Why Jane the Virgin is among TV’s best
It empowers women without emasculating men, and deftly combines genres, storylines
Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for Jane the Virgin.
Jane the Virgin is like nothing you’ve ever seen on television.
The series recently ended its second season on the CW and is coming back for a third (in Canada, it streams on Shomi).
It has humour and originality and emotion. It’s so raw and so honest it can make you sob with its realness or bring absurd amounts of joy.
It provides fresh takes on the themes of family, love and sacrifice. It has a100-per-cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s acclaimed by critics. It’s laugh-out-loud funny. Lead actress Gina Rodriguez, who won a Golden Globe in 2015, is stunning. Still not convinced? Here are five reasons that Jane the Virgin is one of the most interesting, entertaining and complex series on TV right now. It’s super feminist and empowering Jane’s world is a woman’s world, in which ladies make most of the decisions and the men coexist with those decisions. Jane is a romantic, so a lot of her dialogue revolves around her love life and the romance novel she is writing, but the show does not punish her for wanting to be in love or have a partner.
It is her choice how she acts and what she does (and whether she swoons at soap operas). Michael (Brett Dier) and Rafael (Justin Baldoni) are two masculine (and sexy) men, but they are at the mercy of their women, who revert gender norms: Jane proposes to Michael and Petra (Yael Grobglas) gets pregnant without Rafael’s knowledge, and that’s just the pilot episode. But instead of emasculating the men, the women just flatten the uneven playing field. Jane’s men are skilled and passionate and complex, but not at the expense of its complex female characters.
The show proves successful TV does not have to antagonize either sex; it can paint men as heroes while maintaining a positive focus on the beauty of women’s strength and sisterhood. Men enjoy it too Don’t you tell me you’re a man and can’t enjoy “chick shows” because a) men who watch chick shows are a wonderful breed and probably far more numerous than they’d admit; b) Jane is super cute, but it’s also tense and poignant and actionbased; c) it’s not shallow or gossipy or based on outdated ideas about women and men like a lot of female-focused shows can be. I’d argue it’s a new style of show entirely, one with little to no precedent; and d) my handsome, manly boyfriend watches it with me, not just because I want him to. He does it because it is silly and special, and he enjoys it and it makes him laugh. And because I want him to. It reminds us emotions are not a sign of weakness in women So much culture nowadays involves the trope of the emotional woman who is needy or awkward or dangerous because she feels things. Men are supposed to resent or pity this woman, and women are supposed to recognize that being emotional is bad and will exclude them from society and the economy. On the flip side, we have amazing heroines that young girls can look up to, heroines who fight battles and overcome obstacles, but they usually do so with controlled resolve and poised determination. Jane Villanueva never pretends to have everything figured out. Jane gives us proof that women can cry and still be amazing. It reminds us emotions are not a sign of weakness in men In fact, Jane’s men — its sometimes eye-rollingly self-involved and proud men — are as chock-full of vulnerabilities and as good at expressing their emotions as its women. The show doesn’t pretend that misogyny is productive in any way; rather it reminds viewers that caring about things and admitting to caring about things means enjoying all the benefits of an honest, open existence. As Jane stresses in subtle but pointed fashion, men who are straightforward about how they feel find themselves much more successful in all facets of life and much happier. Jane reminds us that it’s OK not to be OK, no matter who you are. It’s a grab bag of genres Jane combines genres and an insane amount of story lines with poise and skill. It’s a testament to its producers, its writers, its actors and everyone behind the scenes that it can be both challenging and relatable, and smoothly tackles issues (immigration, reproduction, postpartum depression) few shows have been brave enough to take on. With a lot of parody, a little murder mystery, some buddy cop action, plenty of comedy, drama and romance, and dashes of magic, it could easily have overwhelmed itself, but it hasn’t. In successfully integrating its challenging story lines, it is the most refreshing thing you’ll have watched on TV in a long time.