'Crazy Ex-Girlfriend' Teaches Another Lesson

We've heard a lot about Audra Levine, Rebecca's hometown nemesis, during Season 1 of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend . During Monday night's new episode of the show, we finally got to meet her, and believe me, she was as dreadful as Rebecca made her seem leading up to this point. Let's just say I could see why Rebecca's mom likes her so much, and that's definitely not a compliment. But the good part about Audra's appearance on the show is that it made you see just how far Rebecca has come in showing her true self since the beginning of the series.

In fact, Audra quite literally shows the kind of woman Rebecca used to be: an attorney in a high-powered New York City law firm who mistook success for happiness. But through some flashbacks to when the ladies were major competitors when they were kids in school, we see that Audra was always much more mean, ruthless, and altogether a bully than Rebecca ever was.

Since she's a Manhattan lawyer, what's Audra doing in West Covina, anyway? Well, remember that case Rebecca started working on with Josh during last Monday night's episode when she discovered that Greater City Water had been bribing landlords to divert water away from the San Gabriel Valley to Los Angeles? Audra was brought in to defend Greater City Water in this major class-action lawsuit put into motion by Rebecca.

And yes, Rebecca and Audra's first encounter after all these years was just as epic as you'd expect. The two had a JAP (Jewish American Princess) rap battle with plenty of burns mostly only privileged young woman of a certain faith would probably understand.

As an aside, there's another epic musical number later on in the episode that parodies "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Miserables and features a cameo from B.J. Novak. C'est magnifique, non?

But let me back up for a second, because while all of this is going on, Trent, that guy Rebecca pretended was her boyfriend has kind of become her real boyfriend/overly loyal puppy dog. Even though it seemed like Rebecca was going to get caught in another one of her lies during last Monday night's episode, Trent played along because he always had a crush on her ever since the two were at Harvard together. So Trent saved Rebecca from losing the trust of Josh, Greg, and Valencia completely, but then he blackmailed her into being his girlfriend or else he would expose the truth. Well, at least he cooks and gives amazing back massages!

But actually, when Trent wasn't giving me the creeps, he seemed like an extreme case of the kind of shenanigans Rebecca has pulled with Josh this season. It was interesting to see how she reacted to his friendly threats, especially because she went along with them for some time because, as we all know, Josh just means that much to her.

However, all of this came to a head during the trial. When Audra's questioning basically rendered Rebecca's key witness in the case useless, Trent swooped in to try to save the day by giving her emails that he got by hacking the company's network that exposed the water conspiracy. The only problem was that was basically stealing and if Trent ever told anyone how he obtained them, which he might be inspired to do if Rebecca broke up with him, she would get in big trouble.

So even though those emails would have been surefire evidence to prove Rebecca's case, she chose not to present them because that's not the person that she is. She cared too much about what Josh would think, and hopefully, how she would feel about herself as well.

Rebecca lost the case, but that didn't matter because, in one of the most honest moments of the season, she revealed to Josh that she wanted him to be proud of her, which made him realize how much he meant to her, which ended up in a big smooching session between the two — FINALLY. Unfortunately, Greg, who admitted to himself once again that he does still have feelings for Rebecca, caught them kissing. Paula didn't really help any either, saying how right Rebecca and Josh are for each other.

Naturally, next week's episode will continue to see Rebecca going to great lengths to win Josh's heart, and it looks like this time, she's going to follow him to Hawaii. I'm not sure their romance will be able to survive the trip, but stranger things have definitely happened on this series.

Images: Scott Everett White/The CW; bunchofbloom, mostlypoptarts/Tumblr