Caray, Caray!

• So evidently yesterday some guy (probably Damien?) distracted the girls (Eva, Sofia, Sara, and Rosario) in the store which I will call "Chock Full o' Chachkes," but Sofia sez she isn't interested in the guy -- and what was that, by the way, that you were going to tell us, Rosario?
  
  It was: "Armando told me Furd's been going around all nervous, the boss gave him orders, he's looking for a scapegoat to blame for one of his misdeeds."
  
  
• Out on the road, Coyote stops Furd again. Armando warns Furd: they're still after you. Well, duh. [That's like my friends' dogs that bark just after you ring the doorbell: "THE DOORBELL! THE DOORBELL!!" -- Ed.]
  
  When Coyote is done being menacing, Oscar rides up and yells "I just figured out it wasn't Jimena who signed the divorce papers, it was Gab guiding those lifeless noodle-fingers!" Furd says MYOB, go blame Gab. "I will!" Oscar rides off.
  
  
• Here is everything that happened in the jungle.
  
  Juan is hunkering around carrying coconuts and gourds and other jungle-like things. At first I thought he'd suffered some calamity and could no longer stand up straight, but it's just that he's gone native. He sees Capricho, glowing and completely silent, in the trees. He starts to have flashbacks. It's like Lassie finding Timmy! Except that Timmy never rolled around in the dirt screaming and shaking like a holy roller.
  
  Juan crawls, he rolls in the bark, he's shaking like epilepsy. Capricho, however, stays very calm. Nice horsie.
  
  A villain lurks in the trees and says Juan will be dead soon. Capricho disappears, I guess he was just an apparition. The villain pours poison into Juan's drinking-gourd.
  
  The babe doctor with huge collagen lips wants to go vaccinate the ignorant savages (or rather, D.F. extras in white clothes) and do vaccinations. I saw this exact story line in a novela years ago. I thought this dumb racist stereotype would have been laughed off the tv by now, but no. Juan will help, the People know him and trust him (maybe because he hunkers around like an orangutan).
  
  While they are talking, Juan's extra-sensitive nose smells the bread. It's all burned, he'll have to make more. He drinks water the witch-doctor poisoned.
  
  As usual, the babe doctor makes an impassioned speech in defense of vaccination, the ignorant jungle-dwellers are suspicious, Juan sez he'll be first, he looks jes' fine after getting stuck with the needle so the people fall compliantly into an orderly queue, Juan is going down the line swabbing them all with the same cotton ball (his understanding of hygeine has not improved since his days as king of sweat-soaked pretzels) when he staggers and falls.
  
  They, naturally, think it was the vaccine. The witch-doctor yells, see he's DEAD she KILLED him with her VACCINES (what does he have against vaccines? is this, like, trying to crowd out the competition or something?) so let's US kill HER and the rabble makes wan crowd-noises.
  
  But wait! Mighty Joe, uh, Juan is not dead! So the crowd carries him off belly down (it looks implausible and uncomfortable) and plunks him in a tent with the babe doctor. She takes advantage of his comatose state to kiss him and monologue on her obsession with him.
  
  'Silvestre' (how COULD they?) goes and gets magic herbs and makes a potion and cures Juan, who starts babbling about Oscar and Franco to the babe doctor's grave disappointment. Silvestre is all excited that Juan's memory is coming back, but the babe doctor crossly says he's just delirious and raving and it doesn't mean anything.
  
  So the rabble is ready to drag the babe doctor away to her doom but Juan busts out of the tent all hale and hearty, and once again he's not dead, so the witch doctor who poisoned him is unhappy, and the confused natives shuffle off to decide what they think about all this.
  
  
• Heladio and Natalia are courting. He's all happy and grateful that a pretty girl like her could want an ugly guy like him. Furd comes in and sez Heladio you're a robber and should be immediately carted off to jail.
  
  Sofia takes time out from sniveling to say she will vouch for him, he's a good man, so later Furd menaces her physically and sez she better stay out of his affairs, he is now King of All He Surveys and will run all the sisters off the plantation if she meddles.
  
  
• Sofia and Gramps discuss, several times, how Furd is dangerous and Gabriela trusts him but shouldn't. Gramps calls Furd alimania (vermin).
  
  
• Gab goes back to her heart doctor, he says his treatment is working and she's basically fine but needs to refrain from being a bitch. No, not really, he says she should avoid stress. She says all her stress comes from her father and three daughters, who'd like to kill her off. The doctor agrees, our children don't understand or appreciate us.
  
  
• Jimena keeps staring. Like Sleeping Beauty except her eyes are open and blinking. Oscar visits her frequently. Sarita wants to run him off, Gramps sez she shouldn't interfere, maybe Oscar will wake the princess.
  
  Gab comes in and tells Jimena if she doesn't get better soon she'll get packed off to an asylum. Oscar, who'd been eavesdropping in the closet, pops out after Gab's exit and says he'll rob Jimena before he'll let her be locked up.
  
  Rise and shine, Jimena! The poor actress must be getting mighty bored. Sarita sez, better to be comatose like you, sis, than to be suffering like me.
  
  
• This is the first time I've met Damien and he already bores my last nerve. Quintina drops in on him, bringing groceries and flirting, she'll find him a housekeeper, on her way home she bumps into (literally) Sofia and Rosendo, who are coming in the big truck to deliver chachkes to Damien. They knock Q. clear off her motorcycle, luckily she was wearing a helmet.
  
  Before leaving, Quintina pointedly informs Sofia: Damian has a wife and children.
  
  Sofia and Rosendo proceed onward to Damien's. He wants her to sit down, she is indignant and waves the picture of the wife and two kids at him, then feels bad because it turns out they're all three dead!
  
  He sits her down and tells her: he was profoundly in love with his wife until the birth of the second child, when the wife became bipolar and his life became hell, and one day they had a fight and she flounced out with the kids and drove around all reckless-like till a tractor-trailer hit them and killed them instantly. [I know some folks struggling with bipolar disorder and I don't think they'd appreciate this wooden-headed take on a complex illness. -- Ed.]
  
  Sofia is all emo about it and the two of them share their sorrow and she talks about her baby and Juan the cradle-robber, but you're all sick of hearing about it.
  
  Damien asks if she still loves her daughter's father. She is evasive but says she'll never forgive the cradle-robbing. Damien compares their cases. On the one hand, he got to see his children grow up and Sofia never even held her daughter in her arms. On the other hand, Sofia may see her child again whilst Damien never will. So it's a draw. They look at each other.
  
  
• Finally, Sofia begs her mother yet again: don't trust Furd. Gab blames everything on Sofia, for falling for a Reyes for instance. "I HATE the Reyes! And I hate Juan more than the others, because he's the most like their father, so rebellious!" Sofia realizes her mother is still angry at the dad for rejecting her -- that all this drama about the sons stems from the fury of a woman scorned. Sofia is impactada.
  
  She is further impactada to hear: "I've disinherited you and sisters -- Furd and only Furd will get my fortune.

Labels: Fuego

Permalink posted by melinama @ 11:00 PM