#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).