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Tag: television

sunny

‘It’s Always Sunny’ When Max Watches TV

May 2, 2017 / / 0 Comments

What happens when you get five degenerate friends that own their own dive bar in Philadelphia? You get some raucous and off-putting situations with a tumultuous storm of dark and politically incorrect (but nonetheless hilarious) behavior. Such is the premise of the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Since the show’s inception in 2005, Sunny has become a major hit for its oxymoronically pitch-black and light tone.

Throughout the years, the show has acquired a pretty large fan base and FXX has recently renewed it for its 13th and 14th seasons. The show has spawned plenty of merchandise, a traveling rendition of one of the episodes, and a consistency to the show’s plot and nature. A big fan of the show, Max Rubinstein (former Dickinson graduate and my partner in crime) allowed me to interview him about his fandom.  For him, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is more than just a source of entertainment; it serves as both a connective tissue for his social relationships and way for him to make new connections.

The show’s consistency is the bedrock of Max’s fandom. Even with its different approach to the typical sitcom, Sunny has been extremely successful and generated a large fan base. Max started watching his sophomore year of high school and quickly zipped through it on Netflix. But he didn’t stop there. He watched the show at least once a day throughout college. He says that now, “I probably watch three episodes a week, but at peak time I was watching three episodes a day, every day.” It makes sense then that he claims he can quote word for word sixty percent of the show’s lines, with some episodes as high as ninety percent. Max loves the show for its “nuanced, fucked-up humor.”

Sunny has been known for drawing attention to taboo topics like abortion, gun control, Naziism, and pedophilia, but instead of coming off as rabble-rousing or mean-spirited, it’s somehow loveable for doing so.

At times it can go further than social awareness and even provide social commentary on these controversial topics. For example, in a recent episode, “The Gang Turns Black”, the gang gets electrocuted during a storm and wakes up in black bodies. The gang then goes about their day and experiences all the different ways that African-Americans are oppressed on a daily basis. In typical Always Sunny style, the episode turns when Charlie, who is being played by a young black actor, gets shot suddenly by the police at the end of the episode. This scene directly addresses police shootings of black children like Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin, showing that the writers of Sunny pay attention to real world events. The content of the show and attention to real world events and problems, like racism, makes this show extremely intelligent, and the fundamental reason fans like Max love its “nuanced fucked-up” nature.

Even with such dark and political humor, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia maintains a massive following because of the show’s predictable and reliable structure. This consistency allows viewers like Max to feel more deeply connected with his peers while watching the show together. He says, “…it’s just a fun thing to do with friends. It’s a good fall back, because you know everybody’s going to have a good time watching it together.” Like most sitcoms, one can jump around to any episode and be able to fully understand it. The show relies heavily on character tropes, sticky situations, and dark humor, making it easy to watch an episode without much background context.

Not only are the episodes self-contained, but its easy to find new ways to enjoy them, allowing fans to watch the same episodes time and time again. Max and his friends have made a fun drinking game to watch alongside the show. He says, “it helps to be a long time Sunny watcher, because you drink whenever a character does one of their character motifs. Or when there’s a recurring joke in the show, or when another recurring character appears.”

This type of repetition creates memories, which helps create bonds. Max says that nearly all of the friends he makes are avid Sunny watchers, and he’s usually converts the ones that aren’t. As with any show, the content may not be the sole reason why someone is a fan. These connective opportunities with others can also serve as motivation to continue watching a show, as it builds common ground. Communal watchings acts as a sort of space to hang around with friends, create memories, bond over the reliable nature and shared love of Sunny.

There are even instances when Sunny interacts with Max’s life outside of the show, showing that his fandom extends beyond a TV screen. He said, “…yeah, me and my friends were able to quote the show so much, that we could make a Sunny reference to nearly anything in conversation. So we would realize that would be pretty off putting for everyone else. So we made a game that whenever we reference Sunny in front of other people that didn’t watch the show, we would have to drink.” Even in his life outside of TV watching, Sunny began to manifest in his ways of speaking and interacting with his friends and other people. For Max, the show can as a conversational safety net; he’s always able to refer back to the show if there’s ever an awkward moment among his peers.

Max has also put in labor towards his fandom, as he has spent outside time thinking about the show and has dressed up as some of the characters. Max told me that at one point he put hours of thought into compiling an extensive list of his top thirty episodes and then shared it with his friends. This intense meticulousness and care towards the show exemplifies how much the show means to him. He has even dressed up as different characters for Halloween along with his friends. Last year he dressed as the character he most identifies with, Charlie, who shares his “…sense of wonder and adventure, [and] feels love very strongly, which is something that I feel too. And Charlie just does ridiculous things, does weird things, eats weird things, and I like doing weird things.”

