#caution processing lesbians at work

[mrsdaphnefielding]

#571

The way this Writing Room can send me processing, by adding one piece to the board that suddenly makes a few pieces scattered across past episodes form a throughline. (All while I cling to the door handle of the rollercoaster by my teeth, screaming, but I did sign up for a soap, so that's on me.)

Fine, this episode hurt a lot. But it also offers at last a perspective that finds logic in Fina's consistently muted and caged mode around Marta which seems so at odds with her decision to stay and her claim that she is still in love with Marta.

It feels abstract, several of us have stated (at the Liqour Cart and here at "1 cap per ep") because we cannot see it. But what if it is just as abstract for Fina as it is for the viewers? What if she has locked herself away so much that she runs at 10% and simply cannot feel as much?

And the reason for that may be, yes, trauma, but this trauma has just taken on a more specific slant that ties together several facts: Fina's chronic lying even when it borders on the ridiculous; Fina's constant tension, unhappiness and guilt next to Marta; Fina's tale of having been saved by Bianca, from death's door and also in terms of romance; Fina's description of her Chacracore life as a perfect idyll where she didn't have to be closeted (honey, if I lived in front of three sheep and a cow out in the steppe, I wouldn't have to be closeted, either).

The episode offers a look at Fina's state of mind without the added layer of Marta. First, there's a run-in at the Casa Grande between Fina and Cloe that Digna extends - perhaps (as theorized with @madronash) to shock Fina back into feeling things? There is a bit of Fina swagger when she eyes the competition and is annoyed:

Cloe gets her Horror Organ/Accordeon Motif at 00:27:18 (Mafin Drive Cut) and the moment is awkward: Cloe's annoyed huff covered by a strained smile, Fina's belligerent stance followed by an annoyed little shrug at Digna:

The scene is, despite everything, not without hilarity.

An educated, suffering Cloe asks Fina how her return is going and Fina says "emocionante!" while her face says anything but:

Fina also states that she doesn't want to stay at the Casa Grande, that she wants her own place, paid for with her own work, and her reaction to Cloe's "But you have Marta'a love as a constant, you are so lucky!" (accompanied by the Wrong Flutes Romance Motif at 00:28:48) is more caged distress.

Fina, by the looks of it, doesn't have the capacity to take in Marta's love at the moment. Fina's heart, for all her claims of not being in the closet in Argentina, is under an invisibility coat locked in a strongbox inside a vault in the hidden cellar department of an underground bunker.

Meanwhile, Cloe seems to be getting a growth curve after all where she realizes that being in love is just that: being in love, and not expecting it to be requited or being entitled to a reward for her feelings. Now if even Cloe (pushy Cloe who wouldn't take a hint even when it hit her over the head in the shape of Fina) looks like the more dedicated and selfless option in the room: oh dear.

Two variants of "green. ugly." jealousy over a woman who is not even in the room. Well played, Costuming, with the sharp, cold green.

The next larger puzzle piece is Fina breaking up with Bianca over the phone, calling her "mi amor" in tears (you dare to touch "Amor", Writing Room? Jail for you for 1,000 episodes!) while she declares, "I love you with all my soul."

OUCH!

After Bianca hangs up on Fina, the Sound Department unpacks the Haunted Flutes Motif (00:37:36) again for a closeup of the metaphorical handcuff bracelet that is revealed to carry the initials F and B (which Marta puts together in the preview while Fina keeps lying, pathetically: “I found it somewhere in Buenos Aires.”)

Finally, insults to injury, Fina tells Digna that she feels terrible about breaking poor Bianca's heart; that with Bianca everything has always been easy, and with Marta hard. The Haunted Flutes turn to a softly nostalgic piano tune (00:38:52) while Fina describes her Chacracore Rebound Idyll, underlined by the pastoral idyll painting on the guestroom wall behind herself and Digna.

And finally, with the Sound Department unpacking the Romance Farewell Motif (00:39:34) to which Fina once wrote her farewell letter to Marta, Digna tells Fina not to stay with Marta or in Toledo out of obligation.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

OUCH.

Is there actually anything left to salvage at this point?

Surprisingly, and looking beyond the top layer of hurt: yes. This is built with hidden layers and a Mafin torch path. And Editing seems to think so, too, because they intercut once more their main couples navigating a current triangle stuation (sorry, Cloe: you are not involved) – it is Marta/Fina/Bianca intercut with Begoña/Andrés/Valentina, teasing at the same threads: Valentina being insecure; a flashback to María as the master manipulator (as stated by @newsfromthegutter).

There is a way to make sense of this from a Mafin perspective (for today. God knows what next week will bring), and that actually starts with the lying, and the muted reaction of Fina to Marta. As asked above: What if Fina is currently on a trauma lockdown and keeps herself cut off from feeling anything deeper that could hurt her again?

A Fina at 10% could say “I love you with all of my soul” to someone else without lying and still staying true to Marta, if that soul currently amounts to only 10% (but that is only one part of the equation; Fina's reaction patterns around Bianca are another: she may be dishing out an appeasement lie she has been groomed to believe).

FIna's trauma has been emphasized since her return. She has been shown having flashbacks and PTSD reactions. And that’s a different backdrop for “I love Marta but I am conflicted about it” than showing two warring mindsets that are equally present. This looks more like one mindset sitting on top of another that is locked away.

We have stated that we don't see at all, in Fina's expression, moments of joy next to Marta followed by moments of guilt. Instead, it's tension all the time. There was only that first exuberant reunion that, in this reading, broke containment and founds its way to the surface in its immensity, but that has been quickly locked away again. Which is to say, FIna is in Muted Mode at the moment; she cannot and will not allow herself to feel more deeply or fully because she is scared to feel and be vulnerable again.

Now add to that: Bianca aka Chacracore Barbie. We’ve pointed out since 568 that there is at least a steep power imbalance going on, with the rich landowner artist sugar mama nursing a battered, penniless young stranger back to health and into her arms. Honi soit qui mal y pense?

Fina, in turn, idealizes that rebound idyll so fully that if decloaks itself as a projection. When Fina first called Bianca (which the audience saw) and left a message, it became clear that she had to refer to her as "Doña Bianca" when talking to her staff, and that the staff didn't know about their relationship. In #571, it turns that "Ramiro" didn't rely the message.

Now: Fina apologizes for that (even though she wouldn't have to); and Bianca - in Fina's words: mature, worldly, artistic, free - apparently rebukes Fina, prompting Fina to state, "Yes, I know I cannot insist much."

That doesn't sound like "freedom and no closet". That sounds like a lot of closet and power imbalance. And Fina is not delighted to hear Bianca's voice here; her face doesn't instinctively relax at its sound. She is tense:

Fina seems, essentially, lost. At 00:36:29, the Haunted Empty Fifth Chords (present over the world's most underappreciated flan with Marta in #570) sound up again.

Fina apologizes constantly to Bianca in this call: For wanting to stay. Then she tries to justify her decision when Bianca apparently rejects it and tells Fina that she is "confused" for wanting to stay. Bianca further devalues Fina's decision by telling her she is making a mistake. And the audience can then deduce from Fina’s “what do you mean I don't love you, of course I love you!” that Bianca at the other end of the line is piling on the accusations, including a classic "You don't love me!"

