Caray, Caray!

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS"

Bill C: If you're still around, looking forward to seeing the full recap coming up tomorrow on tonight's episode.

Juanita: Everything doing Ok ?
 

El Señor de los Cielos (2)

thanks so much Bill C. for the wonderful update of the plot lines for this (posted at the end the previous Telemundo page), this really helps me tag along.

 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS":

Deb: Looks like the FBI will need to join in bringing down Aurelio.
 

El Señor de los Cielos: lunes

This relatively plot-light episode opens on a refrito of Aurelio's merry band sneaking onto the grounds of the hotel Team Victor had staked out in Mazatlan, and Baby Girl going to Victor's room to wake him up. Victor, while a grumpy just-woke guy, is apparently in a good mood; he offers Baby Girl one of his two bedwarmers (yup, one of them is the zombified blonde girl) as a morning pick-me-up. Baby Girl's down with this, and in she goes to make her pick as Victor hangs out in the doorway with just a bit of a leer on...

...as Aurelio breaks out a rifle with a scope and draws a bead on Victor's body, and then his head, and then infinity later (seriously, this gets dragged out across two scene changes) his body again. And then he finally takes the shot, nailing Victor in the back and knocking him back into the room. This is the cue for Aurelio's team to open up on Victor's goons, as Baby Girl goes to check on her boss--the bullet went through, she says, but he's bleeding badly. We're going to come back to this in a minute.

Meanwhile, Monica is on her way to Los Angeles. While in Colombia she got a line on a new US connection, who's actually about to get out of prison; she's off to meet his lawyer. The connection's name, according to Work Hubby Ramon, is Tony Pastrana--and the minute Monica hears that name she sighs. Turns out Tony, according to her, was part of Aurelio's Nicaraguan forest connection (way back in S2, IIRC)...and Aurelio was responsible somehow for him ending up in prison. Once again, Aurelio forks her over without even trying.

And on cue we see Tony in jail with his smarmy-looking lawyer, Anton, rocking some smarm of his own and some epic helmet hair as he's working out before picking a nice monogrammed shirt from a selection parked close by. Helmet Hair wants to look good on his way out of prison, though he makes the point that after that he won't be wearing anything for about three days; he wants Anton to find him a lady, preferably a model. And, he adds, he also wants to meet whatever representative of the Robles cartel is coming to meet Anton; since they were close to Aurelio, Job Two for him post-prison is finding Aurelio. Yup, he's got a grudge. Uh oh.

So inevitably, once Monica gets to L.A., she meets with Anton--who wasn't expecting a woman--and gives him the required I'm-the-boss-I-got-this speech, and Anton somewhat hesitantly tells her that Helmet Hair wants to vet her personally. And alone. (For a split second, the camera goes back to Monica right after this and Ramon, in the background, has a "Wait, what?" look on his face. Stay with your woman, man!)

- Colorado: Esperanza and Zoe are bonding a bit over food. Zoe, still a little cautious after banging, asks "Martha" if she's always been gay; Esperanza admits she likes men too, and that she is/was basically recovering from relationships with two "complicated" men, but then lies her pretty ass off when she then declares she's not a sex fiend with a straight face. Esperanza continues to flirt with Zoe while revealing that she's had an idea: she had to leave her old life behind, which included her business career, but why can't she restart it in Colorado? She's going to take Zoe and Weed Zone to the top. Zoe for her part looks interested in...well, all of this. I, for my part, have not yet started Zoe's deathwatch.

- Back in Mexico City Rutila and Alba, more so Alba, are still bent out of shape over both the Aurelio/Victor thing and Rivero now digging into Rutila's old meth-dealing salad days. Alba insists that Rutila not only not go back to that, but also to distance herself from Monica for her own sake; Rutila's perfectly fine with the former, but not entirely down with the latter.
 

El Señor de los Cielos: lunes (2)

Meanwhile, Sebastian is checking in with Salazar by phone from his pad. I apparently missed him eavesdropping on Rutila in the last episode or so, because Sebastian tells Salazar he definitely heard her refer to a "Monica." Salazar is kind of happy about this, since the only Monica he knows of is Monica Robles...who was believed to be dead. (Part of the ongoing misinformation campaign south of the border about her coma, since "her body was never found"? I got nothing.) Salazar relays this to Director or Whatever Colon, right before he gets a call from Rivero--who had just dispatched some forces to Mazatlan, having heard about the shootout down there--and when he finds out that Victor's forces were involved, he guesses that Aurelio has to be there and suddenly the DEA's going to Mexico.

