Caray, Caray!

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS":

Isn't Aurelio's Puppet President Omar Talen based on current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto ?


 

General -

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Anyone interested in Mariposa de Barrio?

Sunday, June 18, 2017 at 12:35:00 PM EDT

The above was posted on the Weekend addition, so I brought it over.

Answer: I am. I hope it will be good. I'm not expecting it to be accurate just entertaining. I don't really know much about her life, so no real expectations in that way. I hope it will spur more conversation over here, as it's been dry for so long. Nothing interesting on Telemundo right now.

-Mike in San Diego
 

If anything I'll check out Mariposa for Gabriel Porras and Rosalinda Rodriguez, and to see how Angelica Celaya's Jenni compares to Luz Ramos's Jenni, but I'm not sold on it at all.

Steve: His physical resemblance was more than enough when Omar was first introduced, IMO, but ESDLC absolutely doubled down on it in a way when it introduced his "pageant winner" wife Paloma. Weirdly, since Telemundo decided to run the S4 finale again last night--and having to edit it from three hours to two--that aspect of things seemed to get lost by the wayside.

So, by extension:

El Señor de los Cielos: martes

In a weird way, the season opener was surprisingly light on plot. It was more of a setpiece to get the pieces back out onto the game board. But, hey.

The episode takes place in September 2015. This places it three months after the fourth-season finale and the "present day" part of El Chema, and about 12-14 months behind Señora Acero's present day, for those of us keeping up with the "narcoverse" as a whole. So, what's everybody up to? Let's condense this a bit...

Aurelio Casillas is...semi-retired? I don't know, but he's taken up an entirely new hobby: bowhunting. He and Emiliana Contreras, still his current boo, are out hunting a panther in the woods near his current ranch hideaway. Emiliana's running around with a rifle, and while she still remembers her master plan to kill Aurelio for retaliation for her father, she's gone full Monica Robles--she draws down on him, but can't bring herself to pull the trigger because of her feelings for him. Conveniently, this gets covered up by a near-miss with the panther before Aurelio takes it out.

Monica, meanwhile? She got shot by Evelyn Garcia in the escape from Victor's old ranch, and El Chema established that she slipped into a coma after that. So she's still in said coma at this point, all dolled up in the world's most expensive hospital room at Aurelio's ranch (suck it, La querida del Centauro). And her and Aurelio's son, Isidro, is there as well; he brings her a drawing and talks to her, trying to get her to "wake up." (For us henchmen fans, both Vitaminas and Monica's lieutenant Ramon are still around.) Aurelio obviously still has his eternal thing for her. Emiliana is jealously unimpressed, straight up cracking that Aurelio should go ahead and unplug her right before going "If you really loved me, you'd move up our wedding" at Monica's bedside. Aurelio reacts pretty much as expected, declaring she had better never say anything like that again.

Garcia is actually in prison, by the way, for Monica's murder. Rodrigo Rivero, still kind of a Standard Action Hero, pops up for a visit and she blasts him for not getting her out of prison--nobody ever found Monica's body, so why's she behind bars for something nobody could confirm? Rivero reluctantly says that the President ordered the investigation fast-tracked (and may have somehow signed off on the death certificate--I'm not sure, CC3's been wonky for weeks with Telemundo where I am), and Garcia tells him to GTFO...but she sheds a tear as he leaves.
 

El Señor de los Cielos: martes (2)

President Bizarro Pena Nieto, meanwhile, has had Rivero scouring the countryside for Monica on top of, as of this episode, calling his ex Rutila (who is apparently just chilling at her own place somewhere in Mexico) and demanding she tell him where Monica is. Naturally, Rutila blows him off. This is right before Mexico's Dia de la Independencia, though, so he's really more focused on looking good for that--especially since his approval ratings have apparently tanked in the interim thanks to all that narco action from the past season or so--and when Bizarro Gaviota (Paloma) tries to show some spine and say he needs to call Rutila to be at his side for the ceremony he once again has to grab her and insist that she'll be right there with a big smile on her face--and all night, too. So, yup, nothing's really changed there.