Still, the perfect projection (and the power imbalance) rear back up when Fina says - not wistful, but defensive - "everything with you has always been wonderful, I cannot say a word against that".

An increasingly desperate Fina pleads with Bianca (who seems to push her emotions onto Fina and understand it as Fina's job to balance them?) not to cry, then Bianca hangs up on her.

Uhm. This is not a breezy chacra cocktail with a jaunty little umbrella in it. This is a cocktail with two dozen red flags sticking out and it's called "Don't You Know That You're Toxic".

Fina takes a shaky breath and the camera shows, over the Haunted Flutes Motif, the inside of Fina's bracelet and the engraved initials F - B ("fucking bitch"? ehm. sorry. nevermind my inner five-year old, they stole a glass from the liquor cart today):

At the Liquor Cart for #571, @ozmoz, @lasllamasnotienenorden, @bloomsberries and I have speculated about Fina being in a manipulative or abusive relationship with Bianca, who has the hot, young, battered stranger in isolation on her lands; and, sure, she nursed Fina through a life-threatening illness, but it's also an illness (transmitted by animals) that Fina likely got on her farm in the first place?

What is becoming apparent across this week's episodes is that Fina feels utterly unsafe and is in consequence unable to trust anyone at the moment, even locking out Marta. Digna is the only one who may be getting through to her, just a bit, and Digna is asking smart, careful questions.

Fina states, "She [Bianca] told me I am making a mistake in staying because of how hard things have always been with Marta, and with her, everything has always been easy."

"Because of her character?" Digna asks (and what a subtle delivery by Fernández there!).

But Fina does not say a word about Bianca's character. She only repeats, "Everything!" and talks about not having had to hide their relationship in front of Bianca's clique, but that is, again, Fina loving the sensation of freedom, not Bianca's personality that she sums up as, wait for it, "she's free!"

And Digna gently suggests that, at some point, perhaps Fina could be free with Marta, too, leaving Toledo to live their lives.

(and, of course: if Fina manages to unfreeze and stay for Marta and their love, then that's indeed greater than all the obstacles and could I please have my North Star back up in the sky? Yes? Thank you.)

But back for a moment to Fina’s chronic, bad lying: as stated at the Liquor Cart to #571, this is the kind of lying you learn when you’re trying to survive in an abusive relationship.

And it is possible that the Writing Room is going there with Bianca, at least in part: You learn this kind of lying when you need to constantly appease your partner so they don’t get mad (because it is your fault if they become angry, and your job to make sure that they don't). You apologize for your feelings when they antagonize your partner, or you directly disconnect from them and repress them, to make the relationship work and not offer a crack that would invite retaliation.

And now look at Fina's armada of turtlenecks that, yes, are hot Professional Lesbian Wear, but also reminiscent of how Fina covered up after her time in prison and the attempted rape by Santiago. The turtlenecks are armor, too. And that armor went down for one moment in striped pajamas she didn't care to button up fully, and that moment was enough to break through the "Everything is Perfect!" Chacracore Façade and stir up something that made Fina stay, but that she cannot work through at the moment. Not as unsafe and untethered as she feels.

And if "She saved my life!"-Bianca is someone who wields a lot of power over Fina, and does so consciously and selflishly, then one line in Fina's conversation with Cloe gains a lot more weight: Fina's desire to have her own place, to pay her own bills, with her own work. Fina needs to be independent and in control of her own life again. Not a rent-free guest in some Chacracore Fantasy; but also not a family friend in the Casa Grande who needs to keep Marta or anyone else happy.

What do you need, Fina? What do you want? - Marta is no obligation, Digna states.

Right now, Fina is not in a relationship with anyone, and my take on it is that she isn't fit to be in one, either. She needs to sort herself out on her own first, and Marta will indeed need to come back to her own advice to Andrés from a few episodes ago, about patiently staying and waiting and helping the woman she loves by showing her that she will not leave. Because as much as Marta will likely want to carry Fina through this, she can't. Fina needs to gets the ground back under her feet on her own.

(And none of this means they don't love each other. This is, in fact, built in a way that could showcase that they love each other more than anything. The Writing Room has set up a winding path and I still think the final destination is Mafin 2.0)

[mrsdaphnefielding]

#591

How the meta crumb level resurges.

And they are layering it on thick: Mafin dialog with Fina having bought muffins (no, really) as a gift for Marta, from Marta’s “favorite pastry shop”; Fina gesturing with a muffin intentionally on display, before remembering suizos – not as a product, but as process: do you remember how we made suizos?

Everyone here remembers the Toledo Suizo Dough Massacre, Fina. In detail. Including the bit where no suizos ever materialized out of that scene.

But the winking at the fandom is even wider: with Fina making happy little sounds while eating a piece of muffin and commenting how good it is (yes, Mafin has its moments), and then Marta gets to say that she misses cooking with Fina (all right, Writing Room, who giggled at writing this dialog?) and when Fina comments that her new kitchen is almost ready for use, Marta says she cannot wait to inaugurate that kitchen.

And that is not just a wink at the fandom, but also a gear change for Marta, who has become so careful around Fina, over Fina’s constant distancing, with initiating any kind of flirting, always trying to gauge the possible reaction first. Here, she’s the one to launch the suggestive comment, and Fina seems at ease with it, which is another interesting gear shift.

But from the top: Editing puts this scene after two full minutes of Begoña missing Luz, talking about how they could trust each other with anything, how happy she was to have Luz with her, how she notices her absence again already, “you don’t know how much”. (Lapausa’s credit in the title sequence and Luz are gone, and Begoña is left without her wife for good. Damn it.)

After this, Marta and Fina: also with a history of trust and marriage, and with a new secret between them. It’s another coffee date, but it doesn’t feel as sad or as cold. Fina’s dove-blue trenchcoat and Marta’s red coat deliver another on the show’s trademark red/blue combinations, with Fina sporting yet another turtleneck. Striped! The last time either of them got as close to a sailor shirt was the striped top Marta wore in the 370s.

Fina, with her couch cushion fort established as a place to retreat to when she needs it, seems finally in a position where she can be a little less defensive. She listens to Marta’s woes about having had to be the one to pass on the news of Brossard’s death to his wife (another marriage interrupted…) and voices support; she even asks about the company on her own and it’s Marta who changes the topic.

Fina has had another job interview and another rejection because what they were looking for was “a man”. And Fina may have changed a lot, but there is that same twist around her mouth as in Season 1 (remember “sí, padre, un hombre” at Isidro way back when?) when she has to say “un hombre” and it sounds like “Burn down the patriarchy!” and I love it.

Marta doesn’t offer money or contacts, only encouragement. Fina gets a line that she hopes to find a job soon (setup for needing to take on a job at the factory even if she doesn’t like it, to pay her rent and to be integrated back into one of the central sets?), and then we get to “I got you muffins at your favorite patisserie.” *guffaw at the Writing Room*

And they get two minutes of being cute, undercut by Marta remembering the call by Bianca she is keeping to herself – of course just when Fina seems to try to let her walls down just a little bit.