- Rivero found out about the shootout, by the way, via phone call while he's checking in with Garcia in her prison office...with a side order of kvetching about Carla Uzcategui, whom Garcia is now a fan of. Carla's a tough and fearless reporter, according to her, and potentially a great asset. Rivero calls Carla a bitch (thanks, CC3), particularly since she straight up taped part of their supposedly off-the-record chat a few eps back; and Garcia basically agrees too, but otherwise he agrees with the assessment. This is about where the phone call about Mazatlan occurs, and before Rivero bails Garcia then asks for probably the umpteenth time if Rivero's going to get her out of prison; she really misses her job, and she wants to be out there with him again. Rivero takes a moment to reassure his boo that he's doing everything he can to get her released, and they share a kiss before he heads out. You might be SOL, Castillo, but it's still early yet.

Okay, now back to that shootout--which is punctuated by the ESDLC tradition of Aurelio crank-calling a bleeding, woozy Victor in the middle of it to taunt him about not killing him out of respect for his abuela Alba. The rest of the conversation goes about as expected insult-wise before Victor passes out...and drops his phone. Baby Girl, Skinny and Victor's other chief henchman Filemon take over arming Victor's troops and getting to some sort of stalemate with Aurelio's forces before they start hearing sirens indicating the law is on the way. Aurelio initially thinks that Victor just might have kicked off in mid-call, and is still typically gung-ho for taking out all of Victor's guys (with a brief detour to Grenas the Techie, who is apparently tagging along for no good damn reason, and arming him because he'd never fired a gun before--nope, still doesn't here), but after the sirens get a bit louder Balki the Engineer manages to talk him down and into a hasty retreat before the Marines show up.

Said retreat ends up with Aurelio's ubiquitous black SUVs ("Sandoval GMC! Serving greater Mexico for over twenty years!") being chased by two SUVs full of Navy guys shooting at them. Alba chooses this moment to call and check in on Ismael, wondering why he hadn't called her yet from on the road, and Aurelio hijacks the phone; Alba demands to know what's going on with him and Victor, and Aurelio tells her that "things ended the only way they could have ended" before hanging up on her. Right after this, Balki springs a trap on the Navy--he's had a cargo truck lying in wait along their escape route, and said truck pops up and crashes into one of the Navy vehicles, stopping them both. This lets Team Aurelio get the drop on them and kill them all.
 

El Señor de los Cielos: lunes (3)

Back in Mexico City, Alba quietly freaks out over what Aurelio told her. She tries to call Victor...and gets an unidentified redshirt soldier, who tells her that the owner of the phone is dead right before putting it in an evidence bag. Rutila pops up at this point, wondering what's wrong, and Alba shakily tells her that she thinks the inevitably finally happened--Aurelio indeed killed Victor. Rutila starts freaking out in her own way about this, just as Sebastian pops up...

As for Victor? Hell no he's not dead, but it's not looking good since he's basically bleeding out. (Seriously, Victor just needs to stick an onion on that wound. It worked for Indio Amaro, it can work for you too.) During Team Victor's escape from the hotel, Skinny sends Filemon off to go find some medical assistance for Victor--and he ends up hijacking some poor doctor and nurse from a nearby hospital, though he's shrewd enough to order them to bring some "universal" (typically, AIUI, type O) blood with them. And right after Skinny and Baby Girl deposit a twitchy, bloody Victor on a couch in one of his safehouses, Filemon and the medical staff show up and at gunpoint they start an emergency blood transfusion...
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS"

Bill C: Good recap. I ROFLOL at your reference to Skinny Girl & Baby Girl.

1.) Rivero still digging up dirt on EVERYONE. I've already started my Deathwatch on this guy since he seems hell-bent on bringing down BPN so that he can be the President (like that'll ever happen LOL).

2.) Body Count likely around 6.7 million ? with the way the graphic deaths have been going around.

3.) Would Rivero really expose his Baby Momma, Ritula as part of the international Drug Narco conspiracy to the authorities ?

 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS"

Bill C: I do NOT see Zoe making it alive as well because Aurelio has spies EVERYWHERE. He's the B613 of the World!


 

I'm still inclined to think Rivero has to survive to break the tradition, so to speak, of high-level officials dying in some way related to Aurelio...but this show does delight in killing or torturing its good things (although after last year it's now a ways behind Señora Acero in that regard). Which brings us to Zoe, who might as well be wearing a big cardboard "COLLATERAL DAMAGE" sign. I don't think they'll kill Esperanza, but somehow her past has to catch up to her in a big way in Colorado.

