Caray, Caray!

Jardinera654---You're wrapping this one up in grand style.

Comandante Barragan is having as hard a time keeping track of everybody turning themselves in and going to jail for some horrid crime or other as Viewerville is. True.

If there's one thing that Abigail has taught her, it's love means never having to say you're sorry. (er...wasn't that a different novela?)

Teo exits stage left and padre Tomas enters stage right.(or maybe that's vice versa)

For sure, I will be reading more when it's posted. I don't want to miss any of the recaps ending last night Que Te Perdone Dios.
the gringo
 

Didn't really care for the ending. Too many unanswered questions and not enough satisfying endings. For example, what happened to Macaria? We ASSUME she went to jail, but what if she ended up next door to "Daniela?"

Or perhaps Mac killed herself because she didn't have Fausto anymore?

We don't know because we didn't see what happened to Mac.

Abi lines, Mateo lines, the end.
 

I'll wait till you have it all up to comment on the finale. Great start, Jardinera.
 

I find the last episode so short and draft. It left us a lot of queries. Fausto's end was so easy, painless and predictable. I wanted him to suffer before he dies. (It would be nicer if Macaria stabbed him on his testicles instead of his chest, like Azela Robinson) Ximena ended up mad as her sister. I like this version because it seems like the roles were reversed. I mean Daniela was drowned in the river where Ximena was about to be killed due to Macaria's envy, Ximena had Daniela's karma who spent most of her life in mental hospital (although I didint want Daniela to die, I feel so sad and sorry for her and the baby) Macaria seems she didn't pay for her bad deeds. I think she didnt go to jail because they considered that she saved everyone by killing Fausto. And she convinced Efrain that Fausto killed Daniela (that was not fair, she should ve paid for that crime). It seems that only Teodora and Max worked out that the woman who was found drowned in the river was Daniela. Also Patricio never discovered who Negrete sister fall in love with. And absolutely noone ever learned that the baby of Daniela was Porfirio's and not Patricio's.

What a mess and confusion with the twin sisters.

Bill
 

I detested the finale. As Vivi commented before, the whole ultimas semanas was very uneventful, but I thought they would bring it for the finale. They didn't.

Abi was apparently a 30-year-old virgin when she finally married. Nothing wrong with that in general, but for this story it was waaaay too much waiting. What was the point of another 5 years going by before the final events? 6 months to a year was plenty for all the fallout to settle as far as marriages. Did they want everybody out of jail? The writers could want that so that everybody could be at the wedding, but not Abi and Mat, Ren and Pat.

I agree about Macaria, uncool that we just have to speculate what if any anvil she got. She was bad news and if Diana was the measuring stick, then she and Fausto should have had worse. I was disgusted by Fausto's demise. He killed a few more innocent police on the way to his non-suffering end. He said going to jail was the worst thing that could happen to him, and that's what he should have got.

I'm glad it all worked out for Motor and Juanita, and Teo and Max. Ximena's anvil was great, too, very appropriate. I almost spit when I saw Tono!

What was the big mystery about Daniela and Ximena? Teo had no trouble distinguishing them apart by their behavior. Daniela wasn't completely innocent, but she wasn't mean. I guess since Pat didn't know until after the fact, and couldn't get to know them both, he's just like, "Who cares anyway?"

I recall the ending of "La Que No Podia Amar," bad guy Bruno went to jail and was threatened with homosexual rape. Crude, not politically correct, but a heavy anvil. Cintia was disfigured and jailed. The bad aunt was in jail, arrepentida. Efrain had been killed by his own lover earlier on and it was tragic. The alternate galan died in the finale, just like Diego, and that's kind of how I knew if Diego wasn't with Nieves then he would die to keep from being "alone," that is to say "not with the main galana."

As I look back, there wasn't much I liked, except Lucio. I realize I tuned in mainly to see what he was up to. As they say, often villains are more interesting, because they can be bad and good, whereas whenever the good guy is bad, it just tends to seem out of character.

En fin, a sorry finale in my opinion. I felt I had been robbed.



 

TN4ever- Ditto everything you said. The only thing good about this finale was Ximena's anvil (poetic justice) and the gorgeous final shots of that beautiful hacienda and its chapel. Just breathtaking and they filmed on such a beautiful day. I also preferred this wedding dress to the one Abi wore to her tragic wedding with Diego.

The 5 year jump and wait until the wedding only made sense as a plot device to explain why everyone was out of jail. And aren't those rather short sentences for the crimes Max and Tono committed and/or covered up? And you mean to tell me that Tono had enough time to serve his sentence for murder AND to finish seminary and become a full fledged priest? I call b.s. on that. I also wanted to spit when I saw him at the altar. It did not give me the warm fuzzies I think the writers intended me to feel. I would have preferred a dozen times for him to die and someone like Helena, Meliton, or Diego to live.