And Marta overwhelms those walls for a minute when she has also brought a gift: a poem anthology by Rosa Chacel, which is a feminist and deep-bonds-between-women choice (the una múscia oscura sonnet to María Zambrano? Uh-hum), even if not a very probable one: Chacel was fighting on the Republican side in the Civil War and was in exile in South America in 1960, and the only anthology Chacel did publish to that date was her 1936 collection, with two more volumes appearing only after her return in Spain in the 1970s, so her works would have been hard to come by. But who knows what booksellers Marta de la Reina has access to? (@wirepaladin theorizing she might have found a volume smuggled out to France during her time in Nice!)

But who cares about that next to Marta’s reasoning of “I read these in your absence, and it hurt not to be able to share all this beauty”? And her suggestion to read them together, now? Marta, the lesbiana intensa that you are.

The mention of her absence has an impact on Fina (Brunet and the small details again, and if this was Directing, it's incredible that they make space for that on a schedule that tight):

And now the lesbians will probably buy up all the Chacel poem anthologies (she did write more novels than poems) at the used bookstores around the globe… The striking thing about her poetry, for me, or rather the most moving one, are the poems she wrote in dedication among the exile community (like the one to Zambrano): always trying to preserve memories and the bonds of a time and community lost and torn apart by the war and then the dictatorship, like photos to call up and preserve earlier times shared.

Fina seems touched and a little overwhelmed; there’s the wall again (look at the detail work in keeping the smile a little banked here)---

---but then she takes a breath and stays in the moment, calls Marta “Mi amor” and it sounds uncalculated.

They get a happy little cadenza over it (Marta’s exhale at 00:34:38, how is MB so good with that kind of thing) but when Fina lowers her guard enough to tell Marta she loves her near, that Marta is good for her (and they get one of the show’s central love motives with it, 00:34:44), Marta flashes back to the phone call she hasn’t passed on, and then suggests they eat those muffins. (pushing away Chacracore Barbie in favor of Mafin? There won’t be protest heard in this fandom corner!)

So. Muffins. And remembering suizos, and making them together. And Marta’s little “Mhm” over this smile:

And a chewing Fina declaring the muffins “Delicious!” – well, at least the Writing Room is lighting meta torches again, but also Fina, within the narrative, seems, tentatively, ready to reach out, feeling a little safer?

(oh God, how bad is the next week going to be if we are handed a buoy of this size, in these neon colors? - There is one earlier moment in this episode when Marta tells Valentina she knows about break-ups. Better hold onto that sugar high while it lasts!)

[mrsdaphnefielding]

#501 - romantic disaster siblings at work

Marta, your stance.

Decorative moping by both love-doomed spaniel siblings here, but the scene has, as all Marta/Andrés scenes, a lovely flow of companionship.

But while it's a scene about Andrés being heartbroken about Begoña (again), the scene also is written (and performed) to evoke Fina and her place in Marta's life (again), and it offers a look into how a still heartbroken Marta struggles to make sense of Fina's departure, her form of bearing it, and her own life sans Fina. (I cannot keep up with all the Red Herrings at this speed or I wil end up doing this instead of writing M:NM!)

Even as heartbroken disaster siblings, these two have such excellent goofy chemistry. "I asked Begoña to start sleeping with me again, I know it's a no-good-very-bad idea, but..." - "Oh no, bro-hoe. You didn't."

Marta - and hello again, softer gray-striped business two-piece skirt suit with an idea of Donegal and terrycloth, but also with firmly padded shoulders - makes the important distinction that Begoña has so much more to lose, as a married woman with kids. And this already prefigures Marta talking about Fina and herself a minute later.

Also how cute is Andrés doodling Begoña on the accounting sheets? - Aww. It made me miss Marta and her pen and her diary; I wonder if we will ever see her do some longhand again?

The conversation turns to Fina when Marta finally snaps, "I lost the love of my life, too, you know?"

And, one episode after we've seen Marta make out with Cloe in the office, birthday gift of jewelry included, this reaction makes clear that Marta a) doesn't think of Cloe in such terms, and b) continues very much to think of Fina in such terms.

MB delivers the line not with nostalgia, but bitten out with little patience, like an open wound that will not heal or scar but that she has chosen to step around since it will not close either way. (excellent choice, from a Mafin perspective)

"Do I need to stop?" Andrés asks Marta, still on trying to find a way to be with Begoña, and in Marta's replies, we get insights into her inner landscape like we haven't seen since her opaque return from Madrid.

While she has continued to say that she cannot forget Fina (e. g.to Digna) and needs Fina (e.g. to Carmen), there has been nothing on how she conceptualizes having been - for all that she knows - abandoned and trying to go on in the aftermath of that.

So what she tells Andrés is:

"Fear ended my relationship." => i.e. Fina's fear over the Santiago murder and possible discovery drove Fina away. So if Marta believes that? She also believes that Fina's fear was bigger than their love, or at least than Fina's love for her, and than her ability to provide safety for Fina. So Marta apparently thinks of herself as abandoned, and as having failed Fina.

"Nobody wants to live with that fear and sacrifice." => Marta, following this logic, assimilated Fina's departure as Fina not willing to pay that price and MB delivers those lines like an argument that Marta needs to say out loud to convince herself of it while her gaze seems to underline "but I would have. But I would have!"

"You need to stop if it puts other people at risk." => after just telling Andrés that Begoña is far more vulnerable than he is, Marta seems to draw the parallel of class privilege: she may be the married one here, but Fina would be at risk of facing murder charges, so she does - in a mirror of Fina leaving to protect Marta - seem to conceptualize respecting Fina's request in her farewell letter (to not come looking for her) as putting Fina's safety above her own desire to continue their (risky, and more so for Fina than for her) relationship. And this mutual framing of self-sacrifice will probably implode in their faces and need a lot of reunion negotiation. (Bring. It. On!)

When Andrés complains that his life would have no meaning without Begoña, Marta says, "You have to think about the other people involved." => again, it's not a wistful reply, it's delivered impatiently, and that choice in directing and performance makes the line come across (to me) as "If I cannot cling to the belief that by being without her, I am protecting her, my life does not have any meaning, either, and I do not want to look at that fact." (again, keep in mind that this is a day after Marta gave her supposed current girlfriend a birthday date night that said supposed girlfriend is very swoony about, but Marta, in terms of love and how she frames her own love life, is clearly not thinking about the previous night, but solely about Fina).

Concluding: I've spend decades in tropey fanfic, with much delight. But this multilayered build-up of mutual pining and self-sacrifice may just take the cake.

[mrsdaphnefielding]

#500

That birthday scene. Or, a Mafin take on it.

No, I did not enjoy watching it, but I tried to think about why it was set it up this way and delivered this way, and what it does for a narrative that is pointing back and forward towards Fina with big neon signs left and right.

The overarching frame is a sling that is being pulled back now (and yes, it hurts) to be then set lose to hurtle everything in the opposite direction. Fina may likely come back to see Marta with Cloe, and if all there is between Marta and Cloe are fights and lukewarm coffee dates, that relationship offers no momentum that Fina can crash or tear asunder.  

Auxiliary to that is to show here, in this sequence, how Cloe has fallen for Marta, while Marta is calmy calling the shots, enjoying being all swagger and suave and gallant, but it’s smooth sailing: she isn’t rattled.

Now watching that scene it itself… yeah. No. In terms of content, that was hard to stomach. But in terms of larger narrative settings, it pushed some things into place: like, as mentioned above, Marta being content with getting to be all swagger and seduction and calling the shots, while the only one with a breathless smile is Cloe, additionally blocked for much of the dialogue in a way that she has to look up at Marta who is seated on her desk.