El Señor de los Cielos:

As usual, just one...okay, two more things. One: while it was ultimately a heat-of-the-moment thing, during the shootout one of Victor's bedwarmers--a dark-haired girl, later revealed to be named Melissa--gets deliberately shot by Aurelio while trying to run to Victor, and Aurelio taunted Victor about it. (This might weirdly be more important for the fact that for once Telemundo didn't blob out Melissa's very scantily-clad derriere.)

Two: Bizarro Gaviota popped up for almost exactly forty-five seconds when she dropped in on Bizarro Pena Nieto at his office. BPN had just finished bitching to Mayra (who's sort of the Ramon of the political side of this show, and thus I will lose my natural damn mind if she ever gets whacked) about the Cancun scandal when BG showed up and basically went "I want to leave you," and BPN in turn went "Fork you, I've got a call to make, get out." That call was to Jaime Rosales, who was happily chatting up a lady in the Condo of Iniquity; his mood definitely went downhill when BPN lit into him for letting this whole thing get out of control (although CC3 won the night when BPN declared that Jaime had gone from "Natural Son" to "natural son of a bitch"), and when Jaime said that it was cool since he and his dad had talked things out BPN hit him with a threat. Either Jaime made the whole scandal go away, or he'd be arrested.
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS":

Bill C: Bizarro Gaviota wants to leave the high lifestyle as First Lady ? No way!
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS":

Bill C: Looking forward to seeing the recap from last night.

Deb: You're having fun ?
 

Other than a brief period during the first couple of weeks of El Chema and the house thing from the last season of this show, Steve, Paloma's not really been shown as being that much into the Primera Dama lifestyle. OTOH, a big part of that is/was her finding out that her marriage to BPN was arranged; she apparently found out about the Rutila affair sometime after that, and then along came the Cancun thing. As much of a brat as she's seemed, Bizarro Gaviota's definitely got cause to bitch out.

El Señor de los Cielos: martes

Mostly just bullet points here, since apparently my main TV has an issue with CC3 (strangely, my other TV doesn't seem to--figures).

- Team Aurelio gets back to Mexico City after their outing in Mazatlan and crashes at Tata and Balki's Gaudy Condo for a bit. Grenas the Techie, who according to Ismael "had left something running" while they were out, informs Aurelio that he's apparently completely broke at this point--all his accounts and businesses were seized. After a split-second where it almost looks like Aurelio's going to blow Grenas's head off, and the inevitable shouty freakout, Aurelio actually takes this pretty darn well; he (somewhat sarcastically, IMO) asks Tata if she'd be interested in some of his art stash, since she did a good job decorating the condo. Tata's actually kind of down with this. In addition, Aurelio decides to liquidate most of his fleet of aircraft and orders Ismael to call in all his debts--by force if necessary--before arranging to fly down to Cuba to call in a favor with a thus far unidentified acquaintance.

- Alba and Rutila cope with Victor's "death" in their own ways--Alba lights a candle to the Virgin, while Rutila and Sebastian end up at a secluded lake with a bottle of booze. Sebastian, basically playing the Esperanza to Rutila's Salazar (and I'm kicking myself for not realizing that a week ago), tries to comfort her; Rutila notes that for a while Victor was like a brother to her, which cues a flashback all the way back to season one when Turco and Ximena had bailed with the kids in tow and Turco was being a jerk to Rutila. They drink, and kiss a bit, and that's about it.

- Rivero, Salazar, and Colon all end up in Mazatlan. This is pretty much just so Rivero can tell them about his Ignacio-esque scorched earth plan to take down Bizarro Pena Nieto (as well as for Salazar to finally tell him that Esperanza's in witness protection), if somewhat kicked off by a frantic phone call from BPN demanding that Rivero keep a lid on the entire affair. The media can't find out what really happened in Mazatlan. Salazar, somewhat shrewdly, tells Rivero that this is admittedly a dangerous game he's playing; if he indeed goes after BPN via his connections to the cartels, the cartels may well just ignore BPN and come after him. (FWIW, the last actual hit attempt on Rivero if memory serves was right at the end of season three. We're probably due.)

Oddly, this also marks the second time I've noticed this season (as per CC3) that someone, Rivero here, has apparently referred indirectly to President Trump. The show's definitely jacked up its own temporal mechanics, unless it literally skipped forward two years and I missed it.
 