However, Max was not the only one; his good friend Nick also dressed as “Fat” Mac that year (in season 7 of the show, Rob McElhenney decided to put on 30 lbs because he thought it would be funny if the character of Mac was fat all of a sudden) and the two proceeded to act out the show throughout the night. In previous years, Max has also dressed as the McPoyle brothers with his good friend Graham. The costumes generated interest among non-Sunny watchers, inviting them to join in on the show’s social sphere by piquing their interest.

Max continues to spend much of his free time interacting and engaging with elements of the show. In small groups with other fans he has even made some of the meals from the show. He says, “I’ve cooked some of the meals that they’ve brought up in the show, like milk steak (when you boil milk and drop a steak in it until it cooks). It wasn’t terrible.” This happens to be Charlie’s favorite meal, an iconic part to his mostly cat-food and gasoline diet. Max and his friends bonded over the ridiculous labor of making this specific meal together. The physical act of making it made it worthwhile despite its gross nature.

Max has even presented his Sunny fandom in situations when other may have no idea about it. To do this, he made Charlie’s beer vest from “The Gang Goes to Hell Part One”. This required creating an elaborate duct tape vest with many different holes and pockets to put beer cans in. Max wore this to a party one time, inciting vehement questioning by those partygoers who were unaware of the show. Max boasted of his knowledge of the show and was proud to explain to anyone who asked (and some who didn’t) what the beer vest meant or did, hoping to gain more viewers and more connections to the show. He fed off of the energy of being a part of something that others might not know about and felt a deep-seated connection to those that did.

There have been times when Max has been rewarded for his devotion to the show. While in Australia, Max went to a Portugal. The Man[1] concert, and had heard through the grapevine that the band was also a fan of the show. He heard reports that the band sometimes played the song, “Dayman”, created by the characters in “The Nightman Cometh”, as a warm up. He said, “As we walked in they were playing it and I thought ‘I’m in a good place’.” Max felt safe and secure once he realized he was in a space where people also shared his same interests.

There was there was even a live version of “The Nightman Cometh” that went on tour with the actual actors. Unfortunately, Max did not get a chance to see the performance, as they are no longer touring. However, the performance can be found on YouTube and Max has watched it many times. He wishes, though, that the actors would go on tour again. These specific presentations of fandom prove to Max that there exists a sense of belonging among Sunny fans, and that others want to connect to something on a deeper level as.

Sunny also was Max’s first introduction to Netflix. The site, a place to continuously binge watch TV, provides all fans of all different shows to engage in fandom. With its limitless nature, a fan can watch hours upon hours of their favorite show, building up one’s fandom little by little. This introduction to Netflix provided Max with other shows like Bob’s Burgers or Breaking Bad, inviting him to engage in other fandoms. Netflix changes the game for fans and TV watching in general, as it can be both be a place to watch your favorite shows on repeat or put on in the background of a social setting. ‘Netflix and chill,’ if you will. The introduction to Netflix brought Max’s fan potential to the surface, allowing him to experience Sunny at all hours of the day, and also served as an outlet to maybe try something new.

The show itself acts an avenue for social belonging for its fans and proves that it can be more than just a source of entertainment. The show has changed the way Max thinks about TV, but also has influenced his mannerisms and speech, how he picks and interacts with his friends, and what he does in his free time. Max’s fandom proves that fandom itself is more than just liking a TV show, artist, or movie; it can be a source for belonging, activity, and social engagement that can bring people closer together to experience both new and old things.

 

[1] This is correct punctuation for the band’s name.

 

stamp tramp

How I Met Your Victorian Society

May 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been taking a Victorian Sexualities class this semester. And throughout I’ve been surprised by the connections between Victorian society and our present-day society. For example, both involve radical changes in technology, concern over family values and morality, and a large amount of coded talk about sex. Although a lot has changed and the conversations differ in content, many of the anxieties of the Victorian era, especially around sexuality and gender, seem to pop up today. One of the places where I was surprised to find myself suddenly thinking about the Victorians was the TV show How I Met Your Mother, created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas.

