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As much as I like Panchito, I can’t get over the fact that he has his own family. It is his family right? He’s got a wife and kids?

Yep, he does. 

I think…this series is not really one where you’re meant to judge the characters like that. Except for Johnny and Servando, who the show wants you to hate, they’re all kind of sympathetic or likable in one way or another. Even Alacran gets his goofy moments with Eva.

Panchito gets called out on it in the show, but beyond that, it’s not like the audience wants him staying with a woman he doesn’t love either. It’s not necessarily about things being excused or justified, it’s just a lack of judgment overall. 

Even Sergio, who I personally still hate, gets a much kinder framing in the cultural context in which the show exists than the one I apply (and I can also admit that I don’t love him for his involvement in Juliantina). That’s a whole different discussion, how our background influences how we see things, compared to how they’re written to be seen by their target audience. There are different lens to look at this through, and they’re all understandable.

It’s not like I have to like Sergio or you have to like Panchito, it’s just not that big a deal in the show. Hell, look at freaking Lucho and the hero’s sendoff he got, even when his penultimate action in the show was to break Sergio’s confidence and go off and tell Val about Sergio and Juls, in a scheming manipulative way the general audience would have recognized.

And another anon:

Am I the only one who still kind of wants to slap Lupe?? Liiiike lady u didn’t notice how much Val loved your daughter Before she got kidnapped?? Val legit hooked y’all up with a nice, safe place to live??? She supported your daughter while you were in the hospital, risking her own safety??? She makes Juls smile in a way that she rarely gets to Bc of urs and chinos shit!! Damn Lupe!! But then I’m happy she turned it around Bc it’s what Juls deserves.

I wanted to answer the ask above first because I think that same reasoning applies here. The show and its writing are pretty lenient on most characters. All your valid points aside, Lupe especially was serving a specific storytelling purpose, a loving parent getting over her homophobia because it’s the loving, right thing to do, and that’s that. We can spend our time continuing to hold a grudge against or just shrug and move on. I should probably do that with Sergio too, he had an even more specific purpose to serve (but we’ll see how successful I am at that, lol).

And another anon:

do we like el chino/beltrán? i mean clearly he does love Juls but like he really treated her and Lupe like shit in the past. also is he actually nice to Beltrán’s kid? i saw a scene of home feeding him soup and he seemed oddly fatherly..

Pulling up another older question to answer now because it fits with the theme. You asked this before his recent attack on Lupe but the thing is, I don’t really think even that’s really changed anything. He literally freaking attempted to rape her and yet, within the show, the way he apologized before leaving and then how we see him talking to Barbara about it, there’s still mostly likely an incoming redemption on the cards and we’re supposed to want it. 

I really didn’t like his character regression when watching, but presumably the purpose of THAT was to have Lupe finally get over him as the culmination of her longer arc, she’s been fruitlessly chasing after him for the whole show, and also to get them to move from the house.

Do we like him? That’s up to you. As I said above about Sergio, how Beltran’s intended to be read as a character is pretty different from how some of us will. We’re used to regarding rape attempts as goddamn inexcusable, but within the show, it might just get skimmed over. And with these kinds of issues it’s really hard to say, oh, well, it’s just a difference of culture. But the important thing to understand is even if you do think a certain framing is harmful and that it’s not “just a TV show”, who and where and how you target your frustration is important. The general audience for this show are the people who live with those attitudes and suffer from them the most. So while the default behavior is now to cancel him, I’m not going to judge people who continue to want to be okay with him or who still want him and Juls to be in an okay place, even if just for Juls’s sake.

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Even though we didn’t have any juliantina today everybody else storyline was fire. The Leon and Lucia, Maeto and Eva, and of course finally Johny falling apart and hopefully either dies or goes to jail. I have a feeling tomorrow Lucia will have confirmation that chino isn’t Jacobo and believe that it’s actually Leon. I’m hoping she tells Val juls is packing

It was great! The Mateo/Eva scenes had been building for the whole series and they delivered. This was the culmination of their EVERYTHING. The actors were so good.