El Señor de los Cielos: martes (2)

At the same time, Carla Uzcategui and her assistant are discussing Carla's chat with Rivero and some information he sent her later (I think this got elaborated on via Telemundo's Doble Accion app, oddly enough; he apparently sent her part of an official file on Aurelio Casillas). Carla's definitely interested in the bombshell she's now privy to, but declares that they have to verify everything is true before they can use it.

And Bizarro Pena Nieto himself, after ordering Mayra to set up an emergency intelligence meeting, gets a phone call from his lord and master. BPN is basically "Is this what you wanted, you bastard?" and Aurelio is mostly "Shut up. Shutten up."

- Tony Pastrana, whose helmet hair looks less helmet-ish than in the previous episode, spends part of his last day in prison doing two things: straight up strangling to death a fellow inmate named Frank for something that I think had to indirectly do with Aurelio, and calling his lawyer Anton to check up on his contact with the Robles cartel. When he finds out Monica Robles herself showed up, he orders Anton to give her the royal treatment until he can get there.

Monica and Anton, thus, end up at Tony's house in Los Angeles. Anton tells her to make herself at home before taking his leave, but Monica's shrewd enough to check in with Work Hubby Ramon; he's still at the airfield, but at least he found an SUV for Monica's guys to get around in. Monica tells him that she can take care of herself, but for him to stay alert.
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS":

Bill C: Bizarro Gaviota finds out her marriage is a political prop ROFLOL.

Whoever her parents are, I'm assuming they're super wealthy & politically connected.

My thoughts:

1.) Salazar as the Voice of Reason when he tries to tell Rivero to be very careful in trying to bring down BPN.

2.) Aurelio is BPN's Pimp ROFLOL.

3.) The producers keep screwing the timeline up. When Season 5 started, it was 2015. Now it's 2017 ? WTH ?
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS":

Bill C: Looking forward to seeing the recap.

HALIMACANDY: You're missing out on the fun.

Deb: Having fun yet ?
 

Telemundo

Hey I am up to my eyeballs tying to keep up with querida and don't get me started onJenni for goddess sakes


But thanks thanks thank you for recaps that help a bunch!

 

El Señor de los Cielos: miercoles

- Okay, so Victor's gone from the croaking-like-a-frog "I'm not quite dead..." stage to the "I'm getting better...ow..." stage, though at least he's bedridden for the entire episode. Skinny, Baby Girl and Filemon spend most of it hovering around him and being glad he's survived, while Victor's shrewd enough at this point to guess that Aurelio probably thinks he's dead. He can use that--Team Victor will keep a low profile until it's time to surprise everybody. In the meantime, his priority is now getting his nightclub, the Dandy Wolf, up and running--and that job he assigns to Filemon.

- The guy that Aurelio was flying down to Havana to chat with? Turns out he's Penumbra, another character from back in the show's day (S2 or S3, I think), apparently a paramilitary of some sort, and while he's not ecstatic to see Aurelio he does roll out the red carpet for him. Or multicolored, anyway, going off the women we see draped all over Aurelio and Grenas the Techie (amazingly; he apparently winds up with a blonde rocking some big glasses and a rather skimpy bikini) the day after they get to Cuba. Anyway, Aurelio's had his fun and feels good, so he gets down to business: he wants Penumbra to hook him up with 15 tons of drugs (either as a favor or gratis due to their longstanding relationship) so he can get back on his feet.

Penumbra actually isn't down with this. The group he represents, he claims, is out to make peace with the government on top of getting out of the drug game and this wouldn't exactly help them with that. Aurelio isn't having it, so he goes straight for the ultimatum: either Penumbra helps him, or with a single keystroke Grenas sends a recording Aurelio made of all his dealings with him out into the wilds of the Internet. (Grenas hilariously accompanies this with a rather sarcastic finger twirl. I guess being near death in that shootout finally loosened him up.) Penumbra doesn't take kindly to that, and threatens Aurelio in turn with having him killed--after all, Fidel Castro had the Ochoa brothers killed for defying him, so what's capping a narco at this point?

Aurelio almost literally bahs at that. He's already dead, he claims, so he's got nothing to lose. Penumbra sighs in the face of such unassailable logic and says that he needs time to think this over, but Aurelio is okay with that. He's got some business to take care of elsewhere, so he says they'll meet in three days in Bogota and Penumbra can give him his merchandise then. And Team Aurelio is off to the States, while Penumbra grumbles to a redshirt soldier about having to take care of this on the Venezuelan border.

