I don’t have the eidetic memory to back this up, but I think that this week’s episode—specifically, the abandoned bachelorette party featuring a very drunk Jane and Xo and a very game stripper (Gina’s IRL boyfriend!)—yanked me from tears to shrieks of laughter in the shortest span of time a piece of media has ever managed.
I say it every week, but: THIS SHOW!!
Let’s talk about it.
AWARDS
THIS WEEK’S MVP(arent)
Jane, for really upping the game on how to keep fairy tales in the bedtime routine without warping a kid’s sense of healthy life outcomes.
Runner-up: Petra, for taking Rafael’s declaration of love very seriously specifically over her devotion to keep her kids’ lives stable and happy.
BEST TELENOVELA TWIST
Raf’s cancer fakeout! There was enough faux-nonchalant foreshadowing in the first act that I genuinely half-suspected that was the twist that was coming. But nope! As JANE always does, it faked out the fakeout perfectly.
Runner-up: That Chuck was such a red herring that not even his declaration of love last week earned him even a mention in Petra’s deliberations, let alone screentime.
BEST PRODUCT PLACEMENT
Our most meta placement yet: television, itself!
Oh, we’ll be there.
Runner-up: Jane’s (and Gina’s!) boxing skills, which have remained consistently organic to every story they’ve been a part of, and make my own pugilistic heart pre-e-e-tty smug.
PREVIOUSLY ON JANE THE VIRGIN
Jane started up a sex-only fling with Rogelio’s hot co-star, Fabian. Xiomara proposed to Rogelio and Jane gave them her blessing(/assurances it wouldn’t bum her out with memories of Michael) to go absolutely all out in wedding planning. Rafael made his resurfaced feelings for Petra known to her in a heartfelt voicemail, which she has heard but not responded to. Chuck, Petra’s actual boyfriend, described a woman he saw on the beach the night Scott was murdered to the police sketch artist, and when Rafael and Petra saw the finished product, they were SHOCKED.
THIS WEEK
Fairytale Flashback
No surprises here: Baby!Jane grew up eating fairy tales for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We’ve long known that fairy tale endings are her Thing, which has both helped (unwavering optimism!) and hurt (bad things still happen) her these past three seasons. Luckily, Adult!Jane has learned from her past, and has evolved her appreciation for fairy tales—and the lessons she teaches Mateo about them—to include the messiness of life as part of what a “fairy tale ending” entails.
Xiomara, meanwhile, has also evolved her appreciation for fairy tales. That is, she has evolved to believe that she isn’t too old, after all, to have the princess poof gown, white horse, and glittering crown she’d always dreamed of for her fairy tale wedding. Some VERY AWFUL other people who live in the world might not agree with her—burn to the GROUND the bitchy patriarchy manifested so perfectly/deplorably by Jean and Luc as they scoff at Xo’s age and dreams before walking out on Jane, tbh—but Jane is all in. If Xo wants it, Jane will make it happen. Even if she only has two weeks. ESPECIALLY if she only has two weeks.
Ricky Martin as officiant, though, Rogelio? Let’s not go too far…
Face Fight
In her bid to successfully take on what pro wedding planners Jean and Luc gave up, Jane sets out to either source every element Xiomara and Rogelio want, or convince them that a slightly different alternative will work just as well. For some details, this is fine. For Xo’s white horses, though, no—”speckled” just won’t cut it.
And so Jane finds herself in quite a predicament when Fabian, with whom she has been trying to break up for days, catches her in his dressing room as she is trying to steal back the wedding invite Rogelio already left for him, and in the very moment she is about to come clean, she catches sight of a poster from his last telenovela. A poster featuring Fabian astride, yes, a white horse. (Or rather, horsie, in Fabian-lingo.) Naturally, rather than doing the difficult but right thing of breaking things off right there, Jane hands him the wedding invitation she had already swiped, and asks if he can hook her up with his horsie guy.
