Caray, Caray!

Rebeca cheerfully explains to Helena: you're getting dumped as part of the new austerity plans. You're always wanting special consideration because you're a single mother. Helena asks to get her project back, Rebeca denies having it. It turns out all the fired employees are women - either old, or single mothers.

JC and his buddies are striking out: all the projects he and his sidekicks review are lousy. He even goes to bed with the somewhat middle-aged Victoria Infante in hopes she has some ideas for him. He calls her his countess; she knows about his fiasco...


... and she tells him Playa Majagua is the next big thing, there will be tax breaks etc, but he better hurry, the window of opportunity is closing. He leaves her to make her own sandwich while he goes off...

... to trawl through the trash - he finds Helena's precious project soaked with ikkiness and her dvd is broken.

Meanwhile, Helena remembers the Canadian guy and calls him... he takes her to lunch and says he'll do business with her if she'll open a travel agency -- he as a foreigner needs a local legal entity. He makes her promise not to accept an offer from anybody else, especially G.I. and they sign an agreement.

Helena drags her fired butt home. In private she tells her mom she's been fired ("don't tell your father") and that she needs 200,000 pesos to start a travel agency. The mom takes out a mortgage on the family home the next day. The cranky dad tells her son Lalo: "Your dad was an irresponsible coward, he ran away, he never wanted you." BUMMER. Later Lalo tells his mom it was his fault the dad left. "You think my dad loves me?" "I think he's losing the chance to see a wonderful boy grow up."

Meanwhile JC gets the list of fired employees from Rebeca (while staring down her cleavage). "You're not thinking of re-hiring them?" she asks like a proper villainess. She gives him pills good for gastritis. JC finds Helena's number and calls her. He's suave, but she's furious: "I'm not setting foot in that business. You didn't have time for me, now it's too late." She hangs up on him. He tells his buddies: "They get their period, that's why I hate doing biz with women!"

He goes and fakes it with his boss, airily describing chains of hotels, restaurants, spas, all with the G.I. logo on them. "Like the Caribbean or the Mediterranean." Plutarco whispers in his brother-in-law's ear that it's all a bad idea. The brother-in-law (boss of both of them) says he won't put his own money into it. JC says he'll get private investment. Adriano says if it goes well, JC will get a chunk of the business.

Plutarco is indignant: "I am your brother-in-law and you never offered shares to me." "You're married to my sister, she has shares. And JC has never failed me - except that once." Plutarco goes to whine to Rebeca his girlfriend (the same one whose cleavage JC was ogling). They have an argument; she threatens: "Fire me and I'll tell the whale [his wife] we're lovers."

At home Plutarco's wife again tries to give him a massage and again he spurns her. Turns out she owns 40% of the company shares.

With the money from the bank, Helena and her friend fix up the friend's place to be the new travel agency, which they call Viajes Moreno. The Canadians come through (the subtitles amusingly call them the Alberta Trouble Company but it's really the Alberta Travel Company).

JC's buddies report that at the beach, they have no local buy-in - the locals only want to do business with Helena! JC says no woman can do as well as men. Plutarco calls the three of them "Hugo Paco and Luis," better known to us as Walt Disney's trio of baby ducks, Huey Dewey and Louis. Plutarco has come round with a huge empty box; he says that because of the austerity program they have to turn in their cell phones. JC says this is sabotaging him! Plutarco says people did without cellphones for centuries, consider the Aztecs!

Adriano steps up the pressure for a quick solution - he wants a formal report on the Playa project immediately. Plutarco is listening.

Rebeca wants a chauffeur but she is refused (austerity). She goes and yells at Plutarco. Unsympathetic, he suggests she take a taxi or walk. Or there's a microbus. She rubs up against him until he gives her his car keys.

JC realizes Rebeca knows something about the Playa project, runs after her, offers to join forces with her, they end up in bed. He says afterwards, "I never take this sort of 'meeting' with women I work with." "Then I'm special." As a reward, she tells him: "I have contacts - and I know that Trouble company has the project underway."

There's some problem at Lalo's school so Helena runs out of the travel agency.

Hewey tells Dewey he's found out about the Alberta Trouble/Travel Company having an alliance with Helena's Viajes Moreno. "And she's an employee you FIRED." Rebeca comes in to hear JC whispering about her: "The woman I'm here with is nothing special, she's a courtesan by vocation, I'm doing her a favor." She yells: "You pig! Some day you should feel what I feel, be in my shoes!" "Ridiculous woman, you think such a thing could happen?"

Tomorrow: he greases his hair back and goes with a false identity to hit up Helena.

Labels: por-ella