Caray, Caray!

Roberto callously tells Gumaro "I have Lichita wrapped around my little finger and it will be she who pays for the broken plates" As I had thought, when Gumaro comes to pick up Roberto we hear that on special occasions, when he needs to impress somebody, Roberto "borrows" a nice car from some unsuspecting yuppie. Now, Gumaro points out, like Cinderella Roberto must ride the pumpkin/moto home.

At the Don Augusto mansion, Luciana pouts in the living room. She covers a vitrine full of saints and Pieta knockoffs - "they're judging me." Beatriz enters and Luciana quickly whips the scarf off the vitrine and dives for the divan - remember, she supposedly hurt her ankle.

She faints and languishes while telling Beatriz "I wish I could be out doing good works." "Your ankle will heal." "Ah, but then my cruel uncle will throw me out on the street where I must needs cower for shelter in a cardboard box." She asks after her cousins. The daughter is at summer camp and the son is in America and hasn't been seen for ages. "Oh, it's sad they are absent, but you have ME now. Oh, why oh why does Uncle hate me? Can you get him to change his mind?" Beatriz alludes to the problem between the two brothers, calling them Cain and Abel.

At the agency Roberto explains to us: "Alicia will do all the work but I'll have her so dazed she won't notice." The meeting starts, the room is packed. Less competent than I'd expected, Roberto temporizes in front of the expectant co-workers - and O. the supermarket czar - because he's waiting for Alicia, the only one who knows anything.

She scuttles in, head down and arms full of reports, and starts a slide show, but turns out the second slide is of her in her cow costume. Who put that there? These supposed adults moo and cow-call. She leaves the room and, since Roberto can't manage without her, he follows. She thinks he put that slide in - "after all, you've deceived and robbed and blackmailed me" - word! But he asks "what would I gain from having inserted the cow slide? You have to learn to trust me." He drags her off...

... to ride a little plastic airplane. It was a beautiful ride, mmm scenery, she is terrified but by the end is ecstatic.

Mags is watching tv, it appears to be a promotion for some other novela. Nachos has his bandages off. He wants to go back to driving the taxi but his wife says he can't, doctor's orders. "You are still the man of the house even if you're not earning!" There is no food in the house, or at least nothing Nachos wants to eat. Magos asks if she can drive the taxi, he firmly says no. My favorite line of the episode is Nacho's self-definition: "Soy medio menso pero no bruto."

To make a long story short Mags takes the keys and goes joyriding with her skanky friends and a bottle of tequila, somebody gets a picture of them in the taxi, and at the end of the episode uh oh, here come the cops up behind this full taxi of drunk teenagers. Stay tuned...

Sandra is massaging her lover Augusto and asking why he hates his niece so much. He rants about his half-brother, and something about an inheritance which I hope somebody caught, and says he's sending Luciana back to Patagonia forthwith. Luciana, eavesdropping, vows: "over my dead body I go back." We find out Sandra has been shagging Augusto for ten years.

After a foreshadowy conversation in which Alicia tenderly supposes that Roberto is big-hearted and will be great to his kids some day (NO KIDS he says), and that growing up in an orphanage was no garden of roses, we find ourselves at an orphanage...

Where an EXTREMELY cute (thank God, in the past we have had kid actors so awful we only wanted to have them murdered post-haste) 6-year-old kid, Mateo, runs up to a handsome young couple evidently out orphan-shopping on a sunny afternoon. He tells them sweetly about all the orphans and their endearing traits.

Exchanging significant looks over Mateo's head they then tell him: "We've made up our minds, it's you we want to adopt," but he gets huffy and says "I have a dad and he's coming back for me" and runs off. We all know, thanks to the previews, who this father is.

The meeting with O. is raucous, a kindergarten classroom is far better behaved. The question he has: where to launch the new Mas campaign? Luchette says the customers are low-class, so launch in some marginal area.

When Alicia thinks O. is asking her opinion she says "our primary customers are mothers with kids so we should launch at an orphanage and profit by their empathy." All say this is dumb until O. says he likes it, whereupon they all say it's great. Roberto intimates this was his idea. I think O. has a foundation and gives old food (as per Elsa's suggestion) to the San Cipriano orphanage, so they will go there. Roberto sighs.

Nacho and his wife Elsa are moaning about what a baby Magos is. He points out that lots of other young single moms get it together. He also (incidental plot point) says "she is not the first in this family to whom this happened." Actually he says "que se comio la torta antes del recreo" or something like that heh heh.

Augusto calls his brother, who is painting (somewhere in Argentina), and calls him an imbecile and asks why he sent his daughter up to Mexico. The brother is so surprised he fumbles his brush.

So the creative team plus O. arrive at an orphanage. Plans have changed, they've come to Santa Clara rather than the previously proposed orphanage because a celebration was already planned. Roberto refuses to get out of the car and we all know (thanks to the previews) why. He explains incompletely to Alicia, "It's where I grew up and I have bad memories."

A clown car pulls up and the entertainers get out and run into the orphanage.

Inside, O. keeps nagging Alicia, why isn't her boss here yet? Also, in the dining hall cute little Mateo and his comrades are debriefing. The comrades think Mateo should have gone with the nice couple.

OK, so unlike real children, these orphans are enjoying the clowns and their lame tricks. Roberto sneaks in, disguised as a clown. This wins the hearts of both O. and Alicia, she gushes to us, "A man of action, a prince, and - a clown!" "He's full of surprises, I like him," says O.

Back at the show apartment, Gumaro is not succeeding in repairing some random object. I guess that is part of the gig, because when a babe comes to the door to see the apartment, he tells her how great he is at fixing things, gives her a tour, and then chases her away by alluding to mice and cockroaches and picking a plastic cockroach out of his weird cravat.

At the very same time that Mags and her drunk friends are about to get busted by the cops, at the orphanage, though night has fallen (unless the orphanage is in a different time zone), the clowns are still, incredibly, entertaining the children and the children, incredibly, are still enjoying it. For one last trick, they reward the best-groomed and most-quietly-sitting child, predictably Mateo, by inviting him up for the last trick, which is to have a PVC pipes frame covered with a tablecloth and then whipping off the tablecloth after some alcazam and magic passes... and out comes a clown...

..."PAPA! IT'S YOU!" enthuses Mateo. All are astounded.

Tomorrow: Roberto hugs Mateo and Alicia gets some sort of promotion.

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Next: Episode 6

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