Jane The Virgin – Chapter Fifty-Five

By: Emily Cross

Having Catalina (Sofia Pernas) visit felt like a dream at first, but Jane (Gina Rodriguez) has woken up from the dream and is starting to get annoyed at her. Michael (Brett Dier) is adamant about getting rid of her, but they only have four more days until she flies out. They hear Catalina very loudly speaking on the phone outside, which has woken up Mateo. Jane goes to talk to her, but is unsuccessful in getting her to quiet down. In the kitchen, Jane looks for Mateo’s teething biscuits, but discovers Catalina has been eating them.

Five days later, Catalina is still there and Jane complains to Xiomara (Andrea Navedo) and Rogelio (Jaime Camil) about how annoying she’s being. On her way out the door, Alba (Ivonne Coll) asks if Jane is going to church with her, but Jane has a new discussion group at grad school. Alba remarks that Jane hasn’t been to church in a while and lays on the guilt. She reminds Jane that she’s responsible for Mateo’s spiritual upbringing, and to be mindful of that.

After Jane and Alba leave, Rogelio asks Xo if she is feeling guilty about anything and tries to get her to tell him about Bruce. He gives up and tells Xo he knows. She is keeping it a secret because Jane would be upset and asks for some time to tell Jane. Rogelio doesn’t like it because he hates being in the middle, but he agrees. In an obvious effort to make Xo jealous, he brags that many women are interested in him and he is meeting with a matchmaker. It turns out that this matchmaker, Darci (Justina Machado), considers herself a “love dealer.” During their meeting, Rogelio makes clear his many requirements for a possible match, but Darci has requirements too: no talking about exes, no heavy drinking on dates and no sex until it’s serious.

Michael scares Jane when she’s in the middle of a Hitchcock marathon. She’s doing research because her writers’ group thinks she should push more into the Rear Window feel in her novel. Jane has learned that there are three steps to good suspense: 1) giving the audience information the characters don’t know to build tension, 2) giving a character the same information and 3) defusing the tension. The narrator (Anthony Mendez) tries the first tactic: he shows us an envelope that contains something that will change everything. But we’re not quite there yet.

Later, Rafael (Justin Baldoni) visits the apartment to discuss Elena’s bank account. Michael has learned that it links to a convent in Italy. In a Hitchcock inspired fantasy, Michael tells Rafael and Jane that Mutter had been sending monthly payments to the convent, which is in the town where she was born. Jane asks Rafael if she can start taking Mateo to church, but Rafael thinks he’s too young and he doesn’t want him to be super religious. Jane pushes, saying it’s really important to her, but Michael ruins that tactic by telling Rafael they haven’t been since they were married. So that’s a no on church every week. Jane confronts Michael, saying that they need to be a united front. She also suggests they start going to church regularly as a couple and Michael agrees to try it. They start kissing, but before things get too heated, Catalina comes in. While Jane and Catalina share coffee, Jane suggests to her that she should move out. Catalina is surprisingly understanding since she needs to plan a gala at the Lincoln Center in New York.

On Rogelio’s first love dealer date, he talks about lying to Jane for Xo. The date was Denise Richards (playing herself) and she seems to be having a bad time. Darci admonishes Rogelio for breaking one of her rules (talking about exes) and attempts to force him out. Rogelio convinces her to give him another chance when she reveals the venue for an upcoming mixer cancelled and he offers to ask Rafael if they can have it at the Marbella.

Jane, Michael, Rafael and Mateo all attend church. Rafael is clearly uncomfortable so when Mateo fusses too much, he takes him outside. He gets a text from Rogelio asking about the Marbella and Rafael confirms. While he is texting, Mateo wanders off. When he runs after him, Rafael sees a hallway that makes him remember his past.

After Mass, Jane is annoyed that Rafael missed most of it. She is calmed when Rafael tells her and Michael that he thinks his mother did take him to church once. He remembers hearing church bells and his mother taking his hand. Michael encourages him to continue to think about it. Later on, Michael confesses thinks that Mateo is too young, but Jane maintains that religion is really important to her and she wants to make it work.

When Jane is dropping Mateo off at Rafael’s, she learns that Catalina has been staying with him ever since she left Jane’s and is now consulting on menus at The Marbella. As a cherry on top of the cake, she calls Mateo by “Mr. Sweetface” – Jane’s nickname for her son. As Jane walks away, her footsteps remind Rafael of another piece of the memory: his mother saying that she told him she would be back.

On the phone with Michael, Jane tells him that she looked up the gala Catalina was supposed to chair and found her name nowhere on the website. He thinks Jane has just been watching too much Hitchcock and dismisses her. Michael is at work “setting up his desk.” A detective gives an update to him on the Mutter case. Apparently, a bunch of paintings were reported stolen from the convent around the time the payments started. Michael shows them to Rafael, who recognizes one of them.

Rafael shows Michael and Jane the storage locker where all of his father’s stuff is kept, including his art collection. Michael recognizes one of the pieces as being reported stolen from the convent. Rafael asks Michael not to call the police because Rafael covered up financial discrepancies in his father’s books, including the art he had suspected was stolen. Jane lashes out at Rafael, blaming him for putting Michael in this position and pointing out that maybe he would know right from wrong if he went to church. Later, Jane tells Michael that he doesn’t have to lie, but Michael seems resigned to it.