The strange thing is that apparently BPN's approval ratings tanked with at least one faction of narcotraficantes as well--Victor Casillas's cartel, which is seemingly based close to Mexico City. Victor (and "Skinny," who may have replaced Super Javi as his lieutenant--we don't see the latter at all in this episode) has a plan: he's going to take the President out with a rocket launcher during the Dia ceremony.

(This is where I pause to sideeye the entire show for reverting not just to action-movie clichés, but in such a 1980s way. Victor's crew, as we see later, is literally holed up in a building directly across from the balcony at the National Palace...theoretically, one long block away. There's no security at all. I mean, damn, show.)

While assassination is Job One for Victor, Job Two is still screwing over his uncle Aurelio. So he sends a redshirt and some goons to follow Vitaminas and company back from a grocery run in town; Vitaminas notices the tail, and ends up taking the goons out before dragging the redshirt off to meet his boss. Redshirt tries to suck up to Aurelio...for about a minute before Aurelio gives him a gun and one bullet and sends him into the woods. He's going bowhunting again...and he inevitably finds the guy and sticks him with three arrows before getting Victor's master plan to take out BPN out of him. Aurelio decides to leave Redshirt out there for the woodland critters to snack on, but since he still has the gun and that bullet, he decides to spare them the trouble and kills himself.

Now that Aurelio knows what Victor's up to, he decides he needs reinforcements. So he hops in a helicopter and zips over to the condo or whatever of Dalvio "Engineer" Navarrete, still looking like evil Balki, and his boo Tata. They're semi-retired too, just kicking around in their spectacularly gaudy condo (let's be honest, we all know Tata decorated that place), but Balki already knew Aurelio was coming thanks to Tata's son Ismael...and why. He's down with stopping Victor, too.

Ismael, by the way, is still Aurelio's lieutenant. He's also apparently running an IT center somewhere on the ranch, which Aurelio shows off to his visitor Roberto Tapia (who's also around, IIRC, when Aurelio sends Redshirt off for his second hunt of the day; all righty then, Roberto). Ismael also checks in with Aurelio's...sixth?...ex Esperanza, who's now hanging out in Puerto Vallarta and still occasionally helping with money issues. (Esperanza's last BF, ex-ambassador Jorge Salazar, is established as still being with the DEA; last time we saw him, though, he was in L.A.)
 

El Señor de los Cielos: martes (3)

And with Tijeras oddly absent and unmentioned in-show (last we saw of him he was being arrested), La Felina is the last gal standing of the late Feyo Aguilera's cartel. She's still in prison (the same women's prison as Garcia, of course), and when she's not beating down some Colombian redshirt who wants to shank her in the shower she's bitching at Emiliana's mom Lourdes because Emiliana has deviated from the plan and hasn't gotten her out of prison yet. Lourdes in turn bitches to Emiliana about this, and Emiliana declares that "it's not the right time." See, Emiliana? You went full Monica. Never go full Monica.

And while allllll this other crap is going on, a band of no-name thugs robs a bank and escapes, though one of their guys gets wounded in the process. They decide to hide out at the first kindasorta safe haven they can find: a church run by nuns. One of the nuns, however, is very familiar--especially when she's not cowed at all by the thugs. Dona Alba Casillas is now, apparently, Sister Alba...but her fork-this-I've-seen-worse attitude is still strong as ever, since she manages to snag a kitchen knife and lure one of the goons into her bedroom before getting the drop on him and slitting his throat.

Alba instantly becomes the most awesome nun not played by Sally Field after this when she pops open a big wooden chest and breaks out a huge suitcase. Yup, Alba has a go-bag; clothes, a big pile of cash, a shotgun that has to come in handy later, and a cellphone which turns out to be dead. She quickly breaks out a USB charger and charges the phone just enough to place an emergency call to Aurelio (judging from his initial response to the call, it certainly looks like they haven't been in touch often if at all during her exile courtesy Feyo).

