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JaneTheVirginFinale.jpg

'Jane The Virgin' Is A Nice Show, And For Once I Mean Nice As A Compliment

By Emily Cutler | TV | August 1, 2019 |

By Emily Cutler | TV | August 1, 2019 |


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Jane The Virgin aired its series finale last night, and I want everyone here to know that it made me cry real, genuine tears of real emotions because I was touched by the things they were saying and doing. If you don’t know me well, you might not understand why that statement is sort of a big deal, but I’m attempting to be more open to both my own emotions and emotionality in general. You know why I’m doing that? I mean, mostly it’s therapy and getting older and trying to find contentedness and letting go of past demons and sh*t. But also, it’s because three generations of Villanueva women taught me that love is transformational, and I’m trying to be open to that.

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There will be a more detailed analysis of the plot below (and spoilers), but I need to spend a second of the idea of love as transformative. I don’t want to get all Marianne Williamson on you (because Williamson is not a joke or funny, she’s a conwoman who has belittled people with medical conditions and fat-shamed people and I need her off my internet), but there’s this thing that Jane the Virgin did that I really want to talk about. Essentially, it said that if you love someone or something, you can, get this, find ways to expand yourself to accommodate changes to that love in order to be kind to the people around you. Crazy, right? Like just the general outlook that despite hardships and tragedies and fights and hurt feelings, people can overcome their own pain because they love people and people love them.

Not that I want to pretend that all of the world’s ills can be resolved if we just care enough. There are reasons that Jane the Virgin never touched on topics like abuse, homelessness, terrorism, and kid jails. There are, admittedly, things too hard and depressing for even a hug from Alba to cure. But mostly the show celebrates the fact that loving means continually opening yourself in ways you couldn’t do without that love. The same characters who were horrible in the first (amazing) season have redeemed themselves not just by conveniently forgetting that they were terrible (what’s referred to by scholars as the Eric Northman effect), but by actually becoming better people. And the people who started out pretty decent have become better because they had loved ones around them who depended on them adapting to new situations and rolling with life’s sometimes awful punches.

So, yes, it’s a nice show about nice people with the occasional sociopath thrown in to keep things interesting. The evil twins, wicked mothers, murderous lovers, the deaths and wrongful impregnations weren’t really the show. The show was all of those terrible things happening to nice people who faced them by saying, “I love you, and we are going to get through this together.” It was really nice, guys. And if you don’t need a little nice right now, I either am worried about your mental health or I need you to teach me your secret because sh*t’s getting real.

OK, so now the specifics of this all-encompassing love. Therefore:

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This is mostly going to be a list of the times Jane the Virgin made me cry. In no particular order:

  • Rogelio convincing Darci and Estaban to get back together even though he hates Estaban because Estaban loves Rogelio’s baby, Baby. Yes, those words make sense if you were watching. Rogelio figures out a way to invite his nemesis into his actual family because he loves his daughter. I can’t even stop referring to my nemesis as “nemesis” even though I haven’t seen her in two years. Area for improvement.

  • Michael and Jane both acknowledging that they don’t love each other the way they used to. And that’s OK because they loved each other once, and it’s still important to them.

  • Or, Jesus, Rafael tracking down and bringing Michael back into Jane’s life because he knew that Michael was important to her. He loved Jane enough to know that he had to do that for her. Damnit, I’m tearing up.

  • Alba loving Xiomara enough to push her to leave for New York.

  • Rafael asking formerly terrible Petra to be his Best Woman because they’re family by choice, and he couldn’t imagine doing this without her.

  • Petra and Jane realizing they aren’t friends because they’re sisters.

  • That whole header picture? Oh yeah, that gutted me. Also just in general, the idea that sometimes you can openly cry because things are mostly happy but a little sad, and crying in the open doesn’t need to be fixed or stopped, it can just be.

  • Also not exactly a moment of transformative love, but the reveal that the Narrator was Mateo?

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  • I know I should say Jane and Raf being in love, and I don’t want to minimize that, but I think in keeping with the theme of the show I’d like to celebrate not just them being married, but being a couple. Jane will always love Michael because he gave her the love they shared. Jane will always love Rogelio because he became her father. Jane will always love Alba and Xo because they raised her, loved her, and taught her to be who she was. And Jane will always love her children because she’s trying to do the same for them. But she’s loved Rafael in a few different ways. They’ve been parents together, friends, dating, and finally husband and wife. Telenovelas end with weddings because a lot of people think marriage is the goal. I think Jane the Virgin would disagree. Love isn’t the goal. Love is the method.



  • Header Image Source: The CW