And yes, there is playful banter and flirting. And seeing Marta doing that with someone not Fina... hurt. Marta getting underneath Cloe’s shirt when – as @roadien60 has pointed out – the only person who has ever taken a shirt off Fina on-screen was Santiago made me feel exactly as betrayed for Fina as I was probably supposed to feel.

So, wider framework. You know what was absent from that scene? Declarations of love or deeper sentiment (so common on birthdays). And a gift for “the first time I saw you” also looks backwards, not towards the future. Did anyone mention the future here? (beyond the hotel evening) Nope.

The issue I take with the writing room is that the “how we ended up together, a brief recap” completely skirts Cloe’s pushiness and petulance in their entire Season 2 arc, as if it was meet-cute (it was not. But perhaps it doesn’t matter as much because this relationship doesn’t matter as much, at least to Marta?). Perhaps part of the Season 3 reset of Cloe to meeker and younger, too.

And on the note of pushiness vs. respect we are back on the topic of Fina, and of course this office seduction scene with Cloe is another parallel to a classic Mafin scene: the Despachamiento.

My first reaction was “Ouch, really?”

My second was, “Let’s spot the differences.”

What do we have here at the Birthday Bash?

No declarations of love. No conversations on character, the future, intermingling lives. Just the tale that turns late Season 2 into a meet-cute.

There are no trembling breaths on Marta’s part. If Marta is supposed to look gone, MB delivers that, and while there’s intimacy here and flirtatious banter and easy desire, Marta’s world is clearly not getting shattered.

Most notably, in the directing, there is no staging of mutuality or balance, or of Cloe undressing Marta. We only see Marta getting under Cloe’s shirt (thanks, Ennis, for your belt, which has prevented things that would have made me need another drink).

Cloe has been shown as working all day and just coming back in from Madrid; Fina was usually waiting for Marta and Madrid was their hideaway spot (honorable mention to un precioso hotel en Illescas). My prediction is on Fina swaggering back into town (press already teased, “por todo lo alto”) and not waiting around this time. And this sequence in the end will have been a setup also for that.

There are two close parallels that I found gutting, though – even if I know they are creating a counterweight for the motion I am waiting for (Fina. That motion is Fina).

The first is Cloe asking “¿qué hotel?” with that delighted smile, and that is a direct parallel to a delighted Fina asking “¿qué hotel?” in Illescas in ep. 37 before she admits that she's on cloud nine. Cloe may be on a cloud here in ep. 500, too. But Marta? ep. 37: yes. ep. 500: no clouds in sight.

On the one hand, that is a full 180 for Marta who has gone from “I am so nervous I cannot even take off my own shirt and prefer to wait” to “I’m remembering to lock the door and will have your shirt off in between teasing dialogue before you realize it, so where do I sign up for the Shane Award?”. Which, yes, okay. We get the point.

But on the other hand, it’s also outlining the difference, once more, between a Marta being shaken to the core, or and a Marta setting up a smooth shake because she can. One could argue that it’s, again, there to show how far Marta has come since her coming out, but it would have been easy to show Marta a little shaken here, a little more taken with Cloe, to have her say something not just playful, but also romantic, but: they didn’t write that in. And it wasn't in the acting, either.

The second, even more hurtful thing, is the use of one of the motifs that was repeatedly used for romantic Mafin moments in the sound score (in the Mafin Drive cut: around 00:43:15). I hear that, and I see Fina, and, yes, I wanted to hit things upon hearing that here when Marta unpacks the bracelet. How dare!! (I know I am supposed to feel this way. I know payoff is underway in a bob and trousers. But that doesn’t meant that watching this didn’t hurt. Playbook is clearly unfolding as planned.)

The most telling thing, though, was the commentary on the Marta/Cloe scene through its intercutting with Valentina telling Carmen and Claudia that she was raped by Rodrigo, and that then her mother didn’t want her to report him, so she fled, and asked Cloe for help. So we have Cloe threaded through both scenes: her birthday office moment, and Valentina’s dinner.

But this paralleling evokes Fina in both scenes, too – in the first one because she and her experiences of sexual violence are explicitly named, in the second one because there’s the “¿qué hotel?” line and someone is making out with Marta in the office (which we all know would be Fina or no one at all if Marta knew the truth).

And look at the Mafin framing: we go from Marta kissing Cloe and “¿qué hotel?” directly to “she blushed” and “Fina was very Fina”, and “we miss Fina!” The frame to that office scene? It's Fina.

And the next bit is about weight because in the dorm room, Carmen and Claudia tell Valentina how Fina was stalked and suffered sexual violence, which is enough to make Valentina open up about having been raped by her fiancé. And we go from that weight, and from the weight of Fina’s fear and her flight and her grueling experiences to Marta and Cloe effectively throwing around baubles (okay, a bracelet) and innuendos.

And how does that come across in comparison? As very shallow (and jarring). And as another betrayal of Fina, even if unbeknownst (because Marta still believes Fina left her willingly and didn’t love her enough to stay, and imagine how much more horrible this past half year would have been with that “but we need to throw another woman at Marta!” directive in a scenario where Marta would know that Fina e.g. simply went to take on a photograpyh apprenticeship somewhere and Marta then would have gotten a cheating storyline).

So what this entire birthday scene, in how it is fit into the episode, says in the end, is – once more –  “But she isn’t Fina, and this is not on the same level.”

But Fina will be back, and MB and AB are going to act the hell out of it, and I cannot wait (even if I may need to write a few more processing posts like this one because this sequence sure twisted the knife).

[mrsdaphnefielding]

#574

How Fina’s outfit is color-coded to match the painting next to her: a ship thrown onto the shore while sunny life bustles on around it. Lost, adrift, without control over her own path?

And this is mirrored in the painting above Marta's head. It's another ship lying on shore, its dark outline matching her dark robe: another standstill. Robbed of the wind and the knowledge of a clear path ahead she thought she had regained after Pelayo’s gaslighting?

This tentative reunion is but step one; the gaslighting will continue to reverberate: again, Marta voices her fear that their relationship wasn’t singular, that Fina loved someone else just as much, that Fina planned a future with someone else.

Digna frames Marta’s hesitancy and insecurity as hurt pride, but Fina has lied, and and Fina has managed to be happy with someone else (or so it seems, and the Haunted Flutes comment on it at 00:17:15 (Mafin Drive Cut)), and that is upending their entire relationship to Marta (Pelayo’s Ominous Woodwinds at 00:16:39) --- even if Digna, older, knows that what counts in the long run is the chance to be together regardless, but neither Marta nor Fina can know that yet.

Digna’s observation as well as Marta’s affirmation that she loves Fina get the Falling Chords Love Motif with the with the little ping (00:17:46), and the final frame of Marta gets the second part of Love Motif – the fifth drop and rise – on piano (00:18:28).

Marta is clear on her feelings: the scene is set in her room (with this very culinary shot that serves as a way into her interior through sound), with a throughline sound carpet of a Bolero (this one, a 2018 ambiance take) as a highly emotional, passionate genre, and Marta gets to make romantic declarations: she doesn’t want Fina to smile lovestruck at someone else, hold hands in a coat pocket with someone else, imagine a future with someone else; she wants a life with Fina.

