Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Life after El Clon: El Mundo de Telemundo
What makes a TN watchable, I’ve decided, are the engaging featured players at its heart. Now that doesn’t make the thing great, only divertido. And using that criterion, Aurora is definitely fun. Sara Maldonado (Aurora), Jorge Luis Pila (Lorenzo, 2010) and Eugenio Siller (Lorenzo 1990, Martín 2010) are easy on the eyes and ears and all know their craft. But they are also all very likeable. What do you all think?
What has happened so far in Aurora?
We’ve been invited into the murky world of cryonics where people deny the finality of death by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their corpses preserved at very low temperatures in the hopes of eventual resuscitation when the cure for their death is readily at hand.
As a cursory Google search will show, this world really does exist. Since the 1960’s, actual versions of Dr. Ponce de León have been selling space in their freezers; and if you can’t afford the deluxe full-body version, they’ll happily welcome you into their heads-only (or even brain-only) bargain basement.
Could it work?
Is it possible to raise the dead, unharmed? From what I’ve read, it’s a very tricky proposition. For one thing, it depends on what you mean by dead. If the holy grail of cryonics is bringing back an intact personality, well, it’s hard to imagine any definition of death that would allow that. If we assume that higher brain function is the first thing lost – the ‘brain death’ that justifies removing organs for donation from a still biologically living donor – how can we expect a ‘brain-dead’ popsicle to be neurologically intact years later? Would you have to anticipate death but not wait for it? That is, would you have to freeze people who were still neurologically intact?
All told, this business of cryopreservation and resuscitation is not totally impossible, theoretically speaking, but the science just isn’t there yet. And when the science eventually catches up with the desire, all those expensive popsicles will likely be out of luck since their antiquated preservation has almost certainly destroyed them.
And yet… and yet… we are in TelenovelaLand where the laws of nature and logic do not apply. Dr. Creepy has raised his lovely daughter from the near dead. It would be the scientific coup of the day and our old friend Augusto Albieri would not have hesitated to take credit for it. But surprisingly, Aurora’s father worries that her life would be blighted if the press were to get wind of her undead status. This leads to three major plot developments:
The latest Big Lie:
Inés and Gustavo (Aurora’s actual parents) tell Blanca (Aurora and Lorenzo’s actual daughter who has been raised to believe she is the daughter of Inés and Gustavo and sister of Aurora) that Aurora had a daughter who was abducted many years ago. Got that? Okay, now she has been found and she will be living at the Ponce de León home. That would make this Beta-Aurora the grandchild of los Ponce de León and Blanca’s niece. Everyone is supposed to believe that Alpha-Aurora is still languishing in the freezer.
The Betrayal:
One of the doctors in the Cryonics facility secretly films the Great Thaw and then sells it to the highest bidder, Eduardo Hutton, wealthy magazine publisher and member of the Ponce de León social circle.
Now Eduardo is a nasty piece of work:
He is married to Vanesa, Alpha-Aurora’s old frenemy and now successful telenovela villain who likes to boast that in real-life, she is worse than the characters she plays on the screen. (And just a glance at her surgically-enhanced enormous ass and lips would be a giveaway to her profession: she looks like a mandrill in estrus decked out in a mini-falda and tacones. She is in the sisterhood of Ivana in STUD and now, Victoria in Eva Luna).
Eduardo can’t understand why the Creepy One values his daughter’s well-being over his own scientific glorification. (Nor can we, really. Could Ponce de León be that rarest of telenovela beasts, a Multidimensional Character?)
A spiteful ex-lover has dragged Vanesa and Eduardo through the tabloids, an unforgivable humiliation in Vanesa’s view.
The First Murder:
I didn’t think this was a murdering kind of story, but apparently I was wrong. A woman – all we can see are her black gloves and black stocking clad legs -- poisons Eduardo. Why? For cheating on the mandrill? For spurning his girlfriend? For revealing the secret of Alpha-Aurora?
Since he’s not just a friend, he’s also a client, he manages to drag himself to Dr. Creepy’s lab for freezing. (Martín is excited about getting himself some cryo-action. Maybe he gets to empty some of the baggies of ice cubes into Eduardo’s capsule/coffin.) While Eduardo’s wife and lover both hated him enough to wish him dead, the killer turns out to be a dark horse: Dra Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is Dr. Creepy’s office wife. She has been in love with him for years but, alas, it has been un amor no correspondido (unrequited). Even now that Dr. Creepy and Inés live apart, their marriage a casualty of Aurora’s tragic fate, he is uninterested in her. When she confesses what she has done, Dr. Creepy threatens to call the police. But she threatens right back: She knows his secrets and where all the bodies are not buried.
Another plot thread yet to be embroidered in the tapestry:
Cesar is the son of Lorenzo and Natalia and half-brother of Nina and Martín, and currently in prison. He is about to be released, if his prison enemies don’t off him first.
Latest development:
Both Martín and Lorenzo open their hearts to loving Beta-Aurora now that she has assured them she is not sister to one nor daughter to the other. [My money is on Lorenzo. Alpha-Beta Aurora seems like an old soul in a young body; once she realized who Martín actually was, she no longer saw him as a lover. She, apparently, has boundaries.]
Last night, perhaps softened by Martín’s words, Blanca realized that neither Alpha- nor Beta-Aurora is her enemy. She and Beta-Aurora strike up an alliance.
The previews show Beta-Aurora arriving at Lorenzo’s dance studio. Anyone want to bet that Nina’s reign as top student is about to come to an end?
