Caray, Caray!

• We start with the cute jammies-only birthday party for Nidia; the scores of candles on her cake go up like a torch (I did this once, I put 50 or 60 candles on a cake, I don't recommend it). Juan's happy voiceover: "This is what keeps me with them... Doña Nidia's a little concerned about getting older but she should enjoy every one of her years." They decide they'll have a 'little' party that night.
  
  
• Chelo, the maid at CL and Monika's house, picks up the fainted wife. Monika thinks she's anemic - then the Doctor muses that she's under way too much stress and a heart attack at her age is likely to be fatal! But of course it turns out she's pregnant. "How could that happen, no puede ser, I'm so careful, there's no room in my plans for children."
  
  The maid dishes out one Public Service Announcement after another about the joy of having children, the miracle of life inside you etc., and that maybe this is best, the missus has been jetting around way too much, leaving the massah on his own too often, and that is, uh, not so good for marriage. A kid is just the ticket. And besides, a couple as gorgeous as Monica and CL should have a dozen children.
  
  
• Pastor wakes up, wrapped in red satin sheets, still wearing his apron and satin shirt, way hungover. He immediately calls Juan (interrupted just as he's about to dive for a piece of birthday cake): "Juanito, I feel terrible, in fact fatal, there are birdies flying around my head, help me, I never drank so much (cries), nothing went as I'd planned, I don't even remember what happened." Juan, very relieved to hear this, assures him everything last night went great.
  
  "Juanito, please come get me right away." "NOW???!!" "Please don't shout." Juan says he can be there in half an hour; he lies to the ladies that he's needed for a big important problem at work.
  
  At Pastor's borrowed flat (where the Silver Fox used to boink Yvonne) Juan whips up a hangover remedy. Pastor morosely apologizes for complaining when Juan's been "such a prince." He attacks him from behind to deliver "an embrace of appreciation." Juan says, "Aw it's nothing, it's what friends do for each other," then says he can't be Pastor's date that night since he has to attend his aunt's birthday party. Pastor wrings from him a promise that they'll be together the next day.
  
  Juan drives Pastor home; Pastor half-heartedly proposes that Juan come in to say hi to Mommy Dearest. Juan is about to slip off, afraid to face "The Panther," when her rasping screech is heard. "This is some hour to be arriving home, decent people never sleep away from their own houses and especially not with mulletheads like HIM. Pastor, go wait in your room, I'll deal with you later, right now I'll talk to this monkey."
  
  To Juan: "I'm fed up with this to the crown of my head. Look here, boy, don't you hurt my idiot drunken son. I'll have to scrape him up off the sidewalk with a spatula, he falls in love with any old hairball, even that Fernando [Juan begins to smile in dazed appreciation that he'll have this hitherto-secret tidbit to blackmail Fernando with], they were friends for just a few months then Fernando jilted him. Don't you dare treat my boy badly, ok now to change the subject, would you like to stay and eat?" Juan, startled: "Oh, no, no, I can't, I..." "Just as well, I didn't want you anyway, I was only being polite." "Well, next time..."
  
  "I hope," she concludes sternly, "there won't be a next time."
  
  
• In their cute little yellow shirts and caps the seminar participants in Tasco are engaging in bonding activities - e.g., a scavenger hunt. Paula cheerfully participates but Cesar wanders around by himself and doesn't even try. Paula visits him on the greensward, does some industrial-strength flirting, shows him how to hold his compass. "You're not even trying, after all these years of owning a corporation you've never learned how to be part of a team?" He says teamwork and cooperation aren't part of his style.
  
  
• Yvonne calls Ana (Paula's mother) yet again and says: "You might want to warn Paula, who's messing with a married man, that his wife is on the way to Tasco and would not like to find her husband in bed with your daughter." Ana tries calling Paula but they don't connect.
  
  
• Parafan yells at the flower vendor that the flowers are too expensive, it's robbery, "You've just lost a first-rate customer."
  
  He arrives at Nidia's with a huge bunch of luridly died carnations which Yadira judges to be third-rate: "He's so putadisimo with you, ma!" (I think that means cheap or like a son of a bitch.)
  
  In a moment of weakness Nidia asks Yadira timidly: "Do you think Alirio and I would make a good couple?" "Do you love him?" "I, uh, esteem him, he does whatever I want and I don't meet many men like that..." "But do you love him?" "With time, maybe I could learn to love him..."
  
  Nidia's eye starts to twitch like Lety's and as she equivocates and finally admits she doesn't love him, Yadira gives a resounding thumbs down. "Ma, a good man needs to have: money, eyes, mouth, hands, ("chomi, chomi"), he has to move well and not be a pest, and Alirio flunks all these criteria so forget him!"
  
  Juan primps in his boudoir mirror, debating whether to tie his hair back like a horse's tail, "But that would hide my highlights!" He lets it free and flips it as Gaviota does. "I'll wrap myself up like a present for them!" He sashays out the door in an ecstasy of self-approbation and runs into Marely in her black minidress. "Oh, the next world beauty queen, I need a pretty girl to take to the party." She says he looks elegant and he modestly replies, "One does one's best."
  
  Nidia descends the stairs a la Marilyn Monroe, to extended applause: feather boa, elbow-length gloves, spangles on her eyelids, an inverted silver cone on her hair. Alirio presents the beautiful birthday girl to the assembled multitude, then asks how she likes the flowers. She doesn't - they're cheap carnations - he should have at least coughed up for roses!
  
  As the party progresses, Juan is in a corner trying unsuccessfully to get Fernando to back off with Yadira because Enrique really loves her (while Fern's only known her for a week)...
  
  Suddenly that selfsame recently discarded fiancee shows up uninvited. He has a present for Nidia and makes a pretty speech, and after the third or fourth compliment Nidia invites him to stay, ignoring Yadira's furious signals. He and Fernando glower at each other.
  
  Yadira drags Ma into another room to yell about Kike's presence; she says she (heh) doesn't have room in her life for a pathetic chauffeur (Enrique). (Remember, she thinks Fernando is a rich impresario.)
  
  Nidia says Kike has been a member of the family since long before he was Yadira's BF and that Samuel (the dead husband) liked him. My closed captions weren't working so I'm not sure, but it's possible she said Samuel started that way too and Kike is following the same road. Yadira = unmoved. She says blood's gonna run in the street.
  
  
• I reluctantly end this recap with a brief summary of all the nauseating, boring Paula vs. the Silver Fox scenes. All are performed with goo-goo aka bedroom eyes, half opened mouths with little bits of saliva dripping discreetly down both chins.
  
  Paula, with a soupçon of coy candor, breathes: "Mom says I'm an innocent gazelle and you are an implacable predator seeking another trophy for your collection." She says she's going to bed early, he begs her not to, she leaves, she soon returns, having removed her little shawl to reveal her deliciously protuberant breast implants squeezed out over the top of her scarlet minidress.
  
  To the tiresome sound of a thousand undeserved cymbal crashes and some idiotic "sweet nothings," Paula squeezes out of Cesar Luis the confession that he's wanted to carry her off to bed since the first moment he first saw her... but now... he wants... (more drool)... to make love with her. And this is quite clearly what she's been angling for, as well.
  
  Therefore I decree: Paula, joining Juan on the list of those who are causing their own downfalls by their own actions, now deserves everything that may happen to her. Let the blood run in the streets.

Labels: Juan

Permalink posted by melinama @ 10:23 PM