Caray, Caray!

By now it’s clear. A tin-foil beanie isn’t enough. For this show, I need my Full-Body Schmaltz Shield.*

*[Fortunately NM Accessories will be offering a limited number of Full-Body Schmaltz Shields at the incredibly low price of $19.99 in the lobby after tonight’s performance. These Shields are guaranteed Hyperbole-Resistant and Impervious to Lagrimas de Sangre. And tonight only, the first 50 customers will receive, absolutely free, one Carmen Salinas Garden Gnome, China Poblana Edition, with each Schmaltz Shield purchased!!!!]
At the Televisa lot, Osvaldo greets María D warmly. Guillermo slithers over to be introduced. When María smiles politely and tells him how much she hated him as the villain in his last novela, he gamely reminds her not to confuse his screen image with real life. (Maybe he means in real life he’s much worse.) Pretty girl, remarks Guillermo when María hurries to her ‘casting’. Not like the one from the other night. I hope the photographers didn’t catch you with that one.

Back in the barrio, JuanJo escapes from Milagros before she can do a card reading and sort out his love life. (He’s more of a do-it-yourself kind of guy.) Just as he steps outside, along comes grumpy Linda shlepping a heavy basket of groceries. When JuanJo offers to help her she snips:
¡Hasta la pregunta es necia!(Stupid question! Literally, Even the question is foolish!)

He carries the basket back to the girls’ apartment, largely ignores the waiting Nathy and then invites Linda to the movies. She can’t, she tells him, she’s expecting a very important phone call. And she arranges herself prettily on the couch, and plays with her hair, looking one lap dance away from a casa de citas. Maybe another time, she says. As soon as he leaves, she giggles at the idea of going out with him. (Maybe if you have a Y chromosome, you appreciate the giggle. If not, not so much.)

At the Casa de Moda, Vicki’s tame Italian designer, Pipino reads aloud a news story about an upcoming show of rival designer, Lucciano Ferretti.
Vicki is going to make sure that show never happens. Toward that end, she has sent Max to do whatever it takes to make sure that the venue for his show (el Alcázar de Chapultepec) is unavailable for the planned date. Even if he has to get his hands a little dirty. She says:
En el mundo de los negocios, hay que ser muy duro, frío e implacable.(In the business world, you have to be very hard, cold and ruthless.)

When Antonieta hears this she remarks that no one would guess that beneath this woman of iron is a girl who suffered so terribly. Circumstances forced me to change, says Vicki.

Flashback: Vicki in braids in a clothing factory. She’s pleading with her sleazeball boss not to fire her for bringing her baby to work. She had no one to leave her with. He takes her into his office and says with a leer:Tú puedes quedarte siempre y cuando tú seas un poco generosa.(You can stay as long as you’re a little generous.)
He grabs her roughly, pushes her onto the couch.
Now she is walking in the rain, pulling her sweater around her. Lightning flashes in the night sky. The humilliation is over, she vows. I’ll be the one who humilliates others, who steps on them, says Scarlet, um, I mean Victoria:
No voy a permitir que nadie se aproveche de mí nunca más. Lo juro. Lo juro.(I’m not going to let anyone take advantage of me ever again. I swear it, I swear it!)
Back in the present day fashion house, Pipino notices his boss lady is upset. In one of the worst Mexican Pretending to be Italian accents I’ve ever heard (I am reminded of Esteve’s Mexican Pretending to be a Gringo in MEPS) – okay, maybe the only one I’ve ever heard – he asks her what is wrong. Before she can reply, Lucy comes in to tell her Osvaldo is calling. Hubby invites her to lunch and a movie -- they’ll talk in half an hour to set it up.

At Televisa, Osvaldo spots María D coming out of the casting. She tells him it didn’t go well.

Linda, back at the apartment, keeps trying to get Osvaldo on the phone. She turns a deaf ear to Nathy’s reminder that he’s a married man. The doorbell rings and Nathy answers it. It’s Max, posing as Fabían. She tells him María left early to look for work. (I guess it’s a good thing Linda was too lazy to answer the door or the story might have taken a different turn.) But not even the serious-minded Nathy is blind to the charms of the guapísimo Max.

Vicki’s irritated that Osvaldo hasn’t called her back as promised and isn’t answering his cell. He is at that moment sitting in the Televisa cafeteria with María. Televisa was looking for actresses and she wants to be a runway model, she explains. If that’s the case, he can’t understand why she didn’t take his recommendation to Victoria. She confesses she was embarrassed and afraid. He gives her a pep talk, telling her that she’ll have to set her fears and insecurities aside if she wants to succeed in life.

Since she can’t reach Osvaldo, Vicki decides to call Guillermo. Maybe he has seen him. Why yes, he has, hisses that serpent. Osvaldo was chatting with a very pretty girl – María Desamparada – maybe you know her?

