I mentioned a while back that rewatching Rogue One this year renewed my interest in Diego Luna, which led me to Narcos: Mexico, which led into a whole Diego Luna thing. It’s been really nice to check out more of his work. I know that he’s written and directed stuff before, but Everything Will Be Fine is the first such project of his that I’ve seen, and I found myself liking it a lot.
Julia and Ruy are navigating a separation – sort of. They haven’t told their young daughter Andrea yet, so they’re still living together, with Ruy sleeping on an air mattress in the bedroom so she doesn’t notice anything amiss. Still, Ruy insists that it’s working for them, that they’re coparenting successfully while both being totally free to see other people. The hitch comes when he realizes that Julia is seeing someone else, and he kickstarts a shitstorm between them that threatens to get very messy.
Marriage Story was the first thing that came to mind for me, in so much as it’s about a separating couple who starts out very “we’re in this together, totally amicable, we don’t need lawyers, we’ll just figure it out ourselves,” but whose situation quickly devolves into ugliness. Money and property are concerns of note, but the chief priority for both parties is custody of their child. Despite the similarity in premise, though, the resulting TV series is very different in tone and sensibility.
Everything Will Be Fine leans more toward dramedy, recognizing some of the absurdity borne out of these states of heightened emotion as well as how intimately we can hurt those we’ve loved. There are sharply painful moments that often go hand-in-hand with a very human kind of comedy. The characters are established types while also feeling specific, drawn subtly but well. I especially like that Andrea isn’t just an adorable figure for Julia and Ruy to fight over – she’s her own person with her own storyline reacting to everything that’s happening in her family (not to mention a complete obsession with chickens, which is just delightful.) I also appreciate that the show casts its net beyond the central family. Idalia, the family’s housekeeper/nanny, is an important character in the show, and as the series goes on, we learn a bit more and Julia and Ruy’s families, friends, coworkers, lawyers, and more.
This might be one of the best “woke” shows I’ve seen. By that, I mean that a lot of shows explore progressive subject matter in a way that can feel varying degrees of didactic, and since those shows often have a progressive viewership in the first place, it can feel like preaching to the choir. Not to mention, the more soapboxy a show becomes, the more it can take away from the main narrative. But this show incorporates progressive topics very naturally: workplace harassment, environmentalism, classicism, reinforced gender roles for children, LGBTQ inclusion, etc. Part of this is simply baked into who the characters are – Ruy is part of a radio show that covers current events while Julia is a feminist artist wading into her first corporate connection – so topics are allowed to come up organically. But another big part of it is how messy the characters are at living up to their own ideals. They’re not setting out to teach us something, because they’re still trying to figure it out themselves and they’re all wildly imperfect. Just to take one example, I really like the episode where Julia brings Andrea with her to a feminist art fair and the other kids in the play area are amazed that Andrea is allowed to wear her princess dress, with plenty of adult attendees obviously side-eyeing Julia as both a feminist and a mother over this issue. It’s a little hard to explain, but it works really well in context.
I’m not familiar with any of the actors, but I enjoy all of them quite a bit. Lucía Uribe and Flavio Medina are excellent as Julia and Ruy, both separately and together, and Isabella Vazquez Morales is just fantastic as Andrea, cute and fun but very genuine. Mercedes Hernández brings a solid, grounding presence to Idalia, and I really like Pierre Louis as Fausto, another important character in the series.
Warnings
Sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drug references, and strong thematic elements (including sexual harassment.)
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