In the fourth episode of the fifth season of Jane the Virgin<\/i>, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m back to telling y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all about how much this show hurts. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Jane the Virgin<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of abusive parents, grief.<\/b><\/p>\n
Help me??? This was a lot???<\/p>\n
Memories<\/b><\/p>\n
You know, I sympathize with all the parties involved here because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 fuck. This really is a nightmare, and I get why the writers used that as a framing device for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chapter Eighty-Five.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Grief is already an awful thing to go through, and the thing that most people struggle with is the finality of death. How can someone just be gone<\/i>? It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t made any sense for a long time, and hell, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that it ever truly makes sense. You adapt. You do your best.<\/p>\n
So what the hell do you do when someone you love dies and then you find out they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dead? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an unfathomable situation because it just doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen! And here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Jane, who grieved for years, who fell in love again, who wrote a book about her loss, who moved on<\/i>. Michael\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death was finally final in her heart and mind\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and then boom! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all torn to pieces.<\/p>\n
But is it? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the conflict we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re given here. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a telenovela twist given a deeply realistic treatment. WHICH MEANS IT HURTS. Because I understand everyone<\/i> here. To the credit of the writers, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve built up each of the three characters to a point that their motivations within this love triangle feel legible and believable. Which doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make things easier for LITERALLY ANYONE INVOLVED.<\/p>\n
Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Jason remembered being Michael. I appreciated that this didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fundamentally change who he was, even if some of Michael\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mannerisms came back. As he put it: he felt like he was two people at once, and it makes sense that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d feel torn between the two lives! Even worse, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s completely understandable that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d still be in love with Jane. Why would that change? So as complicated as it was, I got why he wanted to get back with his true love. Unlike Jane, he hadn’t<\/i> moved on in the same way. He lost his memories and became a new person, but once those memories snapped back? Lord, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even imagine what that must feel like. Disorienting, frightening, overwhelming. ALL OF THOSE THINGS.<\/p>\n
As frustrating as it was at times, I also<\/i> understood Jane. Michael was the love of her life, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like she broke up with him, and that was the reason they were no longer together. Again, death is supposed to be final! Even then, Jane hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily fallen out of love with Michael. Her love became something else. She fell in love with Rafael. And now, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s confused because this person is back in her life, he says he loves her, and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unsure. What if she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153meant\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to be with Michael? What if she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t escape her own sense of guilt over falling in love with someone else? Because I still think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the main reason she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s having a hard time letting him go! I really do. Because her life is with Rafael. Who is the one who shows up to help Jane and bring Xo a change of clothes? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Rafael. Rafael is the one prepared to love Jane now<\/i> how she needs to be. Jason loves Jane for who she was four years prior, you know?<\/p>\n
I just\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 god, Rafael, I FEEL SO BAD. And look, it was painful to watch, but I get why he asked Jane to leave. Rafael\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worst nightmare already happened<\/i>. He lost Jane to Michael years ago, and he had to watch her get married to him!!! So this is just a repeat of that same scenario, only wrapped up in another<\/i> nightmare. UGH. It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help that Petra got Rafael excited about the divorce, only for Jane to take it back hours later. (And for the record, I agree that life-altering decisions shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re drunk.) From his point of view, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got to feel like he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being jerked around, flung from one extreme emotion to another. Is it unfair that he wants an answer so quickly? Probably. At the same time, I understood why he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want Jane around while she wavered between her two options.<\/p>\n
THIS ALL HURTS. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m personally of the mind that Jane and Rafael should stay together, but clearly WHAT I WANT DOES NOT MATTER.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Grandparents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Day<\/b><\/p>\n XIOMARA. MY HEART. Oh, lord, this was another gut punch of MANY in this episode. I was overjoyed that Xo had reached her final chemo session! I hope this is the last we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen of her cancer, but the writers are once again sticking to realism with this plot. Because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like a person gets chemo one last time, and then everything is just perfectly fine. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen the aftereffects of cancer treatment too many times to count, and recovery can often last a long, long, time. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all assuming a person stays in remission. (Which I hope is the case for Xiomara.)\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Xo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whole life has been interrupted by this diagnosis, so I also assumed that she was trying to return to some sort of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Which means that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see her confession coming. Oh, god, she just wanted to give Mateo a good impression of her! She wanted to appear strong and brave, and so she played up everything in order to do so. INCLUDING THAT CUTE DANCE. WHICH WAS TOO MUCH. What I enjoyed about this plot is that Rogelio reframed Xo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s understanding of strength for her. Look, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s absolutely a stigma against sickness, and Xo was worried about how her grandson would perceive her. But Mateo already looked up to her!!! He already saw her as the toughest woman he knew! THAT VIDEO WAS EVEN CUTER THAN THE DANCE. I just\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I really liked that this wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily a big flashy plot, but it was still emotionally powerful.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n JR and Magda<\/b><\/p>\n YES. YES. Y E S. All of that is of course only reserved for JR and Petra, because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 fuck all the rest. Seriously, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so exhausted by Magda\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s presence, and I want her gone. Forever! She is so brazen in her abuse and manipulation of Petra, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 every time I think she might be stricken from Jane the Virgin<\/i>, she creeps back in. This time: She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suing her daughter. And constantly trying to make a quick buck rather than just\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 go off and live her life somewhere else? THERE ARE LITERALLY ENDLESS OTHER PLACES YOU COULD GO. GO AWAY.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll say about Magda: She tries her very hardest to completely ruin Petra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reconciliation with JR, which includes handcuffing herself to Petra. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an actual thing she does. But guess what? It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fucking work<\/i>. And if that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a sign of how much these two are willing to give one another a chance, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what is!!! I actually wonder if that gave JR the nudge she needed. Because here was Petra, handcuffed to her abusive mother, still willing to come to JR\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s place and promise to be a better person. I think JR saw that Petra truly meant it.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M JUST SO HAPPY. I WANT THIS TO WORK SO BADLY.<\/p>\n Jorge\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Letters<\/b><\/p>\n You know, I wanted this<\/i> to work so badly, too. I admit that my hopes were not as high as Alba\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s were, but still. It would have been nice, no? To have Jorge return to Miami and admit that what he wrote in those letters was how he really felt? Alas, that is not the case, and this really does look to be a marriage built on a favor. How is Alba going to deal with that? Apparently, not well at all because she is STILL holding out hope for Jorge! She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decided that his hug with her revealed his TRUE feelings, which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 ugh. Jorge isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite the kind of person to hide how he feels, so why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he just admit the truth to her?<\/p>\n Probably because there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a secret truth at all.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Crushing, I know, but I really hope Alba doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get too invested in this. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want her to break her heart any more than it will be!<\/p>\n The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chapter Eighty-Five\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My second novel, EACH OF US A DESERT, is now out in the world!<\/a> In the fourth episode of the fifth season of Jane the Virgin, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m back to telling y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all about how much this show hurts. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Jane the Virgin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[705],"tags":[706],"class_list":["post-7697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jane-the-virgin","tag-mark-watches-jane-the-virgin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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