The unmarried woman was a big concern for the Victorians. The growing number of single women in Britain was in conflict with the traditional role of women as wife and the mechanisms of inheritance and property. William Rathbone Greg wrote “Why are Women Redundant?” in 1862 to address this problem. He believed that it was in women’s nature to marry, so that if they weren’t marrying, it was for unnatural reasons: bad temperament, desire for work, and a lack of eligible men. I think the Robin, one of the two female protagonists, is the modern day manifestation of a similar fear. Most of her characters’ conflicts have to do with whether she wants a man or a career. So which will she end up with? And if a man, who? The show spends a lot of time dwelling on which path and which man is a better choice for her. This focus on marrying off the single women strikes me as very Victorian. Her role as a woman is also complicated through her non-traditional portrayal of gender. Robin has a lot of traditionally masculine characteristics, and the show wants us to see them as such. Her drinking scotch and smoking cigars makes her a ‘bro’. As does her lack of desire for children or for commitment.

Set against Robin’s gendered identity, Lilly’s performance of womanhood becomes the other half of the binary. Lilly wants a husband and children. For most of the show she is a kindergarten teacher. Her character has nurturing and maternal instincts that Robin seems to lack. Though Lilly isn’t always traditional, she is aligned with the traditional ideals of womanhood as mother and wife. Just as Greg was thinking about what the proper role for women was, How I Met Your Mother proposes these two ideas: Robin or Lily. In addition, Wilkie Collin’s book The Woman in White sets up a similar binary with its two main female characters, Laura and Marion. Laura is a traditional woman—quiet and passive—while Marion is frequently compared with men—rational and stubborn. This concern over what makes a woman is also in our consciousness today. Certainly How I Met Your Mother’s women are different from those in the Victorian period, but we are still trying to figure out what gender means—especially for women in relation to marriage. What is the ‘natural’ role for women? Is there one?

Another Victorian trope that has found its way into the show is that of the potential (or definite, depending on how you see it) homoeroticism of male friendships. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest is packed with jokes about gay sex. In Wilkie Collins’ work, there is a pattern of homoerotic love being expressed through the desire for the same woman (see, for more on this, Carolyn Dever’s “The Marriage Plot and Its Alternatives.”). In How I Met Your Mother, the bond between Ted and Barney has similar coding. The greater importance of their relationship with each other over their brief and unimportant heterosexual bonds mimics that of men in Victorian literature. Their strong and foundational love and care for each other is greater than that of marriage—which is shown as shallower. Add to this Ted and Barney’s mutual love for Robin and you have a Victorian love triangle. The homosocial relationship is, perhaps, coded in their desire for Robin. The questions that Wilkie Collins and Oscar Wilde asked are still concerns today: What is the role of homosocial relationships? Is marriage still the most important relationship if the ‘bro code’ is supposed to come first? Or does the show’s narrative framework suggest that, despite the importance of homosocial bonds, marriage wins out in the end? The whole point of the framing narration is, after all, to tell an audience of children about their family history or what—for lack of a better world—their inheritance.

While I believe that a lot has changed since Victorian society, it seems odd to me that so many of the questions they were grappling with are still valid today. Have our thoughts on marriage changed so little? Or have we returned to a time of these odd hypocrisies? Morality, family and marriage are central concerns while sex and sexual deviance are both immoral and everywhere. I don’t have a claim, or a ‘so what’ to answer these questions. I think the pattern is worth some thought however. The Victorians were trying to adjust to changing gender roles and ideas of sexuality. So are we today. Our society is in the process (hopefully) of rearranging how we think of gender and all of its institutions. Do we look to the Victorians for help perhaps? How come we’re still so stuck on these issues?

orphan black poster clones

Orphan Black

February 23, 2015 / / 0 Comments

It’s not easy to be a feminist and watch TV. I don’t deny there are shows that are making strides in their representation of women and non-normative people, such as Orange is the New Black, Parks and Recreation, Bob’s Burgers, etc. But despite these shows, television seems stuck in a rut. Though there is a lot available, shows stay rigidly within their genre and tend to market towards one single demographic. Cop shows work one way, sitcoms another, teen dramas are different from soap operas, and soap operas are different from prime time. So although the shows employ many different lenses, they remain clustered around a few primary ideas, showing but not embracing diversity in characters or life narratives. Watching through a feminist lens traps you in wanting to praise and encourage a show for the progress it does make but feeling disappointed by the conservative structures that TV can’t seem to let go of.

