"Your boyfriend Rafael is Rafael Santos??? Who is the biggest freakin' Latin soap star on the freakin' planet???"
"If you say so," Zoe said. "I've been watching these episodes while he's been away but, because I don't speak Spanish, I have almost no idea what's going on in the soap most of the time," she admitted.
"All I've really learned from it so far is that Rafael spends a lot of time groping and kissing big-butted women on-screen."
"Well, I speak Spanish," Lana told her, "and I NEVER miss an episode of this soap. It's 'appointment TV' for me."
"Okay, so here's the story," Lana volunteered enthusiastically. "Jane is a virgin, went in for a PAP smear, and was accidentally artificially inseminated by a confused and possibly drunk doctor, who is the sister of the hot guy who partially owns the hotel where Jane works.
"The hot guy's wife, Petra, can't have children, and SHE was the one who was supposed to be artificially inseminated with her husband's sperm. And because her husband is a cancer survivor, that was the only sample of his sperm that was--OR EVER WILL BE--available."
"And people actually watch this?" Zoe asked.
"Oh," Lana laughed, "don't judge till you've actually given it a fair chance. It's beyond hilarious!"
She went on. "Petra is from Czechoslovakia, where she was walking down a street with her mother, and her ex-boyfriend Milosz threw acid at her. But she had bent down to pick up a coin off the street, and the acid hit her mother's face instead. And the mother is in a wheelchair, though I don't understand what the acid attack has to do with being in a wheelchair. But--hey--it's a telenovela, so facts and medical science don't really matter.
"But Milosz claims that he KNEW Petra would stoop over to pick up the coin--because that's one of her habits--and that he really meant to injure her mother, not her, because the mother was keeping him and Petra apart.
"Long story short--if that's even possible at this point--Milosz finds Petra and her mother in Miami and--he and Petra have staged this--he pretends to slit Petra's throat, and the mother gets up out of her wheelchair, proving that she's been faking all along.
"And this is important because--now that we know Petra's mother can get around--it will be easier to prove that she pushed Jane's grandmother down the hotel stairwell!"
"You're right," Zoe agreed. "That IS worth watching. But what does Rafael's character do--other than grope and kiss big-butted women???"
"He's Jane's actual biological father," Lana explained. "Which Jane never knew, because her mother, Xiomara, kept it from her. And--this is confusing--your boyfriend is a telenovela actor, and IN his telenovela, he plays an actor in ANOTHER telenovela.
"Never mind," said Lana. "Here's how to turn on the English-language captions."
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For those who don't already know, what Lana details is ACTUALLY the plot of "Jane the Virgin," a soap on the CW network. It is nearly entirely in English, although there are a handful of characters (such as Jane's grandmother) who speak only in Spanish, but English subtitles are provided in-show (so enabling closed-captioning is not necessary). Good way to practice Spanish.
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