I watched the very first episode of Jane the Virgin when it first aired, and I wasn’t immediately won over. It was too convoluted, too melodramatic, and too many other things that I knew I’d have to be in the right mood to watch.
Well, I ended up recording it all, anyway, and started watching again yesterday, and have been ever since. Yes, it’s convoluted, yes, melodramatic, and the farce level is beyond belief. Yet, I am drawn to watching this, now. I think it’s mainly because of the convolutions of it all.
Yes, it’s over-the-top, but the narrator really keeps you interested, the on-screen texting helps a great deal, and the occasional on-screen captions explaining this or that character keeps the humor level and the melodrama at a nice balance. And I like puzzles, very much. Give me a good mystery, and I’m hooked.
Back when I was a kid, there was this show: The Ellery Queen Mysteries, I think its name was. I don’t remember a lot of specifics, actually. The lead had brown hair, and it was curly, I think. But I do remember the format, and it was awesome. Ellery would wander around the show, finding clues, yet the audience was not filled into any of them explicitly. And the bad guy was never revealed until Ellery revealed him. And then there’d be a “Did you figure it out? Here are the clues you COULD have seen (but probably missed)” segment.
I loved that, that I’d get to compete with Ellery Queen himself. And I remember solving a couple of them before the reveal, even at my young age. (My mom helped, a lot.) [I don’t remember when the show was on, and I’m resisting the impulse to look it up. My memory tells me it was when I was in my adolescence, and since I’m telling this from my memory, as honestly as I’m able, I’m not going to “cheat.”] It was a fun show, and I was very sad when it wasn’t on any longer. At least until the next thing caught my attention. But I guess it made a pretty good impact on me, since I do remember it, on occasion, when I compare to other, more current shows. (And I find the newer ones a bit lacking, honestly.)
I also remember the Sunday Night Mysteries, that would cycle through several shows. Columbo, McCloud, even Nightstalker, back then, were among them. I think Kojak even started there before it got its own time-slot. Of those, Columbo was the closest to Ellery Queen Mysteries. The bad-guy was revealed to the audience earlier, but they kept the suspense up by making Columbo not tell all his clues to catch him until the end of the show.
I think I’ve always had a real connection to a mystery, if it’s well told. The current crop reveals the bad-guy really fast, and sometimes the clues found are just fictional magickery. (C.S.I: Cyber is a real good example of that.) But I still tend to like them, if only a bit. The thing that keeps me, and I imagine the rest of the audience, coming back is the interpersonal stories. The character arcs are what compel me to see the next episode. Back in the Ellery Queen days, there was no real character continuity, other than “How will Ellery solve the newest murder?” But I still miss the chance to compete against the hero.
Now, Jane the Virgin does have a murder mystery in it. But that’s only one, rather minor, plot point. There’s the botched insemination event, her father reemerging, a wedding, the new love, a divorce, the mob, a controlling mother, a passive-aggressive grandmother, step-step-sisters, a good-for-nothing brother dating a best friend, and on and on. It’s a massive pile of puzzles that keeps me tuning in to the next one. The humor is not to be dismissed. I think it’s the only thing that gets me past the melodrama.
And one of the biggest mysteries, to me, is this: Is this what a real Telenovela is like? I mean, I’ve seen a lot of them, and understood maybe 10% of them. I had a girlfriend who understood Spanish once, but she didn’t really like Telenovelas, so poo-pooed any question I had about them. But it seems to me this show is one, if mostly in English. And if it is, then I can see how folks can get wrapped up in them. They’re like Soaps on steroids. No regard for realism, or an even hand toward dialog. It’s all heavy, yet goofy, farcical, even.
Frankly, I don’t like farces, much. I hated the last few seasons of 30 Rock, because it got more and more farcical, and hated The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt because it STARTED that way. 3rd Rock from the Sun got a pass, because John Lithgow is just that good, but it was pretty out there, as well. (Makes sense for a Space Alien Show to be Out There, no?) But I’m enjoying this one, and I decided to sit down and figure out why.
And I think I did: the puzzles. It’s more than the murder part, it’s how things are all fitting together, and the entire tapestry of the story being revealed episode by episode. It’s like a really good crossword puzzle. One that I sit over and think about each clue, and try an fit the right words into the spaces, so that it all fits in one lovely, completed puzzle.
I do crossword puzzles most every day, but sometimes, I’ll go a day or two without. I just don’t feel the need to turn my brain on 100% for a bit. I once went over a year without doing any puzzles, and I didn’t really miss it.
And that’s how I feel Jane the Virgin is going to be for me. I’ve been writing this for about an hour now, and I haven’t been missing the show. And I’m mid-season. I’m sure I’ll pick it up easily if I do start watching it again. (And I will, re: previous post, I AM a bitter-ender.) But, I can say this with some real certainty. Once I reach the end of this show, I don’t think I’ll need to watch another season of it. If it ends on a cliffhanger, I’ll be a bit miffed, but this show has SO MANY threads, that if one or two end up hanging, who cares, so many others will be resolved.
This show does a VERY good job of showing that life is complicated, but if you do miss out on a little bit here and there, it’s not the end, you just move on. And that’s like this show, and presumably Telenovelas in general. Watch, quit, pick it up again years later, and you’ll be caught up in no time. The opening monologue of the Narrator, (a character that would be missed), that’s comedy, in itself. I think I could edit together the first minute of each episode to make a really funny and concise summary of the entire season. (I haven’t looked, but I’m willing to bet someone did that already, and it’s on YouTube.)
But I have already reached that point of my brain being too tired to watch the show, as made obvious of me writing this post. I don’t mean my brain gets tired. (Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing, that takes a lot of brain-power, I’ll have you know.) But I do mean it’s tired of processing this amount of silliness, of this show. The show is contrived. Funny, imaginative and the acting is spot-on, but it’s all a life I would NEVER live, and so I can’t identify with any one character. A pretty significant reason to watch any show, in my opinion.
Yet, it’s fun enough to make it through my 3 episode testing, and since I have the entire season recorded, I will watch it all, and be done. But I’m deleting the season pass, because I know I won’t want this, next year. I’ve satisfied that bit of curiosity, and found it fun to visit, but I am not moving there.