Orphan Black is a show that begins to deconstruct these ideas. For those of you who have not watched it, let me give you a synopsis (unless you want to watch it right now. Don’t worry, I’ll wait). Sarah Manning (played by Tatiana Maslany) is the first and primary character; the audience mostly follows her through the narrative, though in the later episodes this changes. Sarah was raised in the foster system, had an unplanned pregnancy, and ran away leaving her child in the care of her foster mother. The show begins with her return to NYC where her foster mother and daughter live, as well as her foster brother Felix (Jordan Gavaris). Sarah quickly learns that she is a clone, meaning that her DNA was either copied or constructed and that her body is technically owned by the Dyad group. She meets many of her “sisters” (as they call themselves) and joins them in trying to discover their origins. They attempt to sustain their lives while managing the unusual details of their existence and fighting for their autonomy against institutional and scientific control.

Through its story, Orphan Black establishes connections between the personal and the political that most TV shows don’t even attempt–and it does this while managing to maintain a multilayered narrative. Diverse characterizations for women–who are the majority of the cast–and men are central to the show. Unfortunately, Orphan Black is largely lacking in representations of people of color. The fact that a large chuck of the characters are all played by Tatiana Maslany because they’re clones is a contributing factor, but it by no means excuses the show for its white-dominated cast. This was a choice the show’s producers made, so though I praise the leaps that it is making I cannot say it does not have flaws, and I am not defending this significant gap in its representation of the human experience.

That said, Orphan Black creates a diverse representation of the female experience, including sexuality, career, class, religion, ideology, and motherhood status. Through learning about Sarah, her family and the clones–mainly Allison, Cosima, Helena, and Rachel–the audience is shown many different ways in which women live. Allison lives in the suburbs with her husband and two children. Cosima is a queer-identified student studying evolutionary biology. And Helena was raised in a convent and then brainwashed to kill people (pretty unusual, really). The audience is also shown the complex relationships between all of these women, and in particular the generational relationships of Sarah, her foster mother, and her daughter. The connections between women, such as those of motherhood or sisterhood (both biological and emotional), are major themes explored in the show. Strong bonds between women are not the subject of most TV shows at the moment, and it’s incredible to see these realistic and relatable female characters explore their relationships to each other, themselves, and the world. In addition, the show includes interesting male characters. In fact, the male characters are integral to the plot and are characterized just as the female characters are, as having different and complex identities. The show focuses on its female character while consistently bringing in male narratives and identities to complete the complex views of gender that appear in the show.

This diverse picture of identities is continued with the inclusion of queer-identified characters like Felix, Cosima, Delphine (a fellow scientist of Cosima), and Tony. I use the term queer to mean non-normative: anything that is against the traditional structures of society. Felix is Sarah’s gay foster brother who, while male identified, is welcomed into female spaces. He is not only openly gay with an actively queer social life but is defended as Sarah’s brother. His identity is not only outside heteronormative bounds, but his connection to Sarah is non-normative as well, as they are not blood relations.

The relationship between Cosima and Delphine (Evelyne Brochu) is also an amazing accomplishment of the show. After thinking about Cosima kissing her in the episode “Entangled Banks,” Delphine admits “Oh, like… I have never thought about bisexuality. I mean, for myself, you know? But, as a scientist, I know that sexuality, is a… is a… is a spectrum. But you know, social biases they, codified attraction. It’s contrary to the biological facts… you know.” This discussion of sexuality acknowledges both the social meanings and scientific ideas of sexual identity. The development of Cosima and Delphine’s relationship explores questions of identity, how identity changes, and what loving someone means. Tony, while only briefly in the show so far, queers the idea of female experience even more by being a transgender clone. His presence highlights that a female body does not always mean female person. Despite having identical DNA with his clone sisters, Tony identifies as a man and pushes against the gender binary and its limited view of sex.

Not only does the show incorporate all these identities as experiences of life, but it also connects them to political, social, scientific and other external institutions. Through the focus on reproduction and women’s bodies, the show explores how people and bodies are used in science, religion, and politics. The clones are inherently drawn into this tug of war because their bodies are the property of science. This also politicizes the lives of these women’s families. Their status as ‘object,’ not ‘person,’ raises questions about how women’s bodies in particular are commodified, often through their reproduction.

The questions of religion, science, and politics, however, do not end there. The show explores the relationships between these political institutions: where their goals overlap, when they’re in contest, how they view each other, and how their ideologies construct worldviews. This complex look at social institutions in connection with the individual is what makes Orphan Black such a smart and multi-layered show. Orphan Black is not trying to show the audience a single way to live, but is instead asking us to examine how the world around us works and what our place is in it. It shows life not as a contained event, but as connected to and influenced by larger external forces. This is exciting to me, that a popular television show would express such a complex world view.