Comments about Aurora or any other Telemundo novelas? I'd love to hear what you think about Alguien te Mira. I still don't know where the plot is going although I was glad to see Lola and Pedro Pablo reconciled last night. Looks like their happiness isn't going to last very long though...
What has happened so far in Aurora?
We’ve been invited into the murky world of cryonics where people deny the finality of death by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their corpses preserved at very low temperatures in the hopes of eventual resuscitation when the cure for their death is readily at hand.
As a cursory Google search will show, this world really does exist. Since the 1960’s, actual versions of Dr. Ponce de León have been selling space in their freezers; and if you can’t afford the deluxe full-body version, they’ll happily welcome you into their heads-only (or even brain-only) bargain basement.
Could it work?
Is it possible to raise the dead, unharmed? From what I’ve read, it’s a very tricky proposition. For one thing, it depends on what you mean by dead. If the holy grail of cryonics is bringing back an intact personality, well, it’s hard to imagine any definition of death that would allow that. If we assume that higher brain function is the first thing lost – the ‘brain death’ that justifies removing organs for donation from a still biologically living donor – how can we expect a ‘brain-dead’ popsicle to be neurologically intact years later? Would you have to anticipate death but not wait for it? That is, would you have to freeze people who were still neurologically intact?
All told, this business of cryopreservation and resuscitation is not totally impossible, theoretically speaking, but the science just isn’t there yet. And when the science eventually catches up with the desire, all those expensive popsicles will likely be out of luck since their antiquated preservation has almost certainly destroyed them.
And yet… and yet… we are in TelenovelaLand where the laws of nature and logic do not apply. Dr. Creepy has raised his lovely daughter from the near dead. It would be the scientific coup of the day and our old friend Augusto Albieri would not have hesitated to take credit for it. But surprisingly, Aurora’s father worries that her life would be blighted if the press were to get wind of her undead status. This leads to three major plot developments:
The latest Big Lie:
Inés and Gustavo (Aurora’s actual parents) tell Blanca (Aurora and Lorenzo’s actual daughter who has been raised to believe she is the daughter of Inés and Gustavo and sister of Aurora) that Aurora had a daughter who was abducted many years ago. Got that? Okay, now she has been found and she will be living at the Ponce de León home. That would make this Beta-Aurora the grandchild of los Ponce de León and Blanca’s niece. Everyone is supposed to believe that Alpha-Aurora is still languishing in the freezer.
The Betrayal:
One of the doctors in the Cryonics facility secretly films the Great Thaw and then sells it to the highest bidder, Eduardo Hutton, wealthy magazine publisher and member of the Ponce de León social circle.
Now Eduardo is a nasty piece of work:
He is married to Vanesa, Alpha-Aurora’s old frenemy and now successful telenovela villain who likes to boast that in real-life, she is worse than the characters she plays on the screen. (And just a glance at her surgically-enhanced enormous ass and lips would be a giveaway to her profession: she looks like a mandrill in estrus decked out in a mini-falda and tacones. She is in the sisterhood of Ivana in STUD and now, Victoria in Eva Luna).
Eduardo can’t understand why the Creepy One values his daughter’s well-being over his own scientific glorification. (Nor can we, really. Could Ponce de León be that rarest of telenovela beasts, a Multidimensional Character?)
A spiteful ex-lover has dragged Vanesa and Eduardo through the tabloids, an unforgivable humiliation in Vanesa’s view.
The First Murder:
I didn’t think this was a murdering kind of story, but apparently I was wrong. A woman – all we can see are her black gloves and black stocking clad legs -- poisons Eduardo. Why? For cheating on the mandrill? For spurning his girlfriend? For revealing the secret of Alpha-Aurora?
Since he’s not just a friend, he’s also a client, he manages to drag himself to Dr. Creepy’s lab for freezing. (Martín is excited about getting himself some cryo-action. Maybe he gets to empty some of the baggies of ice cubes into Eduardo’s capsule/coffin.) While Eduardo’s wife and lover both hated him enough to wish him dead, the killer turns out to be a dark horse: Dra Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is Dr. Creepy’s office wife. She has been in love with him for years but, alas, it has been un amor no correspondido (unrequited). Even now that Dr. Creepy and Inés live apart, their marriage a casualty of Aurora’s tragic fate, he is uninterested in her. When she confesses what she has done, Dr. Creepy threatens to call the police. But she threatens right back: She knows his secrets and where all the bodies are not buried.
Another plot thread yet to be embroidered in the tapestry:
Cesar is the son of Lorenzo and Natalia and half-brother of Nina and Martín, and currently in prison. He is about to be released, if his prison enemies don’t off him first.
Latest development:
Both Martín and Lorenzo open their hearts to loving Beta-Aurora now that she has assured them she is not sister to one nor daughter to the other. [My money is on Lorenzo. Alpha-Beta Aurora seems like an old soul in a young body; once she realized who Martín actually was, she no longer saw him as a lover. She, apparently, has boundaries.]
Last night, perhaps softened by Martín’s words, Blanca realized that neither Alpha- nor Beta-Aurora is her enemy. She and Beta-Aurora strike up an alliance.
The previews show Beta-Aurora arriving at Lorenzo’s dance studio. Anyone want to bet that Nina’s reign as top student is about to come to an end?
Comments about Aurora or any other Telemundo novelas? I'd love to hear what you think about Alguien te Mira. I still don't know where the plot is going although I was glad to see Lola and Pedro Pablo reconciled last night. Looks like their happiness isn't going to last very long though...
Labels: alguien, aurora, clon, fantasma, telemundo
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