WOW I somehow lost the whole week after going on that bachelorette bender with Jane!
Yep, took that way too literally to heart. So, let’s not waste time. To the party recap!
AWARDS
THIS WEEK’S MVP(arent)
Petra, maybe, for not actually leaving? Or Alba, for knowing what line between comfort and criticism to take when a drunken Xo crawled into her bed? Or Xo, maybe, for being such a successful negative (parental) example to Lina that she got the fire she needed to move her life forward? I don’t know! It was a parenting-light week, for once, which was kind of refreshing (as a VERY occasional thing).
BEST TELENOVELA TWIST
TWINS???
Czech.
Buuuut maybe that is so obvious that instead I should go for the fresh cucumber twist of Michael’s bro-y friends finally coming around to the glories of an extended, classy spa bachelor party.
BEST PRODUCT PLACEMENT
We got a double-shot this week: Jane flipping through her very practical Apple iPad while sitting in her shiny wifi-hotspot Chevrolet Cruze:
Way to land those sponsors, JtV!
PREVIOUSLY ON JANE THE VIRGIN
Jane and Michael got re-engaged, finally, because Michael, finally, got his shit (taking down Rose/Sin Rostro)(not telling Jane how she feels about everything ALL THE TIME) together. Xo and Ro got engaged, then dis-engaged, then distracted from their angst w/r/t both events by their excitement over Jane and Michael’s upcoming nuptials. Raf and Petra together got TWO BABIES, and separately got post-partum depression (Petra) and a surprise half-brother (Raf, on his crimelord mother’s side). Luckily, they have hired two very skilled Scandinavian night nurses for the Frozen twins, so each has ample time and energy to try and deal with their respective non-infant burdens. Petra’s gambit? (Prescribed) Pills and/or running away in the night. Raf’s gambit? (Non-prescribed) Aged spirits and/or teaming up with Michael to snoop behind his brother’s back for any ties to their criminal (and criminally absent) mom, Mutter.
THIS WEEK
All The 21st Party People
Jane’s 21st birthday, you may recall, was both the first time she met Michael, and the last time she let herself totally lose control. The latter facilitated the former, which obviously Jane and Michael are both happy about, but it also led to Jane shooting a hole into her ceiling after she mistook Michael and his real gun for a stripper with a fake gun.
What we didn’t see in the first flashback to that night, however, was the fact that it did not end after Michael pulled back from their first kiss and Jane shut the door on him: he actually knocked on that door immediately after Jane closed it, to bring her attention to her passed out “friend” on the front porch swing. The friend? Xo, who proceeded to puke on Michael’s shoes.
All The Party Parents
So that, right there, is why Jane has never since let herself lose control. It is also why she took on the planning of her own bachelorette party, which will include ZERO strip clubs, ZERO penis stuff, and ZERO surprises. Lina (hai gurl!) and Xo solemnly nod their agreement to these stipulations. If you think it is weird that Jane’s mom is playing an active part in her own daughter’s bachelorette party, well, you’re not alone! Alba thinks it is beyond the pale for Xo to be attending, and Jane’s lightning fast grimace when Xo proclaims that Jane wants her there shows that Jane agrees. Alas, who among us could muster the heart/courage to forbid Xo from A) a party and B) her daughter? No one, is who, so Jane, like Petra’s twin daughters, lets it go, and Xo and Lina shoo her out the door before squealing together over the stripper surprise Jane will NEVER see coming…
Needless to say, this signature Crazy!Xo surprise interrupts Jane’s life in not just an unwelcome way, but a very (dangerously) real one, as the professor who asked her to step in to talk to that room of prospective first-years was so aghast at the whole thing from a professional institution of education standpoint, he informed Jane she may not be able to keep her TA position as a result. On a practical level (and as a former TA), I can’t see how punishing the unwitting and willing recipient of such a thing could do anything to either mitigate the fallout of the individual event, or (and especially) to discourage the family and friends of any other TA completed unrelated to Jane in the future. As a former college instructor himself, however, my dad totally disagrees.
Either way, Xo’s complete obliviousness of/ambivalence to the inappropriate nature of a surprise stripper sent to (her daughter!) at any public place of employment, no less an institution of higher learning populated with at least a few underaged students is NOT GREAT. Only slightly less not great is her mild bemusement to Jane’s unhappiness, followed by her extreme peer pressuring of Jane to get drunk off her ass on shots in a party bus.
Not. Great.
Xo isn’t the only parent crashing a twenty-something’s pre-wedding blowout. Rogelio, whose face at overhearing Michael talk about the bachelor party Ro hadn’t heard word one about made Michael feel so guilty that he pretended Ro’s invite had gotten lost in the mail because OF COURSE Rogelio should be there!!, also yanks the party-planning reins into his own hands with utter obliviousness to how appropriate any level of involvement on his part might be.