Orphan Black is by no means the only example of television with diverse identities or political implications. Nor is it perfect, with every identity accounted for, and all voices heard. However, it is a show that attempts to establish the connections between personal and political lives. Its characters show a range of life experiences and identities and build relationships outside of a heteronormative structure. The show stands out against the Normative and promotes a more complex understanding of an individual’s relationship to society. In short, I think it’s worth a watch.

For more Orphan Black information, click here!

JtheV

Jane the Virgin is far from a Beginner

February 16, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Just based on the title alone, Jane The Virgin is an attention grabber of a show. This CW comedy-drama focuses on Jane Villanueva, a virgin (surprise, surprise), who finds herself at the center of numerous crazy developments that complicate her life and the lives of those around her at every turn. It was developed for an American audience by Jennie Snyder Urman and is loosely based on a Venezuelan telenovela called Juana La Virgen. The show itself is a pseudo-telenovela and pays a lot of tribute to the genre: its characters are predominantly Latino, dialogue is occasionally in Spanish, and a fictional telenovela regularly plays on the characters’ TV screens.

Jane (Gina Rodriguez) is young Latina woman going to school and waitressing in Miami, where she still lives at home with her flirtatious mother (Andrea Navedo) and devoutly religious ‘Abuelita’ (Ivonne Coll). In the series premiere, Jane finds herself artificially inseminated because of a mix-up at the gynecologist. This plays into the religious undertones of the show as Jane becomes pregnant despite still being a virgin (her purity is something her grandmother preached to her to protect when she was younger). The mis-applied sperm, it turns out, belongs to a man named Rafael (Justin Baldoni), who not only runs the hotel Jane works at but also happens to have been her first kiss five years earlier.

For Jane’s detective-boyfriend Michael (Brett Dier), learning that his virgin girlfriend has become pregnant inevitably puts some serious strain on their relationship. By the end of the premiere, the two decide to take their relationship to the next level by becoming engaged to be married. The symbolism is apparent in the final shot, where Michael knocks a white flower–symbol of Jane’s virginity–out of her hair and they embrace. This foreshadows what is in the imminent future for Jane, although when this moment of deflowering will come is a big mystery.

As with a typical telenovela and soap opera, if you thought this show couldn’t get any more complicated, you would be very wrong. Just to give you a taste of all the storylines in this show, here are some of the things that a viewer will have to follow. Rafael’s sperm (frozen before a bout of cancer left him infertile) had originally been intended for his devious and scheming wife Petra (Yael Grobglas) as a way to salvage their marriage. Despite this ploy, Petra is sleeping with Rafael’s best friend Zaz, who Michael just happens to be spying on because he is the last link to a missing drug dealer. Jane’s absentee father also happens to be the star of her favorite telenovela, but her mother can’t bring herself to tell this to Jane. Oh and the gynecologist who caused this mix-up? None other than Rafael’s sister Luisa, of course.

The white flower is a recurring symbol

This complex web of interconnecting stories is both a flaw and one of the appeals of Jane The Virgin. On the one hand, it keeps the speed of the show very fast-paced and there is never a dull scene. The music also plays into this process: a frequent use of background music conveys the sense that a scene is about to reach its climax (pun intended) and then snowball into the next big moment. This gives the show a rhythm that it complicates with every scene. On the other hand, the complex plot leads to there being anywhere from seven to fifteen legitimate and important story lines going on at all times. This can make the show seem scattered and hard to follow on occassion.

The writers do a really good job combating this complex narrative by having every event and person related to one another. Every single scene has larger implications and there is no wasted time in each episode. The writers also utilize a narrator to make sure the audience is keeping up with all the characters and their stories. He has a very jokey and omnipotent voice. He is in on all the jokes and aspects of the show that the audience can see but the characters cannot. Relatively frequent flashbacks also help tie the story together to explain both character motives and relationships between different people. Despite the high amount of turning wheels on the show, the writers are able to tie it all back together, providing a satisfying assurance to viewers that any confusing event will be explained in due time if they continue watching.

The directors of the episodes have a tendency to hint at a lot of things in the future. There is an incredible amount of foreshadowing, and part of the fun as a viewer is to catch the symbolism in what seem like otherwise mundane details. This gives the viewer a privileged view that is way above the characters themselves and can thus draw viewers back to see if their predictions turned out to be correct or if they misinterpreted the hidden message in a scene. The main example of this is the sort of ‘will they, won’t they’ feeling surrounding Jane and Rafael. They have a classic rich vs. poor, Romeo and Juliet dynamic between them. This becomes confounded by the fact that Jane and Michael really do care about each other as well, so it will be interesting to see how this unfolds on the screen.

