*Spoilers from episode 1.*
My guess is this is going to be the type of roller-coaster story where talking about each subsequent episode will involve spoilers from the previous one. Episode 2 simmers a bit more than episode 1, but it’s still gripping. I like seeing this world expand a little and getting a wider view into these characters’ lives.
After Esteban defeats Protasio in the rematch, he’s invited to fight the current welterweight champion of the world. But he doesn’t realize there’s something a lot deeper at play here. Andy is being threatened by shady characters who helped him grease some wheels in the past, and now they’re coming to collect a heavy price: Esteban taking a dive. As Esteban starts training for the fight, Andy frantically tries to find a way out of their predicament. Meanwhile, Irasema begins an investigation into the shifts she’s seen in boxing in recent years.
While episode 1 is bookended by two pivotal fights (even if we don’t actually see the first one onscreen,) this one doesn’t revolve around a clear set piece. After speed-running through episode 1, we’ve slowed down a bit. Esteban is focused on facing off against Harry Felix, a little nervous and troubled but mostly in good spirits. But he’s also focused on Zamira, a dancer he met before the second Protasio fight. When they met, she had no idea who he was, which he finds refreshing. I enjoy the scenes of them on a date together—Esteban is fumblingly awkward in the beginning, then manages to relax with a change of scenery.
Even though Esteban is definitely in a better state of mind here than he was in episode 1, the impending end of his career is still on his mind. It doesn’t feel quite as imminent now, but in an excellent scene with Irasema, he’s in a reflective mood. I really like how he contrasts the start of his career with the present day. Back then, he had more energy but didn’t really know what he was doing, and his punches were fueled by anger. But it wasn’t until he started to really learn the technique, he explains, that he started to have fun.
Speaking of Irasema, I’m glad that she has a role beyond being Esteban’s ex-wife who co-parents with him. In this episode, we learn that she used to be a reporter for a sports network, but she’s off-camera these days and pursuing her own research. While her old boss recognizes her intelligence and knowledge, pointing out her “head full of stats,” Irasema is well-aware that most people in the business find the “Esteban’s ex” angle to be more valuable. Her encyclopedic knowledge of boxing statistics helps her recognize an important pattern that she thinks could be pointing to a story, and I really like getting to follow her on her investigation in this episode.
Esteban doesn’t know what sort of trouble he’s in, and Irasema doesn’t yet know where her digging is going to lead. So that leaves us with Andy as the one character who really knows that they’re in the shit. He is positively going through it in this episode, edgy and paranoid at the gym and scrambling to find a solution to the threats they’re facing without having to tell Esteban what’s really going on. As with episode 1, Diego Luna’s facial acting comes through mostly in his eyes, and here, we can see a lot in his body language too. There’s a scene where Andy’s waiting for a clandestine meeting at a carwash, and even though he’s shot in profile and his face doesn’t move much, you can still feel his agitation in the way he fidgets and grips the steering wheel.
One great thing that we see here is just how deeply Andy cares about Esteban. In his secret meeting, it’s not just the threat of danger (to himself, Esteban, and everyone in their immediate circle.) It’s knowing how hard Esteban worked to bounce back from his knockout against Protasio and how he was on the fence about even accepting the fight with Felix, wondering if he should just retire instead. If Andy pushes him into this fight and he’s forced to lose, on an even bigger stage? “I know he’s just another boxer for you, but you’re gonna fuck his life up,” he says. And even more significantly, “I made the deal with you. I’ll pay.” Andy is someone who likes flash and opulence, who likes to duck accountability. For him to take the responsibility on himself and offer himself up for an unnamed price feels like a huge deal.
But in a crucial scene between Andy and Esteban at the end of the episode, you can see why. This is why Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal make such electric scene partners. Just like in Y tu mamá también, their real-life friendship is felt through the screen, and even though their characters’ relationship is different than their own, they lend that feeling of history. The sense that these two characters go as far back together as one can go. The sense that they’ve been through it all together, and no matter how much their lives change, on some level they’re still just those two boys from Jalisco.
In my episode 1 review, I didn’t mention Andy’s mom, so let me circle back around to her now. They live together, along with Andy’s wife Carlota, and per the subtitles, Andy calls her “mommy.” He clearly gets his resistance to natural aging from her—if anything, the work she’s had done is a little smoother-looking than his, and it’s probably quite the head trip to be a 40-something living with your mom who still looks the same as she did when you were a kid. We see Andy’s preoccupation with his appearance as an outward manifestation of his stress and fears, a lot of which probably come directly from her. There’s a scene in this episode where he promises, “Mom, I’m not going to fail you.” Nonchalantly, she replies, “You always do.” Yikes! Andy has plenty of issues, but we’re seeing that he comes by them honestly.
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