Nothing is a throwaway joke on Los Espookys. As I’ve mentioned in previous recaps, the second season of this unclassifiable show has been light on horror and on plot, focusing its attention on its creators’ intriguingly skewed points of view. (Okay, fine, technically it’s a half-hour comedy. But it’s a rarer bird than that label implies.) And this week’s episode shows how deep that vision goes, zooming in on what would in most comedies be a throwaway joke.
After watching “The Virus (El Virus),â€Â I’m sure that series creators Ana Fabrega and Julio Torres have entire scripts, or at least visions, for “Harvey Potter†and “Mickey Moose,†despite the brevity of their appearances in previous episodes. Nightmare sitcom Mi Puta Suegra (My Fucking Mother-In-Law) has been on in the background this entire season; it’s the graveyard attendant Oliver Twix’s favorite show, for example. But this week, a side gag became the main storyline, as Mi Puta Suegra herself asks Los Espookys to put her out of her nagging, one-dimensional misery by getting the show canceled.
The cheer on the Mi Puta Suegra set is so forced that, tonally, this week’s behind-the-scenes sitcom storyline reminded me of the Gordy’s Home scenes in Nope (minus the ape-based mayhem, of course). Isabel (Amparo Noguera), the actress who plays the title character, is trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare, a blatantly sexist sitcom that no one admits is such (there’s Los Espookys goofing on misogyny again) where she’s been the butt of the exact same joke, every week, for the past 37 years. “I play a lady who nags, who throws away her son-in-law’s beer, hits him with an umbrella, and stands in front of his TV … sometimes I throw his bikini-girl calendar in the garbage, but mostly I just stand in front of the TV,†she laments to the Espookys crew, who react sympathetically — not to Isabel, but to Renaldo, who laments that his father (who I’m pretty sure has never been mentioned on the show before; we’ve never seen him, at least) loved that show. (The payoff of this particular joke was, in my opinion, the most curious part of this curious episode.)
It’s strange that Los Espookys’ low-maintenance solution, which is basically setting Renaldo up in front of a green screen and having him make vague threats about cybersecurity, actually works. At the same time, however, it’s not strange at all, because everything is strange in this world. (That’s the Los Espookys paradox.) I don’t think that scene was ever really a joke at Apple’s or Norton Antivirus’s expense; the humor in this series is never that literal. It’s just funnier if the crew protests and then folds right away. But Andrés, as mopey as he’s being this week — understandably, if not justifiably — is right. It’s not their best performance. At the very least, it’s not as extra as Los Espookys’ best scares. And for such a high-profile client!
Úrsula is probably happy to see that regressive garbage go. She needs a small victory, to make up for the disappointment of not being able to stop Ambassador Melanie Givens from manufacturing any more insidious propaganda to influence the presidential election. The Water Spirit turns out to be an ally, slipping Úrsula information she can use to blackmail the Ambassador, and hopefully take President De La Guardia down in the process. But the joke’s on Úrsula, because serving late-’90s/early-’00s Teen Choice Awards red carpet, as Melanie is in that newsboy cap–ruched pink prom dress–distressed bell-bottom jeans combo, is actually very in right now. Melanie never left the era of Amanda Bynes and Paris Hilton in the first place, based on her bubblegum-pink pleather outfits and Barbie Dream office. So what would she have to be embarrassed about?
She’s not even embarrassed to find out that she can’t become the U.S. ambassador to Miami because Miami is actually a part of the United States if you zoom out and look at the dangly-dick part of Florida that connects it to the mainland. But, again, what’s there to be embarrassed about from her perspective? This information is new to the U.S. secretary of State (Kim Petras) as well, and her whole job is knowing which places are America and which places are not! (Speaking of which, the comic delivery of “Was I supposed to wear a hijab?†“No, that’s not here†was stellar, especially considering that Petras is more of a singer than an actor.)
Although it’s always risky to conflate actor and character, I like to think that Julio Torres sees Greta Titelman, who plays Ambassador Melanie, as a living Barbie doll. I also like to think he really thinks that the contestants of a reality show — or, in this case, the La Nuestra Belleza beauty pageant, which is one degree away from a reality dating series — all live in the same house together forever. I know he doesn’t really, but Renaldo’s visit to the house was like something out of Andrés’s mind manifested in Los Espookys’ larger reality.
That raises an interesting, unlikely, but very fun thing to speculate about: What if Andrés is actually still a solitary chocolatier child sitting all alone in his room, imagining everything we’ve seen on the show so far? Are these the “valves†Tati was referring to? Or is he just an extremely fashionable wizard, as I speculated last week? If he can pull a helmet and a spangled cape out of thin air, as he does before mounting the steed to … I guess the moon?… he can spin whole realities as well. This raises the question of why, to which the simple answer is so he could have friends. The more complicated question is why he’d go through the trials he’s been going through this season if this were the case, to which I can only say — going into exile is very dramatic, isn’t it?
I don’t really get what was going on at the Moon’s party; was Andrés supposed to attend, but didn’t? Did he send the Moon a text asking if he could crash for a while as he rode off into the night? This remains mysterious. But while Los Espookys may deny us certain logical explanations, “The Virus (El Virus)†does give viewers one of the key satisfactions of watching television: Seeing the many plot threads that have been introduced throughout a season come together. Renaldo is the one with the galaxy brain as he realizes the connection between Karina’s ghost, the sexy lady silhouettes posted all over the city, and President de la Guardia. He’s falling down the rabbit hole, and things just keep getting curiouser.
It’s Me, Tati
• Tico and Sonia play a minor role in this week’s adventure, but I’m still holding out hope that Sonia’s volatility (and perhaps her growing library of domain names) factor into a Los Espookys scheme in the finale.
• “What celebrity doesn’t have a decoy coffin?†Dark, man. Dark.
• A chaotic pile of cords with one plug in the middle of it is a perfect metaphor for Tati’s brain. It also sleeps in the middle of the day, like a cat.
• Speaking of Tati — say what you want about the quality of said work (the ladies at the literary conference sure did), she’s the most consistently employed out of all of them. Just this season, she’s had side gigs as a trophy wife, a best-selling author, and a DHL tracking-number writer.
• And speaking of Tati’s side gigs — Hierbalife made its return this week as a sponsor of the U.S. secretary of State’s red-carpet summit.
• “I thought this was an Andrés thing.†“No, it’s a me thing.â€
• When Andrés and Juan Carlos inevitably met back up this week, the joke was that they were, as the saying goes, “saying the quiet parts out loud.†Where directness would normally be expected, the show leans on enigma; where tact would be polite, it goes direct.
• LOL at Andrés acting like he’s been stabbed as he stumbles out of the TV studio — which, since Los Espookys were hanging out in what looked like their HQ, represents the studio where the show itself is shot? Like a meta thing? Curiouser and curiouser.
• Wow wow wow, that disco-ball full-length poncho Yalitza Aparicio is wearing at the celestial party!
• I loved the whispered delivery of “Blue Zara sweater. It’s so cold!†Very spooky.
• I don’t know a ton about Kim Petras (sorry! I like dad music!), but I was obsessed for a while with a Kim Petras song that was featured on another of my favorite shows, The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. It’s the right season for pop songs with haunted-house sound effects in them, not to mention the right crowd, so here it is: