Rafael: Co-Parent From Hell

It seems like only...almost five months ago that I was grudgingly admitting I would no longer stand against Jane and her love of Rafael. Sure, he wasn't in the upper echelon of male CW love interests, and yes, Justin Baldoni, who plays him, still hadn't convinced me that he had the acting chops to play any character more complex than your average Disney prince. But I liked Jane and Jane liked him and her approval raised his worth, so I got on board. (A petal-showered second first kiss certainly helped as well.) But ever since he dumped Jane, his actions have cancelled out all the gains his character previously made -- and have done so in such a spectacular fashion that I'm having a hard time buying it.

Because this is a novela, we could probably all be pretty sure that the path of true love wouldn't run smooth for these two: in soaps, as in life, nothing is less interesting than a happy couple successfully surmounting challenges and making things work. And the cause for Rafael's initial breakup with Jane was, at least, appropriately novela-ish: grief over his mother's having taken a scandalous cash payout from his father to stay away from Rafael. But once he agreed with Jane that they should not only try again but employ the assistance of an impartial mediator to help them with any other issues that may yet arise, only to fall back to a variation on the utterly banal and predictable "You deserve someone better than me," just proves again why Rafael is one of the show's most expendable characters: he's so basic. And yet, at the end of last week's episode, one could at least give him credit for having given Jane a reason for their breakup that would forestall her trying to argue him out of it again: that he didn't, and doesn't love her. Of course, we know that it's not the truth, but if he sincerely does believe that he's not good enough for her, then at least he's pushing her away in a manner that potentially lets her move on without any doubts about reuniting with him.

Where they lose me is this week's episode -- or, to be precise, in the episode's penultimate scene, which completely sells out Rafael's character as we've come to know it. Okay, I can believe that Rafael would be naïve enough to think Jane would be satisfied at the news that Magda won't be working at the hotel anymore. But to counter her accusation that Petra is also implicated in covering up Magda's attack on Alba with "There's two sides to every story" is ridiculous, even for someone as credulous as Rafael. He obviously knows that Petra isn't trustworthy: it's most of the reason their marriage broke up. I also don't know why he would place so much stock in what are supposedly Magda's exonerating medical records when they (a) passed through Petra's duplicitous hands and (b) are presumably not even in a language he reads.

What makes the crux of this fight even harder to believe is that the past several episodes have been spent establishing the hotel's slide into peril and Rafael's increasing dependence on Petra to keep it viable to the degree that it is. When Jane asked when Petra was leaving, why couldn't Rafael have told her something like he's hoping that he and Luisa can, between them, figure out a way to buy out Petra's shares and get her out permanently but that they have to play nice for now? It still would have been shitty given that he'd be putting the needs of the business ahead of his child's mother's, but maybe in that circumstance Jane could have understood that he was doing what he had to in order to preserve hundreds of jobs, including her own and those of her friends. (A solution that would please me even more would be for Rafael to have heard Jane's concerns and co-operated with Michael's investigation, since presumably he heard some stuff after three years of living with both Magda and Petra, but that would require Rafael to get over his childish and basically unfounded jealousy of Michael, and that's probably too much to hope for.)

All of this is, of course, to drive Jane to the decision we see her announce in the episode's final scene, which is that she plans to seek full custody of the baby -- a risky and expensive proposition that will put her in conflict with an opponent whose resources far outstrip her own, and against whom she can only bring accusations of criminal activity by his associates that the police have thus far been unable to bring charges on. But because I've watched TV before, I am pretty sure that all of this work to undercut Rafael's character is happening now so that the culmination of his redemption arc can be that much more explosively emotional: I foresee, from Rafael, a tearful confession of love on the witness stand (or, at least, in a judge's chambers) that causes Jane to drop her objections to his co-parenthood and hurtle back into his arms. I just wish that someone had thought of a way to drive these two apart that didn't make Rafael act like Jane was hysterical, or confused, or baselessly vindictive.

But maybe what will cause him to come around is for Magda to push him down the stairs. And now he deserves it.