keeps getting cut off — first by Josh in episode three, then by Valencia and Anna in episode seven. In episode ten, Naomi performs her own version while recalling the time she caught Rebecca having period sex as a teen.
Though Rachel Bloom joked that she wanted to put “Period Sex” references in every episode of the season, the actual song was too hot for TV, and was released as a YouTube video instead.
It’s all on East Cameron
It’s been a running gag since the first season that every business in West Covina is on East Cameron Drive. (Paula and Rebecca in episode one: “What’s on East Cameron?” “Literally everything.”)
In episode two, Greg brings donuts to his AA meeting from “the new place on East Cameron.” Later, when White Josh and Hector think he’s relapsed, they split up to go look for him at “the beer garden on East Cameron” and “the gastropub on East Cameron.”
When Josh rescues the Garfinkel ring to propose to Rebecca in episode ten, he tells her, “I went to the pawn shop on East Cameron.”
The butter ads
Remember those creepy butter ads that peered into Rebecca’s psyche during season one? In the eighth episode of season two, they’re the sponsor of her mom podcast: “Let’s take a quick break to hear a word from our podcast sponsor, Truly Butter. ‘When you’re trying to make things right with your best friend Paula, who you’ve been kind of a bitch to lately, why not take a break and eat some butter together?’”
In the finale, when Rebecca puts on her veil and looks in the mirror, she says the same butter slogan she did when she had a breakdown in the pilot: “This is what happy feels like.”
Paula loves Twilight
In episode one, she describes the high she gets from scheming with Rebecca as “like the high I get from those vampire novels.”
In episode seven, when she’s absorbed in her constitutional law textbook, Scott asks her, “What are you reading? You’re so into it. Is it one of your sexy vampire books?”
Rebecca’s red licorice fetish
At Electric Mesa in episode five, Rebecca confesses to Darryl: “Let’s not knock someone for a fetish. I mean, you know, some people like being … choked by red licorice. Not saying who, but I think you know it’s me.”
At the end of episode six, when Rebecca and Trent finish having sex, she’s shown chewing on a red licorice rope.
“I’m a student”
A holdover from the first season: Whenever Heather is in trouble or doesn’t know what to do, she falls back on her “I’m a student…” excuse. The most successful use to date is at the Miss Douche competition in episode four, where it ends up netting Heather the title.
Gif or jif?
Rebecca doesn’t know how to pronounce GIF. When she asks in episode one, Paula’s responds, “Nobody knows.”
In episode ten, Rebecca tells Valencia, “I used up my data plan sending you sad Bitmojis and Golden Girls GIFs. Jifs? Is it gifs or jifs? Never mind.”
Always blame men
In episode seven, when Rebecca and Valencia desperately try to cover up the fact that they ran over Anna’s cat, Rebecca yells, “It was a man! It’s always a man!”
In the next episode, when Paula freaks out about the ice-cube tray not being refilled, she yells, “Who did this? What man did this?”
This joke comes to a head in the finale, when Paula reassures jilted bride Rebecca: “All these men, they are the ones to blame.”
“What’s that guy’s name?”
The show draws attention to poor George in episode nine, when he sings a song about being ignored, but people at Whitefeather haven’t known his name for quite a while. Here are the other names his office mates call him over the course of the season: “this guy,” Garry, Glenn, Gene, Jordan, Jer, Gus, and “what’s-his-name.”
Rebecca can’t sing
Another first-season holdover: Despite having a full-on musical in her head, Rebecca Bunch can’t hold a tune. For example, when she makes up a song to the tune of “The Entertainer” in episode one.
Rebecca hates football
A favorite joke of the Bunch women, as seen in episodes four and eight of the first season: ”I’m going to hit the ladies … room, I’m not a football player.” Rebecca trots it out again at dinner with Josh’s family in episode nine this season. It continues to not kill.
