Dinuguan at Thanksgiving

On Monday’s episode of Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Rebecca cooks a traditional Filipino dish called dinuguan to impress Josh’s family at their Thanksgiving celebration. By the time it came to filming the scene that included eating the pork blood stew, the meal looked more like carnitas than the hearty soul food it was meant to be.

“The dinuguan had been sitting on set all day in the heat, so it no longer looked accurate,” said episode writer Rene Gube. “I started thinking about whether I’d say so because the props guy was working his ass off, and if I slowed down production, we might run overtime, and it would cost thousands of dollars. But [executive producer Aline Brosh McKenna] saw my face and asked what was wrong. When I told her, she immediately stopped everything and said, ‘It’s done, we’ll fix it.’” This might be perceived as a minor course-correction in other circumstances, but for the Filipino-American actor and writer, it was proof that his bosses are committed to representing Filipino culture authentically on the CW musical comedy — the first TV series to depict Filipino-American family life, with a large Filipino cast of actors, in a single episode. “I was encouraged every step of the way to make it truthful and accurate,” Gube said. “That’s something I’ve never felt the agency to do by my previous bosses.”

A fantastic episode and more notable that Rene is getting some awesome traction. Seriously, this is what I look forward to on Thanksgiving.

Catch the clip: