La Fea - Part Six

Lety, having claimed to have finished the business plan, is unable to provide it. Remember, the envelope with that CD was lost when she fell getting off the bus. Fernando is acting un poco loco with all that is going on, there is a meeting and he NEEDS those numbers. He asks both Lety and Alicia to get him something, neither of them can produce more than ‘uh uh well jeez uh….’

To make matters worse, Mama Padilla tells Lety that RoboPapa is on the way to Conceptos to have a word with Fernando. We can only hope that he keeps his ninja skills under wraps and truly intends to just talk. I don’t know if my brain can handle martial arts and Spanish all at the same time. Maybe to top it all off it could be in black and white, showing some other guy smoking a cigarette and talking about death, like a German film. Then the TV would explode.

RoboPapa shows up and asks for Fernando. Lety finds RoboPapa in the lobby and tries to head him off at the pass. She basically tells him to hit the bricks, he naturally assumes that she is ashamed of him. That’s not true, but it should be. “Si Papa, I would love to introduce my dreamy boss to my steam-powered father.” I don’t think so. Besides, at this moment Fernando has steam coming out of his own ears.

Lety runs him off and heads back upstairs. Fernando has had enough. He calmly tells her that she’s fired. I thought this was another dream sequence, but no, he really said it. It’s time to start a count of how many times Lety has been fired.

CANNED = 2 TIMES

She goes to her office and sniffles and cries. Meanwhile, somebody’s kids find the envelope with Lety’s CD in it. Everyone at this company has kids and perpetual babysitting issues. Paula Maria has a kid that has to hide under her desk a lot, I think he keeps getting kicked out of school. I imagine it’s from getting in fights about his clothes, she has him dressed like he’s going to golf school. Green pants and a polo shirt, and a matching green cap. He was probably tired of getting his ass kicked for wearing that stuff and fought back. Then Olarte and Marcia’s secretary has two kids who always don’t have anyone to watch them, so she sneaks them in and hides them in an empty office or something. These kids are the ones who found the envelope. They decide to try and find out who this Leticia Padilla is. Can they just put it in the mail cart or something? Nooooooo. They sneak around, avoiding everyone. If they keep avoiding everyone and not asking who Leticia is, how are they going to find out?

A package arrives via Saimon, this one for Ana Leticia Villaroel, sister to Marcia and Ariel. Finally the confusion between Ana Leticia and Leticia! Lety is told that there is an envelope for her, she is excited and rushes down and tears it open, turns out the envelope has a couple fake boobs in it, bra-stuffers. She is now despondent. Right then, though, the kids show up with the other envelope, Omar takes it from them and he and Lety run up to give it to Fernando. All ends well, with Lety again sniffling and crying.

Fernando has no recollection of firing Lety. “Really? Well since you got this report here you aren’t fired, forget about that.” I’d forget about it right after an APOLOGY. Lety is more forgiving though, she goes back to dreaming about being Mrs. Fernando.

Fernando does a quick reversal of his earlier firing of Lety, realizing now that she is vital to the company. He calls her in and tells her that, finishing with “tu eres la mujer que yo necesito,” you are the woman that I need. Omar overhears this last part and has a field day teasing Fernando about his new novia, once Lety leaves the room of course. He can offer nothing but “yeah yeah whatever Omar, good one, how old are you anyway?” or something along those lines.

Alicia tells Marcia that she didn’t do any of the work, Marcia is pissed. How can she have Alicia keep tabs on Fernando if she doesn’t keep her job?

Omar tells Fernando that Alicia was going to try and do that work, but that she asked him for help, and well, you know. That help resulted in low-flow showerhead hair for Alicia and them using the same soap. Fernando finally comes right out and asks Lety if Alicia really did that earlier report that she was so quick to take credit for. Lety says “if she did that, then she could have done this one too, right?” She grins smugly. Fernando smiles and says that yes, she could have. We’re all on the same page here. Lety smart, Alicia dumb. Fernando has big plans for Lety, she is going to be a big part of the company. Lety wants to just be a big part of Fernando’s bow-chicka-bow-bow but will settle for being important at work.

The next day Tomas is at the Padillas’ house freeloading some food and lets slip that while Lety does executive work, she’s techinically (and is paid like) a secretary. OOPS. Wow is it any wonder this guy hasn’t gotten any farther in life. He’s supposed to be smart, but his role in this novella so far is to be the buffoon.

RoboPapa’s steam engine gets pumping in the next gear, he starts yelling at Mama saying “how can this be?” Earth to RoboPapa – it’s not Mama’s fault. Helloooooooo. Anyway, he is going (AGAIN, this whole theme is getting old) down to Conceptos straight away to get her out of there. Nothing shows support for your daughter who should be working as an executive like showing up and treating her like she’s five. Nice work RoboPapa.

Mama and Tomas are no match for a lumbering, wheezy old man, he uses his Robo stiff arm to push them back and lurches out the door. Mama calls Lety on the phone to tell her what happened and to warn her that he’s on the way. “Hurricane Erasmo!!!! EEEeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!” Lety is too busy for the call, though, and cuts her off before she says that he’s on the way. I sense more running around like Jack Tripper and John Cleese again.

Meanwhile, the big meeting is called to order, now that the numbers have arrived. RoboPapa shows up and is about to barge in when he hears Fernando say to Olarte, “from now on, from this moment, you will report all the bank and treasury movements and transactions to la señorita Leticia Padilla.” RoboPapa beams and decides everything is fine. This guy has one brain cell. Maybe none. All this does is verify the problem that got him so pissed off in the first place. Lety does executive work but is getting ripped off in her paycheck. Well, tomorrow is another day. Another day, another visit to Conceptos by RoboPapa.

Later that night Lety writes in her journal that she’s giving up on love, nobody will ever love her, men would never want to meet someone ugly like her. Sniff sniff.