Osvaldo, still with María D, notices his cell phone battery is dead. He excuses himself – he has an important call to make – but tells María not to forget his advice.

Juan Pablo is playing soccer with the street kids in his parish.

Osvaldo drives up to his house where the Bitch on Training Wheels, Fernanda, is waiting outside. She wants to be able to see Federico, the scuzzy tattoo-boy, openly. She doesn’t want to have to sneak around. Ok, her father agrees, as long as tattoo-boy respects her and the rules of the house, they can see each other. Osvaldo will talk to Vicki. He sighs: Between Vicki and Fer, one of these days they’re gonna kill me!

Eres un as del volante! squeals Fer to Fede when their car comes to a stop after their suicidal spin down a winding road. (You’re an ace – not an ass, which is what I would have told him – at the wheel.) This scene probably took a few years off the life expectancy of every viewer with teenage children.

Back at the Casa de Moda, Max reports that he did what Vicki asked. Lucciano’s show at Chapultepec has been torpedoed. But he didn’t feel right about it and he doesn’t want her to involve him in her dirty games in the future. Vicki says she’s trying to make him a winner (triunfador). It’s Lucciano who doesn’t play fair. He learned the ropes at Vicki’s place, then left taking two of her best people and stealing many of her ideas. Now he’s out there competing for her clients. When it comes to Lucciano, Vicki’s willing to play a little dirty. She’s out to destroy him!

Osvaldo finally calls his wife but she refuses to take his call.

María, now back home with her roomies, announces that she’s going to take Osvaldo’s advice and use the recommendation he wrote her. Linda is impactada: Osvaldo Sandovaaaaaaaal gave you a recommendation? Nathy tells her that “Fabián” stopped by while she was gone.

In the office, Vicki and Toni take us down memory lane again:
The vicious boss, Padilla, didn’t just paw Vicki: he raped her. After that obscenity, both women left his factory and never looked back. They had a small amount of money saved and used it to open a tiny dress shop. Vicki designed and they both sewed. Their business began to prosper.

Toni recalls:
Realmente fue tu entrega y tu esfuerzo la que nos hizo crecer de la misma manera en que la pequeña María crecía a nuestro lado.(Really, it was your dedication and effort that made us grow just like little María was growing beside us.)

Later, they were able to get a larger place, and hire seamstresses. Things were going well until that terrible night when their lives were changed forever.

Victoria and María, just a toddler then, are standing outside together when a car comes out of the darkness. It sends Vicki flying over the hood and she lands prone and bleeding in the street. The child is crying but seems unharmed. The girl’s ragdoll is lying in the street several feet away.
Victoria wakes up in a hospital bed. When Toni tells her that María is lost, Vicki becomes hysterical. Next we see her in the street, a coat thrown over her hospital gown, frantically calling out to her daughter. The only trace she finds is the ragdoll.
The friends never saw the little girl again. And they never found out the name of the damned person (maldita persona) who was driving the car.

But we know who the damned person was: St. Bernarda. She kneels at her own little altar, and offers a custom-made Ends Justify the Means prayer. She’s not sorry about anything she has done in her effort to make her son a priest.

Here we get a ghastly replay of the car plowing into people scene from a different angle and we get to see St. Bernarda looking back at her handiwork.

Says that Evil Broad: I was an instrument of Your will, Lord.

Unbeknownst to her, her two victims, the mother and daughter that she took such pains to separate, are sitting on opposite sides of a door at this moment. Pipino tells Vicki that there’s an aspiring model with a hand-written recommendation from Osvaldo outside. Send her in, says Vicki.

And so begins the Interview from Hell:

Vicki: Tell me right now – what’s going on between you and my husband?
María: Nothing. He was just being kind.

Vicki peers at a little business card (tarjeta). It’s Osvaldo’s handwritten recommendation (de su puño y letra). (This thing is tiny! How much could he have written?)

Vicki: So you want to be a model… What do you know about modeling?
María: What I’ve read in magazines and the shows for the orphanage…
Vicki: So you’re one of those girls who wake up and decide they want to be models. Puhleeeeeez!!!

Let’s get some air, shall we? Father Juan Pablo is still out there playing soccer with the guys. Oh no. The air is suddenly sucked out of the scene when the Evil Broad drives up and is shocked that he’s wasting time on those ragamuffins (zarrapastrosos) when his mission is praying for her. And other good souls. JP is puzzled by his mother’s attitude. She was always so charitable, compassionate. (Is he kidding? Did she truly have him fooled all those years?) You’re right, says the Evil One. And she picks up the soccer ball, hands it to one of the guys and gives him a hug. Surprisingly, the guy’s flesh does not blister and flake off his body.

