-This Week in Titles: Jane The Horndog.
-When we last left "Jane" about a month ago, Alba was falling in love with her new boyfriend Jorge and Jane was falling in lust with Rogelio's new co-star Fabian. Both these threads carry on into Chapter Sixty, another great episode of Jane that works in all the usual twists and turns and strong emotional beats, while exploring how Jane and Alba's relationship with the idea of sex has or hasn't changed over time.
-For roughly 47 episodes, Jane's view of sex was based around the idea that it was special and she decided to wait for marriage for reasons connected to both her faith and her romanticism. This show wasn't titled Jane the Virgin for nothing. Then she got married and finally began having sex with the love of her life. Then he died. Now Jane is ready to start getting back out there but what does that mean for her sex life? Chapter Sixty is smart in showing us how Jane's view of sex has changed and evolved from the first time she felt lust (As a child watching a particularly steamy telenovella) to now post-Michael. Where sex used to be this big, looming, forbidden thing, now Jane has no problem openly talking about her sexual needs and where she used to want to wait for that special someone, now that special someone has come and gone and she doesn't see the point in waiting anymore, no matter what her grandmother thinks about her choices. It's a smart move that shows off how much Jane has grown and changed from the unsure girl we met in the pilot. Jane knows what she wants and she's not going to let anyone stop her from trying to get it, whether it's the not-so-subtle guilt trip of Alba or Rogelio's anger that she's after the co-star he thinks is trying to "All About Eve" him.
-Alba can't worry too much about Jane's love life though because now she has her own to worry about. Just as we can understand why Jane decides she's not going to wait to be married again to have sex, we understand why Alba isn't going to make that same choice. Alba had sex before marriage and it destroyed her relationship with her family. She's never going to make that decision again, even if it costs her all of her relationships because she knows the right man will wait for her. She's so used to this being a deal-breaker though that when Jorge seems to have a negative response to her telling him and doesn't contact her afterwards, she's ready to write him off as someone not worthy of her love. It turns out Alba needs to have more faith in people though because what she thought was a break-up wasn't a break-up at all. Jorge has no probably with Alba's celibacy and the two end the episode in a better place than ever. It's a good storyline and what I really like about it is that the show doesn't try to compare Alba and Jane's choices about sex or suggest that one choice is better than the other. They're both independent women who allowed to make their own choices without being punished for it and the show recognizes it.
-Fabian makes for an interesting choice for Jane's first post-Michael love interest. It's clear that he and Jane would never work as more than a casual thing. He's just not complex or intelligent enough to challenge Jane on a meaningful level and her attraction to him is purely physical, as she openly admits. At the same time, Francisco San Martin brings such a dopey earnestness and sweet enthusiasm to the character that it's hard not to fall for him just a little bit. The key thing here is that he seems to be genuinely falling for Jane, which should lead for some interesting complications down the line.
-Of course Jane has more on the brain than sex this week as her book about her romance with Michael begins to move to the publishing stage. Jane is excited to be selling her book but runs into trouble when she learns the publishers want to use her backstory to help sell the book. This would mean a generous initial printing and a slot at a book fair moderated by Maria Semple but Jane shoots that idea down because she wants the book to stand on it's own, even if it means an order of only 1500 books. Of course there's more to Jane's reluctance then that and while a conversation with her former adviser and current friend Professor Donaldson is enough to make her realize standing for your art this early into a career isn't the best plan, it doesn't fix the underlying reason she was so reluctant to use her backstory as a marketing tool: Michael.
-One of the things I've really appreciated about how "Jane" has handled the death of Michael is that while they chose to skip ahead in time and only touch on the immediate aftermath of the event, they're not forgetting or ignoring him either. His memory is a constant presence on the show, popping up when you least expect it to. Jane is worried that by agreeing to talk about what happened, she'll be reducing Michael to an anecdote and what they had will become less meaningful over time. It's a valid fear, but luckily Alba is there to reassure her that this won't happen and Michael will always be meaningful to her. Jane and Alba have always had a special relationship and that relationship becomes even more meaningful post-Michael because Alba is the only person who understands what it means to lose the love of your life so young and can offer Jane a kind of support and insight that no one else can. Alba's story about seeing her Mateo's favourite Ice Cream at a grocery store last year and being overcome with emotion is a powerful story that lets Jane and the audience know that no matter how far in the past Michael becomes, he's never going to go away.
