It’s been a long, long, long journey for Jane the Virgin fans, but Jane finally did it. After years of waiting, Jane is a virgin no longer—and what’s surprising isn’t that she and Michael have finally had sex, but instead how the consistently boundary-breaking show handled one of the most delicate, and rarely discussed on TV, elements of sexuality.

We already knew going into this season that this moment was “imminent,” and after Episode 2, which ended with Jane and her newlywed husband Michael rushing home from the doctor’s office with the green light to finally consummate their love, it was basically a given. “I knew it would be this year, and I knew it would be with Michael after he had recovered,” show-runner Jennie Snyder Urman told Deadline. “There were no more stories we needed to tell—we had played the Jane the Virgin card in its different iterations, pregnant virgin, virgin with a baby, married virgin, married virgin with a one-year son. We’d mined all the material that stems from that and felt that the story would stall if we didn’t move forward.”

And how did it go? At first, things seem great. Michael makes a comment about them finishing at the same time, and Jane seems relieved to have finally shed her virginity. But as the episode progresses, her attitude changes.

First off, Jane actually faked her orgasm, as she reveals to Lina, who tells Jane, “Faking orgasms are for nights when you need to get some rando out of your apartment—not for the guy you’re supposed to have sex with for the rest of your life!” Whoops. And the more time passes, the more Jane seems conflicted about having lost her virginity, and what it means for her identity.

Given what Jane’s abuela taught her about virginity—remember the crumpled flower that hung over her bed for years?—it’s no shock that finally having sex would throw Jane into a mini-tailspin. When Jane finally tells Michael she faked her orgasm, he seems relatively unfazed and willing to try again—but Jane can’t get out of her head and into the moment. A couple mishaps later, and things look pretty dire. But then Jane sits down with her mother and tells her what’s going on.

Jane declines to tell her mother about her and Michael’s sexual difficulties, but Xiomara figures it out and gently tells Jane that sometimes it just takes time to figure things out. And sure enough, when they try yet again, Jane and Michael finally make it work—for both of them this time.

Sex on TV is nothing new. And it’s definitely not a novelty on the CW, home to some of basic cable’s horniest vampires. But Jane the Virgin has always approached sex from an intellectual, emotional perspective, rather than a physical one. It uses comedy to avoid that dreaded after-school special or Very Special Episode vibe, but it’s always been more interested in exploring what sex means than depicting the act itself. Which is why instead of watching Jane and Michael do the deed, viewers got treated to a cute little cartoon of them blasting off in a rocket ship an flying around the world, “A Whole New World”–style.

“We are not competing with HBO or Netflix and we’re not going to show the real physicality of sex,” Snyder Urman said. “I wanted Jane to have a private moment and have it be more about the feeling, what her expectations were.” So while the orgies of Game of Thrones and Westworld may show more sex compared to sunny Jane, when it comes to the meaning and realities of sex, it takes a Virgin to show us how it’s done.

But perhaps more important, what sets Jane’s depiction apart is how it depicted the newlywed couple fine-tuning their sex life until it works for both of them. It’s still relatively rare to see a series that dares to admit that sex doesn’t always work for both people the first time—especially women—and that explores the complicated emotions many women experience once they lose their virginity. Now comes the fun part: since she’s no longer “the Virgin,” it’s time to explore what really defines her.