- In Colorado, Esperanza is still talking up taking the Weed Zone to the next level to Zoe. Zoe's initially a little more interested in whether Esperanza is as into her as she's into Esperanza (haven't they known each other for, what, not even a week yet and banged once?), but Esperanza sort of swerves around that and takes Zoe out to what looks like a small park with a pair of big plastic tents on it (I'm assuming this is Zoe's marijuana farm). She then points out the land around it--a farm next door that's having money troubles, and a parcel on the other side owned by two feuding brothers who apparently just want it gone. Esperanza thinks they can buy all the land, expand the marijuana farming, and not just turn a profit in "two harvests" but get rich within five years--well, not Esperanza rich, but rich. Zoe could be a millionaire by then. Zoe's a bit overwhelmed by all this, and I'm just going "Okay, is this really all about Esperanza wanting to do her own thing all over again? The sex is just a perk."
 

El Señor de los Cielos: miercoles (2)

- Speaking of perks, if very obliquely: Ismael, who stayed behind in Mexico City, has a snack and chat with Alba. He's still somewhat bummed about the whole Victor thing, and she's on the verge of crying again throughout all of this, but Ismael notes that the whole thing is making him serious about going to college. He wants out of The Life, which makes Alba a little happier.

A little later Tata shows up to check on Alba, for once sporting a rare non-cleavage-baring outfit, over the whole Victor thing. And Tata goes full Tuti when she asks for champagne and, later, tequila over some coffee.

Anyway. Ismael goes to an unidentified nearby college to sign up for classes, and in the process he runs into a potential teacher--a relatively young and very pretty lady named Paulina Nogales. They end up talking in her office; Paulina's all about getting to know the students who may be taking her class, though she notes that obviously Ismael has money going off his watch and his jacket "that probably cost as much as my car." Ismael gives her the Cliffs Notes version of his backstory growing up with Tata, and that the ability to buy the good stuff came later--and that he'd gladly give it away if he had to. He doesn't like the person he is now, and he wants help changing.

In case you weren't sure, this is where we wonder who's more doomed: Zoe, or Paulina.

- In the previous episode, while still out at Mazatlan, Salazar asked Rivero if he would try to protect Rutila from the DEA's investigation into her and her family. Here, Rivero admits that he loved Rutila and almost gave up his career for her, but then it all fell apart when he found out about her thing with Chema Venegas. So, he says, he's over her. Salazar and Colon are glad to hear it, and they make their exit to take care of something else. Rivero for his part has the inevitable "Okay, I'm really doing this" face for a minute after they leave.

Meanwhile, Rutila and Sebastian are still hanging out at the lake and drinking that booze. Sebastian is still being the understanding novio-to-be, and Rutila's glad--but when he gets a call from Salazar (but doesn't answer) and blows it off as someone bugging him about art, she gets a very brief side-eye going. But he's able to calm her nerves, and they end up kissing, and Rutila doesn't want to think about Victor any more and they end up renting a room for the night at the lake.

The next day, they go back to Sebastian's house...just in time for Salazar and Colon to pop up and go "Surprise, bitch!" Colon for his part, realizing Rutila's there, fakes being an NYC art museum owner who's been bugging Sebastian for some art (Salazar somehow cloaks himself or something) complete with some fawning over Rutila. Sebastian has to go for the double entendre: Rutila, he says, is his "girlfriend" and the woman he's with. Rutila for her part is okay with him actually being her novio, and seals it with a kiss before leaving so Sebastian can take care of his "business."
 

El Señor de los Cielos: miercoles (3)

After Rutila's gone Salazar decloaks and Sebastian quietly freaks out over them being there. They're loving that his attempt to get close to Rutila is working so well, and he's--again channeling S4 Esperanza--still having a crisis of conscience.

- And Monica's still hanging out at Tony Pastrana's house (being the day after she got there, she's changed into another of her 1,0001 legporn-flattering dresses) with Ruben the lawyer when Helmet Hair himself shows up and almost literally opens with "So, you're Monica Robles--the woman who had the kid of the man who sent me to prison. 'Sup?" This conversation stays pretty much at "chilly" and goes as expected, with Monica declaring several times that she's done with all things Casillas--at one point saying that she'd declare war on them if she could--and Helmet Hair going "I'm not sure I trust you, I really hate your ex." Tony is impressed by her spunk, though, so they're likely going to join forces and bang at some point. Still not feeling you yet, Helmet Hair.
 

"EL SENOR DE LOS CIELOS":

Bill C: Enjoyed the part where both Salazar & Colon showed up at Sebastian's face LOL.