How many catwalks has YOUR dad walked crawled for you, friends? Personally, my count is zero. But my dad is severely allergic to cats and still (ahem) walks to feed mine his pills whenever I am gone, which seems like pretty much the same thing, so.
Exactly, Jane. Exactly.
(Penultimate) recap!
AWARDS
THIS WEEK’S MVP(arent)
Rogelio is sweeping this category this season! The extreme ends to which he went to secure a picketer-free path to Jane’s fake house for her wedding?
In Jane’s own words, everything he does for her is just so weird and cute, and I can’t get enough of it.
BEST TELENOVELA TWIST
There were so many! Derek double-crossing his own (terrifying) mother was actually unexpected and pretty great, but honestly? Rogelio’s gift of a whole photo album of fake 1st birthday memories for Mate(li)o was just…SO so great. So…
Rogelio’s Chapter 43 Award Count: 2!
BEST PRODUCT PLACEMENT
Target made itself known a LOT this ep—like, a LOT—but the prominent brand placement even more relevant to our specific interests here at FYA was, obviously, Simon & Schuster.
The publisher got called out by name so many times, with its logo clearly positioned (on the business card from Alba’s purse) as a focal point before the title screen even hit, that I wouldn’t be surprised if a tie-in romance novella by one Jane Villanueva and/or celebrity memoir by one Rogelio de la Vega didn’t hit out actual bookshelves (à la Richard Castle) sometime in the next couple of years. A GIRL CAN DREAM.
PREVIOUSLY ON JANE THE VIRGIN
Jane and Michael got engaged, and Rogelio had his Tiago crew build an exact model of the Villanueva house for them to get married in, as the real (“real”) Villanueva house is currently under extensive remodeling due to black curse attic flooding. Jane and Petra were just starting to be real friends, but then Petra’s secret twin sister Anezka showed up and ruined everything with her well-intentioned meddling to try and make Petra shine brighter than Jane in Raf’s estimation, and now Jane and Petra are in a FIGHT. Raf was too busy to notice any of this, as his own secret (half)sibling, dbag Derek, showed up to the Marbella around the same time as Anezka and has kept Raf busy alternately 1) working with Detective Michael Cordero to investigate Derek (son of Mutter) behind Derek’s back, 2) publicly disavowing said investigation and hiring Derek, a Solano with ties to Sin Rostro, to manage the blueprints for the Fairwick hotel the Marbella just acquired after Derek proved himself trustworthy/Michael got fired, and 3) obsessing over what to do to keep himself and his family safe after Derek proved UNtrustworthy and started blackmailing Raf in exchange for the entire Fairwick with the insider trading he tricked Raf into doing in the first place. Across town at his new job as head of security/lead technical advisor for Rogelio, Michael made his own SS Inkspot realization about Derek’s yacht alibi being fake, which news he immediately stepped outside, alone, to call in to his MIA ex-partner, Susanna Barnett…
THIS WEEK
Beyoncé Bobby
As has been common this season, the flashback most relevant to Jane’s current sitch this week is another from her recent adult life—specifically, to a moment several months ago when she, Mateo, and Rafael were at the park on a family outing and Mateo fell in love with the glitter-littering kids’ performer, **sparkle SFX** BOBBY.
Or rather, Jane fell in love, along with every other new mom in the park—including one whose tot had the same first birthday as Mateo—so before Mateo could say boo, the literal foot race to secure BOBBY’s services was on. And while personally I consider the glitter monster to be a public nuisance who should be banned from both Miami’s craft stores and all of its public green spaces, I admire Jane’s near-patented baby mama ferocity.
From Ladies to Lunch to Friends Who Fight
Speaking of fierce baby mamas, Raf’s are in a fight! Really—that is the exact phrasing Petra uses to describe it when Jane interrupts her harried double-planning for wedding and first birthday party to confront her about RSVPing No to Jane’s wedding, like she’s in sixth grade and the rules of friendship are only just starting to crystallize into anything remotely resembling nuanced. Which, considering Jane is Petra’s literal first friend, is not so inaccurate.