Aurelio gets the call, however, while he and Balki and his guys are attacking the building Victor's using for his planned missile attack--and this occurs well after Aurelio contacts BPN himself informing him of that possible hit on him. BPN, naturally, gets Rivero on it--and so Rivero and his troops almost literally show up out of forking nowhere on the roof of this building, and Rivero finally gets his first glimpse of the indeed-still-alive Aurelio...
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS"

Bill C: I'm assuming Omar was elected President in 2012 according to your recap & he's in his 3rd year in office.

His BUJI wife, Paloma is a BRAT & the way he grabbed like that, I kinda smirked. I know it's wrong to see him man-handle her like that, but she deserved it!

 

I had to doublecheck off my tweets, and I'm still fuzzy on that specific timeframe; BPN was elected President during the third season of ESDLC, which I think does loosely place it in 2012 (the narcoverse in general does sort of mirror real life, if through a funhouse mirror at times, but it's bonkers about mentioning dates and temporal mechanics in general).

As for Bizarro Gaviota: she's a mess, absolutely, but it's more in reaction to everybody manipulating her and her environment. Let alone BPN's ongoing affair with Rutila, who was chief architect of her and BPN's original showmance in the first place.
 

Bill C: The producers should've let BPN (ROFLOL at his nickname) marry Rutila, making her First Lady instead.

But NOPE! I'm guessing they needed a BUJI woman like Bizarro Gaviota (LOL) to be First Lady. From my opinion of her on last night's episode, she likes to SHOP a LOT!

 

Jenni Rivera: Mariposa de Barrio

2 minute sneak peak with english captions, here,

http://www.nbcumv.com/news/video-take-look-exclusive-sneak-peek-jenni-rivera-mariposa-de-barrio-series-set-premiere?network=33144

 

Deb: They're doing another TN about the late Jenni Rivera ?

OMG!
 

"EL SENOS DE LOS CIELOS"

Bold Prediction: President Omar Talen (AKA BPN) survives the explosion, but I do NOT expect First Lady BUJI Paloma AKA Bizarro Gaviota to survive.
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS":

Bill C: I'm looking forward to your recap from Wednesday night.


 

Between the ongoing wonky CC3 and being partially tuned out due to a cellphone issue this is probably going to be (kinda) short...

El Señor de los Cielos: miercoles

So we open on Rivero and his unit still in a standoff with Aurelio on that rooftop, with Aurelio shouting that he's actually trying to save Rivero's boss and Rivero shouting that he won't let him kill the President. Since we're still not sure how the fork Rivero got up there in the first place, we're just going to handwave the inevitable shootout after this--even when it wings Rivero in the arm and, shrewdly on his part, in the bulletproof vest he was wearing under his shirt.

Aurelio, Balki, and company make their way downstairs through the building, finally running into and mowing down various members of Victor's gang, while Victor himself is on the phone to his rocket launcher crew waiting for the right time to give the fire order. That time, inevitably, is when President Bizarro Pena Nieto comes out onto the balcony of the National Palace and is doing the whole "Viva Mexico!" bit...and it's almost literally one second after Rocket Launcher Guy gets taken out by Aurelio. (Assistant Launcher Guy, who has spent all his time directly behind the launcher and likely would have been killed the minute it went off, gets whacked seconds before this.) The rocket goes off, but zips over the Palace and detonates in the middle of the Dia de la Independencia fireworks...but not before BPN notices it and has a brief "Oh, fork, Aurelio was right" moment.

Team Aurelio--at this point him, Balki, Ismael, Vitaminas, and some redshirts--makes it way back up to another part of the roof to escape from Team Rivero, and since the only way out is to get to another building across an alleyway we get more of the VFX budget used up as they walk across a girder to get to it. (Balki gets the likely inevitable falls-off-but-gets-saved near-miss, while the redshirts sacrifice themselves holding Team Rivero back.) In the end, Aurelio and company end up escaping through what appears to be a series of underground catacombs.

