AWARDS
THIS WEEK’S MVP(arent)
Parenting was pretty low on the list of plot points in the thematically titled “Chapter Sixty-Nine” (NICE), so I’m going to skip straight to “Chapter Seventy” and hand out two awards there.
BEST TELENOVELA TWISTS
Definitely 1) Adam being revealed as a comfortable, chill bisexual, and 2) LINA KISSING JANE to cap off Jane’s emotional journey accepting that news about Adam.
I MEAN
Runner-up: Carl wasn’t a figment of Luisa’s broken imagination after all, and Magda and Anezka have an actual SCHEME afoot!
BEST PRODUCT PLACEMENT
SISTERLOVING FRIENDSHIP, IS WHAT.
Here’s to all our longest BFF relationships. May they last forever and a day.
PREVIOUSLY ON JANE THE VIRGIN
Jane healed enough from Michael’s death to start dating again, and then got confident enough dating again that she was able to start a relationship with her first love (and almost husband!), Adam the Chill Graphic Novel Artist, who turned down a job offer in LA in order to stay in Miami near Jane. Meanwhile, following Petra’s breakup with him, Rafael descended into Douchedom long enough to fight with Jane, lead a cougar hotelier investor on as part of a scheme to get back the Marbella from his unraveling sister, Luisa, and then get run over by said cougar’s car when he finally came to his senses and was honest with her about his intentions. Luisa had no clue about this near-death accident, as she was being led by a secretive dude named Carl into almost torching the Marbella for enough insurance money to break Rosa out of jail. But surprise! According to Anezka, who was overheard by an accidentally eavesdropping Krishna, Carl doesn’t exist, and Luisa is seeing things! Back in Villanueva-de la Vega land, Rogelio and Xo are now happily married and not ever going to have any kids of their own, and since Rogelio orchestrated diva Fabian’s exit, his telenovela is going great guns.
THIS WEEK
Guess who is in town??? LINA IS IN TOWN!!!! My absolute favorite BFF team, back at it again for Lina’s bachelorette party. Also here, Lina’s fiancé! And also also here, Adam! Who somehow knows Lina’s fiancé from NYC! Because of their mutual friend, Adam’s ex! Who was a dude!
He’s so pretty!
As cool as Jane is in general, she does not take this revelation with particular grace. But I’m sure it’s fine!
Anyway, here is a greeting that no person receiving a phone call has ever been soothed by: “Everything’s fine, there’s nothing to worry about.” Now, I definitely understand why it is the best of all possible ways to open the sharing of catastrophic information—”Now don’t freak out, BUT…” and “[Person you love is in the hospital] BUT…” are so much more terrifying, so better to provide the most critical information about someone being alright before going into the less immediately relevant details—but it’s still not great! So, no wonder that Jane freaked out when Petra called to alert her to Rafael’s having been run over, by way of telling her that he was totally fine.
Rafael is *mostly* fine, but the real reason Petra worked to hard to downplay his injuries and put Jane off racing to the hospital herself was because Raf was embarrassed that Jane was right about Katherine all along. Petra didn’t want her to come because she is furious that Rafael let himself get Villanueva-ed in the first place, before their scheme could push through.
In any case, what’s done is done, and now some new scheme has to be invented to get Rafael his hotel/money/pride back from his crazy and possibly pyromaniac sister. “Girl PLEASE” is the look Petra gives Raf when he stresses how insane Luisa is. “You don’t think so??” he demands, incredulous. “My sister tried to drown me at sea; I have a high bar,” she says in return.
Back at the Villanueva ranch, Jane hangs up from her call with Petra to return to her argument that Xo stop relying on the birth control pills she keeps forgetting to take and instead find a method that is way less energy-intensive like the ring or the arm implant or the other ring or a vasectomy for Ro (“Look at you, Planned Parenthood!” and Spoiler: Rogelio fights but eventually allows for the vasectomy). Oh, and also they are talking about Adam being bisexual, and Jane not yet managing to absorb the reality of that. SHE claims it is because of society’s double standard on what kind of homoerotic pairings are acceptable and what ones are gross, but she is Jane and she is complex, there’s probably something else going on we’ll learn about soon!