Back in Victoria’s Secret Torture Chamber, the interview proceeds apace. Vicki commands: Walk!
The verdict: You know nothing about modeling. You can’t walk. You have no elegance. You’re an average little girl (muchachita del montón). You had your nerve coming here.

María works to hold back her tears. She thanks Victoria for her sincerity and gets up to leave. But Victoria clicks a switch and locks the door. You’ll leave when I decide you will, she tells the girl.

Linda has gotten tired of trying to reach Osvaldo by phone. She storms the Televisa Studios insisting she has an appointment with him. They throw her out. Are those cheers I hear in livingrooms across the land?

Back to The Interview. María tells Vicki that she has destroyed her dreams and it’s pretty clear she hasn’t had to suffer in her life. Osvaldo gave her his card because he is a good person, she says, very different from you.

Finally, the ordeal is over. María, now totally humilliated and in tears, is stuck in the hallway waiting for an elevator, when Max/Fabián comes by. She tells him what has happened and weeps on his chest. (Fair compensation? You decide.)

Behind closed doors, Vicki tells Toni she’s going to give María a chance. She wants to have the girl where she can watch her:
Siempre he pensado que la mejor manera de defenderte es tener al enemigo cerca.(I’ve always thought the best way to defend yourself is to have the enemy close-by.)

Max/Fabián and María sit in the cafeteria and discuss Victoria. Yes, admits, Max, she is demanding (exigente). Well that doesn’t give her the right to humilliate people, says María. She has no intention of trying her luck again with that woman – let her take out her bad temper on her employees and her kids! Ouch, thinks Max/Fabián.

The Evil Broad is back home peeling off her clothes and telling Tomasa to get rid of them. They have been contaminated by her contact with Juan Pablo’s flock. It’s disgusting just thinking of hugging that riffraff (gentuza). She’ll have to bathe to get rid of the stench. (She hasn’t figured out that the stench is coming from her putrescent soul.)

JuanJo is telling the ladies – Milagros, Linda and Nathy – about responding to an old lady’s cry for help only to find that the victim needing rescuing was a kitten! Milagros explains that firemen (bomberos) don’t just save people; they also rescue animals. Nathy is impressed. Linda is dismissive.

Max is in his office with his assistant, the real Fabián. He just wanted to give María a hug and console her. What if she comes to work here? asks Fabián. She’ll find out you gave her a false name. Relax, says Max, she doesn’t want to work here.

After a long hard day of crushing souls (Vicki) and soothing them (Osvaldo), our favorite power couple relax at home in their Jacuzzi. Vicki tells Osvaldo she’s going to hire María. You’re so noble, he says. That’s why I adore you.

Linda rushes to answer the telephone’s ring in the girls’ apartment. She passes the receiver to María. It’s la señora Victoria Sandovaaaaaal.

Fer and dirty Fede are in his car outside her family home. She’s getting a car for her birthday and he can teach her to drive, she says. Oh and his band (So this jerk has a band. That figures.) will play at her party.

María hangs up the phone. She tells her friends: The job is mine!

Fabián and Max are seated at the dinner table. They are joined by Osvaldo and Vicki, fresh from the Jacuzzi. A little piggy squeal is heard and then Fer and Fede join the family at the table. Fer announces that she wants her birthday party to be at a club (antro). When Max points out that she is underage, she says that’s not a problem. She and her friends all have fake ID’s. Osvaldo appreciates her honesty but it’s still a bad plan. Vicki suggests having the party at home and bringing in a decorator to make the garden look like a club. Max raises an eyebrow slightly. Fede nods his approval. It’s a deal. But one more thing, says Fer. It has to be Fede’s band that plays.

María lies in her bed beside the Betty Boop Virgen and recalls Victoria’s soul-crushing words at the interview. Then she sits up and vows:
¡Voy a demostrarle a esa señora quien soy yo! ¡Sí se lo voy a demostrar!(I’m going to show that lady who I am! Yes, I’ll show her!)

The following morning, Vicki is surprised to see María arrive. She thought she wouldn’t show up. But it is another model, Ximena, who has failed to show. And Pipino is beside himself. What is he going to do?

Victoria says that María Desamparada is a very original name. She is to keep it professionally. And from now on, she, Victoria, will be making all the decisions in María’s life. She belongs to Vicki. And now, she tells her, you’re going to show whether you can do it or not.

We see the models out on the runway. Then it’s María turn. She looks gorgeous, and walks with confidence. Toni smiles. Pipino and Vicki watch but say nothing. Max joins them while María is on the runway and within earshot. Vicki says: ¿Otra cosa Max? (Was there something else, Max?). Max????

Shirtless William Levy paddles his kayak across the screen.

Labels: triunfo