Caray, Caray!

I had fun putting that list of characters together, so I'll jump right in to some summaries. The show has been on for two weeks now, I'll try and catch you all up with what's going on in general, then as time goes on I can be more specific. It begins -

Note - there may be a couple of things out of order since I'm going mostly from memory here, but nothing that will change the story.

Lety comes home from another day of getting turned away from jobs due to being so ugly. Her friend Tomas is at her house, they have a discussion that fills us in on the burden of being Feos. We meet Sr. y Sra. Padilla, Lety's parents, who refer to each other as "Viejo" and "Vieja" (old man/old woman) but make it sounds nice, not insulting. Like I said, Papa Padilla is convinced that the whole world is just waiting to take sexual advantage of Lety.

We next see inside the offices of Conceptos, where Fernando is talking to his father Don Umberto, we learn from their conversation that Umberto is retiring and turning over the presidency of the company to Fernando. The stockholders voted on the new president, Fernando won by one vote, which happened to be cast by his fiancee, Marcia. Again, as I said before, Marcia is the daughter of Umberto's former partner, but her father died in a car accident I think, well at any rate some horrible accident. Marcia has a brother and a sister, the sister is named Ana Leticia (as soon as I heard this I knew there would be some name confusion written in, it only took until the second week of the show for this), and brother named Ariel. Ariel is a horrible bitter, ugly, whiny man who was Fernando's competition for the company presidency. This in spite of the fact that he only worked for Conceptos for a short time a long time ago. He's convinced, however, that Fernando does ALL his thinking with Little Fernando, which will drive the company into the ground, and his stock along with it. He fills the villian role nicely, in spite of being named after The Little Mermaid.

I don't remember specifically why Fernando is not keeping his father's secretary, or even keeping the secretary he had before being elected president, but whatever the reason was, it was contrived to lead us to the interview scene with Lety and Jessica Rabbit arriving simultaneously to interview for the job. The contrast couldn't be greater, JR is taller and has long blonde hair, a dress that starts about two inches above her navel and ends about two inches below, while Lety is dressed like one of the women waiting in line for radishes or cheese in a WWII-era photo from Russia. This is her interview look? I don't think it's her ugliness keeping her away from getting hired, it might be that she dresses like a bag lady, albeit a bag lady who found a couple quarters and washed her clothes.

Lopez (Personnel chief) and some other guy who I forget are performing the interview. It takes about three minutes, they recoil at the sight of Lety and then silently thank God the table is not a glass top and see-through as they openly ogle JR. In today's business environment, this guy Lopez would get fired in about five minutes, especially with him being in the Human Resources area to begin with. Lopez gives us the first taste of his unique tic - he licks his fingers and then brushes off his shoulder, no it doesn't look anywhere near as cool as when Jay-Z does it in his video for the song "brush your shoulders off", and then he uses the same spittle and dandruff/dust covered hand to smooth down the three hairs he has left on the top of his head. All in all, thoroughly disgusting. This is his trademark move I guess, it's what he does every time he leaves the room, sort of like snapping his fingers like a diva, but a little (very little) more manly. Anyway, I digress - they talk to the girls about their resumes, first they smile and let JR talk and just nod at whatever she says, then Lety tries to get in and they brush her off. Then they hire JR before Lety is even out of the room.

Lety heads home and commiserates with Tomas some more about being ugly and unemployed.

Lopez shows Fernando the resumes of the two women. Due to her struggles with getting a job, Lety stopped attaching her photo to her resume. Fernando is NOT pleased with Lopez having hired JR. Lopez says "I thought you liked the shapely ladies" with a little whistle and a hand gesture in the place of 'shapely ladies.' Fernando says "yes, but this (whistle/gesture) is the BEST FRIEND OF MY GIRLFRIEND." He's very concerned. Marcia, his fiancee, has obviously sent JR in as a spy to keep track of Fernando. He seems to have a girlfriend for every day of the week, in spite of the fact that his fiancee is rich, owns part of his company and is basically responsible for him having his sweet job, and also happens to be totally hot. Some men don't know how good they have it. (Personal side note - I know EXACTLY how good I have it!)
Well, on the other hand, Marcia is conniving and apparently a little dumb, since she is convinced that she can reform Fernando of his philandering ways.

Fernando confronts Marcia about it, Marcia manages to put him in a corner where he has no choice but to hire JR, not hiring her is basically an admission that he wants to have the freedom to run hoochies in and out of his office all day. Then he has an idea - he'll hire JR to sit out front and look pretty, and he'll also hire Lety (who he hasn't met yet) to take the little storeroom off of his office and do some real work. He was very impressed with her resume and is convinced that she'll do a great job.

Back at Lety's house, the phone rings, it's Lopez telling Lety to come back in, they want to talk to her again. She goes in, each person in the company, regardless of whether or not they've seen her before, manages to comedically recoil as they see her face. The funniest reaction is that of Luigi Lombardi, the in-house talent scout/photographer/videographer and all around 'light in the loafers' guy. He turns around and is face to face with Lety and says "Oh my God!" in English, with a great accent. The actor here is obviously not gay in real life, he plays the stereotypical gay creative type so well, I think a real gay actor wouldn't be so over the top. He's hilarious and a great character. Lety gets upstairs to Fernando's office and even though he recoils back into tripping on his desk when he sees her, he figures he can lock her in the back room and be ok. He hires her.

My lunch hour is almost over so I'll stop here for today. I didn't realize I was so verbose. Hopefully it's entertaining reading, I look forward to your comments. If you prefer something more short and to the point, please let me know. Otherwise, thanks for letting me prattle on. Back soon with more.

Chris

Labels: fea-e