In episode two, Josh tells Rebecca he’ll be watching the game with just the guys, since she hates football. Her response: “I don’t hate football. I get why it’s fun, it just kind of propagates the ideology of physical dominance and the economic subjugation of the working poor. Plus the concussions, it should be illegal, LOL.”
The L-word
This one goes from sad to sweet. In episode two, Josh tells Rebecca: “That’s what I love about you!” She responds: “You love me?” Josh: “Love about you.”
In episode seven, Josh and Anna have the same exchange at the fancy coffee shop — only this time, Josh is in Rebecca’s shoes.
When Josh and Rebecca finally get back together in episode nine and plan their day at Raging Waters, he says, “That’s why I love you.” Rebecca: “You mean you love something about me.” Josh: “No, I mean I love you.” Rebecca: “I love you too, Josh Chan!”
Josh Chan or Silas Bunch?
Rebecca’s relationship with her dad, as shown in the finale, is a lot like her relationship with Josh. The text message she sends him in the beginning of the episode is almost a word-for-word re-creation of the text she first sends Josh when she arrives in West Covina, complete with the “Buzz!” and bee emoticon.
She also re-creates the moment from the Dr. Phil episode where he thinks she and Josh are a couple, only with her dad and the dance instructor. “That’s so funny, he thinks we’re a couple. That’s so funny! We’re not a couple. That’s so funny, he thinks we’re a couple. We’re not a couple. But he thinks we’re a couple.”
“You’re crazy!”
In episode nine, Nathaniel says this line to Rebecca when she’s about to stab him with a pen. Her response: “Little bit!” When her dad walks out on her after she’s jilted by Josh, he says the same thing — and gets the same response.
The many, many song callbacks
Episode two: Rebecca quietly sings a few bars of “I Give Good Parent” to herself while making kugel for Josh. Later, Scott tells Paula: “After everything you’ve done for her!” and Paula interrupts, “That she didn’t ask for” — a callback to Paula’s Mama Rose–esque song from the first season.
Episode eight: Paula’s son Tommy is obsessed with boobs, so Rebecca repeats the “Heavy Boobs” mantra: “They’re just sacks of yellow fat.”
Episode ten: “We’ll Never Have Problems Again” has a callback to the show’s old theme song: “Now, for once, the situation’s a lot less nuanced than that!” Then, when Rebecca and Josh meet Audra Levine’s husband at the bar mitzvah, there’s a callback to the “JAP Battle” lyric about her sleeping with him at the Matzo Ball in college: “finished quick, rotten lay.” (In the uncensored version, it’s “small dick, rotten lay” — and it’s established shortly thereafter that Audra’s husband is not well-endowed.)
Episode 11: The Santa Ana winds remind Rebecca that she’s once again ruined everything. In the closing tag, Karen sings a mini-version of “The Math of Love Triangles” about her snake, Long John Slither. “What’s a girl to do when she’s stuck between men? Especially when one of those men is a snake!”
Episode 13: “Rebecca’s Reprise” in the finale is actually four songs put together: “You Stupid Bitch,” “I’m the Villain in My Own Story,” “I Love My Daughter,” and “We’ll Never Have Problems Again.” And, of course, Naomi’s testimony to the judge in the finale is more or less a line-for-line reprise of the second season’s theme, “I’m Just a Girl in Love.”
The Hidden Clues about Robert
Although they aren’t really jokes, the show has seeded hints about Rebecca’s brush with arson since the first season. Here are three big ones:
1. In the pilot, Naomi chews out Rebecca for “another stunt like your little ‘suicide attempt’ in law school. You didn’t even break your skin and you inconvenienced a lot of people!” (Presumably, Rebecca tried to kill herself after setting the fire, which might explain why the judge was so lenient — and why she landed in a mental hospital.)
2. In episode four of the first season, Rebecca says she plans to make healthy choices in her dating life: “I think I really need to be with, like, an older guy, maybe like a professor … [quietly] oh.”
3. The most notable is when she sets fire to Joshy Bear in episode four, and ends up torching her apartment. It’s a shot-for-shot match with the fire at Robert’s.