Unfortunately, while Jane told Rogelio her plan to break things off with Fabian, she didn’t follow up with what became of that plan. And so, when Rogelio catches Fabian with a hangdog look on set later that day (Fabian’s shirtless scene got cut, so traumatic), he commiserates with him about Jane’s decision…accidentally laying bare her lie.
Fabian turns vengeful real quick, and while his flavor of vengeance is genuinely puppyish, he manages to inconvenience Rogelio and Jane (and, by extension, Xo) enough that a showdown is inevitable.
No horsies here, Jane!
Equally inevitable: that his hurt dude feelings would fall so easily back into the false virgin-whore paradigm that Jane schooled him in so thoroughly last week, him calling Jane a slut in retaliation for hurting his feelings and making him look foolish. Bad move, guy! Now Rogelio has no machismo-rooted option but to fight you!
(Not in the face.) (OBVIOUSLY.)
The two selfie-obsessed actors make for the studio lot to throw down, Jane chasing after. She wedges herself between their cat-fight and confronts Fabian with the truth, and an apology. He seems to accept it, hugging her to prove his understanding, but the hug was a lie. THE HUG WAS A LIE. He uses his proximity to Rogelio to pull back and try to sucker punch him…in the face.
Alas for him, Jane’s boxing sessions have paid off, and she bops him in the nose first. Nicely done, Jane!
Showing just as much womanly fortitude: the network exec who comes down to the lot and just reads the two drama kings for all they are worth. You two dudes WILL make up with each other, you WILL work together without any further fighting, and you WILL make up all the time you cost the crew with your childish shenanigans.
PREACH, QUEEN.
Love Bugs
This prime directive screws up Rogelio’s whole night, unfortunately, and he has to bail on the bachelor/bachelorette party he and Xo were supposed to have. Jane still sets everything up, but Xo texts everyone to cancel, and mom and daughter do shots and talk life and love instead. Xo gets REAL about how Jane’s opinions about Raf+Petra clearly stem from jealousy, and Jane gets honest with herself about how she worries she and Mateo might just become “the extra people” if Raf and Petra and the twins all become one happy family.
Then Xo gets really real, and drunkenly opines about how happy and lucky she is that she gave birth to her best friend, and hi, I’m crying rivers right now. AND THEN a knock sounds at the door, and it is the stripper Jane forgot to cancel, and he is the same stripper Xo ordered for Jane way back when Jane was getting married (“he’s the only stripper I know!”), and he is Gina’s real life boyfriend, and he is dancing allll up on Xo, and Jane is dancing drunk in the background, and it is just truly, genuinely, a gift.
While she is still drunk, Jane gets on the phone with Rafael to make up over the argument they had earlier when he figured out she helped Petra talk herself out of taking Raf up on his admission of love. She tells him her fears about her and Mateo being on the outside; he tells her point blank that when he thinks of family, he sees her.
Her heart, it starts glowing. And then she calls Petra, and drunkenly talks her into giving things with Raf a shot, because how could they not take that risk, if it would actually work out. They have all grown these past many years, and the change seems permanent. Then she gets back on the line with Raf and sends him to Petra’s room.
There is a split second where Raf’s knock on the door sounds on Jane’s end, but it is another fakeout: he did go to Petra, and the knock at Jane’s door is Xo and Ro, come to ask Jane to be their officiant. Not necessarily what Jafael shippers might have hoped for, but also not a bad outcome.
The bad outcome does come, though—just, for Rose, who, after forcing Luisa to never speak to her brother for more than 30 seconds at a time, and keeping them constantly in hiding, agreed to don her Elaine disguise and follow Luisa back to Miami after Raf leaves his red herring message of his cancer returning. As Rose suspected, he was working with the police, and she is arrested on sight, the cops pulling her skin mask off with unsettling slowness.
What will happen next? WHO KNOWS.
NEXT TIME
Wedding bells are ringing, and Darcie is pregnant…with Rogelio’s baby!
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.
