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)