Alicia goes on a dinner date with Ariel that Marcia set her up with. She is supposed to meet him at 8:00, she shows up ten minutes late. He’s already eating. She asks him, basically, “what the hell???” He says she was late, so he ordered. I want to know what restaurant this is, because they have the best service of all time. In ten minutes he can order, be served, and be halfway through his dinner. That’s incredible. Anyway, Ariel is a complete and utter ass, Alicia tries to flirt a little and make nice, Ariel quickly tells her that they have nothing in common, she’s trash trying to act like she’s somebody, he really puts her down. I almost feel sorry for her. NOT. She gets pretty pissed, naturally, and says fine, if we have nothing in common I’ll just go. He says “well, we could still have sex.” She declines and leaves. Ariel should take lessons from Fernando, then he’d learn how to be smooooth with the ladies. And it wouldn’t hurt to not be so nasty ugly either, I’m sure.

The next day Paula Maria invites Lety out for a drink, an old boyfriend is in town and invited her out. He has a friend and she needs to bring someone for him. She reaches the end of her list and Lety is all that is left, she of course says she’ll go. Paula Maria’s date looks like the assistant manager at Main Street Used Cars. I’d say he’s about 50, with a very round shape and very average looks, wearing a cheap suit. I have no idea why she got so excited that he was in town. Maybe he’s rich. His buddy, Lety’s de facto date, is a younger guy (His trainee? The guy who washes the car after you buy it?) who does the now famous Lety Recoil. They go to the bar, Paula Maria and her date hit the dance floor, leaving Lety and Trainee at the table. Lety gamely tries to make conversation, she seems to be overcoming some of her shyness, but the guy would rather be anywhere else in the world but here. She eventually gives up and just sits there drinking. Careful Lety, that’s not ginger ale!

Fernando is finishing dinner with Marcia at her place. He suggest going out, it’s a Friday night and he wants to party. She wants to stay in. Finally she tells him “Fine, go ahead and go out.” She says it nicely, not bitchy. That should have been the enormous red flag. Your fiancée is telling you to ‘go ahead’ and go out on a Friday night without her. Oh Fernando have you learned nothing? You will pay for this in the end, I’m sure. It will be thrown back at you during the next 100 arguments and beyond, perhaps on Marcia’s deathbed. “Fernando I wouldn’t be dying if you hadn’t so selfishly gone out without me that time.”

Back to Lety at the bar – she is sitting there glumly as her date spends a really long time in the bathroom. Suddenly an angel appears – no wait, it’s Fernando, even better. He chose this bar to come to and cut a rug. He sees Lety and heads over to talk. Lety is of course beside herself with giddiness. They chat for a minute, and then Fernando invites her to dance. She dances like a horse. Well, so do I so I can’t criticize. Trainee shows up and demands to know who this guy is, and then tells Fernando that Lety is with him. Lety tells him that it’s her boss, and besides Trainee wasn’t talking to her for the last hour anyway. Trainee tells her to decide, him or me? Before she can answer, Fernando punches him in the face and knocks him down. Lety is almost in tears over this manly gesture. Fernando leans in to give her a kiss……….

BIENVENIDOS AL CLUB AL CLUB AL CLUB AL CLUB DE LAS FEAAAAAAAAAS

Yes, that was the end of that particular episode and a great place for me to stop for now. Back soon with more.

La Fea - Part Five

I’m going to have to catch up quickly, my memory of some details is getting fuzzy being weeks behind. Let’s see what we can do to catch up.

Alicia tells Marcia of her plan to steal Lety’s business plan work and present it as her own. Marcia gets her devil look and agrees that this is a good idea. For some reason Marcia has started to be jealous of Lety and the fact that Fernando is nice to her. She has now reached the status of the stupidest woman of all time. She has caught him cheating with all sorts of hotties, now she’s up in arms about La Fea. She has real issues and needs to work on them, I think. I don’t even know what else to say about this.

I do have one other thing about Marcia – I think she’s a robot too. She never blinks. She has only a couple facial expressions, most famously the devil/dog baring teeth look. But most noticeably, SHE DOESN’T BLINK. I swear. I look really hard ever time she’s on camera. No blinking. Somebody needs to research and see if her real name is “model x4500” or something.

Paula Maria the receptionist gets the entire Club de Las Feas together to have a big cry about how her boyfriend dumped her. I guess this whole scene is to establish that she’s a single mom who has trouble with men. She’s still hot though, we are reminded, because as soon as she leaves and gets on the elevator, Omar (Vice-Horndog, to Fernando’s Horndog-in-Chief) immediately tries to move in on her in a manner that would look over the top in a porno, here it looks beyond ridiculous. Nevertheless, she swoons and acts a little like she’s having an orgasm just from Omar hitting on her. Really an uncomfortable scene.

Omar didn’t waste any time, next thing you know he’s repeating an earlier scene of being at a bar with some woman, with another woman to spare sitting there too, on the phone with Fernando trying to convince him to come out. Again, Fernando can’t go, as Marcia has managed to get her hooks into him for the evening. After Fernando gets off the phone, he starts making out with Marcia in his office (he is the president and you know what presidents do in their offices). Lety walks in on them and sees what they are doing, she goes and hides in her office and sniffles from sadness and jealousy. She wants Fernando to be putting little kisses on that nice moustache of hers. Bleah it made me shiver just to write that.

We now meet Ariel again, he arrives for the meeting and is introduced to Lety. He is speechless that this Fea is the secretary for the president of the company.

Alicia follows through on her plan to steal Lety’s work and pass it off as her own. She is really in charge of getting coffee and snacks, but when she waltzes in to the meeting with the business plans she told Lety she would ‘deliver’ for her, nobody bats an eye as she pretends like she did the whole thing. Everybody takes a quick look and Don Humberto comments on what a good job she did with it.

