Caray, Caray!

Rubi

I’m up to episode 22 and depending on how crazy work is this week it might not be until the weekend before I can watch the rest so I will recap what I’ve seen so far.

First things first, Cayetano fared pretty well up to episode 20, but he got transferred to big boy prison after that. He was pretty impressive in giving the cops attitude too when he first got arrested. Basically, he told them he did nothing and knows nothing and investigating was their job not his. This guy is pretty much always impressive except in his irrational jealousy of the boss and going off on Cristina because of it. Jealousy of Don Whatever-his-name also causes him to turn down the lawyer that he tries to provide because he doesn’t want anything from the man he thinks is trying to steal his woman! Speaking of Cristina, she pretty much immediately knew Rubi set Cayetano up, and she stood by her man and gave Rubi hell. She also started to keep Fernanda from Rubi.

Rubi’s mom also knew Rubi set Cayetano up (the cop told Cristina that it was Rubi’s suggestion that they look into Cayetano) and she gets into a huge, horrible fight with Rubi, basically tells her she’s a disgrace and an embarrassment. After the fight, mom has another medical crisis this time she doesn’t survive!!! With mom dead, Rubi blames herself. 19 years later, Borris (the doorman/butler/whatever he is) suggests to Carla/Fernanda that Rubi never got over her mother’s death and it changed her.

Carla/Fernanda is torn – on the one hand she is angry and wants to leave. She is disgusted by what Rubi did to Cayetano who she clearly still loves and she is ready to believe Rubi is irredeemable but you can tell that a part of her wants to believe that Rubi has regrets too… Carla does try to leave but Rubi shows up at her hotel and basically orders her to move into the house with her instead to finish the interview. She makes it clear that Carla will never be able to publish her article without her consent. After they arrive at the house, Carla/Fernanda realizes she’s more or less a hostage. There’s no internet, no phone, no way to contact the outside world and her car is MIA!!! This leaves viewerville, to wonder if Rubi now suspects that Carla is Fernanda? Or is Rubi just that CRAZY???

Unable to contact his wife for a couple of days, Carla’s husband Frank comes looking for her, but he’s accosted and jumped and left for dead. It’s unclear whether Rubi is involved in that, but she and Borris seem more concerned about making sure he’s not found dead on the property than they are in his welfare. Borris is attempting to save him (maybe?) but they refuse to take him to a hospital and a doctor is coming for a house call….

Hector is still determined to get to Rubi and keeps popping up wherever he can even though his lawyer keeps telling him not to. Turns out Hector is a junior (at least if not III or IV) and Hector Senior was a jealous violent man too – Hector junior’s parents died via murder-suicide when mom tried to leave dad. Dad thought mom was cheating, it’s unclear whether or not she actually was or if Dad was irrationally jealous. Hector knows that dad was wrong, but he doesn’t think he can avoid ending up in the same scenario.

Meanwhile, after mom’s death Rubi just wants to lay in bed and cry, but Lucas wants her to get pretty and smile for the camera. To be fair, I’m not really sure if Lucas wants her to rally for her own wellbeing or if he truly is just focused on his bottom line but either way he comes off as only caring about the business. He forces Rubi to go to some soiree where she meets a prince!! A literal Prince! We all know what happens next, Lucas is cast aside for prince charming! Now both Hector and Lucas are trying to get Rubi back while she’s sleeping in a prince’s bed! But I think Lucas just wants to win…. or control? He doesn’t seem to be in love. Really Hector doesn’t seem to be in love either, just tormented.

 

Rubi part 2

And since that’s not enough crazy, we still have Alejandro. The undisputed love of Rubi’s life. Well Ale managed to get Sonia pregnant! He proposed, she accepted! He ran and told his BFF Maribel about it, and she wasn’t thrilled although she pretended to be. Rubi found out about it (I forget how, maybe Mari told Loreto and Loreto told Rubi?) and has a fit!!! She meets up with Ale and seduces him! He once again falls willingly and eagerly into bed with Rubi and there’s a camera! I thought at first one of her crazy men was taping her, but she was filming herself and she later gave the tape to Sonia as a baby/wedding gift!!! (eek) Heartless!!! But then Sonia deserves better than a man who would sleep with his ex, days after proposing marriage to her – not to mention whatever is going on with his BFF Maribel…. who is more than the BFF but also got to hear all about the Rubi backslide from Ale because he needed to confide in his BFF!!! LOL

