4 out of 5

Developed by: Jennie Snyder Urman

covers season 1

With its bright production design and immensely cute cast and cheeky premise – virgin Jane is accidentally inseminated during a visit to the doctor and, whoops, it takes – it’s hard to imagine how ‘Jane the Virgin’ can sustain itself for 22 episodes without wringing the most from its resources after a few screen hours and / or falling back on CW soapy tropes.  Interestingly, the way to circumvent this seemingly inevitable turnout was to embracing some of those same elements, but tunneled through a telenovela filter – fitting, as the show is adapted from a telenovela.  So we have an invested narrator (Anthony Mendez), who’s “reacting” to events at the same time as us, and plenty of back-from-the-deads and who’s-in-a-relationship-with-whom changeups, and some cleverly handled magical realism stuff, all of this then filtered back through a modern US TV mindset, which somehow leads to all of these really grounded performances – especially by lead Gina Rodriguez as Jane – or hilariously embellished performances (Jaime Camil as Jane’s father, Rogelio, a… telenovela star in the show), both grounded by surprisingly tastefully handled dialogue that navigates realistically through all of the drama.  The show can be very funny and is often very touching and will make you bite your nails nervously as things just continue to get more complicated, despite Jane’s fretful best intentions.  All of this praise offered, the show still bears the weight of many, many churning subplots, and though they’re all evolved effectively over the course of the season, the main subplot – sub to the main plot of Jane’s pregnancy and the boys vying for her attention – that ends up taking over the majority of the excess runtime seems so far and away from things that it feels a bit disruptive until it gains direction.  Of course, the ridiculous nature of juxtaposing these storylines is also very telenovela, but that cheeky / awareness balance that otherwise fuels the show is, regarding that relationship, most susceptible to tip into fake sensationalism, such as forced cliffhangers.  Thankfully, such slips are rare, and the season brings everything to a satisfying and interesting point (without dragging anything out to much…) for a second season.

The best part of Jane the Virgin, though, is still in the performances and relationships.  Jane’s family – mother “Xo” (Andrea Navedo) and grandmother Alba (Ivonne Coll) – make for an especially endearing trio, tons of believable interplay, and Alba’s sticking to Spanish for the entire season just adds, again, that perfect touch of both telenovela winking and realism.  Kevin Kiner’s meet cute music theme that pops up constantly during the first half of the season might jangle your tolerances a bit, but otherwise, if you’ve been charmed at all by the first episode, it’s near impossible to not be swept up by everything that follows.  I know: how do you maintain a show about a virgin birth for longer than the duration of the birth?  Well, while that question still will need to be answered by season 2, season 1 of ‘Jane the Virgin’ proves how adept the creators are at crafting a whole season of entertainment without it feeling like they’re just padding the runtime until that kid absolutely has to come out.