For all the narrative trickery and complexity, however, it is the characters who are the real driving force behind the show. At first glance, they all may seem very one-dimensional. Their basic personalities, for instance, are established very quickly from the moment they are first on screen, and it seems at first that they are all extremely easy to figure out. However, as the show progresses, all of the characters are shown to have much more going on. And in due time they become much more multifaceted. This is a really crucial part of the show because it complicates a lot of the decisions that characters have to make, since all of them are dealing with internal struggles.

Though the writing helps, the depth and attraction of all the characters is mainly due to the performances of the actors. Rodriguez is really the backbone of the whole cast. She plays all her characters’ emotions to the fullest and is asked to do so across a large spectrum in every episode. She shines brightest in the tougher, dramatic scenes but is still able to hold her own with the comedic scenes. She was deservedly recognized for her abilities when she won the Golden Globe for best actress in a TV comedy this year.

Navedo, who plays her mother, heavily supports Rodriguez’s rollercoaster of highs and lows. Early on, she is presented as a ditzy, young, carefree mother going from man to man. But she is capable of much deeper scenes when she is put in a position to showcase her nurturing side and take care of Jane. The same could be said for Baldoni, who is able to portray the difficulty and complications within his character with just his face and posture when necessary. Additionally Grobglas does a fantastic job keeping the audience guessing as to her motives and what side she is really on, utilizing very emotional performances that can turn on a dime through expert use of a very sly grin. Some of the supporting roles are more caricatures, with the overbearing grandmother, backstabbing best friend, and clueless/self-indulged television star, but they all do a great job holding up the rest of the show and bringing it together.

Andrea Navadeo (left) as Jane’s mother and Ivonne Coll (right) as her abuelita

For what it’s worth, the show is also pretty progressive. The large majority of the central roles are Latino characters, which is somewhat revolutionary for U.S. television today. This is important for the show, because it is an ode to telenovelas and it is showing that Latino actors and characters can lead, carry, and tell a very compelling story to an American audience that is typically drawn to predominantly white shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, The Middle, and Modern Family. However it is interesting to note that while a lot of the characters have accents or Latino names, they are not actually all Latino, and the exact ethnicity of any person on the show cannot be determined. Rodriguez, Navedo, and Coll are all of Puerto Rican descent in real life but the show is situated in Miami, a very Cuban city. Surprisingly enough, given their accents, at times, and appearance, Baldoni and Grobglas are not Latino in the least. Baldoni’s parents were of Jewish and Italian descent, while Groblas grew up in Israel and her parents are from France and Austria (though her ethnicity on the show is even harder to tell than the others). This is a testament to their acting abilities; however, it also brings into question why actual Latino actors were not used for more of the roles, as they are an underrepresented acting group in network television.

Additionally the show deals with a lot of heavier issues in society. Examples of this is whether or not Jane should get an abortion and the decision over when to lose her virginity, in addition to a lesbian relationship with one of the recurring characters. These are topics that other shows might shy away from for fear of controversy and Jane The Virgin should be commended for tackling them head-on.

Ultimately, Jane The Virgin is a delightfully charming show that still possesses the ability to put amazing emotional scenes at its core. This charm makes sense given that it is on a network station and marketed towards a younger audience than more conventional network shows. It is quite action-packed and complex to say the least, yet because of the foreshadowing and narrator, a viewer could miss an episode or two and still have a strong grasp of the majority of what was going on. The whole show also has a very fantastical feel, which a viewer needs to accept given some of the ridiculous things that happen. This magical feel is conveyed through the intertwining stories being told, the music and narrator, and the utilization of very vibrant colors.

It is hard to categorize this show into one genre as it has elements of comedy, romance, drama, and even mystery. It may sound like a lot to comprehend in one show, but Jane The Virgin is quite brilliantly constructed to have everything eventually tie together. This is not a laugh-out-loud show per say, as the humor typical arises from situations of classic misunderstandings that drive the plot forward. The jokes have a playful feel to them, toeing a line between childish and mature so both adolescents and young adults can find it enjoyable. This has been highly recognized among a large variety of people as the show was nominated for a Golden Globe for best TV comedy series this year, despite its airing on a relatively smaller network. Jane The Virgin is a show with such an incredible amount going on that it can be intimidating, but it does a really good job balancing the funny with the heart wrenching, the absurd with the relatable, and even addressing contemporary issues.

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