Lety drowns her sorrows in some food all alone, but the Club de Las Feas invites her to come eat with them, which improves her spirits a bit.
In the meeting, the pissing contest continues over Fernando getting to be the president. Ariel pouts and whines, Marcia finally yells at him that she voted against him because until now, he never showed the slightest bit of interest in the company. Ariel pouts some more. Something about this family – Marcia doesn’t blink, Ariel is unable to move his lips. They are stuck in pout.

Lety wants to say that the work was hers and not Alicia’s, but can’t figure out how to do it without being a whiner. I say be a whiner, but that’s me. She talks to her mom on the phone, she tells her that she is thinking of quitting before she gets fired. Whe does she think she’ll get fired? Who knows. She worries a lot.

The employees throw a little retirement party for Don Humberto, he is flattered, so flattered in fact that he stays for a whole five minutes before bailing out.

Fernando asks Alicia to make another report for him since her first was so good, she stutters and stammers about how much time she needs for it, uh, well see, uh, etc. Fernando asks Lety if Alicia did in fact do that business plan or if it was Lety’s work. Again Lety says nothing, but this time looks smug as she senses Alicia about to hang herself. Alicia goes back to her desk and worries about what to do since she has no clue how to do the work Fernando asked for.

Fernando and Omar take a break from chasing tail to do some work. They discover that the original business plan that Fernando wrote up neglected to take into account some debt and interest. Here is where I have to suspend even more disbelief. I am an accountant by trade, it is IMPOSSIBLE to prepare some financial summary of a company and ‘overlook’ debt. It is a principle component of a company’s financial situation. Do you ever consider your personal financial situation and ‘forget’ the money you owe? “Dang I should be a millionaire, where does all my money go? OH YEAH – my mortgage, car, credit cards…….” So, two things are possible here – the accountant who prepared the information that Fernando used is stupid or crooked, or Fernando himself has absolutely no clue about this sort of thing. Both are very very possible. The finance guy, Olarte, is indeed an idiot. And Fernando would only care about debt if it had boobs. The logical thing to do here would be to come clean, but this is America after all! No wait it’s Mexico, but apparently they have been paying attention. Rule number one is cover your ass. Usually the lying is to protect stock price or something, in this case they can’t come clean because Ariel would use it to push for a re-vote for the presidency.

Saimon the dapper messenger offers to give Paula Maria a ride home but she declines. Poor guy, he’s always around trying to win her over but she thinks he’s a clown. Obviously, then, at the end of the show they are sure to get together. That’s my guess. She DOES, however, quickly accept Omar’s offer of a ride, right in front of Saimon, He makes an awesome sniffle sniffle I’m not gonna cry face.

The next day Alicia decides to try and work an angle. She asks Omar for help on the work that Fernando assigned, knowing that she can never do it alone. She also wants to win Omar over to her side, that will help keep her in good with Fernando. He takes a look at her cleavage and her short skirt and readily accepts. Meanwhile, Lety and Tomas are at Lety’s house working on the same project, but in this case it will actually get done.

Lety confesses to her mother that she is only Fernando’s secretary, not his assistant. She must have been weak from the lack of sleep, she and Tomas stayed up half the night working. This Tomas guy sure gives a lot for free. It has every indication of him being hot for her so he helps her so much, but that’s not the case. He is in loooooooooove with Alicia, just from seeing her picture in a magazine. He cut out the picture and laminated it. Aaahhh – now I know. He’s always begging Lety to introduce him to Alicia, that’s why he is kissing up so much. Did you catch the part back there? He cut out Alicia’s picture and LAMINATED it. Stalker alert. Holy cow.

The scene at Alicia’s apartment – she is cooking spaghetti and Omar is openly ogling her. He has the constipated look again, the one where he is consumed by lust but really just looks like he needs to drink some coffee to get the system back in order. They talk about nothing and eat dinner. Omar is trying to get her to have more wine. And more. And a little more. It works. By the time Alicia sits down at the computer, Omar is nibbling on her neck. You can imagine the rest.

Lety gets the work done and puts it on CD to take it back to work. She takes the little microbus to work, it only slows down in front of Conceptos this day instead of actually stopping. Lety valiantly tries to do a Keanu Reeves in Speed style disembarkment while the bus is moving, but of course she takes a huge spill, trashing her stocking and her knee. The envelope containing the CD with the work slides away behind a large potted plant but Lety doesn’t notice. I see more Fawlty Towers in our future.

Fernando wants the work from Lety, she can’t find it and starts freaking out. Her lip and eye twitch are working overtime here. Lety was on the phone with her father when Fernando asks, so RoboPapa overhears Fernando speaking rather harshly with Lety. He is immediately pissed and is going to come down to her work to have a word with him. Don’t **** with RoboPapa, we have learned.

Meanwhile, Omar and Alicia are late late late for a meeting. Fernando is really steamed about it. Lety says with a grin “do you think they are together?” Fernando smiles like a 12 year old and says “I don’t know! Maybe! Do you think?” before snapping out of it and ordering Lety back to work. Omar and Alicia show up together shortly after, looking like they slept in their clothes. Fernando starts to pace back in forth and chews them out. He stops and sniffs them. “El Mismo Jabon!” Fernando the bloodhound has deduced that they used the same soap! Is your boss allowed to sniff you? I didn’t think so. The best part of this scene is seeing Alicia’s hair look limp, like everybody in that one episode of Seinfeld when they got the low-flow shower heads.

I’ll be back soon with the latest edition of Fawlty Conceptos, see you then.

La Fea - Part Four

As we all suspected, Roman and Dork had no intentions of going out with Lety. Roman seems to think this whole idea of inviting her out, then standing her up, is the funniest joke ever. In truth, it is the dumbest joke ever. Beavis and Butthead could come up with a better plan.

Huh huh uh huh huh Hey Beavis – let’s like, call Daria and say we’ll be at the mall, and then, like, not go. Huh huh.