Once he understands that Michael’s bros haven’t planned anything beyond a bar, Rogelio sets up a multi-course private dinner in his Miseria condo, complete with full lavender table settings and a round of lavender swag bags full of skincare and beauty products for all the guys. Also: lavender party t-shirts with Michael’s face on the front and Jane’s on the back. But the completely tone-deaf fancy dinner isn’t Rogelio’s last surprise! Nope—he has also booked a party reservation at one of Miami’s best (Russian) spas, steam room birch-branch beatings and all.
Needless to say, Michael’s bros are speechless (which, considering how we’ve never heard of any of them existing before now, really is no change!), and when Rogelio leaves the sauna to get a pitcher of cucumber water, they lean in to Michael to demand what is up, who is this dude, and can they just ditch him already?? Michael apologizes for Ro and explains how the invite was accidental, because how could he hurt his fiancée’s feelings by refusing him an invite? And then the steam clears, and Ro is standing stunned with his pitcher of water, having heard it all.
Michael chases Ro back to the locker room, and they have a quick heart to heart about how yes, they ARE #brogelios4life, but that Ro is also going to be his father-in-law, and there are just some freedoms you have with your friends that you can never have with your wife’s father. Like, for example, reminiscing about a rowdy college-years bar crawl that ended in a hookup with twins, one of whom was name Jane… “Yes, yes, okay, I get it,” Rogelio interrupts. He gives Michael his blessing to take the bros and go finish the bachelor party at a bar without him. When they find said bros chilling in the jetted hot tub, though, none of them want to leave. Turns out, Ro’s campaign to get men to pamper themselves finally won a victory!
And so they all stay, Michael gets his first ever real massage, and he and Ro cement their lifelong bond. And when Jane’s night goes downhill, Michael is not just sober enough to go be her wingman, but is energized and glowing…
Bro Brothers
Before we get to Jane’s night, though, a brief rundown of Rafael’s:
Yes, former stepdaughters of Rogelio, I totally agree. But his drama isn’t all about Jane anymore, so much the sadder for you. These days, it’s all about Derek. And, oh, look! More un-captioned gifsets of Derek smirking/looking like a dbag.
The last we saw, Rafael had secured Derek’s trust by yelling at Michael, then had manipulated Derek into staying in Miami by offering him a job at the Marbella. IDK what that job is. If this episode is any indication, it is just to look like a self-satisfied trust fund baby while getting happily drunk at the Marbella bar. I mean, after the past year of bad press, I guess someone’s got to do it.
Having ensured that his brother won’t be skipping town anytime soon, Raf tries to convince Michael to seize the opportunity to search Derek’s yacht sometime while he is at “work” or something, even though the cops don’t have enough cause to get a warrant. Michael’s trying this new thing, though, where he doesn’t go off the professional rails trying to run down a crimelord. He’s got Jane now! No one left to impress with his recklessness. So Michael refuses, and Raf is left to hire his own personal investigators to look into it. Because that worked so well last time with Zaz’s twin brother!!
Anyway, to keep Derek occupied long enough for the investigators to do their work, Raf keeps him and his investment something friend doing shots at the Marbella until late into the night. Halfway through, the investment bro tries to hit Raf up to buy into some company or scheme or something. Derek is immediately like “hey, dude, not cool,” and “sorry, bro, I had no idea he was going to offer, I didn’t want him to, now I’m embarrassed, g2g,” but clearly there is a family gene for easy deception, so who knows how genuine his embarrassed apology is. In any case, Raf has to work extra hard to convince Derek that he isn’t offended, so that Derek doesn’t take off right then and ruin the investigators’ efforts. And in this case, “work extra hard” means “buy so many more shots.” And I guess the whole double agent thing really does stress Raf out, because he doesn’t even have the foresight to signal his bartender to give him water shots instead, and thus he gets so drunk that he does end up buying in to the investment bro’s scheme, which fact he discovers the next morning when his bank dings his phone to tell him Congrats on that stock purchase, you just made $5 mil!
“Whoa, dude, should we get our story straight then?” Derek asks, slipping on his dbag scarf. Because it turns out that the reason the investment bro wanted Raf to buy in was because he had some insider knowledge about a new tech development, which means that Raf could be accused of insider trading (I guess?). Which is why Derek had been trying to steer his half-bro away in the first place.
Dun dun DUNNNNNN I don’t understand or care about anything having to do with major money scheming, dont @ me.
Lady Bros
Okay I know that Jane’s surprise bachelorette party was a major deal mostly for Jane and Xo, both as individual people and as very closely tied mother and daughter, BUT: it was also the first time we have gotten to have Lina, personally, be involved in the story in any way deeper than as comic relief, and I am so here for all BFF character development.
