Yep, he does.
I think…this series is not really one where you’re meant to judge the characters like that. Except for Johnny and Servando, who the show wants you to hate, they’re all kind of sympathetic or likable in one way or another. Even Alacran gets his goofy moments with Eva.
Panchito gets called out on it in the show, but beyond that, it’s not like the audience wants him staying with a woman he doesn’t love either. It’s not necessarily about things being excused or justified, it’s just a lack of judgment overall.
Even Sergio, who I personally still hate, gets a much kinder framing in the cultural context in which the show exists than the one I apply (and I can also admit that I don’t love him for his involvement in Juliantina). That’s a whole different discussion, how our background influences how we see things, compared to how they’re written to be seen by their target audience. There are different lens to look at this through, and they’re all understandable.
It’s not like I have to like Sergio or you have to like Panchito, it’s just not that big a deal in the show. Hell, look at freaking Lucho and the hero’s sendoff he got, even when his penultimate action in the show was to break Sergio’s confidence and go off and tell Val about Sergio and Juls, in a scheming manipulative way the general audience would have recognized.
And another anon:
Am I the only one who still kind of wants to slap Lupe?? Liiiike lady u didn’t notice how much Val loved your daughter Before she got kidnapped?? Val legit hooked y’all up with a nice, safe place to live??? She supported your daughter while you were in the hospital, risking her own safety??? She makes Juls smile in a way that she rarely gets to Bc of urs and chinos shit!! Damn Lupe!! But then I’m happy she turned it around Bc it’s what Juls deserves.
I wanted to answer the ask above first because I think that same reasoning applies here. The show and its writing are pretty lenient on most characters. All your valid points aside, Lupe especially was serving a specific storytelling purpose, a loving parent getting over her homophobia because it’s the loving, right thing to do, and that’s that. We can spend our time continuing to hold a grudge against or just shrug and move on. I should probably do that with Sergio too, he had an even more specific purpose to serve (but we’ll see how successful I am at that, lol).
And another anon:
do we like el chino/beltrán? i mean clearly he does love Juls but like he really treated her and Lupe like shit in the past. also is he actually nice to Beltrán’s kid? i saw a scene of home feeding him soup and he seemed oddly fatherly..
Pulling up another older question to answer now because it fits with the theme. You asked this before his recent attack on Lupe but the thing is, I don’t really think even that’s really changed anything. He literally freaking attempted to rape her and yet, within the show, the way he apologized before leaving and then how we see him talking to Barbara about it, there’s still mostly likely an incoming redemption on the cards and we’re supposed to want it.
I really didn’t like his character regression when watching, but presumably the purpose of THAT was to have Lupe finally get over him as the culmination of her longer arc, she’s been fruitlessly chasing after him for the whole show, and also to get them to move from the house.
Do we like him? That’s up to you. As I said above about Sergio, how Beltran’s intended to be read as a character is pretty different from how some of us will. We’re used to regarding rape attempts as goddamn inexcusable, but within the show, it might just get skimmed over. And with these kinds of issues it’s really hard to say, oh, well, it’s just a difference of culture. But the important thing to understand is even if you do think a certain framing is harmful and that it’s not “just a TV show”, who and where and how you target your frustration is important. The general audience for this show are the people who live with those attitudes and suffer from them the most. So while the default behavior is now to cancel him, I’m not going to judge people who continue to want to be okay with him or who still want him and Juls to be in an okay place, even if just for Juls’s sake.
