#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!]