The best thing about this Lina arc is that it is so natural, and in being natural, is pretty sneaky. Because her first appearance in the ep, at the table in the Villanuevas’ Marbella suite where Jane is laying out her lowkey party plans, is total comic relief. Obviously Jane’s best friend would be integral to any bachelorette party, but otherwise Lina is there as a foil for Jane’s personal brand of adult responsibility and intellectual curiosity, neither of which are high on Lina’s (nonexistent) list of priorities.
Once they are at the bar Lina and Xo picked out for the surprise party, though, Jane’s smart and successful friends (well, one—hi, Charlyne Yi!) start questioning Lina’s life choices. And then Xo’s drunken voicemail tirade accidentally gets sent to Jane’s professor moments after he leaves a message telling Jane she can keep her TA position after all, and adult responsibility becomes the watchword. And all of sudden, Lina is in a position of character development all her own.
Because here she is, at the bachelorette party of Jane Villanueva, responsible surprise mom, hardworking graduate student, hardworking waitress, surrounded by all of Jane’s smart, hardworking friends. And Lina’s biggest concern of the night? Finding the perfect balance between hard-to-get and totally available for the hot bartender she’s been hooking up with. And then Xo comes stumbling drunkenly down the hall with said bartender attached to her lips, and that is the final straw: Lina is doing nothing with her life, and feels totally stuck.
GIRL. I feel this SO HARD.
Despite the fact that Jane has one thousand other problems on her plate (although not the drunken voicemail Xo left, since she successfully conscripted the teen twins to sneak into the prospective student party to swipe the prof’s phone and delete it), she recognizes that her friend needs her, and the two sit down on the veranda and have their own heart-to-heart. And Jane, much like my own very successful lifelong BFF with a husband and brand new baby did when I had my own existential panic attack about ambition not too long ago, not only told Lina how great she was, but offered concrete help to get Lina started on finally chasing her goals.
Ugh. I’m tearing up all over again. Thank god for best friends. Thank god for Lina. Thank god for this show.
Mom Fight
But back to Jane’s thousand problems, which in this episode start and end with Xo’s lack of personal control. Really, as far as Jane is concerned, Lina’s problems this episode start and end with Xo’s failures, as Lina, in an effort to be self-effacing and laugh of Xo’s betrayal with the bartender, offhandedly refers to her as “a cautionary tale.” This registers with Jane deeply, but not as an offense to her mom—as a truthbomb. Because as much as Jane loves Xo, and we love Xo, and we love Jane and Xo together, we have been shown time and again how Xo’s life choices have always trended on the more freewheeling, less mature end of things. We have seen equally how Baby!Jane absorbed lessons from those behaviors, which shaped the kind of person Adult!Jane grew into.
Xo is not a bad person for living and loving the way she does. It is to the show’s complete credit that within the span of a month, one episode can air that hinges on the unfairness of Alba judging Xo for living a more sex-positive life than she did, and another that hinges on the unfairness of Xo’s freespiritedness so regularly putting Jane in a position of embarrassment, humiliation, or even danger. BOTH of those things can be true; human beings are complex, and human relationships endlessly complicated. But it is rare for a television show to render those nuances so skillfully.
When Xo comes to Jane’s door with a bag of pastries and a rehash of the same sad “I’m a mom whose job is done” apology speech she gave after puking on Michael’s shoes at Jane’s 21st birthday, it is crystal clear what both characters are feeling, and why. This is high stakes drama, and not one corpse or romance is involved.
The laws of television tell us these two will come back together more quickly than perhaps would be natural in real life, but this argument will have real repercussions for both of them. I can’t wait to see what they are.
Private Lives of Private Eyes (and Hearts)
In all the discussion of non-love triangle, non-corpse drama above, I didn’t get a chance to mention the shots-meter that promised us a glimpse of Jane’s party alter ego, Sweet Lady Jane. She did come out, if only after the twins saved the day with the phone and Michael saved her sanity by existing and the Marbella gave them a room for a private dual party for the rest of the night. And she was great, both in her imagination and IRL!
It was after the party was over and Jane and Michael were finally alone together again that things got really sweet, though, as the two realized that they like each other’s company best of all things, and that sharing some things just between the two of them is better than anything else. Their vows are among those things, and so they decide to share them only with each other, before the ceremony, and forego printing them in the Catholic wedding program for anyone and everyone to read. Jane, who had been too anxious to pare her 20+ pages down to a printable paragraph, breathes a sigh of relief. Michael had already finished his, though, and so he reads them to her right there.
We don’t get to hear them. It’s very, very sweet. It’s also the most I have ever liked the two of them together. Equal, loving partnerships! I am ON BOARD.
Poll time!
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.
