Jane the Virgin Recap: Money Matters
Welcome back to Jane the Virgin! Let’s get you caught up to speed.
Chapter Forty-Eight opens with Alba’s (Ivonne Coll) and Xiomara’s (Andrea Navedo) bittersweet feelings over Jane (Gina Rodriguez) finally, officially, moving out. She’s lived with them her whole life, and they miss seeing her all the time. Alba has even been shopping at the Marbella gift shop as an excuse to see her more.
A Run For Your Money | Jane and Michael (Brett Dier) are finally settled in their beautiful new home! They’ve finished painting, and are getting ready for their open house, when in barge a group of strangers. One man says he manages the property, and is showing it to potential renters. Jane and Michael insist that they’re renting it, and the man scoffs. Jane tells him that she personally pays $1000 per month for it, and the man informs her that rent is $2000 per month. Whoever was paying the other half of their rent had stopped. Petra (Yael Grobglas) was the one secretly paying, but Jane and Michael have no clue. They call Rafael (Justin Baldoni) and Rogelio (Jaime Camil), but both deny any involvement. Then, Jane runs into their realtor, and scares the truth out of him (by threatening to arrest him, since she’s a police officer’s wife). She then goes to thank Petra, who is really Anezka, but she’s been giving Jane the cold shoulder lately. Mostly because Petra knows a lot of things involving Jane that Anezka doesn’t know, and she’s trying to keep her cover. Jane tells Anezka that she can’t let her continue paying for their house, but she asks that she come to dinner. Anezka tells Jane that she and Scott (Wes Armstrong) will be there. Oh, Scott was invited? Whatever.
So, Jane and Michael ruthlessly slice into their budget. After many sacrifices and squabbles, they ring it up and . . . they’re still almost $300 short. Later, Michael discovers that Jane secretly padded the budget for emergencies, and is furious. Jane has always worried about money, and Michael’s filing system is a shoebox, as Jane rightly points out, but yeah, not a good choice.
An Inside Job | Xo has been on the hunt for a job, and comes home with a job at the bank on her first day looking! However, Alba knows Xo will hate working at a bank, and tells her so. But then she hears little Jane’s voice in her head, telling her to just be supportive, so she is. Buuuut she was right, and Xo hates it. But Alba’s being so supportive that Xo doesn’t want to tell her and disappoint her! Xo quits and is at the Marbella when Alba shows up there, visiting the gift shop again with the old woman she takes care of. Alba spots Xo before she can hide, so Xo tells her she’s on her break, and needs to get back to work. Alba offers to drive her, but once they get there, the cat gets out of the bag, and Xo has to tell Alba that she quit. Later, at home, Xo is sitting on the swing, and Alba starts to go inside, but “sees” little Jane gesturing for her to come sit beside Xo. Xo confesses that she lied because she didn’t want to disappoint Alba, and Alba confesses that she was overly supportive in an effort to keep the peace, because she doesn’t want to go back to how things were. Before Jane, they used to fight all the time, and their relationship has vastly improved since.
Anezka is confronted by a strange figure in her room that night, a friend (Dot-Marie Jones) of her mother’s. She’s here to warn Anezka to stick to the plan, and sell Petra’s hotel shares within 72 hours, or else. Anezka tells Rafael that she wants to sell her shares, but she needs his approval and Luisa’s to do so. Rafael asks for some time to try and get together the money to buy her out, so she gives him 48 hours to do so. Rafael then tells Jane that he thinks something’s up with Petra. Yes! But he thinks the “something” is blackmail, by Scott.