Despite the fact that Petra’s sister lost Jane her grad school TA position (well, one might argue that a man’s a compassionate intransigence lost her that), and that Petra lied to Jane about knowing about Anezka’s role in things, Jane still wants and expects Petra to be at her wedding. They are, after all, more or less family. And beyond that, they are…kind of…friends. And friends fight, and then the one in the wrong apologizes, and then they make up. And so Petra apologizes, profusely and repeatedly and with every promise possible regarding keeping Anezka away from Jane, and changes her RSVP. And not that it is a competition or anything, but with that apology, Jane scores a win.
Unfortunately for Jane, Petra is a quick learner, and she soon puts this new lesson in friendship to work in trying to edge Jane out in advising Raf what to do in response to Derek’s Fairwick blackmail.
She wants to get a win of her own, of course, but she also feels strongly about both her philosophical position on the inherent injustice of life, as well as her deeply rooted expertise in how to drop a pre-emptive strike on said injustice. Plus, as her subconscious blurts out when she is trying to get Raf to even listen to her idea, she loves him. She tries to backpedal and spin it into love as the father of her children, and as her family (Raf’s two magic words, yes, but increasingly Petra’s, too), but she and he and we all know what she really meant.
So Raf hears her out—in a closed-door meeting that Jane can’t effectively put the kibosh on, no matter how hard she tries—and it goes so well that Petra totally lets her guard down when decompressing with Anezka afterward (read: letting Anezka’s brush her “beautiful” hair), letting her tender, Raf-loving heart show and giving Anezka’s “hesitant” observations that Raf “seems to be loving her again too” far more credence than the hardened Petra we’ve come to know and love would normally do.
Cut to Petra sitting back smugly across from Magda in jail. Only, of course it isn’t Petra: it’s Anezka in Petra drag.
Petra, my heart! Put your hardened shell back on!
O Crew Captain, My Crew Captain
Okay, we will get back to the great Petra v. Jane face-off for Raf’s respect in a moment, but first: Rogelio. Or, as his nemesis Esteban tweets out after he shows up on screen for literally one minute to do nothing for the story except to troll Rogelio. #Rosmellio.
Why such a clever moniker? Well, because Rogelio is spending his week working full-time as part of the studio’s tech crew. Why? Because ever since Tiago’s turn as César Chavez’s right hand fruit man, the crew has been building up righteous rage enough to strike to force the studio to let them unionize, which plan they decided to put into place the day before Jane’s wedding, which plan would put their picket line directly in the way of the Villanueva house set (that Rogelio had them work uncompensated overtime to build), which wedding threat Ro decided to try and head off by making a bet with the lead tech guy that he could crew up for a whole week without complaining or quitting, if only they’d wait to strike until the day AFTER Jane’s wedding. (Not to call off the strike altogether—Jane pulls too much of a guilt trip on him over the importance of letting the crew unionize to do THAT.)
Easiest bet in the world for those tech guys, right?
Not exactly. Ro loves the utility of his lavender cargo shorts (so many pockets for moisturizer and mirrors!), and appreciates the opportunity to get in squats and shoulder presses when hauling cable. Plus, he is VERY MOTIVATED to not ruin either the grand gesture the house set was for Jane, or the event of her wedding, itself.
The Villanueva ladies frantically work on setting up contingency plans in case he can’t come through, but ultimately, the only thing that stands between him and success is a klieg light in the rafters whose bulb needs changing… a task the astonished/beleaguered crew assigned him knowing his crippling fear of heights. Rogelio gamely makes the attempt, but alas, freezes mid-crawl on the catwalk, where he stays for hours. Jane eventually shows up, and, leaving a sleeping, feverish Mateo (dun dun dunnnn) in the care of a best boy, climbs up the ladder in her heeled sandals to pull a Petra and threaten her dad to change the lightbulb or else. And he does! And the wedding is saved!
Alas, the extra days Rogelio’s grit and bravery bought for Jane’s wedding ALSO bought the studio enough time to hire a scab crew to come in and take over after they fire everyone Ro has been working with all week. And having so recently been a part of the proletariat (and being just a generally amazing dude, as we know), Ro gives up his victory, apologizing to Jane that they won’t be able to have the wedding on the scheduled day after all, because Rogelio himself will be in the picket line with the rest of the crew. My heart, it grows ten sizes. And Jane, she’s got the Villanueva Plan B ready to go, moving the wedding up to Thursday and taking Ro up on his offer to send a private chopper to pick Michael’s mother up in order for her to make the wedding in time.
Di! No! Mite!