The funny thing is that they told us it was a five year jump, but the little kid playing Gerardo at the wedding was no more than three years old. Domingo should have gone from being around 10 to teen around 15, but the older Domingo was about 12. Maybe it was originally written to be a three year jump, but the writers changed their minds post production, realizing the jail sentences would make no sense, so they decided to caption it as five years later.
 

Sergio G must have made some deal with the producer that his character must never look like a loser. He must never be seen to break a sweat or looking worried or unhappy. Fausto must be the big boss and be on top until his very last breath and he must have the last word. And so it was.
 

Jardinera, thanks for the finale recap and all the others you wrote for this TN.

I agree that this final left me with alot of questions, and the 5 year jump was too much.

More later. I am at work, but will comment during my break.

Hasta pronto!
 

A ridiculous final for a poorly-written telenovela. At the beginning, this show was so bad I thought it was a satire. But after the time jump, I stuck around for the wonderful cast, the gorgeous haciendas and town and scenery, and the photography. At first the photography was just luminous – outside scenes shot in the warm light of dusk (or maybe sometimes dawn), interiors with the characters looking like Rembrandt paintings. The actors must have been thrilled to be photographed like that. After while, I guess that got too time-consuming and the photography went back to regular style. But still it was a very pretty show.

And I ended up falling in love with the theme song and its tuba.

Unbelievable stuff:
Abigail goes to university to get a degree in agriculture, then when she comes home, she doesn’t even take a soil sample of her lands, and just turns them over to someone else to run. Then she hangs out in the house because she obviously made no friends at university, and had no dates.

Can vineyards really catch fire?

Fausto is supposed to have always been in love with Renata. But he said right at the get-go that he didn’t love her and was marrying for money. Then partway in we have a scene of him in a bar all weepy about his bad marriage. He never looked at her with love, he never acted towards her with love. So how do we buy his final words?

Also, he never looked at Abigail with lust. The characters said they could tell he was lusting after her, but I sure couldn’t see it. Could you? Sergio Goryi, who played Fausto, was undiplomatic to say during La Malquerida that he would have done much better as the lead. I agree – he’s hawter and does very well being masculine and intense. But he doesn’t seem to have anything beyond that. For instance, when Abigail hugged him, he ought to have sniffed her hair with a crazy-lust look in his eyes, but nada.

Nobody in the house read, listened to the radio, or watched TV. They would always be just sitting somewhere waiting for somebody to enter so the story could carry on. It was particularly striking that blind Renata never listened to the radio or anything. And that when she learned Braille, we ended up with the blind lady being the only one who read.

Macaria, who was a hot mama, never went into town to party.

I had really loved Zuria Vega (Abigail) and Mark Tacher (Mateo) in Ricos. Zuria was lively, and Mark had a nice phoniness that went with his smarmy bad-guy character. But here Zuria was kinda blank, and now that I’ve seen Mark in a serious role, I guess that phony feel was really due to his not being a very good actor.

Now, a gripe: Altair Jarabo (Diana) is a huge talent. She needs a new agent. She always gets stuck playing the same exact part, plus her name is always way down in the credits.

More when I think of it!
 

Thank you, Jardinera. You're really having to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear with this totally boring and anticlimactic finale. Pshh, what a disappointment. Macaria should have died instead of Daniela. Meliton, Elena and Diego were totally unnecessary deaths. What would have been the harm in having Diego stay with Nieves and come to realize, in the five-year time jump, that he actually DID get to love her and recognize that his love for Abi was, after all, just an obsession? And,I agree, I would rather have Tonio gone and Meliton alive. Two thumbs waaay down!

Lisa
 

I'll be brief because I want to comment better when the full recap is up but this finale was lackluster. I vote that Dianaconda got the best comeuppance. Mac killing Fausto looked too easy and it was dumb that he made her stab him.

I was always here for Max and Teo so I'm glad Max completed his sentence and was able to survive the leukemia.
 

Thank you Jardinera654 for an excellently detailed recap.
I was very disappointed in the gran final, especially that Dianaconda died so quickly, would have preferred to see her suffer in jail or the looney bin with Ximena.

So many unanswered questions:
Was Macaria sent to jail for life for killing Fausto? Will she serve time in jail and then join a convent?
Why the 5 year time jump?
Will Barragan hook up with Simona or Connie?
What happened to Porfirio's fortune? Was it put on a 5 year hold for Max?
Will Abi continue to call Amanda abuela?
Since Marcelino seems to have changed...will Violeta take him back?