So, Sonia leaves Ale after seeing the video! Rubi heartlessly rubbed that video in her face too! Sonia not only left the relationship – she just plain left that parts unknown and is planning to raise her child alone, she left a note telling Ale not to look for her. She can’t stay because if she did, she would hate him forever… I don’t get people who do this, break up the relationship, absolutely, but don’t take the child from their father!!! As far as the relationship ending part, Maribel was fully team Sonia on that when Ale told her about Rubi showing Sonia the vid. Ale tried to deflect and tried to blame Rubi and Maribel was all ‘sorry buddy, but you have to take responsibility for your choices, Sonia is never going to forgive you, and she shouldn’t!!! Go girl! Al said ‘but we are having a child’ and Maribel said it’s precisely for the sake of the child that Sonia shouldn’t stay in a bad relationship – which is true, but she shouldn’t cut Al out of the kid’s life either.

Mari also had a heart to heart with Hector, which didn’t look fun but was closure I suppose? She said, she’s decided not to hold grudges, and she doesn’t want to let the past destroy her. Those two said goodbye and it felt like a goodbye forever, which granted is appropriate, but also felt a little serious. Mari next attempted a ‘reconciliation’ with Rubi, but it seemed clear she didn’t expect that to work, and she recorded their conversation. So now, Mari has audio of Rubi saying some not at all kind things about disabled and ugly people that wouldn’t go over well on social media. She seems torn between wanting to move on with life like she told Hector and wanting to give Rubi a taste of her own medicine! Which is understandable since Rubi’s misdeeds have included: stealing her fiancée, setting up a robbery at her house, and telling the whole world that Mari’s father is having an affair with her (Rubi’s) sister!!! In the end, the desire to give Rubi a taste of her own medicine wins and Mari turns the recording over to the reporter (Keke?) who publishes it, and the media goes wild – but they will have something better to talk about almost immediately.

Before we move on though, let’s talk a little about the Mari’s daddy is having an affair with Cristina rumor – now public accusation! Because Mari’s mom (sorry about the mom and dad thing but even after 22 episodes I can’t remember their names) is going crazy!!! Dad told her he’s bored in their marriage and she’s throwing a fit and throwing fuel on the fire, talking to KeKe, making Cristina look like she’s just like Rubi and a husband stealer! And it’s really not fair, since Cristina hasn’t done one thing to deserve it. Between her jealous co-worker and Mrs. Don Whatever-his-name is and her sister getting her fiancé thrown in jail for a crime he didn’t commit this chick can’t catch a break!

 

Rubi part 3

Hector also seems like he wants to move on, he even went to say goodbye to Ale. He let go of his office staff – giving his long-suffering assistant some hard-earned severance and acknowledged that he wasn’t the easiest boss. He says he’s leaving Mexico to get away from the madness but in the end, he just can’t escape his demons, and he commits suicide instead. He set himself and his car on fire! I guess he escaped the circle of murder-suicide by skipping straight to suicide. Hector is the big news that distracts everyone from Rubi’s ugly talk about disabled people. But he also left a note that said: ‘Ask Rubi’, this is going to create more drama, especially for Rubi’s new prince who seems to be less enchanted than the others – and he’s very scandal and drama adverse. He’s not yet ready to walk away, but it seems clear that if Rubi becomes a problem she will be sent packing.

When Mari and Ale hear about Hector’s suicide they are both devasted by it. The briefly argue about whether or not to blame Rubi but end up drinking instead. And drinking and drinking. It is still possible that Mari has a drinking issue, but it doesn’t seem like the writers have committed to making Mari spiral. Some episodes she seems to be falling into a bottle and others she seems strong and mentally healthy. Anyway, back to Mari and Ale, none of Ale’s bad behavior towards Sonia (that Mari heard about in detail) has done anything to deter Mari’s ardor of Ale and a drunk Mari finally kisses Ale! He doesn’t back away from the kiss either, or the dance that follows but he seems worried later…

