#568
Committed Marta, conflicted Fina, and - in matching orange - Digna getting an idea about why. And in between those two spots of orange, the framed sibling photo from Andrés' wedding in the background: Marta in That Ballgown, and we know whom she called then, and who got her out of that gown that night, and where.
We'll always have Illescas, I suppose (even if perhaps not "toda la vida por delante" any longer).
Marta gets to do a lot of quietly intimate "mhmm" sounds next to Fina across these past few eps (@madronash pointed out one such instance a few days go, and: agreed), playing up the trust and understanding in their day-to-day that Marta still believes to be there.
Marta is also back in the soft-fall pinstripes with the not-quite western front detail; fitting for the somber news at the company and worrying about the workers, but Marta smiles when she admits her private happiness while Fina, again, looks as if she wants to be elsewhere and we are getting an idea of where.
One new sound motif of two interchanging halting piano chords above single strings appears when Fina lies about Bianca to Marta, with Digna (and her delicate "well, I didn't know how you knew her so I did not ask") seeing right through her, at 00:37:00 in the Mafin Drive Cut; it keeps recurring until the end of the scene when Marta - in a lovely tribute to Carmen - asks Digna if she wants to share a Fino, and Digna agrees while Fina retreats further into herself.
The following would have been a comment at the Liquor Cart yesterday that turned a little too long, but it does serve as an episode commentary instead, on implications of Digna's eagle eyes versus Marta's utter lack of distrust when Fina reacts to the message that there was a call by Bianca (the Interim Doña with the Rural House aka "I'd rather dance with the cows 'til you came home" (Groucho Marx) since Fina has a pattern she is pavloved to, apparently).
Given the 569 preview, Bianca is indeed a secret not-quite-ex-yet-interim-liaision, here to mess with the Mafin narrative. In case of Cloe, that kind of setup turned into an underhanded underlining of Mafin (and what a deviously gleeful piece of writing that was). But what will it be this time, with a Fina who clearly does not want to grow roots in Toledo again, who doesn't want a darkroom or a home and who chooses not to talk to her wife?
From a meta point of view (dramaturgy, story pull, audience engagement, etc.) I don't think it would be a narratively or economically sound choice to break up Mafin permanently. Add to that how the creative team and crews clearly care about the storyline; why would they suddenly chuck it to the wind?
What does make sense, however, from a storytelling point of view (maximize drama!), is a temporary break-up: to give them a dizzying high (ep 561) , then have them separate painfully (slower, but not so slow as to make them unsalvageable as a couple), and to then have them build their way back towards each other in a slow burn.
And that might take time, perhaps until the end of the season, or even moving into the next season. If we look, for comparison, at the timeframes they are pulling with Began (if Began is still set up to be endgame, which I assume, even though I don't see it sustained onscreen), those are long narrative spans that are on the table.
I am seeing the same thing @blancdansnoir pointed out at the #568 Liquor Cart: Fina looks happier at the mention of Bianca in the #569 preview than, post-561, at the continued presence of Marta next to her, and there isn't much facial nuance about it. And that doesn't add up (yet), in terms of the narrative that drove their story until episode 561. Also it might not be what viewers invested in the story which was told up until episode 561 want to tune in for. Some people who were constant, constructive voices in this tag across the past year have already decided to take a step back and I feel it as a loss.
If this is a longer, bigger arc, Bianca will likely appear on screen and she will need to be given some weight to cause gravity shifts. But the question would very much be how that were framed: The entire Marta/Cloe involvement was carefully and explicitly framed as "this happened only because Marta thought that Fina was not available and even then she was unable to forget about her".
So if they framed Bianca as "this only happened because Fina thought she would never get to see Marta again and tried to move on with her life, but then the moment she saw Marta again, that lock burst open again", that would yank the Mafin chain (and with the current secrecy and conscious lying: considerably), but it would not break the narrative, necessarily.
It is too soon to tell whether this will be an extended jumpscare or a permanent dissolution. My money is still on the former, but there are no clear signs yet.
Meanwhile, all the little references given are deliberate 180s to their prior story: Look how we don't care about suizos and patisserie portmanteaus! Look how Fina has changed in looks and behavior! Look how there is no Mafinca any longer! Look at how the running gag about them wanting each other but not having a place has turned into having a place but not going for it! Look at how Marta (as @bloomsberries pointed out at the #568 Liquor Cart), after being horribly gaslit by a person she trusted, is being kept in the dark by her wife, at length! Look how Marta dotes on Fina ("I organized your favorite breakfast"), look at how umcomfortable Fina is in turn! Look how trusting and how in love Marta is, and how Fina is certainly not the first and possibly not even the second! Look how they are so close again at last, yet so incredibly far away from each other! Look at it, look at it!
Why set this up so explicitly and gleefully if not to deliver a spectacular U-Turn? This is a telenovela, not arthouse, and its curves tend to have a sway akin to transporting an aircraft carrier to port via truck on a serpentine road.
Could the Writing Room make Marta and Fina come back from this break they are hurtling toward, and have them find each other again? Sure. (and that could be glorious. If we can sort the shards into a pattern again, and it might take seasons and stretches of credibility, like with the other long-term lead couples on the show: Andrés/Begoña and Damián/Digna)
Does it feel more like "Hulk. Smash Hearts. With Hammer. Haha!" right now? Also sure.