 

Thanks, Jardinera, for giving us a complete picture of the rather disappointing finale. I gave up on this on partway through, but wanted to check out the ending.
As cruel and rapey and Fausto was, he should have suffered more at the end.

So we caught Tono at the beginning of his priestly career. Poor Diego--always the one to die as the sacrificial lamb at the end. They had an interesting camera angle, from his chin, so his gorgeous eyelashes were in full profile. (Sob!)

Quit watching partly due to so many minor characters and sub-plots, getting bored with identical twin plots, too many rapes, and preferring Mark Tacher as a smarmy bad guy (Ricos), not a righteous good guy.

Thanks for all the comments and analysis from the patio!
 

Jardinera,
Thanks again for your recap of the finale and all your other recaps.

Like everyone else I felt robbed after watching the last episode. The most disappointing was Fausto's death and the 5 year time jump. That was not needed. Why would Mateo and Abi, and Ren and Pat wait so long to get married? I found it ridiculous. That was just stupid on the writers part. If they wanted a 5 year time jump so that everyone's out of jail, then have the time jump, but then have the couples married already, and everyone could be at a party at the end instead of a wedding. I also thought it was stupid that Max and Tono served the same amount of time for two very different crimes. Plus the fact that Tono had apparently gone to the seminary already? Wow, he's been really busy in the last 5 years. Serving a murder sentence and becoming a priest. Sorry, but I don't buy that. I haven't been this disappointed with an ending in a while.

More later. Thanks again Jardinera!
Hasta Pronto
 

So many unanswered questions:
Was Macaria sent to jail for life for killing Fausto? Will she serve time in jail and then join a convent?
Why the 5 year time jump?
Will Barragan hook up with Simona or Connie?
What happened to Porfirio's fortune? Was it put on a 5 year hold for Max?
Will Abi continue to call Amanda abuela?
Since Marcelino seems to have changed...will Violeta take him back?


Since the writers didn't answer these questions, we will have to.

1. I'd like to think Macaria killed herself after she killed Fausto. Her whole reason for existing was Fausto. She killed Daniela because she wanted Fausto for herself. Since the authorities didn't know she killed Daniela, they probably sent her to the manicomio where she probably offed herself. We should've seen what happened to Macaria. FAIL on the writers' part.

2. 5 year time jump was probably so Max could come & Tono could perform the wedding. Tono was never any great friend of Abi or Mateo so his presence wasn't needed. Max, either.

3. Barragan will hook up with Simona...she can be bis-abuela to Abi's kids.

4. I would think that "Ximena's" half went to Max...and he already had his mother's jewels. "Daniela's" half is probably maintaining her in the manicomio.

5. Abi barely interacted with Amanda, so she won't be calling her abuela.

6. Vy might've gone to Mexico to resume her music career.

The Thirsty Sisters were there, I wonder how they got over being married to the same man.

I also didn't understand why Renata & Pat waited 5 years to get married, either.




 

Thanks to all of you who took the time to read and/or comment through all of this. and my recaps.

ITA that this was one of the most anticlimactic and unsatisfying of finales--and that says a lot considering how many i've watched and/or recapped over the years. Fausto cheated justice in the end as he had all of his life. Cheating La Justicia is not part of the formula. Oh well....Neither is waiting 5 effing years for the lead couples to get married. Also, it made me feel really queezy seeing a murdering drunk as a priest. That did not square with me. Sorry, and I do not give a rat's patooty whether that's PC or not. Something wrong with that picture. As for Diego, he was always a whiny loser to me and then a hotheaded campasino, despite his good intentions. Ren finally revealing that she could see and why she never let on to Fausto was rather unimpactful. That could have been made more impactful if they'd changed camera angles. SG's expression was perfect but the rest was a waste. Team B or even C material and execution.

Fausto, for true justice, would have had to been left blind, deaf, dumb and quadriplegic. IIMNSHO.

Glad this one's packed away! Hope the next one is a bit better. No reason for anybody to stay up the extra hour otherwise.


 

Jardinera- Thank YOU for this deliciously snarky recap, and all your others. Lived your last paragraph. Thanks for ending on the only bit of satisfying comeuppance we got in this tn- Ximena mistaken for Daniela and locked up in the manicomio. Bwahahaha!

 

Steve- Yes. They told us that the police found the body. Mac told them where to find it. Also, Porfirio's lawyer had Dani's prints on file as the official Ximena prints. I'm sure that helped the police decide that Ximena was crazy Daniela.
 

