Caray, Caray!

If you're just getting started with Barrera, go read the cast of characters below. I'll wait.

OK, did you read it? Good. We proceed.

At the start of this episode, we have a stoned prostitute leaving town on a bus; the heroine, Maite, being poisoned by her mother-in-law, Jacinta; her husband, Adolfo, an incompetent veterinarian, failing to cure his neighbor's cows; the hero, Unibrow, moping in his veterinarian clinic in another town but being attended to by a sexy young pet-shop owner named Nuria.

What preceded this episode: the prostitute was Magdalena (note the symbolism of the name?). She once was the girlfriend of Jacinta's son Adolfo, but Jacinta didn't like her and therefore went to Magdalena's father and said something: subsequently, the father ran Jacinta out of the house so naturally she became a prostitute.

• It's years later now, and Magdalena recently showed up, bringing a baptism present for Adolfo and Maite's daughter Valeria. Jacinta saw her, was incensed, and organized a gossip campaign against her among the women of the town. Under the guise of door-to-door bible study, a lynching was fomented. (I saw a few moments of styrofoam stones being hurled at Magdalena on a previous night.) Adolfo is upset that his mother was present and didn't stop the little lynching party.
  
  Tonight, Magdalena, with nought but one little bandage neatly in the middle of her forehead, is at a bus station headed out of town. Federico, who is a servile evil henchman to Jacinta, tells Magdalena she should go away and never come back. He's been putting spiders in her room.
  
  
• I'm going to combine all the poisoning episodes. Martina, a nice servant in the Valladolid household, has witnessed Jacinta putting poison in the tea, and mutters under her breath in Jacinta's presence - but in an incomprehensible Native Language - "Evil Witch, You'll Go To Hell For Poisoning Maite."
  
  Jacinta wants to hire another doctor because (oh, the unfairness) Maite isn't getting better. She gets herself a new evil henchman, too.
  
  Martina has managed to intercept the poisoned tea a time or two and therefore Maite is feeling perfectly fine! Martina starts to warn Maite, but Maite's aunt Griselda stops her saying, "let's not upset her." What a poor plot device! If you were being poisoned, wouldn't you want to know it? So you could at least stop thanking your poisoner for her kind attentions?
  
  Then there's some poisoned orange juice. "We'll take it up for you, Jacinta." "No, I'll do it myself, I want to make sure she drinks every damn drop!" A little fib about a telephone call clears the stage for Griselda to pour the OJ into an amphora, hide the glass, and subsitute non-adulterated juice.
  
  After missing a few poison doses, Maite is feeling great and comes outside, dressed for the first time in weeks I guess, to have breakfast with her dear mother-in-law! She hasn't had the nerve to hold her baby since (nauseated by the tea) she fell down the stairs with her, but she holds her now. Jacinta mutters in a thought balloon: "Whoever's done this will pay!"
  
  Martina, the Indian servant (she doesn't look Indian nohow to me), perhaps realizing she's the one who's going to pay - and that she may not be above ground much longer - starts furiously babbling, trying to warn Maite. "I killed a black widow spider, I was reminded when I saw your dress, Doña Jacinta. Oh those spiders, they're poisonous and dangerous! They bite when you don't expect it! They have killed so many babies! They eat their men!"
  
  
• Manola and her money-fixated mother are back from the airport. Manola is upset that her [UPDATE: I thought it was her dad but it's really her husband, an ossified ugly guy named Gustavo Zamora I think] forgot to send the chauffeur to pick them up.
  
  He's sorry - it's cause he's worried about his cows, who are not getting better from their udder problems. The mother has no interest in the cows' problems but she zooms instantly to her own self-interest: "Then we'll lose a lot of money?"
  
  
  Maricruz wrote: Melinama, the guy with the sick cows is not Manola's Dad is her husband she married him, when Adolfo left her for Maite. She wants him to die to inherit the money, and that is why federico tried to kill him en an earlier episode... I don't like the novela, but I enjoy your recaps.
  
  
  Manola, the daughter, tells her husband: "Your vet, Adolfo, is completely incompetent. He drank his way through vet school, he told me so himself. Better you should get Luis Antonio (Unibrow), we saw him in San Diego."
  
  
• Unibrow is sad. "I like taking care of cats and dogs, but I miss the cattle, the horses, the bulls, they are my specialty!" Therefore he's delighted to get the call from Gustavo (who has the sick cows). Let's take stock (so to speak):
  >

  Adolfo	Unibrow
  Handsome and young	Fat and old
  Bad or possibly being rehabiliated	Good, though boring
  Adolfo has Maite and also baby Valeria (see last item below).	Has a cute pet-shop owner, Nutria (er, Nuria) doting on him while he broods about Maite marrying the other guy
  Has a mother who will willingly murder for him.	Has Maite weeping over him
  Is a bad vet	Is a good vet

  
  There is a confrontation between Adolfo and Unibrow at the Zamora stables. Unibrow discontinues Adolfo's antibiotic treatment. The owner points out: "I can't sell milk that's full of antibiotics!" Is this a covert public-service announcement? Adolfo is way miffed. Don't forget, Maite vastly prefers Unibrow (whose belly made me laugh out loud) to her husband Adolfo, and Adolfo knows it.
  
  
• Ladies of the village righteously tell the Padre: "We stoned Magdalena because Jacinta told us she was a danger to our families."
  
  Immediately after that, Martina and Griselda come tell the Padre about Jacinta's poisoning project. He says it's a very serious accusation and he'll have to check it out himself.
  
  He goes to Jacinta and talks about the stoning but not the poisoning. He doesn't look so well. He may be a goner too.
  
  
• Jacinta remembers a conversation she overheard between her husband and his father. The father was saying, "if you're going to boink Remedios, at least don't let it get in the way of your family. ... it's my fault, I made you marry Jacinta when you didn't love her, and you go to Remedios for what Jacinta can't give you."
  
  
• There is a little lovefest during which the aunt, Griselda, remembers that Maite was given into her care by Maite's mother Eloisa on her deathbed. Griselda tells Maite: "While I'm alive, nothing will happen to you." (a) Since Maite has been raped and is now being poisoned, this is obviously not the case; (b) I believe this statement is a deathknell for Griselda.
  
  
• There is another lovefest when the evil Manola comes to ask the evil Jacinta to be godmother to little Rodrigo. "Who better than you to impart the best Christian values to my son?" Manola is the one Jacinta always wanted for her son Adolfo.
  
  
• Finally, Manola stirs up a little trouble by "mentioning" that she saw Unibrow in town, that he's come to treat the neighbor's cattle, and that he has a nice little bimbo of his own called Nutria (Nuria).
  
  Maite goes staggering into the house and tells her team (Martina and Griselda) that she only married Adolfo because:
  
  1. He raped her.
     
  2. Unibrow beat him up.
     
  3. Unibrow went to jail for beating him up.
     
  4. The only way Maite could get her sweetie out of jail was to promise to marry Adolfo.
     
  5. The newly-born Valeria is the consequence of the rape.
     
  6. Only three people know this: Martina the pseudo-Indian servant, Maite's aunt Griselda, and the Padre. "I don't ever want my daughter Valeria to know..."
  
  She still loves Unibrow, of course. I'm sorry, my suspension of disbelief has been stretched beyond its limits with this one. Unibrow is the worst love interest I've ever seen in any telenovela.

I hope we've got other people to carry on with these recaps. I'll plan to do next Monday. Write me at melinama@mappamundi.com if you're willing to recap (I think we have somebody for tonight.) Leave a comment if you read this. If nobody is going to read, we will pack up shop till some unknown future date.

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