Hrnh heh heh hrnh Yeah it’s like, she’ll go, and then like, we won’t be there. Hrnh heh heh. That will RULE! Hrnh heh. FIRE FIRE FIRE!!

Predictably, the whole plan to go out falls apart. After successfully appealing her RoboPapa’s decision to lock her up forever, with her Mama’s help of course, Lety gets all dolled up in her Grandma’s finest dress and sits by the window waiting. Mama checks in occasionally to see why she’s still sitting at the door waiting, when are these Pendejos showing up to get her? Finally one of them has the brilliant idea to call Roman and see what the deal is. I usually reach this point in about 30 seconds, it took them about two hours. “Lety, there’s this thing. It’s called a telephone. Perhaps we should give it a try.” “Are you SURE Mama? I’m scared.” Lety calls Roman, who happens to be just sitting there staring at nothing when the phone rings.

At this point I started laughing hysterically and had to pause the show. My wife thought I was insane. But the shot of Roman sitting on the couch staring at nothing when his phone rings just KILLS me. Like he thought “I’ll play this awesome prank on this chick, then I’ll completely waste the evening sitting on the couch doing absolutely nothing, and THEN, be dumb enough to answer the phone when she finally calls.” I don’t have any history of standing up dates, but I can only assume the process does not involve sitting by the phone waiting for the person you just blew off to call. What an idiot.

Roman answers, gives Lety some line about going to the store for his mom or something, and says he’ll be by at 9:00 to get her. Lety is excited all over again. Hours pass and nobody shows, Lety is very sad and Mama tries to comfort her, to no avail. Lety cries in her room and writes in her diary about how alone she feels. Mama tells Papa the whole deal, he is livid and swears vengeance on the souls of his ancestors, etc. Or something like that, he was wheezing a lot and he’s hard to understand. He’s like a super wheezy Mexican Captain Kirk. “I…… will find…… those kids and……. kill them.”

We get one quick show of Roman and Dork at some club, smoking and drinking with some hoochies. Dork asks Roman “shouldn’t we call her?” or something like that, Roman gives the “pfff give me a break” face and waves him off.

In the morning Lety tells Tomas what happened, he bowleggedly stomps off to talk some sense into those ruffians. He gets to their turf, the corner where they show how cool they are by having nothing to do and nowhere to go, and demands that they go see Lety and apologize. Roman pops him in the eye, somehow not breaking his Harry Caray glasses but giving him a shiner. Tomas slinks off.

Now it’s RoboPapa’s turn. When Tomas shows up with a black eye, RoboPapa gets out of him who the kids are that didn’t try to take advantage of his daughter. All men are evil and only want to hump Lety, but even worse are those who don’t even try. I guess. He won’t let her go out, but when some guys don’t take her out, he’s pissed. This guy has some serious issues. I really wish they would tell us something about what he does for a living, or show a clip of him coming into work one day to show everyone else in the office rolling their eyes and avoiding him. “oh jeez there he is, maybe he’ll leave me alone today, please God I’m begging you, I’ll come to church every week…….”

RoboPapa lurches off to where Roman and Dork hang out with their entourage and starts yelling at them (you……. kids……. desgraciados…… rrarrrrrgggghhhh….. wheeeeeeze…..). Roman answers with the equivalent of “screw you dude what are you gonna do about it” and RoboPapa turns into JET LI! He punches Roman in the face, then when Dork comes over to help out (following standard Ninja protocol by attacking only one at a time) RoboPapa grabs his shoulder and gives him a knee to the family jewels. Awesome! Some of the most atrociously choreographed fighting I’ve ever seen, but still a fantastic scene. Watching Dork keel over after RoboPapa kneed the air next to his left knee was thisclose to looking like the real thing. RoboPapa proudly shambles back towards his car as the gang of ruffians writhe in pain on the sidewalk. There may have been police in the area, but they were likely stunned by the fighting prowess of RoboPapa and were reluctant to get involved, lest in his rage RoboPapa kicked ALL their asses.

Lety goes to work and tells the whole story to Paula Maria, who sympathizes. “Yes Lety, while you are muy fea and I’m built like a centerfold, I feel your pain.” Regardless, it’s nice to see the ladies of Conceptos being nicer to her and becoming her friends. In fact, later that day Lety finally gets into El Club de Las Feas. They finally realized that ostracizing someone for being ugly was kind of ironic and invited her in.

When she finally gets upstairs to the office, Lety is thanked by Fernando for all her help in pulling the wool over Marcia’s eyes the day before in regards to Carla Laguna. Lety beams and loves him even more. Somehow her image of him is not tarnished by the fact that he just thanked her for helping him lie to his fiancée about another woman. Ahhhh what a man!

So the whole “Lety’s big night out with Roman and Dork” story was short and anti-climactic, with the exception of RoboPapa’s berserker rage the next day. Getting the next plotline started, Alicia happens to be listening at Lety’s door when she is on the phone with Mama, telling her that she’s going to surprise Fernando by working late to finish up a business plan for him that he needs for a big meeting the next day. Alicia decides that in the morning she’s going to intercept Lety and take the business plans from her, to then deliver to the meeting (along with coffee, tea, or me?) and take the credit for doing the plan. Also, I’m sure, she’ll wear some dress that would get her sent home from any office in the United States for being inappropriate for work.

More to come –
Chris

La Fea - Part Three

Lety arrives in the office, but Fernando isn’t there. As she’s walking in, Saimon the courier walks in behind her. The two haven’t met. We saw Saimon earlier in the show, he delivered a letter or package to somebody. For some reason he wears a suit, then over that puts on a yellow slicker and a helmet. I suppose he doesn’t want to look like a hippie like most bike messengers, he’s trying to look fly for all the ladies at Conceptos. So, since he rolls in wearing a suit, Lety thinks he’s some other executive of the company, or perhaps an important visitor. Saimon, who listens more to the little devil on his right shoulder than the little angel on his left, seizes the opportunity to have some fun. Once he’s done convulsing in horror, like everyone does when first meeting La Medusa Lety.

