‘Jane the Virgin’ recap: Jane falls short, but comes out ahead

“Jane the Virgin” is one of the best shows on television for many reasons, but primarily because it has an uncanny sense of how to balance its main character.

Jane Villanueva, embodied by the impeccable Gina Rodriguez, is a people-pleasing go-getter, to the extreme and while this is far from being a problem, it actually presents a significant challenge as far as storytelling goes.

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Coming out of the television age of the antihero, it’s something of an anomaly to have a lead character that the audience can root for unequivocally. But with that comes the danger of creating a lead that comes across as something of a goody-two-shoes.

With “Jane the Virgin,” after some false starts in season one, they’ve managed to calibrate Jane’s personality perfectly. In “Chapter Twenty-Eight,” Jane fails spectacularly and repeatedly, a necessary occurrence for a character who often knows just the right thing to do in every situation.

In the wake of last week’s dramatics, Jane has cut Michael out of her life, instead committing herself fully to being a mother and a full-time grad student. However, it turns out that mother and grad student are both equivalent to full-time jobs and Jane finds herself underperforming at both.

Mateo ends up needing a helmet for his ill-shaped head, due to not enough tummy time while Jane is studying; and Jane ends up on academic probation, thanks to a nap in the midst of a classmate’s share time.

What’s brilliant about the way that “Jane the Virgin” displays Jane’s failings is in how it treats these events without the scorn and judgment of actual failure. It doesn’t treat Jane like a bad mother because of a little imperfect parenting and it doesn’t treat her like an uncommitted scholar because of a single lackluster semester.

Nor does Jane beat up on herself because of her struggles. It pains her to stop breastfeeding Mateo, but she understands that sometimes plans need to be changed to better serve the people involved.

The other brilliant aspect of “Chapter Twenty-Eight” is its commitment to the passage of time. The episode encompasses the events of several months, allowing the series the breathing room for Jane to process the fallout from last week and move past her feelings for Michael.

While this may underwhelm the more enthusiastic members of Team Michael (the fans of the show who would prefer Jane ending up with her ex-fiance than with Rafael), it’s a necessary evil for a show married to churning out as much plot as possible.

If you stop and think about it too long then, yes, it may seem like cheating to spend just a single episode on Jane’s post-Michael heartbreak, but it would be a disservice to the show to spend too much time on her recovery, particularly when it’s inevitable that she’ll give Rafael another chance to prove that he’s the one for her.

Better for the show to dispense with the inevitable and move boldly into the future, where there’s still a chance for Jane to make a love connection with her new professor who is handsome and kind of mean.

Even if that doesn’t happen, “Chapter Twenty-Eight” proved that Jane Villanueva is a messy and flawed individual, who undervalues tummy time and is a slave to the breast pump and is sometimes too sleepy for school.

But it also proved that with all those flaws, she continues to be a glorious and generous human. Jane is the type of person whose crankiness when sick makes you love them even more.

Jane may be saying “I can hear you and I hate all of you,” but all I can think is, “I love you, ‘Jane the Virgin.’ Never leave me.”

Follow me on Twitter at @midwestspitfire.