Rogelio calls Jane while she’s on her way to dinner with Catalina and they talk for a minute about Xo before Rogelio can’t take it anymore and tells Jane about Xo and Bruce. Jane calls Xo and leaves a message. When Xo gets the message, she calls Rogelio, but he doesn’t answer because he is at the mixer where Darci has prohibited phones. Rogelio’s suitors include Carmen Electra and Brooke Burke-Charvet, but he rejects all of them. Xo ambushes Rogelio at the mixer because he won’t take her calls. She is upset Rogelio didn’t let her tell Jane when the time was right. She accuses Rogelio of sabotaging her relationship with Bruce because he doesn’t want it to work out and he admits she’s right. When Rogelio announces, very loudly, that he’s in a room with women he’s not attracted to in the least, Darci kicks him out.

Jane continues to poke into Catalina’s charity event, questioning how she got out of it but Catalina evades her as usual. When Catalina goes to blow-dry her hair, Jane spots a purse that seems to be full of cash and jewels. In another Hitchcock-inspired fantasy, Jane imagines herself as a cat burglar going through Catalina’s purse, but in real life Catalina catches her. Jane admits her suspicious about Catalina and the charity, but everything is easily explained away. She’s an anonymous benefactor of the charity, she’s carrying so much cash because ATM’s aren’t safe in Venezuela and the jewels are family heirlooms she will sell to send money back to her poor family.

Darci officially throws Rogelio out, upset that he didn’t realize he was still hung up on his ex. He reveals that he’s so obsessed with having a kid because he wants the opportunity to raise a child from the beginning because he didn’t get that chance with Jane.

Catalina tells Rafael about what Jane did, but she’s not too bothered by it because life’s too short to stay mad. She quotes an Italian saying, which makes Rafael remember an Italian-speaking woman telling someone that they should be ashamed. On the phone with Michael, Rafael says that it wasn’t a church he remembered, it was a convent. There was a nun who spoke Italian and a bust of a woman wearing a veil.

Two hours later, he’s at Jane and Michael’s house identifying the bust as The Veiled Virgin, which is at a convent in Miami. They find out that the Mother Superior, Mother Constantine, did her novitiate (nun training) at the convent in Italy that they’ve connected to Elena. Since one childhood memory isn’t enough for a warrant, Michael suggests that Rafael does a tour of the convent and see if anything else triggers a more specific memory. Jane volunteers to go with him, because she will know all the right questions to ask.

At the convent, Rafael is horribly awkward, but Jane saves him. Mother Constantine (Irene DeBari) gets a call from one of the other nuns, telling her that she thinks Rafael is at the convent. Mother Constantine is on her way! On the tour, Rafael splits off from the group because something feels familiar. As he walks down a hallway, he remembers his mother telling Mother Constantine she will go to jail. He finds the office of Mother Constantine and snoops inside.

Meanwhile, Mother Constantine arrives back at the convent and the narrator uses this chance to use the first two of the three steps of suspense: the audience knows that Mother Constantine is back and Jane soon finds out. Jane runs around trying to find Mother Constantine and stop her, but she is unsuccessful. Mother Constantine goes into her office to find Rafael and claims she always knew this day would come. She tells Rafael to sit and the third step is achieved: the tension is diffused as it seems Rafael is not in trouble. Mother Constantine admits she was dealing in stolen art with Rafael’s father because the convent and its neighboring orphanage was in financial trouble. Elena found out about the deal and threatened to expose Mother Constantine, unless she did something for her. Mother Constantine then gives Rafael the envelope the narrator told us about earlier, but we don’t know what is in it just yet.

Meanwhile Jane is still trying to distract a nun she thinks is Mother Constantine and asks her for advice about Mateo’s religious upbringing, but the conversation segues into why Jane has been avoiding church. She admits that she’s felt mad at God since Michael’s shooting. The nun encourages Jane to work on her relationship with God because it’s not just going to come easy.

Back in the car, Rafael tells Michael and Jane that he didn’t find anything (which we know isn’t true). He also tells them he will be returning the stolen art and turning himself in to the police, because he doesn’t want to withhold any information that might help with the investigation (even though he still is). He wants to set a good example for Mateo. At home, Jane tells Michael that she wants to hold off on bringing Mateo to church so that she can work on her own relationship with God. He tells her that he will be happy to go with her occasionally, but that he thinks she should spend that time with Alba.

Michael then takes Mateo so Jane can have some writing time, where she incorporates some classic Hitchcockian suspense building techniques. The next morning, Jane wakes up early to write and Michael gets a phone call with bad news. He didn’t pass his physical and he’s relegated to desk duty.

Jane visits Xo at the house and they talk about Bruce. Jane is worried because he treated Xo so badly before and he didn’t even tell her she was married. Xo tells Jane the truth: she knew Bruce was married when they got together. Jane walks off, clearly upset with her mother.

Darci gives Rogelio one more chance and picks out the perfect match for him: her. Not to date, just to have a baby with. Rogelio immediately accepts and announces his news to the family.

Catalina calls Jane and tells her that Rafael seems really upset. Jane promises to check on him. After they hang up, Jane comments to Alba that she feels terrible for misjudging her. But, it turns out Jane might have been right all along. A mysterious older man confronts Catalina at The Marbella. He claims that she ran off with his mother’s jewels, but he cannot stay mad at her for long and kisses her.

Meanwhile, Jane checks in on Rafael. He shows her the envelope, which contains Rafael’s birth certificate. It turns out that he was born in Italy, around the time that Elena lost a baby. She bribed the nuns, who brought him over (presumably from the orphanage). Rafael isn’t a Solano!