-Jane's conversation with Alba wasn't the only emotional Michael-related scene in this episode though as Rogelio's complicated feelings about Fabian trying to befriend him and Jane dating Fabian turn out to be rooted in his own grief about Michael. For the first few Post-Michael episodes of "Jane", we mainly focused on Jane's reaction to losing the love of her life and how she reached a place where she could begin to heal. This was a smart move as this is first and foremost Jane's story and her feelings take initial priority. Now that we've taken the time to see how Jane is dealing with all this though, "Jane" has space to explore how Michael's death impacted Rogelio who lost his best friend. Jaime Camill has always been good at playing the comic relief, but his conversation with Xo is a terrific chance to show how good he is at the big emotional moments too and is one of Camill's best scenes in the history of the show. Rogelio knows Jane has to move on from Michael eventually but he's not ready for that to happen yet and he's definitely not ready to go get mani-pedis with someone else. Tellingly though, he only tells Xo this information, not wanting to burden Jane with his feelings and showing just how far he's come from the self-centered Rogelio that we began the show is. Andrea Navedo is great in this scene too, as she manages to display her own grief about Michael, without making it the central focus of the scene.
-We finally get an explanation for Rafael's shady behavior with his handyman Caesar. Turns out Caesar isn't an ex-con, he's a private investigator who Raf has hired to keep an eye out for Rose. It's a solid twist that makes perfect sense. Of course Raf is still after Rose and still doesn't trust Eileen or Luisa. We know how fiercely protective Rafael can be and after everything Rose has done to him and the people he loves, it would be dishonest to the character for him not to be actively searching for her.
-Luisa can be a hard character for the show to get a handle on, thanks to her status as a perpetual trainwreck, which causes her character to be overly broad and hard to take at times, Season 3 has been taking steps to ground her more by actually delving into why she cares about Rose while showing how conflicted she is about Rose's history and how her choices have alienated her from her family (Raf won't let her see any of his children). This has made Luisa more complex and interesting than she's been in past years and her dilemma about having to choose between leaving with a (rightfully) paranoid Rose or staying and finally starting to take steps towards a real reconciliation with Rafael is honestly compelling. If she does choose to stay though, it'll be interesting to see how long it'll be until she finds out Rafael being open to a conversation about her seeing the kids was just a ploy to get keep her busy while Caesar bugged her room.
-It's been a while since Chapter Fifty-Four (The last episode Luisa and Rose were in) but I don't think it had been established that Rose's "Eileen" face was a removable mask and not a total facial reconstruction of Rose (Though I guess that makes sense, considering she went the mask route when she was Susanna last year). So it was a pleasant surprise to learn that Bridget Regan is still going to be around. She's always been great in the part so it's nice that she'll still be around, even if she'll be sharing the role with Elisabeth Röhm for the time being.
-Petra mostly spends the episode preparing for the arrival of her sister and continuing to strengthen her relationship with Chuck. So she's mostly off to the sidelines but the cliffhanger of Anezka being arrested upon arrival into the country instead of just questioned like Petra was promised ensures that the focus will be on her soon enough. The crime stuff is still "Jane's" weakest element but the Scott stuff is much more intriguing than last year's Mudder and Derek shenanigans and I'll admit I am very curious to learn just how exactly Petra and Anezka are involved with the death of Scott.
-There's a lot of great narrator jokes tonight, but I think my favourite is when he keeps interjecting when Rogelio and Fabian's telenovella characters talk about their "lady scientist" love to point out that they should really just be saying scientist.
-When Jane's teasing Alba about the possibility of Alba sleeping with Jorge, the same music cue from the opening scene of the series plays during Jane's recitation of the advice Alba gave her as a kid. It's a nice touch.
-Luisa attempting to use being the reason for Mateo being born as justification for being able to see him was a solid use if Luisa's trainwreck status. It's also always good to be reminded that she was the catalyst for literally everything that's happened on the show.
-No spoilers about the promos for next week, but they seem to be showing an interesting twist on Jane's romantic dynamic with Fabian.
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