Typo: Loved not lived your last paragraph.
 

Jardinera654, good final recap. I didn't see all of this telenova, saw the first few eps, but then it got tired and I just watched on and off. I couldn't stand seeing fausto gettin away with so much crap. But was very happy to see him get it in the end. Death was the only way for him. He had so much blood on his hands, I hate that some of it was his son's. But lets just say That diego went to telenova heaven, and fausto went to telenova hell, witch is worse than prison. hooray!!!!!! For the good guys.
 

OK---Round two. Jardinera, Your part two was as good as part one. A GREAT read.
She stabs him in the heart--or whatever passed for one.

For some reason known only to the telenovela gods, neither Mat and Abi or Ren and pat are married yet. Good one Jardinera. This caught my attention but the possible answer as others have noted, is that those that had been serving time in jail all needed to be there at the big happy ending.

The end of the novela wedding was conducted by former bad boy Tono. Some had a hard time accepting that. The gringo says that sometimes even bad people "see the light"
so to speak and turn their lives around. I'll admit that it doesn't happen often but it does happen. I agree that it was a shocker and a little hard to accept but I will just chalk it up as a modern day miracle and leave it at that.

Many unanswered questions.---Yes there were loose threads at the fin but that happens in almost all novelas. At least all those that I've seen lately. Do the writers actually have so many things going on within a story that some aspects of the story are forgotten about? Maybe but I have gotten used to novela loose threads.
I guess that the solution is for each of us viewers is to tie up the hanging threads as we see fit.

One example is Macaria. What happened to her? Bill thinks that she may have gone free even though she killed Fausto in front of everybody. Why set free? Because she saved everyone who was in danger. I would have to watch it again as I don't remember if he had Abi hostage at the time he was making his getaway or not. But let's say that the first part is true---Macaria appears out of nowhere and shoots him. At that point, he's down but not out however at that point, he was no longer a threat to anyone. Fausto gives sobbing Macaria a knife and asks her to kill him which she does. That's murder and that's why Macaria sealed her fate. She's in jail for murder plain and simple.

And that brings up a BIG complaint by many---Fausto didn't suffer much at the end. I
agree and the vengeance in me wanted to see him suffer also but he is now dead and soon to be buried. He won't be hurting anyone anymore. I can live with that.

Another complaint by some---Too many good people died. Life isn't fair. If it was, only the bad would parish but it doesn't work that way. We might not like it but that's the way life is.

Diego good guy? Yes he was but I agree with Jardinera at 7:50AM He was a whiny looser and also hotheaded. He had a temper that he never seemed to be able to control. He was killed off in the end by Fausto. Maybe for the good because I don't think that he would ever have been able to accept the fact that Abigail didn't love him. That would have destroyed him so maybe it was better the way it ended for him.

Motor and Juanita & Teo and Max ended happy--happy. The children were growing and were happy also. The spinster sisters seemed to have gotten over their loss and bad boy Tono is bad no more.

A nice church wedding for Mat and Abi and no, they didn't ride off into the sunset but they did fly away in a beautiful balloon under a beautiful blue sky. I liked it, I thought it was nice. It was a nice ending for a sometimes dark novela.
the gringo



 

Just a couple of more thoughts. Overall I did like the cast however I thought that the story was hard to follow at times---I don't know why. I did think that Mark Thatcher over acted or over played his part at times. Maybe he's that way all of the time, I'm not sure. However that is just a minor complaint for me.

Another thing that I wanted to say was near the end when Diego and Mateo rescued Abi from the Devil Dog, Diego immediately jumped on Fausto. After a few seconds of the fight, it looked like he was loosing to the Devil. Mateo on the other hand was all busy with Abi whom it was very clear that she was alright. I kept waiting for him to jump in and help Diego take down Fausto or for Diego to yell out to Mat---HELP ME!!! But neither of those two things happened and when it was over, Diego was dead. It didn't make sense to me at the time but now I understand it better. Diego had to die and the Devil had to escape so that he could be killed by the women that had loved him all along but who he had never loved in return.

All in all for me it wasn't a bad novela as some have stated. It will not make my favorites list but the funny thing for me was that this one drew me in, I couldn't stay away from it. Overall I liked it but I don't think that I will be visiting that town anytime soon. Thank God for Comandante Barragan, he never gave up on the case before him.

Thanks to all the recappers who made this story come alive. You guys are great.
the gringo
 

Jardinera, what a great recap to a not so great TN ending! Like so many of you, I also felt disappointed and cheated with the "gran final". I think that after all the harm Fausto caused, he got off too easy. I foresaw him going to jail, with no money to buy protection for himself and then ultimately dying. It was frustrating watching everyone just standing around, doing nothing and watching Macaria stab him.