Fina… doesn’t want to be at odds with Marta, and she has made a conscious choice to stay (and broken up with Bianca once Bianca was thousands of miles away), but she is still keeping a careful distance: intent on making up with Marta, but without making herself too vulnerable.

Also without making clear declarations on her Argentina chacracore idyll life being over for her heart. It’s not lies, but it is careful, intentional omissions, and that makes them hurtful.

And I think it is a very intentional choice by Directing to keep things reserved here: Marta and Fina may kiss, but they still have distance to cover and a lot of trust to rebuild.

When Marta anguishes over Fina having felt the same for someone else as she has for Marta, Fina’s answer is “There is no one like you.” It decidedly isn’t “I loved her less than I love you.”

When Marta says, heartbroken, “I thought I was singular (única) to you", Fina's answer is not "You are", but "I was also uneasy with you having had another relationship."

Those two things are not the same, and these two are not on the same page yet. Fina keeps holding back. And Marta’s final, “No, I do love you more, believe me,” is not just cute. It’s where they are at, at this moment, because Fina wants to be there, and she made a choice, but she is not there yet with her heart, at least not out in the open.

And if the testing way Fina looks at Marta in the end (great detail by Brunet/Directing) is any indication, then this is just Curve #1 of the rollercoaster, I would assume. As it should be, since there is still so much to work through for both of them.

There is still a lot more buried underneath Fina’s time in Argentina (which Writing Room would not make use of that?), and the first skeleton will be Bianca trying to reestablish ties that have not been as neatly cut for Fina yet.

This is not the reconciliation. This is just a first step, with still too much unsaid, and it looks like the next little rupture over Marta’s jealousy and Fina guarding her relationship with Bianca to herself is already knocking on the door.

I hope that they will not wipe Fina's trauma away, but continue to explore it. Otherwise, the week of being utterly cagey next to Marta, to now suddenly being able to communicate with her and trust her again because one lie has exploded in her face, would be a hell of a shortcut (even if an understandable one for a daily soap).

It is fantastic nuance work how the Writing Room and Directing keep them both relatable, and readable to the audience, but not to each other. Marta is fighting her own trauma of being abandoned and being deemed insufficient by romantic partners, and now the one person who has always been the proof to the contrary has both left her and lied to her; Fina needs to work through what she calls "cowardishness", but what is actually a trauma response of wanting a safe place and automatically trying to appease anyone who might offer it, without looking at what she herself might want or feel first.

But I still think Mafin is set up for a full “I love(d) no one like I love you” arc. With how the Writing Room is leaving these blanks now, they are teasing exactly that narrative again: with the reunion in #561, and now with this slow "Fina lived a different life under different conditions, but now she has to consciously choose Marta all over again like she did on instinct in the hallway" tale.

Let’s go check on those dahlias, Digna, your daughters will need a while longer to sort out their marriage.

[mrsdaphnefielding]

Season Finale Day, and another post to add to the flurry. (just some musings. very much "glass half full")

Screencap thanks to the clip by @bloomsberries, and chosen very consciously, since this post by @ignorant-rat-carcass raised a very interesting question: will the season finale indeed have Marta approach Cloe in the same space where, towards the end of the previous season, Marta and Fina got to exchange wedding vows?

That would make another instance of quoting an iconic Mafin moment, the previous ones being The Eyelash, The Perfume On Her Wrist, and, arguably, the Let Me Wait For You To Feel Comfortable Approaching Me (which Fina did in Illescas 1, and which Cloe, repeatedly, got wrong in the office). Will the Wedding Vows moment be next, and will it underline, once more, how Cloe does not compare to Fina for Marta?

After what we have seen so far after Fina’s departure, my own expectation would be: yes, they will underline that distance once more, and underline how Mafin is the real thing, and Cloe at most an interloper.

Do I expect, from the preview, that Marta will throw herself at Cloe in defiance in the season finale? Yes. Would I enjoy watching that? No.

But would I enjoy watching it as part of a large Mafin reunion arc that drove home time and again that no matter whom Marta might turn to in the meantime – believing herself abandoned – that nothing compares to Fina? Yes. I would enjoy that arc, and I would accept the moments that make me scream at my screen as part of its build-up. That is, after all, the show’s description (any telenovela’s description), and the job of anyone on its set: to make people respond with a high level of emotion to an emotional hothouse of twists and swerves. And it takes no more than a look around the tag today to see that, yes, if the goal is to create engagement, this show delivers. Con creces.

With how this season, post episode 377, has been so careful to remember Fina and to frame all ‘acercamientos’ between Marta and Cloe with “Actually, remember how Fina did this better?” (also no one gets to sleep in her bed, let’s slip in another mention of her and also here is her calendar on the wall), I do not get the impression that the writers’ room is trying to overwrite the Season 1 “Mafin is *it*” narrative in Season 2. They have maintained it despite one of actresses being out of the show for nearly half the season. No small feat. And you don’t script a choked-out “It’s been so hard since Fina left” nearly a 100 episodes later when you’re trying to overwrite a narrative.

I am, at this point, more puzzled what would draw Marta to Cloe in terms of story and character – with Marta threatened to be socially shunned for her gayness and with other drama requiring the character’s attention; with Cloe having been written as rash, inconsiderate and moody towards Marta – but there might be yet another twist or finally a backstory today. Or it might just be another rung on that ladder of distance to Fina, to mark one involvement as something desperate while the other is all-consuming but lost to Marta (who still doesn’t know Fina didn’t leave her of her own free will) for now. Or Cloe might simply not get as much attention as a character and remain more of a dramaturgical ploy?

We have been told in no uncertain terms since right after Fina’s departure that there would be another woman, so my focus is not on the what (soap’s gonna soap), but on the how, and, so far, the entire how has been “but whom Marta actually loves is Fina” and “whatever Marta does, she doesn’t know Fina didn’t want to leave her.” That is, basically, a variant on the “this is only a dream” scenario (which is a soap staple, too). None of this – none of this – has been “Marta is over Fina and finding someone new, yay!”

I was there for Tara’s shirt. I was there for the parking lot of no remembrance. I was there for Silvia gunned down at the altar, I was there for the hurtful “I am cheating on you on purpose because the network just hired someone hot they needed to stuff somewhere” HC storyline. I was there when Eduige hung herself, echoing that other Martha who hung herself who was one of my first on-screen lesbians.

And while I personally dread the sight of Marta locking lips with Cloe, it can still make for great drama, and there’s so much to be grateful for and to celebrate, in this storyline and in this season overall: The beleaguered lesbian heroine is a center of narrative goodness and whom we are supposed to root for. Her entire family is rallying around her instead of looking contrite at her funeral. Not too many years ago, this would have ended differently, or been brushed away, and not given this weight. This is the season finale, and the entire de la Reina family loss of the company comes down to the right of one lesbian telling at least her diary about how much she loves Fina Valero? That belongs on a Pride float.

So, some things I am grateful for, and that I want to remember today:

They didn’t kill off Fina.

They didn’t make Fina disappear and make light of Marta’s grief.

They allowed Marta to spiral into despair for dozens of episodes, to a degree that they had to move the character reset to “stable & functional” off-screen in Madrid since it would have taken another full season to move out of that on-screen in any credible manner.

(And the acting during that entire spiral. My God. All the awards to Belmonte.)