Side note – I’ve noticed the for the most part, people act like they’ve gazed upon the face of satan when they first see Lety, but then 30 seconds later and forever after they are unaffected. Sure, they refer to “La Fea” in conversation, the other ladies keep discussing how ugly she is to make their pitiful little lives seem less hopeless, but really the whole ‘shockingly ugly’ thing seems to pass quickly. The main exception to this is Luigi. In an earlier scene, when Lety turns into Jack Tripper for a bit when finding and returning some CDs from the production area, Luigi buttonholed Fernando and said that Lety is banned from the studio. I don’t remember or didn’t quite understand what his reasoning was, but really I think he just doesn’t want her uglying up the place. Perhaps her Fea causes his Chakra to become misaligned or something.

Saimon plays like he’s a talent evaluator or something along those lines and starts talking to Lety like he’d like to put her in a commercial. He gives her a pen and instructs her how to hold it up like she’s selling it in a commercial. Soon he has her hopping around the office with the pen in her mouth like a goon. Mid-twirl, the door opens and Fernando enters. She almost twirls into him, giving her cause to have a seizure and offer her disculpes and all that and bow bow bow like she’s Japanese and scamper off to her office. Fernando softly reprimands Saimon, he wants to chew him out but really he thought the whole thing was funny so he just told him to take off.

We get into some real Fawlty Towers territory here, which continues along the same lines as Three’s Company. The show jumps genres a lot, though never dipping heavily into drama. Sometimes it’s a touching family drama, like a ‘very special episode, ‘ with RoboPapa completely detached from the real world and Mama Padilla loving him for it while telling him how wrong he is. “Viejo you don’t know what you’re talking about. Get over it. I love you, you’re so sweet. And insane. Kiss kiss kiss.” Then we have slapstick. Then we have “let’s laugh at the Feos.” Then occasionally we have cause to feel sad for Lety’s suffering, The Passion of the Fea.

A woman named Carla Laguna has arrived, looking for Fernando. She is apparently a former lover that Marcia is aware of. The bit plays out a bit like Carla didn’t know where Fernando has disappeared to until she saw the photo in the magazine announcing his engagement. What I don’t get is that Fernando is a big shot at this company, his dad owned part of it, was he really that hard to track down? Anyway, Carla gets out of a cab dressed horribly, there are better ways to have your boobs hang out, you don’t have to wear such a nasty outfit to do it. Carla is tall and has an awesome body, obviously she was a model on some previous project that Fernando managed to win over with his super smooth pickup lines. “Hi. You’re pretty. Uh how’s it going.” I guess he’s handsome, my wife says si como no, but maybe her tastes are different, because he’s pulling in ladies left and right with zero effort. So Carla comes in and demands to see Fernando, receptionist Paula Maria tries to stall her while she calls up to Fernando’s office. Lety answers the phone, this kicks off a long chain of people running around the building trying to find each other, phone calls back and forth, people just missing each other turning around corner, etc. Lety has made it her life’s mission to keep Fernando’s secrets, she goes out of her way to not let Marcia find out what’s going on. When speaking to Fernando, who for some reason (to make the scene work right) has decided to keep Marcia with him all day today, about Carla looking around for him, she keeps referring to the ‘personnel issue.’

Finally, I don’t even remember how, Marcia finds out that Carla is in the building. She storms down to the receptionist, Paula Maria tells her that Carla and Fernando left together. Indeed they did, they went to a restaurant, where surprisingly Fernando tells Carla to make like a tree and get out of here, he’s going to marry Marcia. I was stunned. This guy tries to have sex with models right in his own office building, but he leaves and goes to a restaurant with this ex-lover who is desperately trying to find some place to lose her clothes to tell her to take off.

Marcia finally tracks Fernando down to the audio/video place that Lety said he was going to, finally ending the entire charade. He acts casual. “What? I just left and came here. I don’t know this Carla of who you speak.” He almost gets to the point of denying that his name is Fernando when Marcia finally gives up and gets off the phone.

Marcia and Alicia storm into Lety’s office and demands his little black book that is actually big and brown. She says de ninguna manera. Con todo respecto, of course. Bow bow scrape scrape Dona Marcia etc etc. But she will not give up the goods. Lety then goes off to lunch or a break, she’s wiped out from being John Cleese all morning. When she returns, Marcia, Alicia, and Lopez the creepy HR guy are standing there waiting for her. Marcia gets her predatory smile going and snaps out that Lety is FIRED. Lopez, between licking his hand and wiping his shoulder and head YUCK (I’m disgusted by this every time, as well as his caterpillar eyebrows) and smiling, like he hated her all along and was soooo glad to send her on her way. Of course, while she’s in her office sniffling about it and picking up her stuff, Fernando returns and tells her to forget about it, he really needs her there and nobody has authority over him to hire or fire anyone. He tells her “Tu eres la mujer que yo necesito.” Omar hears the whole thing, then proceeds to needle Fernando mercilessly over his new ‘novia.’

Lety has now promoted Fernando to sainthood. Well, something along those lines, because she wants to get busy with him too, I suppose you don’t do that with saints. She goes back to her office and gets to acting like a 12 year old with a crush on Justin Timberlake. It’s almost embarrassing to watch. Get a grip woman!

Her spirits are high. On her way home, some local idiot boys around her age, who have nothing better to do than hang around and try and show how cool they are for having nothing to do and nowhere to go, decide to tease her. Roman, who Lety knows, introduces her to some other guy who he says “is dying to meet you.” The guy reacts predictably, cracking his neck as he lurches back when he sees her, but then gamely plays on. I can’t remember his name, so I’ll just call him Dork. Roman and Dork invite Lety to go out with them that night. Due to her new high spirits, she doesn’t see how ridiculous this is and agrees to go.