Having been unable to interrupt Petra’s closed-door meeting with Rafael about what to do re: Derek’s blackmail, Jane invites Raf to join her and Mateo in a scouting mission to check out the party performers Xiomara found to replace the double-booked BOBBY (I told you he was a menace! Never trust a man who thinks spraying glitter around public places is acceptable human behavior!).
Yes, dancing dinos are a million times better than glitter magicians, Mateo, good opinion.
Her hope is that she will be able to present her counterargument to, well, whatever it was that Petra suggested, and that by being doped up on daddy dopamine while holding Mateo in the middle of a sunny park, he will be extra receptive to it. Her counterargument? For Raf to bring the entire insider trading boondoggle to the cops, and trust that the consequences for him will be minor to none in the light of how much help his new Intel will be in bringing Derek down, Unfortunately, Jane had made the invitation to see the Dinomites when she busted in on his and Petra’s private meeting, so Jane is barely able to finish her pitch before Petra and the twins crash the party.
Raf takes Mateo to meet the Dinomites/leave Jane and Petra to duke their ideological differences out without him, and Petra explains her plan to Jane in detail. Jane thinks it is insane, not least because it runs counter to everything she believes about doing the right thing and trusting that justice will prevail. Ultimately, though, Raf decides to go with Petra anyway. She can be very persuasive! And it isn’t like Raf’s has had much luck with, well, anything optimistic lately. So it makes sense, but still.
Jane: 1, Petra: 1.
Rafael, unfortunately: 0. Because Petra’s plan? To fake an FBI raid in the middle of Derek’s last shakedown of Raf’s for the keys to Fairwick, during which Raf and his computer and all his files are taken into custody, leaving a gaping Derek and “frantic” Petra behind to bite their nails through the long hours until Rafael, stone faced, returns.
When he does, he brings Derek into his office and closes the door to give Derek the chance to explain how Rafael has endangered his extortion plan in so many words. This confession is meant to be captured by a recorder hidden in a box by the office door, but unfortunately some repairmen out in Krishna’s office are making too much noise for the recorder to definitively catch what Derek said. And when Raf ham-handedly tries to get Derek to repeat himself, Derek figures out what’s up, and gets Raf to give up his plan.
And thus, Raf hands over the Fairwick. And while Michael was successful in getting Susanna to meet with him, and to agree to chase down the new leads on his suspicion that there is another secret suite under the hotel that Sin Rostro built to hide her criminal plastic surgery money in, they arrive too late, the hotel’s marble lobby floor already demolished…and Elena Mutter Solano bound and gagged in the corridor below.
Welp, Raf officially has the worst luck in family.
Am I biased? Very well, I am biased.
Feliz Cumpleaños, Mister Sweet Face!
That was the episode’s kicker, but Derek is too douches to deserve final billing—especially when Mateo (and Jane, and Rafael) go through a minor hell to get to his first birthday celebration.
Yes, despite all the work Jane put into planning, then replanning, Mateo’s party in tandem with planning the last details of her wedding, the party is a flop, as Mateo’s minor cold from the beginning of the week grew into a cough, grew into a fever, grew into something that required the baby ER and Rafael holding him down as he had a little needle stuck in his arm to draw blood.
Jane and Raf spend the night in the hospital room with Mateo, both equal parts shellshocked over having let their own dramas take such priority that something bad happened to their favorite little human, and relieved to have a moment of peace to consider their priorities/flash back to the long year they’ve had since the first time they met Mateo. In appreciation for everything Raf’s done for her and them, Jane squeezes Raf’s hand, and we get the rest of the BOBBY flashback from the top of the episode, seeing that that was back before Michael had come back into the picture, when Jane and Rafael were about to get back together. And as Jane takes her hand back, we see Raf’s heart glowing in his chest, and my heart aches for him.
The next morning, after Jane and Raf cancel the Dinomites party and the doctor discharges Mateo, the rest of Jane’s family shows up, a full birthday party, balloons and cupcake and Rogelio’s photoshopped birthday scrapbook and many, many Target gift bags and all, in tow.
Showing their teamwork (and proving Alba’s theory that the first birthday party is for the parents to celebrate one successful year down, not the kid, right), Jane and Raf blow out the candle together.
NEXT TIME
IT’S TOMORROW!!! IT’S THE FINALE!!!! And wedding bells, they are a’RINGING.
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.