Rafael, meanwhile, is not handling his hit-and-tun recovery well, and Jane doesn’t feel like they are in a good enough place for her to do the comforting he and she both need. But when she walks by Mateo’s room later that night and sees a weeping Raf half-fallen out of Mateo’s bed, having been unable to handle his laptop, she sits down with him and they have a the heartfelt discussion this whole fall season has been leading up to. Justin Baldoni KILLS it, breaking down all the worries he is spiraling over, and all the guilt over worrying when he is just lucky to be alive that is compounding that spiral.
Jane, who has rediscovered some of her grace, drops all judgment: he is allowed to feel unlucky about the hotel and the money, regardless of being alive. His feelings are valid. They are both, at last, mostly redeemed for their terrible Season 4 behavior!
The next day, Raf learns from Petra that Luisa was talking to someone named Carl. It turns out that when Luisa had her first mental breakdown that resulted in institutionalization, it was because she had hallucinated a person named Carla who was telling her to do things in surgeries that didn’t need doing. This freaks Rafael out enough that he breaks Luisa’s ban and returns to the Marbella to try to talk her into considering medical help. Remarkably, after consulting with Anezka, who apologizes to beautiful doctor but confirms that no, no one was with Luisa when Luisa introduced her to Carl, it works, and Luisa believes him, hands back his part of the hotel, and checks herself into medical care. Wow! So easy! Everything is solved!!!!
Except: Carl is real! Magda and Anezka orchestrated the whole thing! And now that Luisa is in a mental institution, none of her business decisions, including handing shares back to Rafael, are legally valid. Instead, her share reverts to Anezka, who becomes majority shareholder. Whoops!
Meanwhile, Jane’s life, at least when she isn’t trying to convince a worried Adam that his bisexuality is totes cool dude, is full of Lina—and Danny, whom Lina is suddenly nervous about actually marrying, now that the real day is almost here, and her sisters sat her down for a sistervention. She tasks Jane with spending the day getting to know Danny well enough to make a decision for her whole future, which Jane initially balks at, but ultimately is too invested in her own opinion not to be honest that Danny? He’s…kinda boring.
Unfortunately, one day does not an expert make in another human being, and Jane’s initial impression that Danny and Lina had nothing in common is shot to bits when he drops by her house later to pick up murder party props and lets Jane in on the secret that he will be interrupting the party with a much more Lina-minded stripper dance, featuring him! Jane is so vocal about her surprise at his rightness for Lina that he immediately is suspicious, and gets her to admit that Lina had her spying on her behalf. And thus Jane rushes to the party to try to talk Lina out of her earlier conclusion, where it takes a whole BFF bathroom floor sesh for them both to get to the bottom of their troubles. For Lina, the answer is that Danny’s boringness is the exact same flavor of Jane’s, and that she is marrying the male version of her best friend and longest relationship.
For Jane, whose response to Lina’s revelation is to let her bisexually-curious subconscious lean her in for a kiss, it is that she worried that Adam might end up breaking her heart and leaving again, and his bisexuality gave her a tangible hurdle to put in their path.
I…call shenanigans on this being the root cause of Jane’s weirdness, given how little evidence is presented textually beforehand, but whatever! It makes for a very cute makeup scene with Adam, wherein he promises her vehemently that he isn’t interested in any other human but her, and isn’t going to be leaving her and breaking her heart, and btw they are monogamous, so neither should be kissing ANYONE else!
Cool. Cool cool cool. I’m so glad this is a promise that will be kept in mind and maintained faithfully for several episodes to come.
About the Contributor:
Alexis Gunderson is a TV critic and audiobibliophile. A Wyoming expat, she now lives in Maryland, where she runs the DC chapter of the FYA Book Club. She can be found talking about Teen TV on Twitter, and her longform criticism can be found on Authory.