Even after that reset, the narrative continued to be “Marta is desperately in love with Fina”.

Even when the show introduced Cloe, it was not to a clear slate, but to “Marta is desperately in love with Fina”.

We are at nearly a 100 episodes without Fina, with carefully curated mentions of her, and the narrative still is “Marta is desperately in love with Fina”.

From The Eyelash to the “temenos toda la vida por delante”: anything Cloe did, Fina did better, and the writers’ room doesn’t tire of underlining it: Let’s turn a page on that calendar again and have Carmen mention again how Fina should be with them. Let Claudia again tell people that no one sleeps in Fina’s bed. And the drama and tension that makes!

We all knew that there could only ever be one Season 1. Marta and Fina could only fall in love once, just like Begoña and Andrés could only fall in love once, and now it has been Soap Season 2, which either needs to remove characters and start the arc anew, or find new twists to this same arc without breaking it, and I am very grateful that, so far, no one is dead and that I can follow the arc without getting the impression that it has been broken. And we may even get to having our cake and eating it, too, with Marta and Fina falling in love all over again in Season 3.

They made Fina’s disappearance not about falling out of love with Marta or a cheating storyline, but about sacrificing her own life for Marta out of love (and fear, and circumstance, but still: out of love).

The dramaturgical buoy since episode 377, for every decision Marta takes, has been “this happens only because Marta doesn’t know” (where Fina is, how much Fina loves her). When it would have been a lot easier to make her mad and sad for a dozen episodes, and then run a lengthy new romance plotline with that hot adversary riding into town (and possibly have Fina return to *that*). And they did not do that. They did not do that at all.

From the preview for today’s finale, it seems that after several attempts of Cloe pushing herself at Marta and ignoring the boundaries Marta set, it will at least be Marta making a (uninformed, ill-advised, but: on her own) decision on that she still has life left to live, even if the person with whom she would prefer to live it is gone from her life? So the season would end with Marta on her own feet, choosing for herself, no matter how ill-informed the choice, despite a very recent threat to her very being herself? That’s someone Fina can home to. (of course, the burned diary also plays up the current distance to Fina, but it is a distance that can be crossed again, in a lengthy arc with lots of narrative weight)

Even if we are moving into a – temporary – Marta/Cloe involvement, it has been made abundantly clear, time and again, that this storyline is not overwriting but underlining Mafin – the “I could kiss all the lips in the world, and on all of them, I would only search to remember yours” mode of things: Marta’s attraction to Cloe does in no way compare to her attraction to Fina.

Look at the conversations and drinks and fanart and shared joy and grief on here, all brought on because we connected to two fictional lesbians. I am very grateful for this space, and for your company at the proverbial liquor cart.

Finally, my God the outfits and the scenes we got out of this all. Sad-eyed lady of the perfumería (@wirepaladin) by the fireplace, burning her diary to those Season 1 voiceovers?! That is the drama I am here for! Honorary mention for Livid Luz in flannel, with her subtext wife Begoña, worried about how their fellow lesbian Marta is treated by bad heteronormative patriarchy. Overall, the abundance of queer characters on this show that are not just there to be queer? And how the writing roots for their perspective? And, linked to that, the continued – and yes, oftentimes grueling, because that is what it is, 1959 and in many cases still today – focus on woman’s choices, concerns and specific challenges?

Sign me up for Season 3. You’ll find me a the liquor cart!

[mrsdaphnefielding]

#523

They actually went and gave Marta and Cloe the lush outdoor shoot, with lakeside and mountainview - only to break them up, in the same car and exactly a year to the day after the Mafin wedding night scene in that very Beetle aired? (thanks to @caskettmyheart and @bloomsberries for pointing out and figuring out that the Wedding (#269) aired on TV Mar 19, 2025; while the lakeside break-up (#523) will air on Mar 20, 2026).

Condolences to the Marloe faction because yikes. But also, what a fanworks move! I would say there are people on the creative crews who ship Mafin even harder than we do.

[Lengthy (sorry!) lesbian processing post on the break up, its soundcueing, and further narrative options. Obiovusly contains Cloe, obviously is about Mafin underneath.]

"Can't a girl simply enjoy some physical affection without declarations or too many strings attached?"

So Cloe actually got the picnic with Marta that Fina never had - but it amounted to no more than a few lonely (sour?) grapes and a glass of champagne since the rest of the picnic basket was woefully ignored.

There was no "the doll in the window I could never have" speech because the entire scene made that already clear from the start: Cloe offers one effusive romantic declaration after another (I love you just as you are; You are so pretty, as always; I am so lucky to be here with you; I love being here with you; You are the most beautiful woman in the world, etc. - sidenote: I still gnash my teeth every time Cloe tips up Marta's chin. No chins, no foreheads. Leave to Fina what is Fina's.), but the only thing responding to her is the Wrong Flutes romance motif in the background. Marta bascially says "we can't stay long, I have so much work back at the company". And beyond that, she's for fewer words and a little more action, hands-on.

Ouch. (Valentina, please come get your girl who is so gone for someone who is so much less gone for her in return). Get up, Cloe!

Of course, after yelling that at my screen, I yelled "Treason!" again when Cloe whispers "Vamos" to pull Marta up from the ground and into the Beetle because that's exactly what Fina said just before getting into the same car with Marta, to do the same thing (and, for the viewers: exactly a year and a day ago!)- another parallel, but Marta doesn't echo it here.

Moving onwards, the sound cueing tries and tries to afford the same affective weight to this break-up and to Marta and Cloe as to Marta and Fina by recycling core motifs, even as the dialogue lines mark a clear difference (I am peeved at the Sound Department because you may want to control my narrative connotations via sound, but it is not working).

Moving into the car, Marta and Cloe get the dense lower strings four falling chords that are just short of the Pachelbel canon (did we get them last for Digna's wedding?), [00:22:29 of the Mafin Drive Cut].

And no, I did not want to see a parallel sequence to the wedding scene in the car, nor the Titanic hand against the window ("At least it stayed put," I said. "Not enough steam," @madronash quipped) which then kicks off the flashback, but not without having afforded some of those same positions and movements - that had been tied to singularity before - to Marta with someone else. Even if it was set up to show the difference.

The wedding night flashback has the same soundtrack as in episode 269 itself - the central Mafin motif dubbed "pasión oculta" on the official playlist earlier this year.

Noteworthy intro to the flashback: the entire 269 scene between Marta and Fina kicks off because they look at each other in a way that would actually melt down the car, sustained and breathless, and then moves into making out, whereas Marta with Cloe does not even look at her: the moment transports, to me, as Marta disappearing into her head and a space of touch, not searching that connection to another person we then see so clearly in the flashback with Fina.

When are the borders between two bodies lifted? Not at the lakeside. But the flashback to the past causes Marta to freeze in the present, and when Cloe's asks her what's wrong, Marta says, "I can't. I'm sorry."

And of all the things Cloe could have said, she says "What?!", and then "No!", and when she asks whether it's because of Fina, and Marta only says "Forgive me," Cloe says "No." again and stalks off. (Marta remains in the car, stunned, and does not even try to go after her. Ouch again.)

Now Cloe will not know that Marta is mirroring the setup of her wedding night here and then gets tripped by it, but still: after having proclaimed that she could live with the ghost of Fina, Cloe storms off at its first appearance (instead of asking, perhaps "What do you need?" or "Let's just sit here for a while and see whether we can talk about it?")

