'Remember The Time You Ruined My Quinceañera With Your "Milkshake" Cover, MOM?'

Much as I enjoyed the pilot of Jane The Virgin -- which was a lot! -- my worry was that the titular character might turn out to be so good and sweet and (literally) pure that, like so many other TV characters with shows named after them, she would slide toward dullness. The series premiere supplied one moment that gave me hope for her: after ruining Michael's wedding proposal, she absently takes a sip of the champagne he'd already poured and then immediately spits it back out, quietly saying, "Probably shouldn't be drinking that; it doesn't sound like much and god knows it's been done before, but Gina Rodriguez gives the line a wry little tweak that reflects the profoundly weird situation she's in that promises her ability to handle smarter comedic material if they give it to her in the future. But even if they don't, and Jane unfortunately turns into a Dawson Leery-esque drip, the show will be okay: we'll still have Xiomara.

It would be so easy for the show to make Xiomara nothing more than the trashy, inappropriate, sexualized-too-young mom she superficially seems to be; her single mom circumstances plus the reveal about Jane's glamorous biological father would have been enough for her to fill a telenovela-worthy slot. But the pilot already showed us there's more to Xiomara, when Alba reluctantly admitted to Jane that she'd counseled Xiomara to terminate her pregnancy, and Xiomara confirmed that she'd kept this terrible secret from Jane for her daughter's entire life, preferring to let Jane think Xiomara was the one who'd had doubts about the pregnancy rather than risk lowering Alba's status in Jane's mind.

The second episode gives us another moment in which Xiomara shows the audience what she's really made of. As Jane assembles her cabinet and tells them that since she's not keeping the eventual baby, they're only to refer to it as the "milkshake," we get a flashback to the moment that might have put this term in her head: Jane's quinceañera, where Xiomara pulled focus from the guest of honour with an impromptu song and dance routine to one of the hot hits of the day: Kelis's "Milkshake."

At first glance, this seems like typical behaviour for a young mother who might feel threatened by her daughter's sudden maturity and seek to create a sexual competition she'd be able to win. And no wonder the moment imprinted itself on Jane's psyche, given the obvious humiliation and horror -- even more so than most fifteen-year-olds are humiliated and horrified by normal stuff their parents do, like waving to them at the mall or wearing Crocs.

But since Jane actually gives its narrator a good reason to exist -- omniscience -- we later learn what Jane never did, and maybe never will. Xiomara didn't distract all the party guests so that she could prove having a fifteen-year-old daughter didn't mean she had entered cronehood.

(For the sake of my continuing to like this show, let's agree that "superslutty" is modifying "hookup" as in the act of hooking up -- which is slutty of both of participants but mostly Jane's date.)

Once again, Xiomara protects Jane's good opinion of others by voluntarily taking the hit herself -- and this time, she doesn't even admit to it; she just allows herself a secret smile at the secret knowledge that Jane's embarrassment at Xiomara's performance is a memory of the night she'd prefer Jane to have than that her date kissed some other girl.

Maybe, at some point, the day will come when Xiomara has to learn that shielding Jane from the worst of the people around her is worse in the long run than letting her discover the truth. But for now I'm just happy we got to see her milkshake. Because it clearly DOES bring all the boys to the yard.