"These are the moments, Rogelio. You won't get them back."
— Darci
Jane is struck by a wave of inspiration and finishes her novel. However, it is summarily rejected by several agents, and she wonders if being a professional writer is the correct path. Following Petra's car accident, which left Magda an amputee, Jane tries to step up as a stepmother in Anna and Ellie's lives.
Meanwhile, when audience test results for This is Mars tend to favor the younger supporting characters over Rogelio's and River's characters, the two actors scheme to present the network with a cut that puts them front and center. This desire to be in the spotlight, however, is complicated by their own relationships with their daughters.
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Rogelio says he's fine with being an In-Universe Ensemble Dark Horse — the kind of well-loved supporting character who goes on to win Teen Choice Awards. Jaime Camil did win one for the role in 2018.
- Bait-and-Switch: The narrator starts the episode by saying that Jane's life changed forever when she was thirty years and six months old, while she's in a hospital, right after the previous episode's cliffhanger where Petra was in a car accident. The implication is that Petra was killed in the accident... but then the camera pans back, Petra is standing next to Jane with a tiny cast on her arm, and they're all in Magda's hospital room, not Petra's. The narrator clarifies that Jane is only thirty years and five months old, and the life-changing event won't happen for another month.
- Delivery Guy Infiltration: Jane poses as a delivery guy to access the big agent's office. She is instead mistaken for Anna and Ellie's nanny.
- Good Stepmother: Invoked; Jane tries her best to be a supportive and loved stepmother to Ellie and Anna. She makes some headway in the end, and begins to forge a better relationship with the twins.
- Heist Episode: Jane and Rogelio plot an infiltration into a big agent's office so they can read Jane's manuscript, Rogelio plans another infiltration with River to get their pilot cut to the network executives (who are at a faraway corporate retreat), and Rose enacts a complex plan to steal a bunch of cash from a vault formerly owned by Rafael's father.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story:
- In-universe, Rogelio tells Jane a long, meandering story about how he got a scar. It turns out that he got it by framing the magazine cover about the events of the story. (Also, the famous director who he was trying to get a part from never gave him a part, and in fact banned him for life, but the publicity garnered by his crazy stunts trying to get a part made him famous enough that he was cast on The Passions of Santos.)
- In a broader sense, both Jane and Rogelio's heists turn out this way. Jane succeeds in getting her manuscript into a reading pile, but that agent doesn't like it; it then turns out that a different agent does. Rogelio decides that spending time with Baby is more important than going through with his heist, so he leaves it to River; she pawns it off on her PA, who doesn't manage to get anywhere, but Rogelio also decides that he's fine with the current cut of his show and so the heist wasn't necessary anyway.