She goes home and tells her mom how she has a date. Mama thinks this is great, but Robopapa says de ninguna manera. Remember, the entire male population of Earth exists for one sole purpose – to get busy with Lety. So he says no. After lots of crying from Lety in her room, Mama goes to RoboPapa and convinces him to let her go out. Of course he insists that the boys have to come in and meet him first, etc etc.

Meanwhile, Marcia sinks deeper into insanity. Fernando shows up at her house to ‘talk’ (uh oh) and Marcia is dressed like a judge. She puts him through some mock trial for being a philanderer, he stammers a lot and it’s funny and strange at the same time. I’m not sure what happened, but soon she sentences him to play ‘see what’s under the judge’s robe.’ He decides to play.

That’s the end of the first week. My spring class ended and I have a few weeks before my summer class, so maybe I can catch up soon. I’m having a lot of fun, I didn’t realize how much I like to prattle on for pages and pages about nothing. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon.

La Fea - Part Two

Before I get back into the story, I have to put out a couple things I forgot to mention. Sylvia pointed out in the comments to my last post that the actress who plays Lety’s mother in the show is the real mother of the actress who plays Lety, which my wife also mentioned to me the first time Mama Padilla appeared on screen “Oye that’s her real mom!” Based completely on two people telling me that, I’m going to believe it.

While we’re on the subject of Lety’s parents, let’s talk about Papa Padilla. The Alborada recaps referred to Rafael as ‘the stuffed boy.’ In that spirit, Papa Padilla will be known as Papa the Robot. This guy looks like he was made from an erector set, then had Mr. Rogers’ clothes draped on. His voice sounds like gravelly voiced asthmatic. My wife tells me that the actor, Jose Jose (great name), was a raging alcoholic and that’s probably why he’s so messed up and can’t talk. So why we have someone who can’t talk in a TV show, I have no idea. He is also extremely one dimensional. “All men want to hump daughter….all men evil…..lock daughter in ivory tower….rrrarrrrgggghhhh.” Ok, not that last part, but he has a Frankenstein’s monster thing going on.

Lastly, Jean pointed something out that I can’t BELIEVE I didn’t mention. Lety’s spastic facial tics. Any time she’s nervous, which is most of the time, she gets this one eye squinting/blinking and one corner of her mouth twitching violently thing. Basically, she looks like she’s having some kind of seizure. When Fernando imitates her right in her face and the does the “what the hell?” gesture, it’s good comedy. I think the actress who plays Lety got the part due to her ability to make this seizure face. I try to imitate it and just can’t do it. There are always some rubber band ‘boinnnnggg’ sounds that accompany the face too, adding to the fun.

Back to the story -

Lety and Tomas are reading an article in a magazine called ‘Caras.’ It has a story about Conceptos and the people involved. As we get to each part of the article, a little flashback scenario is shown, this is still all part of providing some background for the story. One photo shows Fernando and Marcia, with a caption saying that they are getting married. We fade to a flashback of the day the picture was taken…. (there was no funny flashback music or anything, but I still can’t ever see a flashback on any show without thinking of Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World wiggling their hands and saying ‘doodle oodle oop doodle oodle oop’ when fading to a flashback, such as the time Wayne was recalling how he made out with Madonna.)

Fernando is with Marcia at a company party, it’s a nice sunny day. Fernando is hitting on the models present at the part any time Marcia is more than 2 feet away. This guy has balls. I’m not saying that in a good way, any self-respecting girlfriend would drop him like a hot potato. If Marcia was self-respecting, however, she wouldn’t be an interesting character and we’d be robbed of some good storylines. Asi es y asi sera.
Fernando sidles up to a model and drops the incredible line (I’m rolling my eyes, I’m not sure how to be sarcastic in print sometimes) “Hola Guapa!” Surprisingly, this gem of a pickup attempt works. Then again, this model might realize that hooking up with this guy will get her some steady work. Her opportunity is spoiled, however, when Marcia’s radar goes off and suddenly she’s right there at Fernando’s elbow. She gives the whole making a smiley face but showing her teeth like an angry animal routine, I haven’t seen a lot of soap operas or novellas but I’ve seen this look plenty of times. The model quickly runs away. A photographer approaches and takes a picture for the story being written for Caras, Marcia tells Fernando that ‘all his girlfriends’ are going to die when they see his picture with Marcia, since for some reason he hasn’t really told anyone about their engagement. Fernando senses a cold front, or perhaps Hurricane Marcia, on the horizon due to the look on Marcia’s face, so to calm her down he takes her by the arm, goes to the microphone someone was using to make announcements, and tells everyone that he and Marcia are getting married. Everyone is excited, etc, Fernando looks like he’s thinking “holy crap what did I just do.” (end flashback)

Lety’s parents are very proud of her for landing a job at such a prestigious place like Conceptos, but she lets them believe that she is the Assistant to the President, not just one of his secretaries. She plans to buy some new clothes, perhaps to look like simply a fashion victim, rather than a victim of a heartless Communist regime.

Lety happily trots off to work the next day, she rides the bus to work. I forget exactly where in the first couple weeks it happens, but RoboPapa Padilla trades in his sweet, but broken down, car for an extremely boring but reliable “newer” one. Newer, as in made after 1980. It looks like a late 80’s Chrysler LeBaron, something like that. All straight lines and corners. RoboPapa is worried that it cost too much (what kind of weak job does he have where he can’t afford a 20 year old used Chrysler?) but Lety, with her sweet new job, says she’ll help pay for it, she wants him to have a better car.

Lety arrives at work, everyone recoils as she passes again, and presents herself in Fernando’s office, ready for work. Fernando has cleaned out the storeroom, no windows, off the back of his office and put a desk in there for her. She’s the man behind the curtain, Alicia is the Great and Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We all know where the real work gets done.

