Caray, Caray!

Friday: Eman rustles up a breakfast soup for Marianela, and while he’s not looking, Fedra pours a whole vial of her potion into it. Gretel calls the police from the nuthouse, and actually reaches Oliver. Eman brings Mari the soup.

Before we start, I just can’t help griping about Mari’s hair which yeah, is the same as always, but tonight I hit critical mass with it, I don’t know why. What’s with the Betty la Gorda bangs? Are they real? She always has a headband or little braid across the top of them, so maybe they’re just glued on or something. And those ringlets. Barf barf barf.

Okay, I got that out of my system.

Mari thanks Eman for making the soup, but says she feels a little urpy and can’t try any.

Gretel is hiding behind a reception desk and the doctor finds her but just in time crumples from the sedative she stabbed him with. A moment to pause and reflect on that most gratifying scene on Friday… Okay, onward! The nurse finds Gretel too and tells her to hide better. Gretel is amazed to hear Oliver on the other end of the phone she’s clutching. Just then other staff find her and she screams for Oliver to save her, of course omitting to give the name of her location.

But Oliver is at the police station – he could just get the records of received calls, no? No. The police’s intermittent skills are slaves to our plot line.

Eman sets the uneaten soup on the bedroom dresser.

Oliver is very upset about Gretel’s call – he says he just knows she’s not in Switzerland. The Comisario tells him if he’s going to be bouncing off the walls like that, he’s going to take him off the case (or off work, I’m not sure which). Brandon tells Oliver to go with the guy who’s going to examine the bullets, and don’t let them out of his sight. Oliver’s worried Gretel will call again.

The Comisario tells Oliver that the first step is to get the goods on Fedra and Bernardo, then they can find Gretel. Meantime, Caiman is in the office hearing all these police insider goodies. Of course it’s natural that the police would keep a mascot in their office who’s had ties to organized crime because we’re in telenovelaland. See “intermittent skills” above.

Orderlies are strapping Gretel down while she begs them not to and insists her boyfriend is going to come get her. The Good Nurse looks on, troubled.

Seems there’s a prison gang the police have to deal with. Caiman says he’ll work as a mole.

Emil has showed up at Netty’s sunny, cheerful place, and Netty says she’s worried about Eman and Marianela, and about Oliver, who’s like a son to her and not what Emil thinks he is. Emil says he didn’t come about all that, he came about Us. He wants to forget about the outside world – it doesn’t exist. Netty says it does, and he’s married. He says but he feels so alone.

Man, the writers take the cheesiest, sleaziest, most worn-out seduction lines and put them in the good guys’ mouths. Where they actually work! Here’s more: This morning (sez Emil) I was driving to work but I ended up here, without having planned to. Tell me that I’m not alone!

Of course, if Cesar Evora told me the sun rotates around the earth, I’d say Yes, it does, and mean it.

Netty tells him he’s not alone, and as long as she lives, she’ll be by his side. They hug.

Lorenzo and Mauricio are being escorted out of the local jail, to head to prison. Brandon exults and Lorenzo and Mauricio throw threats. Mauricio tells Brandon that he’s going to pay. Just then Fedra appears and tells Mauricio that the one who’s going to pay is him. She hopes he molders in jail for the rest of his life. Lorenzo and Brandon arch their eyebrows in surprise and stare at Mauricio.

Emil blames himself for his family’s troubles – he is the man of the house, so it’s his fault. Netty reckons it’s Fedra’s fault. He tells Netty their marriage is over, and she suggests counseling or something. Nope. He takes her hands and tells her how tender and understanding she is and how he wished he’d formed a family with her. She would have loved that, she says, and adds he would have always felt loved and respected. He says that’s what he feels when he’s with her – loved. Oooh, nice kisses!

Fedra tells Mauricio that Kristel’s at death’s door, and all because he used her. She loved it, retorts Mauricio. Brandon has to hold Fedra back while Mauricio is taken off.

Okay, he’s gone and now Fedra tells Lorenzo about Kristel’s hysterectomy. He’s sorry to hear about it, and the next thing we know, Fedra is hanging on him, right in front of the cops, distressed that he got mixed up in a bad business. Of course just then Muñeca comes in, along with the comisario.

