Favorite Characters: Penelope Alvarez (One Day at a Time)

I sang the praises of this wonderful character – and the talented Justina Machado who plays her – back in my review of Netflix’s reboot of One Day at a Time, but I have more to say about Penelope.  Such a fantastic protagonist and a really compelling character to center the show around.

As I said in my review, Penelope is many things (to reiterate, newly-single mom, nurse, Cuban-American, Afghan war vet, person dealing with depression) and more importantly, she is wholly all of them.  She doesn’t switch from being a mom to being a soldier, and her culture isn’t something she turns on and off.  Every part of her is always present within her, bringing with it a level of complexity that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a “sitcom mom” before.  Having a few aspects of her identity be so rare for TV instantly makes her stand out – Latinas are plenty underrepresented, and you hardly ever see the lives of female soldiers explored in media – but balance between them all is what makes her so special to me.

At the same time that she’s a very unique presence on TV, Penelope is also a classic example of a character (frequently a woman) trying incredibly hard to convince everyone that she can do it all when, on her worst days, she secretly feels like she can’t do anything.  She works hard to do right by her kids, cheerfully crushing it at times and agonizing over the best move at others.  She wants them to be safe, to strive for their potential, to know they’re loved no matter what they do, to not make stupid or reckless decisions, and to learn who they are on their own terms, and she’s very aware of the fact that she’s trying to accomplish all that without their dad by her side, going it alone when that was never part of the plan.  I like that she gets it wrong sometimes, overreacting to a minor thing, being stubborn when that just makes Alex and/or Elena dig in their heels further, and struggling to balance Lydia’s overzealous insistence on helping with her (Penelope’s) authority as the kids’ mom.  But by the same token, as imperfect as she is, she’s also pretty objectively great.  She can be either a hardass or a sympathetic ear, depending on what the situation calls for.  She works to listen to what her kids have to say, taking their concerns into honest consideration while still having the final say.  She can be endearingly goofy in a cheesy mom way, one that’s too infectious for the kids to stay embarrassed for long.  And she can be really smart about her parenting – my favorite moment from the pilot is when she “challenges” Elena to a devil’s-advocate-style Lincoln/Douglas debate over having a quinces and happily declares Elena victorious after proving Penelope’s own pro-quinces stance for her.

Since, like I said, Penelope is many things, she is 100% a mom but also not “just” a mom, unfortunate though that phrasing is.  And so, we also see her at work, kicking butt at her job and wrestling with how underappreciated she is in it, imagining more for her life but unsure if she can really achieve it.  We see her making friends and making overtures for more-than-friends.  We see her fighting a losing battle against a VA hold line, and we see her coming to terms with her feelings about depression and getting treatment for it.  We see her low, elated, snarky, frustrated, nervous, confident, hyper-polite, infuriated, overwhelmed, overjoyed, fierce, commanding, sentimental, melancholy, silly, comforting, and bemused.  She’s all that and more.  I’m so happy to have her on my screen and hope the show gets the opportunity to show her tearing it up for many, many episodes to come.