Money to Burn | Anezka and Scott, you’ll recall, are scheming to bring Rafael down. They decide they’ll get the worth of the hotel back up before selling Petra’s shares, and Scott sets off to become a #dicktator. He implements Flamingo Friday, a theme night where all the staff women wear flamingo outfits and the men go shirtless with pink bow ties. The staff are sick of his nonsense, and decide to stage a walk-out. Scott gets wind of it, and tells Jane at that dinner party that the hotel will cover the extra $1000 per month she needs per rent if she gets the rest of the staff to stay, but Jane refuses to sell out her friends. Other than that, the dinner seems to be going fine, if awkward, until Jane privately asks Anezka if she’s in a “Milos situation,” code for “are you with Scott because he’s blackmailing you?” Unfortunately, she picked the one comparison that Anezka did understand, and Anezka is furious.
As Handsome Does | The leader of Jane’s old writing group, Amanda Elaine (Jane Seymour) has a book that’s being adapted into a Hallmark movie, and Rogelio has his eye on the lead male role. And he’s definitely not planning on sleeping with Amanda to get it. Amanda tells him that he’s in the running, and when he asks how he can get to the finish line, she tells him that she needs a handsome man to escort her to a charity event. She had been planning on asking him to, but now that she sees Rafael across the room . . . well, he’s cuter. So Rogelio swallows his wounded pride and realizes that Rafael is, in fact, very handsome. He asks Rafael if he’ll go with Amanda, and after some coercing, Rafael agrees. But shortly before he’s going to leave, Luisa (Yara Martinez) comes to him, saying she’s upset and feeling like drinking, so she came to him. So in return for Rafael’s favor, Rogelio babysits Luisa for an evening. He knows what it’s like to struggle with addiction, because he played an alcoholic flight attendant once. He ends up playing psychologist with Luisa, and helps her realize some issues she has. They decide she should go to preventative rehab. And Rogelio doesn’t get the part.
Blood Money | Later, Jane gets word that the walk-out has been cancelled, because the party is sold out and there will be lots of tips, so she heads back to the Marbella and gets into costume. While she’s talking with Lina (Diane Guerrero), Scott walks by and asks Lina if she’s “cashed that check yet,” and Jane realizes that Lina took the extra money to cancel the walk-out. Oof. Jane is determined to make things right with “Petra,” but she happens to approach Anezka as she’s being bullied some more by her mother’s henchwoman, and Anezka, having had enough of Petra’s life in general, shoves Jane, feathery costume and all, into the pool. Jane pulls Anezka in with her, and they have a full-on cat fight, in front of all the party guests. Lina jumps into the pool to back Jane up, and later, when they’re wringing out their feathers together, Lina reminds Jane that she has a rich father, and a rich baby daddy, and Lina doesn’t. But she’ll always have Jane’s back. Jane realizes that Lina is right, and tells Michael that she thinks they should move to a smaller house. She grew up stressed about money, and she doesn’t want to live above their means, because it’s stressing them out. Michael agrees, and they change the housewarming party to a goodbye party. Alba gives Jane a gift from the Marbella gift shop, telling her she bought it with her employee discount! She finally decided she’d had enough of the crotchety old woman.
Michael talks with one of his cop buddies about Luisa, and the cop tells him that they’re keeping an eye on Luisa, to see if she tries to contact Rose (Bridget Regan). And they’ve combed through the Bible that Rafael’s mother left for him, and found four words from four passages highlighted: angels, guard, the, son/sun (the Narrator isn’t sure which).
A Fool and His Money | Lastly, Anezka tells Rafael he’s out of time, and she’ll find a new buyer. Rafael reminds her that she can’t sell without permission from him and Luisa, and she orders him to give her permission, and sign his shares over to her. She tells him that she knows he covered up illegal dealings in his father’s finances after his father died, and threatens to send him to jail if he doesn’t do as she says. He’s got 24 hours to decide. When Anezka is leaving Rafael’s office, Jane startles her, and she squeaks. Jane remembers all the weird behavior from the past months, and that Anezka always squeaked like that when startled, and bursts into Rafael’s office saying, “This might sound crazy, but I don’t think that’s Petra!”
It’s. About. Time.
Catch Jane the Virgin Mondays at 9/8c on the CW.