Straight Out of a Telenovela
Jane The Virgin released its pilot episode in mid-October 2014, and it has been a whirlwind. Quintessentially a Horatian satire, the show has endeavoured to make a joke out of telenovelas at every turn, and simultaneously pay homage to the unending legacy of soap operas. Five years and 100 episodes later, this critically acclaimed series, helmed by Jennie Snyder Urman, concluded on July 31, 2019. As we mourn the loss of good art, let’s take a look back at everything we’ve been through.
The journey begins with our heroine Jane (Gina Rodriguez), a virgin, and her accidental artificial insemination, which sets off a chain of events that turns breezy Miami life into a Murphy’s Law Playbook: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Several worlds collide, and whoever is brewing this messy concoction will not rest 0until every ingredient is added to the mix.
Yes, when we say this show contains every single telenovela trope, we mean it. Starting with gruesome murders, we find ourselves facing a long-lost father who happens to be a famous telenovela star, a cheating stepmother moonlighting as a dangerous crime lord, an evil mother faking an injury, characters returning from the dead, amnesia, acid attacks, twins nobody knew existed, enemies becoming friends, a second artificial insemination by the same man, and many juicy love triangles. With the disembodied voice of the narrator tying everything together, Jane The Virgin is cleverly written, methodically sequenced, and easily one of the best shows of the decade.
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