*Major spoilers for episode 3.*
And the hits keep on coming! While I get that my definite biases play a role, I am loving this show, and I think it’s fantastically done. This is a shorter episode, but it still packs a punch. (Honestly, I’m not making intentional boxing references here—they’re just apt descriptions.)
Big things went down in the last episode. Esteban, fresh off a devastating diagnosis about his hallucinations, does a TV interview where he hints at the idea of a shadowy conspiracy to rig fights. And in retaliation, the Otras Personas have Andy’s brother-in-law Saul killed. Now, everyone is reeling. Andy’s wife Carlota is falling apart with her grief, both Esteban and Andy are scared and guilt-ridden, and Irasema is more determined than ever to uncover what’s going on and expose those responsible.
In episode 3, Esteban learned that he has pretty severe brain trauma. It’s what’s causing his hallucinations, and through her investigation, Irasema has seen firsthand what other symptoms might be coming as his condition worsens. He’s kept away from Saul’s funeral out of concern that he won’t be able to hide his situation, so instead, Esteban goes to the gym with Sixto, who takes him through a kind of treatment to “untangle” some of the issues buried inside his hallucinations.
Given what Esteban has been seeing and hearing throughout the miniseries, it’s no surprise that his injured brain is stirring up traumatic memories from his childhood. We’ve seen flashes here and there, and while this episode doesn’t give us any answers, it more clearly puts Esteban in a position to face them. His session with Sixto is interesting to watch. As Esteban hits the speedbag in rhythm to a metronome, Sixto asks him a series of rapid-fire questions, digging deeper when Esteban tries to deflect. The longer it goes on, the more gets stripped away. For instance, he initially answers, “Yes” to the question, “Do you deserve to be happy?” The next round, that one gets a “no.” The crux of the matter, the question he can’t yet bring himself to answer, is, “Who fucked you up?”
It's interesting—thinking back on it, most of the episodes so far have only had a few scenes where Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal are together. They spend the majority of their time in separate plots, but every time they do come together, it’s just fantastic to watch them play off each other. I love that, for much of the miniseries, Andy and Esteban been angry and arguing, and yet that doesn’t lessen their obvious love for each other in the slightest. Here, Andy is upset that Esteban never told him about the hallucinations. “I would have helped you,” he insists. I doubt that either of them knows what kind of help he might have been able to offer, but it’s clear that he means what he says. It’s also apparent that each knows the other better than they know themselves. Individually, each has personal blind spots that they’re avoiding dealing with, and so both can see the other’s messy parts. “I’m in denial?” Andy asks, scandalized, when Esteban suggests he gets his own house in order before trying to fix Esteban’s.
As Andy and Carlota attend Saul’s funeral, we get some really great character stuff for Andy. I’d been suspecting it for a couple episodes now, but this one crystalizes it: yes, Andy’s appearance is more than a little absurd, but the show itself doesn’t treat it as a joke. We’ve seen how much his mom has obviously messed up his self-image, and we’ve seen how his first instinct when he’s stressed is to check his face for imperfections. That comes to a head in this episode. After arguing yet again with Esteban and preparing to head to the funeral, Andy makes use of some emergency Botox vials in his glove box. But it’s not until after he arrives that he realizes he’s screwed it up—he pinched a nerve in his forehead and over-injected his lip.
Andy’s panic when he realizes this is palpable. There’s anguish in his eyes as he physically tries to hide his face from others, and his attempts at damage control in private are increasingly agitated. When, after several tries, he finally gets his doctor on the phone, He pleads, “I’m at a funeral, doc. I can’t go right now…. I can’t wait till tomorrow. I have to go downstairs!”
I love this—the storyline itself, and especially Luna’s acting. As a society, I feel like it’s easy to be unsympathetic to people who get a lot of work done, particularly if it’s obvious. But this miniseries is taking its time to really show us Andy’s point-of-view here. We see how much his injections are fueled by his anxieties and insecurities, and we see how desperate he is for other people to think he looks good. In the list of Andy and Esteban’s problems, “bad injection” ranks far below all the other drama they’ve got going on, and that doesn’t mean it’s not hugely important to Andy.
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