Victor, after having his mini-crybaby freakout over his plan being dashed and getting dragged via cellphone by Aurelio about it (Assistant Launcher Guy dropped his phone when he got whacked), comes up with another cunning plan--and perhaps a smarter one than the original--to get rid of BPN. We'll come back to that.

Rivero, as far as I could tell, finally gets to go "I told you so!" to BPN about Aurelio being alive (which BPN has continuously denied for ever). BPN dismisses it in general and insists (?) Rivero find the people that tried to kill him; Rivero later makes a call to Jorge Salazar and asks for the DEA's help with all this. Salazar's down with that.

Over at the Reclusorio Feminino (Women's Detention, i.e. Prison), Felina tries and fails to get some intel out of the girl who tried to shank her. She then tries to cozy up to Garcia, who apparently enjoys some sort of protection and perks in prison (hey, she gets to eat her own breakfast alone!), but Garcia actually says she doesn't want anything to do with trash like her. Felina then conveniently gets her own perk on and gets a cellphone from another inmate so she can call Emiliana and blast her again for not getting her out of prison, before hitting her with an ultimatum: get her out of prison tomorrow, before she gets extradited to Colombia, or Felina blabs to Aurelio about Emiliana's agenda.
 

El Señor de los Cielos: miercoles (2)

Emiliana, at least up to that point, is utterly and borderline insanely over said agenda. Beforehand, when she pays a visit to Lourdes, she tells Lourdes to take all the money they'd accumulated and just go off somewhere. Emiliana can't go through with the plan; she just wants to marry Aurelio, and not for revenge...but for love. Lourdes is so over that idea she's in orbit, complete with flashing the scar from her bullet wound to her daughter (niece? I can never remember this one) and declaring "The man you love did this to me!" Finally Lourdes hits her where it hurts, though: she plays the one card all ESDLC viewers know, that Aurelio truly loves only one woman--Monica. Emiliana's subsequent bitchface isn't nearly as epic as it needs to be, but since she's running around in painted-on pants she gets a pass.

Rutila, meanwhile, does pretty much nothing of immediate relevance. She flirts with and bangs some guy working for her, and makes a recycling joke when he asks if this can become a thing.

Monica Watch: still in a coma, but she has some sort of cardiac event in front of Isidro. Ramon, loyal henchman as always, is the one to whisk him away.

And that new plan of Victor's? He has one of his goons disguised as a soldier stationed along the path of a presidential motorcade the day after the Dia de la Independencia, and said goon plants a bomb in a trashcan before the motorcade passes and before viewers show up streetside. So as BPN and Bizarro Gaviota make their way wherever (complete with a hilarious intermediate bitchface from the latter to the former between waves to the public), they indeed pass that can and a big bunch of people around it--and Victor triggers the bomb by cellphone. And it indeed goes off, knocking over the President's SUV with the First Couple in it...
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS"

Bill C: My Bold Prediction is that BPN survives the blast, but Bizarro Gaviota does NOT!

1.) Poor Security along the motorcade route. I was like, the POTUS has bigger security detail than this ?

2.) I did enjoy the bitchface between BPN & Bizarro Gaviota inside the Presidential SUV. Like I said before, Rutila should've been First Lady, but I guess the politics would've been over the top on that one LOL.

3.) Victor better pray that Aurelio does NOT whack him when Aurelio finds out about the explosion in downtown DF.
 

El Señor de los Cielos

thanks Bill C for the recaps!
I'm not watching but I always enjoy reading your posts.

(I've actually been enjoying Centauro, which should be ending soon)

 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS"

Deb: You're missing out on the 5th Season. I'll be watching it again tonight.

Body Count is like 600+ because there's way too many to count.