And omg, the Lucia/Leon parts? I actually love them, lol, they’re so messy but so in love! I’ve been listening to their themes all day and will probably gif the parts in the theater, Angelique was so good.

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In the first convo w/ Val, she tries to sweep over the ‘betrayal’, when she sees that Val is still hurt and unhappy, she tries to make this out as an experience that will make them stronger and calls back to their love. She’s not ready to admit or believe the ~soulmate~ nature of their relationship so that’s why instead of confronting the events headon, she’s trying to paper over the cracks. This isn’t malicious of her, but it just shows that she’s such a kid still, emotionally, compared to Val

But is she sweeping over it or does it actually mean that little to her? To her, it answered some questions and now she’s over it. Made especially easy by the fact that she was kidnapped immediately after, thought she was going to die multiple times, and then her father revealed himself to her in a different body (and also for the first time in her life was nice to her). Her perspective on things is different than it was in the minutes after it originally happened.

She’s inexperienced, sure, but that doesn’t make her a kid compared to Val, just a different person.

I don’t know that not believing in the soulmate nature of their relationship makes her like a kid emotionally and not more pragmatic, if anything? How would someone with her background so easily believe in a love that deep, when all it’s done is cause more trouble, for both of them? Her whole life she’s seen her mom devoted to one person in a “soulmate” kind of love and she knows the effects it’s had on her AND her mom. Of course she’s going to be very careful about it now. Val is the opposite of Chino in every way, sure, and that’s what she’ll slowly come to accept. She’s tentative about it, and careful. That’s not like a kid at all.

And another anon:

She *doesn’t* get why Val is mad though, otherwise she wouldn’t use “we weren’t together” as an excuse. Or, she gets it viscerally, since she says after that she betrayed Val, but can’t yet openly admit that they never were just friends and never will be just friends, regardless of the circumstances. Last episode, I don’t think Juliana was as committed to resolution of the issues as she was in wanting things to go back to before. That’s why she was so shook by Val knowing about Sergio. She (½)

I didn’t get the second part so I can only reply to this, but which issues should she be committing to resolving? The reason she broke things off with Val was because of outside circumstances, none of which have really changed. Maybe only gotten worse, if anything, since the danger she’s surrounded by was confirmed by her own kidnapping and now Alacran knowing Lupe’s alive.

Separate from that, she’s also figuring out her own sexual identity and dealing with her mother’s homophobia. She’s somewhat resolved at least one of those things, it wasn’t anything to do with Val, it was her own thing. Or so she thought, incorrectly, it had a lot do with Val and she does somewhat sense that, immediately feeling like she’d betrayed her. I don’t know how things would have happened if Val hadn’t found out like she had, if she’d told Val herself, broken it to her in a way that explained things more, or if she’d never intended on telling her. But to Juls, it was something that helped her figure things out and now she was ready to move past that. So it explains why her attitude is one of going back to things with Val as they were after the breakup, friends with something more lingering.

And another anon:

I think my main issue with the “just friends” talk in last night’s episode was that it seemed like you said that Val and Juls were kind of talking past each other and that Juls who usually has a good read on Val’s emotions completely missed what was happening in that scene, but I think after everything w/ Sergio and the trauma of her kidnapping she is just desperate to keep Val around how ever she can &her insecurity wont let her believe that she could have Val fully again after everything ½

It is genuinely heartbreaking to go back and watch early episodes and see how badly El Chino treated Juliana, but when you do it really makes all of her insecurities make sense. The POS literally shouted at Lup when she tried to get him to stay for their daughter that Juls isnt his while she was only a few feet away he also physically jumped at her. Anyone who goes through that would have a hard time understanding/accepting unconditional love even from someone as genuinely kindhearted as Val 2/2

Yeah, and you wrote this before last night’s episode, where we saw old Chino again. Eugh.