Also, the unrealistic wedding 5 years later?' We sometimes have had weddings and then all the characters gather at the end for another celebration, could have been the baptism of Abbi and Mateo's first baby, or something like that. At least like Gringo said, "they did fly away in a beautiful balloon under a beautiful blue sky."

After so many thing a left in the air, I do like Anon207's idea of Barragan and Simona hooking up and being loving great-grandparents to Abbi's kids. Also, it went by really quickly but I did see Marcelino and Violeta sitting together inside the church, so it's safe to assume that they got back together and Marcelino changed his ways.

Maricruz
 

Many thanks to all bloggers. This is my first post since I've been reading Caray Caray for the past several years. As novelas go, this was a bit draggy, but I agree with what everyone has posted in that it was anticlimatic.
I have a BIG problem with the audio portion of all the telenovelas that are being televised now and with the one that just ended. Who can we complain to? My problem is that in a most important scene loud music suddenly is heard drowning out the actors voices and/or if a scene is being acted out near a water feature, their voices are "drowned out". This is in all the novelas that Univision films. I also watch Telemundo and the actors' lines are much clearer. I live in Houston, TX and my daughter's BFF's neighbor is the actor that plays Thomas' father in "La Sombra Del Pasado". His names is Javier H??????. Nice gentleman. Met him while he was walking his dog. The next time I vist, I'll make it a point to visit with him and ask him to point this out to the director/producer. I'm sure they could probably care less but it is a great anoyance to me. Jess in Texas
 

Jessica---I don't understand Spanish but I also have noticed that at times the dialogue gets washed out or a little hard to hear. I had always thought that it was the sound crews fault. Can anything be done? I doubt it. Doesn't that happen in a lot of movies. An example might be two people talking in a crowded place or bar.

the gringo
 

Jess- You should definitely mention that connection to that actor on the Sombra thread. Very cool! Almost all the tns shown on Uni are not produced by Uni. Uni buys them from Televisa in Mexico.
 

I am late reading the recap and responses. I just came out of lurkdom to thank all of the recappers for their work during this novela. I enjoyed your work, humor and creativity.

This novela does not rank on my favorites list even though Ferdinando Valencia is my favorite (I admit I only watched to see him). I found this novela hard to watch (the recaps were extremely helpful since I fell asleep during MANY episodes). I enjoyed the performances by Ferdinando, Ana Bertha Espin, and Alejandro Avila. I enjoyed Zuria Vega in Refugio but not this one - I blame the writing/plot. I am still new to novelas and had never seen Mark Tacher in any other shows. I must say I was not made a fan of his.

For me, this novela was a disappointment and the ending made it even more so. I felt a villain who had caused so many to suffer/die should have faced a punishment with long-term suffering. Oh, well....

Thanks again to the recappers and also to the other bloggers. Some of the comments have been hilarious. :-)

Now, let's see if my comment will actually post. I had a problem in the past and therefore stuck to lurking.
 

I finally came to watch the Fin and I was quite disappointed with Faust's anvil, it was way too small and didn't make much sense. I would have loved if he had been shot 10 times or beaten to death by Mateo and then sent to burn in jail ( My crackpot wish was that Mat would beat him to titters and then crucifying him) . Danilo in La Malquerida had such a satisfying end even if small. But I expected more from Fausto's anvil since he was the literal Devil that lived to make EVERYONE'S life as miserable as possible.

I have never gotten in touch with Pat's character. I just don't find him interesting enough.His role was too corny.

Well atleast Motor didn't throw Juanita away to be with the Spinster Sis and that the Spinsters got their deserved end. I don't get how a former criminal can get to become a priest. I know it happens in real life but I just couldn't simulate it in the novela. It seemed a wrong end for Tony. He should have just completed his sentence and marry some hot chick in town ( Not the Spinster)

I wonder why Efrain didn't call the SWAT or something, they are apprehending a very very dangerous fugitive and they cannot expect to catch him with a team of 4 cops Sheesh. Fausto despite his madness has been the most useful , cunning and brainy character in the novela. Not only that he is an excellent manipulator but he has also diplomated from Martial Arts, Fashion Class and Gun Marksmanship ( When Fausto shoots, he shoots to KILL) . Way to go Fausto , you died a good citizen !!!
 

Ah yes forgot to say thank you for this marveleous recap, Jardinera!
 

I also would have liked for Fausto to suffer before dying! Why ease him out after all the misery he caused?