I think we got the answer to one question I’ve been wondering about for a while, which is how did Rubi end up with Borris if she left Lucas? And the answer is, she poached him!!! Borris shows up at the prince’s house to bring Rubi a suitcase she left at Lucas’s and she’s so happy to see him! It’s clear that Borris too is smitten Rubi, though not necessarily in a romantic way, it’s the first time I’ve seen a hint of the devotion that obviously kept him by her side for 19 years. Rubi states she’d like to steal him from Lucas and even though he hasn’t been decided as of ep 22, I’m thinking that must have happened. The other thing that happened, is there was some Asian business guy (in business with both Lucas and Rubi) who had been trying to force Rubi into some event and a stay at her house, but Rubi felt he was shady so she was avoiding him but dude tricked her into a meeting and had her cornered in an empty restaurant with a bunch of thugs/bodyguards. Rubi thought fast and went live to try to save herself, but Borris who had driven Rubi to the meeting also intervened with a shotgun and got her out of there!! So now Rubi wants him with her even more because he saved her life.

In the 19 years later timeline, it doesn’t seem like anything that has happened changed Rubi’s values any because when she takes a break from the past, she’s always telling Carla/Fernanda that she should use her beauty more, have more ambition, aspire to more… she doesn’t seem to realize it never made her happy! Also, Frank woke up, but Borris declared that the doctor says he MUST rest and sedated him immediately, so Carla/Fernanda isn’t even aware of it. It’s an interesting dynamic and I don’t know how they are going to unravel this mystery in just a couple more episodes. The thing is Rubi seems unrepentant, but I was thinking she’s admitting to all her misdeeds, and she doesn’t have to. 19 years ago, when both Cristina and her mom accused her of sending Cayetano to jail, she denied it, she said she didn’t have anything to do with it – but when she’s talking to Carla/Fernanda she admits that she did it. Why admit it now and in an interview? It’s a still unanswered question and a momentarily distraction because unfortunately, there’s more bad news to report.

 

Rubi part 4

Like I said, Cayetano faired pretty well up until ep 20 but then things changed and now Cayetano is dead too… He was murdered by his cellmate in prison. It doesn’t appear to have been any kind of outside ploy or plot; his cellmate was just insane. And because it’s a novela, it happened on exactly the day that he was going to be released from jail because Cristina had found the proof that he was innocent! After news spread of his death, Rubi tries to come see Cristina, but she gets completely rejected by Cristina and she tells Carla/Fernanda that this was the day she became the enemy of Cristina – so I believe this was probably the permanent breach between sisters, as it should have been!

This part of the story is where episode 22 ends, but it ends in the present/19 years later timeline and Fernanda reacts very emotionally to the telling of it. She still can’t accept that Rubi did this to a good man like Cayetano and says that she killed him. Rubi doesn’t take responsibility for that, she admits that she set him up like I said above, but she says she had no idea that he would be killed in prison and that that wasn’t her fault. Fernanda isn’t so easily bought off and makes a sarcastic statement about how difficult it must be to imagine something bad happening in a Mexican prison – it’s not like they are dangerous places to send innocent people! LOL Rubi says that she was just trying to save her sister and her niece from poverty, and she repeats ‘I was trying to save you, Fernandita’ and grabs her niece’s face; confirming my suspicion that she knew who Carla was all along or at least had figured it out by the time she kidnapped her to come live at her house.

 

RUBI

Darcy, this is sensational!

As I can't watch, I had many nagging questions many of which you answered tonight. Turns out, I remembered little of the tragic events you so amazingly captured.

Hector was obsessed with Rubi and/or the idea of her. I believe Lucas just wanted to possess her. The prince was blinded (temporarily) but I don't believe any of the three truly loved her.

I'd forgotten Ale was a cad and slept with Rubi. What she did to Sonia was unforgiveable.

In the original, Hector died in a car accident. I knew his death was different here but I didn't recall it was by suicide.

I knew Cayetano ended up dying but couldn't remember exactly what happened. Rubi destroyed so many lives, especially Cristina's. In effect, she did kill her mother for which at least she did feel some remorse which she didn't for Cayetano.

The one thing I did remember was that Rubi knew (at some point) Carla was Fernanda...

It was so generous and kind of you to capture all of this. Thank you!

Diana