Part of this is still Season 2 Cloe who tends to make things about her - the Season 3 "I can fix her" attitude is similar. And no, she cannot, and it is not her fault, but also nobody asked her to do it.

When Marta says, "I can't", the sound level gets two tiny, piano renditions of Wrong Flutes in a swerve to minor and then directly moves to another familar motif which makes me think of "lost love", so it might have been used for Mafin or Began before, but I cannot place it right now [g'' /c'' /g''-a flat"-g'']

And that's the lake scene. The actual break-up conversation happens in the office, and the Sound Department pulls out all the stops, but trying to put this on the the same aural podium as Mafin still does not give it the same weight.

The scene opens with Cloe alone, and we get her personal motif (Horror Organ) for the first time in weeks. No more Wrong Flutes romance here. And Cloe starts the conversation snappy and hurt - and sure, she should be hurt, but she cannot blame on Marta that she hasn't received the affective reaction she wanted, and that's Season 2 again.

When Marta says, "I've been an idiot", Cloe replies, "you're not an idiot, you're in love with Fina." And when Marta says, "Fina is not here" - again ungallantly implying that Cloe is not the primary choice - Cloe yells, "She's here, she's inside of you! She pushed herself into our relationship!"

And that's again backwards: because the relationship that still lingers is the prior one between Marta and Fina, and despite Marta telling her flat out that she cannot move on (yet), Cloe pushed herself into it. She didn't mean to fall, but she did, yet that doesn't undo the chronology.

Musically, we get some string and piano that just meander without recognizable motifs (to me), but at the point where Cloe says, "You never loved me like I loved you" (which, again, sucks. True. But it's nothing you can blame on the one you love), we get the questioning piano and strings that underlined Fina in episode 354 in the warehouse at night, when she asks Marta, "Isn't our life already a condemnation?"

Marta doesn't segue into a big romantic declaration here, but she does insist that what she feels for Cloe is real, whereas Cloe says "that's what you tried to make yourself believe".

And, sure, Marta can be emotionally stunted at the best of times, the character has consistently been drawn like that, but why shouldn't that affection have been real? It wasn't the level of affection Cloe wanted, but that doesn't make it unreal. Just a mismatch.

The conversation is entering wistful major break-up levels, and Cloe gets in one more declaration at 00:39:20 [Mafin Drive cut], saying it's her fault for adoring Marta so much, and the Sound Department gives her the Warehouse Swagger Motif of episode 354 to upholster her commitment, and no. Just no. This does not get to be on the same sound podium as "Mi Mujer" at the warehouse.

The sound motif only switches when a stunned (and stunted) Marta says that she had also imagined a life with Cloe - just perhaps not the life Cloe dreamed up - and she gets the falling piano chords they use at times for scene changes.

Now, for Cloe saying "I can't do this anymore, I give up" and Marta - who is afraid of falling back into that pit of loneliness on her own, perhaps? - saying that Fina is a memory she would, supposedly, forget in the long run, the Wrong Flutes motif is back, tentiative and moved back to piano [00:40:00], also if I never have to hear that motif again it would still be soon enough.

For now, it continues to meander in the background as Marta insists that she does love Cloe (but how. But how), and as Cloe insists that Marta is deceiving herself about that.

[no knee touch here, other than in the previous ep's scene with Cloe and Valentina in the exact same space]

The sound background stops when Cloe sits down with Marta and tells her, kindly, that she needs to leave the past in the past if she wants to be with anyone new, "because this hurts", and as of 00:40:43, they get the epic Tragic Love Farewell motif (yes, the letter-writing, diary-burning one) and again, No. This is not on the same level: or, it probably is from a Cloe POV, but what about viewers who have been through 500+ episodes of Mafin?

And they get the full motif, played through to the end (until 00:42:41, with the thick celli coda) , with dense orchestration - as Marta (who is only now learning how to break up with someone) states that she never meant to hurt Cloe, and as Cloe tells her that she "tried to cure your beautiful heart, but you didn't let me."

And that is again close to Season 2 because, sure, Marta did not put herself out there like she did with Fina, but she couldn't have either way: you don't decide when you're over someone. It's not a conscious choice, and Cloe's "I could have fixed you if you had let me" stance denies that here.

But then they get a very good ending, as the Tragic Love Farewell motif continues to play: Marta asking Cloe to forgive her, Cloe saying there's nothing to forgive, both agreeing they've been happy with each other.

Still, Marta, in the end, is left adrift: "What do I do?"

Dramaturgically, the story has now left Marta at a point where she is unattached, but still bound to Fina, newly aware of the depth of her love for Fina, perhaps with enough impetus to try and search for her - be it for closure or for a reunion.

As for Marta and Cloe (some final ruminations on how things might progress from here on)

This was a neat, mature ending - both fond and sad - that leaves both characters undamaged, and without scores that still need to be settled.

Of course, Cloe is now set up as so “good” that she would deserve narrative reward (but is she? Those petulant “no!” say something else and the writing could easily have put different lines there to reach the same calm break-up), and the only reward she wants at the moment is Marta; her only plotline, except for supporting Valentina and interacting a bit at the store and the company, is Marta.

Is Cloe a 2.0 setup in case Fina returns only to leave again?

I don’t think so, because that’s not the story the writing room has been telling.

The writing room has held onto the singularity of the Mafin narrative even when writing Marta with another woman, and soaps function through predictability in their plot twists: we know who’s good and we know who’s endgame, and the fun is in being hit over the hand with how it happens rather than with what happens.

We’ve been through the extra-diegetic conditions last summer, when I doubted Brunet would return at all, for simple reasons of demographics and the TV industry and the setup of SdL: it has always been likely that Belmonte might stay on while Brunet pursues different offers or further family plans.

Yet this wouldn’t need to break the narrative they’ve set up and that they’ve continued to tell heavily even in Fina’s absence. I’ve said before that Marta could easily shift into shady directora matriarch for a decade, if the show stays on air that long, with women coming and going, and she could still board a plane to Buenos Aires in the final episode of the show.

A  short-term “oh, we don’t fit into each other’s lives any longer, fare thee well” wrap-up for Mafin is not what the show has been building towards in the past months and weeks. It would surprise me, as a poisoned gift I would prefer not to have received, much like I e.g. would have preferred not to have had Season 5 of Warehouse 13.

But in case of Warehouse 13, the fandom decided “There is no Season 5” and the community is still thriving and celebrating its characters more than a decade later, so if we come to that bridge with Mafin and SdL, I’ll jump off that bridge with my quill in hand.

For now, I am looking forward to the return of Fina and am basking in the shipping level of the creative crews who honestly timed the wedding anniversary to the interim relationship breakup in the very same car.

[thanks to @caskettmyheart and her team for the Mafin Drive Cuts that enabled my timestamps for the sound analysis!]

[mrsdaphnefielding]

#594

Thunderstorm, here we go.

Editing puts Fina exploding at Marta in between Claudia and Miguel moving closer to each other as a parallel “couples trying to figure each other out”; and that’s the most optimistic read I can draw up at this point.

The scene is brutal, but it helps to remember that Fina is not openly reacting to anything that happens in this scene and in this office. Fina walks in in full lockdown mode and she walks out in full lockdown mode and not even Marta in tears gets through her armor of ire.