Fedra says it’s nothing, just hugging an old friend, and Muñeca wryly observes that Lorenzo is full of surprises lately. He swears he had nothing to do with the illegal liquor – it was Mauricio. An official comes up and says Lorenzo gets to be freed. Lucky, says the comisario, glaring at him. Muñeca looks doubtful. Lorenzo is thrilled – maybe his Farmville crops haven’t withered yet!

Netty’s worried Consuelo and Gladiola will come back from the market. Emil suggests a day together – lunch, theater, something fun. Netty’s ecstatic. They leave, laughing like kids.

Ilitia’s at the hospital with Kristel and she gets a call from Muñeca, telling her that Lorenzo has been sprung. Muñeca says maybe the police didn’t look hard enough for evidence or he hid it. Ilitia tells her mother to knock it off, then tells her she’s been with Kristel.

Kristel begs her not to hang up – did Mauricio get off too? Ilitia’s very happy to hear he’s off to the big house. Kristel thinks he’s been let go, but Ilitia tells her he’s going where he can’t hurt anybody any more, and she hopes he gets molested there.

The orange kitty laps up the chicken soup.

Mauricio gets checked into prison.

Mari and Em are jogging. Of course she falls, which makes him fall right on top of her, so they can kiss some more.

Mauricio, now in prison khakis, enters a big cell full of inmates who check him out. Caiman is there among them.

The kitty has more soup.

Netty and Emil are having a lovely lunch. They chink glasses, talk, laugh.

The police scientist in a lab, which looks very sophisticated and has four, count ‘em! four guys in lab coats working there, scans the bullets using fancy software.

Oliver looks worried. Gretel is strapped to a bed and despairs.

Netty and Emil neck in the back of a theater, and we see Mari and Eman up front, eating popcorn. They kiss too.

Mauricio tries to make macho chit-chat with a couple of prison guys and offers them money to be his protectors. They come close and tell him somebody’s already hired them to give him a welcome – Fedra Curiel.

Fedra and Bernardo have a debriefing session, now they’re home. He reports that Caiman had no trouble switching the bullets at the station, and that he’s there at the prison. Fedra says the guys she’s hired are going to make Mauricio’s life hell, but nice and slowwww-like.

The two guys slug Mauricio and tell him that’s what he gets for raping girls. Caiman comes in and pulls them off.

Bernardo is smooching Nereida who complains that he’s been neglecting her. Why doesn’t he ever take her out? He flops on her bed, saying they’ll be fine here. The pillow has something hard in it, he complains, picking it up. She tries to get it away from him and suddenly cash is flying everywhere.

Nereida says she won the lottery! Bernardo realizes it’s Fedra’s money. Nereida tells him that Kristel stole it and gave it to her to buy her silence. Bernardo thinks she ought to give it back. In fact, she’s to hide it in Marianela’s room so everyone thinks Mari took it.

Emil and Netty come home to her place, happy. They kiss, but she says they should stop at that. He kisses her some more and begs to stay the night. Next thing we know, they’re in the bedroom. Netty pulls away and says she’d always dreamed of coming into her room in his arms – but the dream had her in a wedding dress, not as the other woman. He tells her she isn’t the other woman. He feels lost until her looks into her eyes, then he knows that life is smiling on him after all. More kisses. Yum! Brandon should take kissing lessons from Emil.

Nereida stuffs the money under Mari’s mattress, then hears her coming and hides in the closet. Mari comes in and pets the surprisingly still alive kitty, noticing that it licked the soup bowl clean. The kitty jumps down off the bed and stares at the door Nereida is behind.

Fedra and Bernardo are having wine, and she says she’s upset about this Eman and Mari thing. While they’re talking, Eman approaches the door to talk to her, then stops, listening through the crack. Fedra laughs that Eman’s going to get high cholesterol from kissing that fatty, but fortunately they have meds for that. She says she’s going to take care of the problem, and she’s going to look great in the black dress for the occasion.

Outside the door, Eman is shocked.

Mari picks up the orange kitty and takes it to the bathroom for some water because unlike the rest of the planet, she didn’t leave down a water bowl. Nereida slips out.

Eman asks Benigno if maybe Maximo would be a good person to consult about his mother being so upset about him and Mari. Benigno doesn’t know. Eman asks him what military strategy is good for an enemy that’s closer that your own shadow. Pretend to be one of them, advises Benigno.

