What I’m Watching: Jane the Virgin

Jane the Virgin: Season 4, Episode 2 “Chapter Sixty-Six” (B+)

Maybe it’s just because we’ve only seen one episode since this show finished its previous season back in May, but I had forgotten about its tendency to feature episode-long gimmicks to frame the events of each hour. The telenovela drama is more than enough, but that’s always a fun addition. In this case, Fun Jane and Mom Jane sitting on Jane’s shoulders (metaphorically, since they were full-size) proved enormously entertaining and helpful as she balanced her strong performance in drinking games with her realization that jumping off a roof was probably a bad idea. I’m glad that the worsening discord between Jane and Rafael seems to have settled in a good place at the moment, since watching them fight was very unpleasant, particularly when Jane accused Rafael of wanting to lie his way out of a tricky situation when it was in fact her grandmother’s suggestion. The relationship between Rafael and Petra, however, is going to take a serious nosedive after Petra broke up with him, and she’s going to be miserable with the return of her mother, who Anezka somehow sprung from prison? Let’s hope that she’s the one who our narrator has just revealed is going to die. Hopefully Rafael won’t go too far off the deep end with his newfound romantic freedom. Adam is quite sweet, though I’m still #teamrafael and wish that would just happen already. Rogelio rising above Darcy’s truly cruel insults was a lot of fun, and it was great to see him combat Fabian sending his grandmother in to the focus group with a winning performance of his own. It was satisfying to see Xiomara lash out at Darcy for saying that she was going into this alone, and unfortunately Emilio romancing her is something that no one wants.