What I’m Watching: Jane the Virgin

Jane the Virgin: Season 2, Episode 18 “Chapter Forty” (B+)

This wasn’t a comfortable episode with Jane and Xiomara not talking to each other, and I’m very glad that it took just one hour for everything to be resolved. Michael and Alba were trying their best to play intermediaries, but in the end it was the great dramatist Rogelio who found a way to help them reconnect, coming up with a decent excuse for his extravagant spending and use of the crew’s time for personal reasons to build the house replica set. I’m intrigued to see this newfound romance between Rogelio and Judy Reyes’ writer Dina, and given the manipulative side of her that we saw earlier on in the show, I don’t quite trust her, though she can’t be as bad as Rogelio’s assistant-turned-kidnapper. It’s good that Rafael’s jealousy over having Michael in Mateo’s life has prompted him to want to spend more time with Mateo instead of taking his anger out in a more childish way. It’s deeply worrisome that Rafael is knowingly using the money he made on an accidental insider trade, and, as the narrator promised, that will come back to haunt him. Petra’s new sister is causing her lots of problems, and I wonder how long she’ll stick around before she becomes an intolerable issue or tries to take out Petra so that she can be with Rafael, the likelier scenario. It’s a relief that Jane didn’t get kicked out of the grad program because the multitasking mom, however distracted she may be, wouldn’t have been able to deal well with that kind of blow.