Bingewatch Award Finalists: Here’s why to vote for ‘Jane the Virgin’
It’s over! It’s all over. Not the 2019 Bingewatch Awards, of course, but The CW’s Jane the Virgin. And while we’ll miss it (and its narrator) every single day until the end of time, that doesn’t mean you can’t vote for it in our two equally important, equally distinct categories: Best U.S. Streaming Platform & Best Show to Bingewatch.
You have until Saturday, September 7th to vote for your fandom favorite. Make sure to tweet at us when you’ve voted for your faves.
Here are just a few reasons why finalist Jane the Virgin has our entire heart. But will it get your vote?
Jane the Virgin is loved (for good reason) by fans
Soleil is a big Jane the Virgin fan who gave us some insight into why the show is so beloved. Soleil thinks the show is so special because “you never know what’s going to happen and you’re always sitting on the edge of your seat.” She loves the show for its diversity and “life lessons”.
Jane the Virgin got Soleil through some hard times. The show “got my mind off chemo, introduced me to a terrific friend, and made me realize that even in the darkest times things will get better.”
Soap opera-ception: A telenovela about telenovelas within a telenovela
Featuring an austere, melodramatic narrator, outlandish displays of emotion, and outrageous twists (more on them in a moment), Jane the Virgin exists in a world both enthralled by the telenovela and inspired by it.
Jane, her mom, and her grandmother are shown voraciously lapping up the high drama of The Passions of Santos – a fictional telenovela about a handsome politician – but their lives are also played out with the same extravagant intensity, something made all the more apparent when it’s revealed The Passions of Santos is harboring a bombshell secret relating to Jane’s real life.
Series co-creator Ben Silverman (The Office) suggested the telenova approach came as a result of how “high-concept” the hook of Jane the Virgin originally sounded. “But I thought we should take a different approach to it and sort of make it an homage to the telenovela, but still be uniquely American and play to a general market.”
As Maddie Crum highlighted for The Huffington Post, this gave Jane the Virgin a surreal edge, particularly when the series “speeds around sharp, shocking plot turns.” There’s also something swooningly tangible about the show existing within a telenovela realm.
Jane the Virgin rivaled Glee for plot twist craziness
Playing up to its telenovela roots, Jane the Virgin featured a breathless series of astonishing plot twists that also ingeniously poked fun at melodramatic tropes.
Love triangles, evil twins, accidental insemination, long-lost celebrity fathers, serial killers, death & rebirth, amnesia, and sudden, startling deaths of beloved main characters, all gave us reason to drop our jaws and wheeze in awe at Jane the Virgin’s narrative audacity. No other show on TV could have achieved twists with such casual regularity as Jane the Virgin.
Jane the Virgin featured the best Latinx representation on TV
Speaking to Mic, Jaime Camil (who portrays Jane’s uproarious father Rogelio) once divulged, “Jane the Virgin portrays Latinos with a lot of respect. Just because we’re Latinos doesn’t mean we need to have hot pink houses and piñatas and shout things like, ‘Tacos! Fiestas!’ We’re a powerful Latino cast, the characters are humans, and the show is written for a mainstream market.”
The dramedy may have leaned towards surrealism & melodrama, but Jane the Virgin managed to explore Latinx identity and experiences with depth and complexity, resulting in a show full of unapologetic sincerity and free of stereotyping.
Jane the Virgin also eschewed the usual TV Latinx clichés in favor of platforming a U.S. migrant story as an American one. “I read this script and thought, ‘OK, here we are giving so much more. We are the heroes,’” Rodriguez revealed to Backstage. “But the show’s main goal is to tell a story from an American girl’s perspective. We all migrate here and have the American dream.”