There is no reasoning with this Fina, there is just wondering what happened to her to be so deadly afraid of any vulnerability that she would rather push away the woman she loves than face her fears. But while Fina is abrasive, she is not cruel here (we’ll get to that over the Chacel. Oh brother.)

Fina doesn’t even ask “Did you take Bianca’s call?” It’s Attack Mode from the get-go: “Why didn’t you tell me you talked to Bianca?”

Fina is plaintiff, jury and judge here, and the sentence has been dealt out before Marta even says a word.

Righteousness is never a good look, but Fina seems to need it just as desperately as her anger – something to be right about, something where she holds the answer, something she can control?

And Fina certainly doesn’t hold back. She starts with “So you have deceived me,” and that is so disproportionate (and that’s how it lands with Marta) that it is clearly about something else. Perhaps it’s about having tried to fit in back in Toledo and being unhappy with it, but she hasn’t tried to talk about, instead hiding the unhappiness and anger behind her new favorite blanket term of “independence.”

There is no actual conversation happening here, and Fina saying things – such as that it’s over with Bianca – will of course not calm Marta, who has lived through weeks of Fina saying one thing but doing another. (I love you, but I don't want a home with you. You are my partner, but I want you at a distance while I shop for couch cushions. I returned for you, but also I decided not to mention I have another girlfriend in Argentina.)

The sequence has an interesting balance in that Fina seems – while she can finally lash out at Marta for having done something wrong! – still defensive and under pressure: she says she hasn’t ended things well with Bianca, she does not want to appear insensitive, she even asks Marta for empathy towards Bianca (the same Marta who was crushed when Fina admitted to being with someone else). Marta is not in the mood.

Of course “I only broke up with her because I chose you” is not a reassurance. It registers to Marta as “I was able to choose someone else and could do so again.”

Above all, it’s not “I broke up with her because I love you, not her,” and that’s what Marta might need to hear, but above all, what she would need to experience. Because for Marta, it is “I will always choose you”, and Fina right now signals to her that she was able to choose someone else.

Yet even though Fina is angry and confrontative and insensitive in this scene, Brunet gets Fina across as caged and helpless, lashing out with fear and in disbelief, and seeming utterly lost. It is not intentional cruelty. And her “attack first” mode is still very much Fina, as is Marta staying cool: “Sorry if I don’t worry about the woman who had you while I was suffering.”

But Fina repeats her manipulative-without-meaning-to move from the muffin coffee date: “Tell me what you need. I showed you that you can trust me, haven’t I?” (Uhm. No. You haven't.)

And this is a good piece of writing because for Fina (“but I stayed!”) that staying is a proof of loyalty, while for Marta, who is kept at arms’ length, that trust in FIna's loyalty has eroded specifically due to this unavailable Fina. And here Marta is asked to spell out, again, what she needs: that she wants affection and compassion and companionship.

They are unintentionally gaslighting each other: Fina cannot believe how Marta doesn’t recognize her sacrifice of staying. Marta cannot believe that a woman who frames staying with her as a sacrifice does really love her. Both their reactions are relatable.

But between the two of them upholding their armor, Marta is the one to cede, from a standoffish “I already told you I’m sorry” (which, indeed, she hasn’t said, and Fina doesn’t wait a second before she latches onto that and throws it in Marta's face with a disappointed sigh) to honestly admitting her fears, under tears.

But this Fina is unable to hear it because that would mean opening herself up to being vulnerable (no one makes her more vulnerable than Marta, which is why she is the hardest on Marta, and only Marta), and here she has found one chink to place her spur of righteous anger, and she will not let go of it.

Their more open conversation gets a string sound layer, and Fina asking Marta “What’s happening to you?” is actually the question Fina would ask herself, if she had access to her own empathic nature.

Marta is still mostly the same. The audience knows it because they’ve seen it across nine months, but they don’t know what has happened to Fina to be on emotional lockdown (other than Pelayo exiling her to the other side of the world). But there are little chinks visible also in Fina’s armor, and Brunet does a great job in portraying that surface ripple of things that do not get through to her consciousness: the way her face moves when Marta sincerely apologizes. It’s in the way her brow and her jaw cede a bit of tension for a second (00:27:51).

Fina doesn’t want to soften, but part of her does. And then she shifts back to her categoric judgment in reaction: The woman I fell in love with wouldn’t have done this (not if you had treated her like a woman you love, Fina, but we get that you cannot do that right now). This has the same importance as keeping the relationship with Bianca a secret. (It has not.)

But as the scene goes on, Fina, if anything, looks desperate and lost opposite Marta's pain:

Fina’s Haunted Flutes are back to underlay Marta’s fears of Fina and Bianca on the phone all night, reconnecting (00:28:29). Marta, who has been unable to move on from Fina, will of course be scared by the fact that Fina could move on, and Fina returning and staying cannot fix that. Staying is passive. "Staying" is not “actively being there with someone, communicating openly, and growing together.”

Fina, on the other side – and damn, upon rewatching it, this is super hurtful but this “ships that miss each other in the night” is very well written – is offended by Marta’s trust issues. No one snuck out of Fina’s bedroom in the middle of the night, she doesn’t understand that fear of abandonment. And “I am staying” likely feels for Fina like “All I want is to run and not have ties, and yet I am here! I am digging in my heels every day to not go back to someplace safer and more rewarding professionally and less complicated emotionally, all because of you and if that doesn’t earn back your trust I don’t have anything else to offer, you don’t love me like I love you.”

That’s why Fina calls Marta blind, and why Marta says she’s not. Because while Fina may say that she is available, and may *think* she acts that way, the audience sees that Fina is in fact not available emotionally at the moment, at least not to Marta, and that echoes in Marta’s reactions.

On the other side, there is Fina calling Marta “insecure” – which she will scoff at in the next episode – but it is not something Fina rejects as a sign of weakness, but as a sign of distrust and lesser love.

The Empty Fifth Chords are back because, no, of course Fina does not know what to say to that confession. Because she doesn’t see “Marta is crying because she loves me, because she is dead afraid of losing me and scared by my constant pushing her away”. What Fina sees is “Marta doesn’t trust me, which means she doesn’t love me like I love her.”

What a twisted mess, which ends with Marta apologizing in more fear while Fina moves away once again, and Fina is incapable of recognizing her own lack of empathy (and there is a big difference between recognizing another human being is in pain and afraid, and forgiving that person for having done something hurtful. You can definitely have one of these without the other).

Fina’s own emotions seem to yell at her at a distance, with only anger getting through, but it is also clear after this scene that they are there underneath. This is not indifference. This is just another facet of fear, locked down so deep that Fina herself cannot hear it (or desperately tries not to hear it).

Girl. You have to talk. You would need a therapist.

Later, Marta's long glace at the liquor tray already showcases that this was the beginning of the end:

In addition, this is the start to a "people attacking Marta as a person" arc: Tasio accuses her, very unjustly, of trying to end his marriage as a retaliation of his business decision over the family company. Of course Marta would never (we hope).

All that aside, Marta countering Tasio's whining of "I just lost my wife!" with "You should have kept it in your pants" was supremely satisfying, and I only hope that it wasn't a parallel setup to have Marta pushed to breaking point and at Cloe (please no).