CRY AND YOU CRY ALONE

 

It was hard finding crying pictures to match the prompt.  Photos aren’t normally taken of people crying.  I had to resort, mostly, to a doll I once had, and pictures from plays and a TV series.

I did find this photo of myself at age one. I wasn’t actually crying, but I was certainly unhappy or uneasy about something?

This is a 3-faced Trudy doll.  Turn the knob on top of her head and she smiled, cried, or slept.  I had one of these when I was around 7 or 8.

Trudy’s crying face.

Two shady characters portraying sadness at the plight of a poor shanghaied fellow they helped be shanghaied in “Adrift in New York”.

A sad lament for a beloved lost pet in “She Was Only a Farmer’s Daughter”.

The heroine weeps as her guardian angel tells her in song “O Dry Those Tears” - reassuring all will be well in “Sheepless in Nevada”.

And now we come to a TV series I’ve been watching on Netflix for the past few weeks called “Jane the Virgin”.  It ran for five years from 2014 to 2019, but, able to watch a couple of episodes every night on my computer, I got through those 5 years and 100 episodes in no time at all, and it was crazy fun.  The Los Angeles Times called it a ‘wacky’ telenovela.  Wikipedia calls it “an American comedy-drama and satirical telenovela”. 

A Telenovela is a Latin America serial drama similar to a soap opera in plot development, but having a broader audience airing during prime time rather than daytime.

Telenovelas deal with the roller coaster ride of life, and staple topics include family, marriage, politics and business. The themes often revolve around the four Rs: romance, revenge, redemption and rivalry. With telenovelas, anything is possible —the dead come back to life, a long-lost evil twin suddenly appears, and anybody can get amnesia.

This particular show is a rollercoaster ride for sure, and a whole lot of fun.  I was disappointed to see it come to an end, except there’s word of a possible spinoff . . . ?

Jane (the Virgin) Villanueva, played by Gina Rodriguez, appears to be on the verge of tears here.

Xiomara Villanueva (X pronounced Z), Jane’s mother, played by Andrea Navedo, looks like she’s ready to burst into tears any moment.

And Alba Villanueva, Xiomara’s mother and Jane’s grandmother, played by Ivonne Coll, looks pretty worried and close to tears herself.

These three, Xiomara, Jane and Alba, can oft be found sitting in the swing on Alba’s front porch talking about their lives.  I can’t tell in this picture if Jane is happy, or about to succumb to tears?  They all three tend to tear up regularly, whether they’re sad – or happy!

And, of course, there are a couple of ‘hotties’ on the show which are pretty much the cause of all Jane’s problems – one way and another.

:->

La Nightingail

Here’s a peek at what the show is about without giving too much away.

You can watch it on Netflix

Comments

  1. Barbara RogersMarch 24, 2023 at 10:41 AM

    Well you did follow the prompt. Interesting synopsis of Jane the Virgin.

    ReplyDelete
  2. KristinMarch 24, 2023 at 6:05 PM

    Whoa. Okay, just watched the peek at the show. Wonder if I could get it in Spanish. Anyway, interesting you have the same song as my grandmother sang this week!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. La NightingailMarch 25, 2023 at 11:55 AM

      The coincidence with "O Dry Those Tears" is fun. The lyrics were perfect for the melodrama we were doing when I sang it - "Oh dry those tears and calm your fears, life is not made for sorrow" etc. And "Jane the Virgin", though mostly in English, does has many lines spoken in Spanish with subtitles at those times for English-speaking folks. It's a crazy show, but fun & you never know what ridiculous thing is going to happen next. The writers were very clever that way.

      Delete
  3. Mike BrubakerMarch 26, 2023 at 9:30 AM

    You definitely got the crying theme covered. I laughed that you include the same song that Kristin's grandmother sang in 1908! Some things never get old.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ScotSueMarch 31, 2023 at 3:52 AM

    You certainly came up with some great “crying” matcheds– my favourite the lovely one of you as an unhappy toddler. New to me were the programme “Jane the Virgin” and the three-faced Trudy doll.

    ReplyDelete

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