Fedra and Bernardo toast one another. Mauricio’s in prison, Gretel’s in the nut house, Axel’s on Fedra’s side, and Mari is soon to be dead. Most excellent. Fedra tells him about the potion she put in Mari’s soup. He tells her it takes 12 hours to act, and what’s more Mari’s going to exit the world in humiliation. He tells her about the money Nereida had and what she did with it. Everyone will think she’s a thief chortles Bernardo. Bwaahahaha.

Bernardo and Fedra burst into Mari’s room. Fedra accuses her of being a thief and sets Bernardo to searching the room.

The scales have fallen from Muñeca’s eyes. She’s on to Lorenzo and Fedra and nothing he cooks up as an excuse convinces her otherwise. She tells him he’s low-down scum and the only reason she doesn’t throw him out of her house and her business is because she doesn’t want to hurt Ilitia.

Eman and Benigno, Axel and the two maids show up in Mari’s room too. Eman tells them all to get out, Mari’s no thief. Fedra says no, they’re going to search. Mari tell them to go ahead and look. Bernardo lifts the mattress, and voila! Delicia looks the most amazed.

Oliver hands Bernardo the report – negative. Now they have nothing to hang on Fedra, Oliver wails. He’s frantic about Gretel – where is she? Bernardo promises they’ll find her.

We see Gretel despairing some more.

Back to Mari’s room: Axel wants to tell his father, but Fedra says he’s probably cavorting at Netty’s. She wants to call the police, Eman says he won’t let them accuse Mari, and Mari says nobody’s going to throw her out of her house. Fedra yells that she’s wrecked the family and all she wants is money. Mari calmly replies that she’s incapable of stealing, unlike Fedra who destroys everything she touches. Fedra lunges at her, but Eman catches her and tosses her so hard onto the bed that she rolls off the other side.

Eeeww! she says. What’s this? She’s fallen on the poor orange kitty, dead now. Fedra accuses Mari of killing it. They are all grossed out. Benigno looks closer and says that the color of its ears means that it was poisoned.

We don’t have long to contemplate what Beningo’s past was that provided him with this sort of esoteric Holmesian knowledge because now we see Lorenzo outside Muñeca’s closed door, proclaiming that he loves only her and he wants to go back to being the picture-perfect family they were. Since she can’t see him, he can punctuate his speech with some eye-rolling. From the other side of the door, Muñeca retorts that they’re not picture-perfect, her daughter is rejecting her.

He says that if he talked to Ilitia, she could see Muñeca for what she really is, her real mother. This last bit makes him roll his eyes so much they look like they’re going to fall out and bounce along the floor.

Muñeca has opened the door. You really think so? she says, but she looks very wary. Of course, he oozes, kissing her.

Fedra thinks fast and accuses Mari of poisoning the cat. Mari protests she just kept it in her room because it was lonely. Nereida says that when she came in with the laundry, the cat was eating from the bowl. All eyes turn to the soup bowl.

Eman says he made the soup. Fedra says that doesn’t matter, the point is that Mari wrecks everything. Everybody leaves, including Benigno who is going to go bury the cat, and Eman rushes to Mari’s side to comfort her. She pushes him away, saying the soup was poisoned and he was trying to spoon-feed it to her!

Fedra is stuffing her money back into her safe and mumbling at Bernardo. Looks like her poison idea didn’t work and Bernardo’s chocolate-lacing didn’t either. Bright side: Others may start to suspect Mari. But still, it’s been a flop. Bernardo suggests that accidents happen every day, tee hee. Fedra lights up.

Brandon and Oliver show up at their home away from home, the Ruiz y Teresa digs. Delicia is alarmed to see them. I didn’t do it! she says, putting her hands up. They’re puzzled and she tells them that somebody did the kitty in, and they’re next if they see them here. She draws her finger across her throat for emphasis. They say they want to speak to Emil. She tells them he’s out.

Ceiling shot of Netty and Emil in bed, content and love-talking. Still, it troubles her that he’s married. Oops – we hear voices – one of the ladies is yelling “you can’t come in!” and the next thing we know, Axel (who mysteriously knows which room is Netty’s) has burst in on them.

Avances: Eman, trying Benigno’s strategy, tells Fedra that Mari’s a fatty and means nothing to him. Apparently Mari gets downwind of that, for she’s heartbroken. She packs and phones Brandon to get her out of there.

Labels: llena