Lety meets “El Club de Las Feas,” a group of women who work at Conceptos. They consist of a few secretaries, the cleaning woman, Luigi’s assistant, and the receptionist. They have given themselves that name, or perhaps Luigi named them that, I wasn’t able to clear that up and then forgot to ask my wife about it. Surrounded by models all the time, they have latched onto each other for support. The one member of the club that confuses me is Paula Maria the receptionist, played by Niurka. I guess she’s in this group because she’s the receptionist, but she’s really, well, hot. She wears little tiny skirts and looks good. So putting her in a group of Feas doesn’t make sense to me. She does have a 10 year old son by a guy who just up and disappeared after knocking her up, so I think it’s the whole single woman/kids/broken heart or just plain ugly that gets you into this club. The club isn’t openly welcoming of Lety at first, they are a bunch of gossipy hens, but in time they open up and become her friends.

Poor Lety – she’s so ugly that Fernando’s parents actually come in and have a meeting with him to discuss the fact that he hired her. She is referred to as “La Fea” throughout the entire conversation. Cripes, these people. Fernando does, however, defend Lety’s skills to his father and insists on keeping her.

Marcia is determined that Alicia get inside Fernando’s private zone, she urges Alicia to play dirty and do whatever she can to get rid of Lety. Right away, that task is made harder as Fernando gives Lety his personal phone book, which is not so little and brown, but still technically his ‘little black book.’ Alicia and Marcia seethe, maxing out their shared brain cell to see how to get their hands on that book. Why? Who knows. Again, if Fernando running around is such a problem, dump his ass. You’re hot and rich. Go find someone else.

Luigi has completed his latest masterpiece, so there is going to be a presentation of his newest ‘videoclip.’ Fernando and Omar head down to the models’ dressing room to hit on some chicks, and proceed to do just that as brazenly as possible. Fernando finds a girl he knew before and proceeds to make out with her right in front of everyone! Then, as I’ve said before, Fernando is a master of the smooth line. He tells the girl “with another kiss like that I’d have to marry you.” I’m sure that this girl, who is the type to make out with whoever in the dressing room, wants nothing more than to get married. This is the type of behavior exhibited by women looking to settle down. Right. Anyway, time’s up, so the models get going and Fernando and Omar leave. Omar, by the way, contributes mainly by looking at girls bodies and making faces like he’s constipated, I think it’s supposed to be uncontainable lust making him look that way but I think he just needs a box of prunes. Then he’ll be able to stop looking so pained.

Fernando sends Lety down to production to get some CDs that he needs for the show, of course these are vital and nobody remembered them. And instead of somebody who knows what they are and where they are, Lety gets sent. She trips and stumbles her way around, frightens some people along the way, and managed to find them. She comes back to the showroom with them and manages to come out the door right next to the film screen. The audience is watching Luigi’s video for…… get ready now music fans…. “El Club de Las Feas” by El Bando de Recodo. The song/video that plays at the end of each episode of the show. Yes, I know you’re all sad you missed this episode, I know how much you love that song. We have a Three’s Company type moment, lots of tripping, physical comedy, Fernando finally gets her out of the way and takes the CDs.



I’m almost at the end of the first week of recaps. I keep telling myself “just summarize to get up to date, you can channel Hemingway later.” But I can’t help myself. I’ll get caught up someday.