I think Juls gets that Val is hurt but what can she do? What options are available to her? How has she handled it before? Twice she’s kissed it away, lol, not possible here, and the other time she’s talked it out, but if you recall, it was Val who instigated that talk and who then started it off, Juls was bashful and hesitant. Juls can participate in discussions and be SO honest but what can she say here that isn’t overstepping or taking liberties? She’s trying to reassure Val as best she can that she’s still all about her, but it’s up to Val to decide where to go from here. This isn’t the place for Juls to be insisting that Val understand everything and be okay with it. 

That would be what she would asking for, wouldn’t it? It would be assuaging her own guilt if she was like, but Val, I still love you, please stop being hurt and mad. Especially when she can’t even offer anything longterm. With the current Alacran and Chino situations her position is even more precarious than before. Alacran kidnapped her, got shot because she hit him, he knows Lupe is alive, and now Chino is back in their lives for real. That’s just revenge and violence heading for them in every way now.

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That conversation between Lupe/Lucia/Juls can become such a mess because basically Lucia is there to confirm Jacobo is Leon, while Lupe and Juls know he’s not el chino but don’t know he’s actually leon aka valentina’s dad. Lucia better not say much cause everything might go to hell if she does lol

Oh! Riiight. 

Lucia: So you know he’s Valentina’s–
At same time:
Lucia: father?
Lupe: driver?

I don’t think Lucia would tell them, she doesn’t know how involved Juls and Val’s relationship is (and why not?? Lucia and Val need to have at least one convo about Juls!), she’d probably want to keep that all a secret. Unless she thinks they know…

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LISTEN, when Trump just startes running I dreamt he was going to get it and win and I am not even from America, so it was an extremely random but a VERY true prophesy. I have had previous successes! I have references! Although, on other hand, I once also dreamt that dancing carrots would invade Estonia, so I do recommend a healthy amount of sceptism…

I believe that first thing is what’s called a “nightmare”? 

Well, if they do get a second season, maybe it’s Estonia who should be watching out.

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in a couple meaningless scenes when Guille went to jail and that fireplace scene where there was nothing if not more exposition about how much Val loves Juls? and also so that Juls could see him and Val which is what sort of pushed her to this horrible Sergio plot? *and* then he showed up and suddenly and to everyone surprise he was useful? 2/4

he had hacker like abilities and he found Lupe, therefore, finding where Juls was kidnapped and drove Val there only to sadly die lololololol (he actually served as a human shield for Lupe and Val) and as fun as that was, his death was used to further push Val to this abyss of sadness that she’s currently living in? you can see the writers kept including him in the plot so that when *all that* happened it was not a random thing?… ¾

I think that whatever it’s going to happen with Sergio will be the same? it’s a guess. 4/4 

I didn’t get the first one but I know you’re talking about Lucho’s inclusion and purpose in the story. Which, fair enough, and I do get that that’s why Sergio’s still around, possibly even help them get together again, or be there to remind us that Val’s grieving hard for Lucho and maybe to help her research more into death and all that but the writers chose him for that purpose, they didn’t have to. 

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i really like Lucia, she is not the usual telenovela stepmom, she begins like the usual ones being a golddigger and all BUT she really cares about the Carvajal’s (Eva not so much cause Eva doesnt like her), she really cares for Val and it’s shown many times how gentle and sweet she is with her, she cares about Guille as well, she is even nice and respectful with Chivis, with Alerio. Most novela’s stepmoms mistreat everyone and act fake, she doesnt.

It helps that she’s more the lead, if anything, but yeah, I really like her too. 

I hope she doesn’t die, she’s a great character and if given the chance, a great person too. In all the ways you listed, she’s shown to be kind and respectful to other people. She didn’t just get what was hers and then turn on people, she’s still always nice to them. She’s only met Juls the once but greeted her politely and offered to get her a ride. 

She definitely doesn’t fit into any one slot, scheming black widow or stepmom or victim, she’s just trying to play the hand life dealt her. And I think Angelique Boyer plays her with a lot of depth, a lot of warmth balancing with the hardness from her old life.