La Fea - Part One

I had fun putting that list of characters together, so I'll jump right in to some summaries. The show has been on for two weeks now, I'll try and catch you all up with what's going on in general, then as time goes on I can be more specific. It begins -
Note - there may be a couple of things out of order since I'm going mostly from memory here, but nothing that will change the story.
Lety comes home from another day of getting turned away from jobs due to being so ugly. Her friend Tomas is at her house, they have a discussion that fills us in on the burden of being Feos. We meet Sr. y Sra. Padilla, Lety's parents, who refer to each other as "Viejo" and "Vieja" (old man/old woman) but make it sounds nice, not insulting. Like I said, Papa Padilla is convinced that the whole world is just waiting to take sexual advantage of Lety.
We next see inside the offices of Conceptos, where Fernando is talking to his father Don Umberto, we learn from their conversation that Umberto is retiring and turning over the presidency of the company to Fernando. The stockholders voted on the new president, Fernando won by one vote, which happened to be cast by his fiancee, Marcia. Again, as I said before, Marcia is the daughter of Umberto's former partner, but her father died in a car accident I think, well at any rate some horrible accident. Marcia has a brother and a sister, the sister is named Ana Leticia (as soon as I heard this I knew there would be some name confusion written in, it only took until the second week of the show for this), and brother named Ariel. Ariel is a horrible bitter, ugly, whiny man who was Fernando's competition for the company presidency. This in spite of the fact that he only worked for Conceptos for a short time a long time ago. He's convinced, however, that Fernando does ALL his thinking with Little Fernando, which will drive the company into the ground, and his stock along with it. He fills the villian role nicely, in spite of being named after The Little Mermaid.
I don't remember specifically why Fernando is not keeping his father's secretary, or even keeping the secretary he had before being elected president, but whatever the reason was, it was contrived to lead us to the interview scene with Lety and Jessica Rabbit arriving simultaneously to interview for the job. The contrast couldn't be greater, JR is taller and has long blonde hair, a dress that starts about two inches above her navel and ends about two inches below, while Lety is dressed like one of the women waiting in line for radishes or cheese in a WWII-era photo from Russia. This is her interview look? I don't think it's her ugliness keeping her away from getting hired, it might be that she dresses like a bag lady, albeit a bag lady who found a couple quarters and washed her clothes.
Lopez (Personnel chief) and some other guy who I forget are performing the interview. It takes about three minutes, they recoil at the sight of Lety and then silently thank God the table is not a glass top and see-through as they openly ogle JR. In today's business environment, this guy Lopez would get fired in about five minutes, especially with him being in the Human Resources area to begin with. Lopez gives us the first taste of his unique tic - he licks his fingers and then brushes off his shoulder, no it doesn't look anywhere near as cool as when Jay-Z does it in his video for the song "brush your shoulders off", and then he uses the same spittle and dandruff/dust covered hand to smooth down the three hairs he has left on the top of his head. All in all, thoroughly disgusting. This is his trademark move I guess, it's what he does every time he leaves the room, sort of like snapping his fingers like a diva, but a little (very little) more manly. Anyway, I digress - they talk to the girls about their resumes, first they smile and let JR talk and just nod at whatever she says, then Lety tries to get in and they brush her off. Then they hire JR before Lety is even out of the room.
Lety heads home and commiserates with Tomas some more about being ugly and unemployed.
Lopez shows Fernando the resumes of the two women. Due to her struggles with getting a job, Lety stopped attaching her photo to her resume. Fernando is NOT pleased with Lopez having hired JR. Lopez says "I thought you liked the shapely ladies" with a little whistle and a hand gesture in the place of 'shapely ladies.' Fernando says "yes, but this (whistle/gesture) is the BEST FRIEND OF MY GIRLFRIEND." He's very concerned. Marcia, his fiancee, has obviously sent JR in as a spy to keep track of Fernando. He seems to have a girlfriend for every day of the week, in spite of the fact that his fiancee is rich, owns part of his company and is basically responsible for him having his sweet job, and also happens to be totally hot. Some men don't know how good they have it. (Personal side note - I know EXACTLY how good I have it!)Well, on the other hand, Marcia is conniving and apparently a little dumb, since she is convinced that she can reform Fernando of his philandering ways.
Fernando confronts Marcia about it, Marcia manages to put him in a corner where he has no choice but to hire JR, not hiring her is basically an admission that he wants to have the freedom to run hoochies in and out of his office all day. Then he has an idea - he'll hire JR to sit out front and look pretty, and he'll also hire Lety (who he hasn't met yet) to take the little storeroom off of his office and do some real work. He was very impressed with her resume and is convinced that she'll do a great job.
Back at Lety's house, the phone rings, it's Lopez telling Lety to come back in, they want to talk to her again. She goes in, each person in the company, regardless of whether or not they've seen her before, manages to comedically recoil as they see her face. The funniest reaction is that of Luigi Lombardi, the in-house talent scout/photographer/videographer and all around 'light in the loafers' guy. He turns around and is face to face with Lety and says "Oh my God!" in English, with a great accent. The actor here is obviously not gay in real life, he plays the stereotypical gay creative type so well, I think a real gay actor wouldn't be so over the top. He's hilarious and a great character. Lety gets upstairs to Fernando's office and even though he recoils back into tripping on his desk when he sees her, he figures he can lock her in the back room and be ok. He hires her.
My lunch hour is almost over so I'll stop here for today. I didn't realize I was so verbose. Hopefully it's entertaining reading, I look forward to your comments. If you prefer something more short and to the point, please let me know. Otherwise, thanks for letting me prattle on. Back soon with more.
Chris

La Fea Mas Bella

Hello all - I'm going to take a stab at occasionally posting some La Fea recaps. Melinama said anything is better than nothing, so I'll give it a shot. Just a quick intro, I'm a gringo from IL, 34 years old, my formal Spanish education was in high school 20 years ago. However, I'm now married to a beautiful Mexican woman so my Spanish education has been re-started. Part of my homework is watching an hour of Spanish TV each night, it started with Alborada. My search for a little help with translation led me to the Alborada recaps, y la la la, here we are.
Just to get started, here are the main characters in the show -

Leticia (Lety) - The main character, the ugly duckling. Anyone with internet access (all of us, duh) can look up the actress and see that of course she's not so fea after all. The makeup people for the show did a pretty good job of making her look bad, but really even with this look she isn't as "fea, pero FEA" as the characters on the show like to say she is. However, the Groucho Marx eyebrows really help ugly her up. There is also a smear of what looks like ash above her lip to give her that nice moustache look. Anyway, Lety has a Master's degree in finance or business or something like that, she's sooo smart, etc etc, but nobody will hire her because she's so ugly. Apparently these employers all live in Spanish TV land where every woman looks like J Lo... Oh wait! They do! The show starts with Lety getting an interview with Conceptos, a big fashion photography/video studio (I think that's what they do). The company has models drifting through all the time, I think they are there for photo shoots and videos, things like that. The other person who shows up for the interview is...

Alicia- AKA Jessica Rabbit. Alicia is a standard hot dumb blonde, tongues are wagging from all the men when she's around. She gets hired for her looks and connections, Lety also gets hired for her skill. They were both hired by...

Fernando - Fernando is the president of Conceptos, his father previously ran the company and is retiring. He is getting married to Marcia. Fernando is a major league womanizer.

Marcia - Fernando's fiancee, partial owner of the company. Her father was Fernando's father's co-owner before dying in an accident.

Omar - VP of the company, but President of the Lusting After Alicia crew. A horrible influence on Fernando, Omar calls him daily from some bar where he always happens to have some extra babe sitting there pining away for Fernando.

Lety's Mom and Dad - Mom is nice and sweet, Dad is horribly over-protective and is convinced that Lety is 30 seconds away from getting mauled by horny guys at any given time. Being her father has made him blind to her plainness I guess.

Tomas - Lety's male counterpart and best friend. A huge nerd who is also highly educated but unemployable due to his horrible look.

This about covers the major players - I'll try and get some stories up soon and within those the minor players will be introduced. Also, I'm new at this, so I haven't figured out how to put pictures in yet. Hopefully you won't all get too impatient with my learning. See you soon!

Chris

Hello

Hi there, I made this blog to keep my own copies of some postings I'm making over at Caray, Caray! (caraycaray.blogspot.com)

I hope I can find some other things to write abut too, writing for Caray, Caray has really shown me how much I like to write. Perhaps my writings would better be described as ramblings. Anyway, if you have found your way here, I hope you enjoy.