Tessa was so so good and I think one of the best scenes in my opinion is when theyre talking about Vera not liking sex and she says she wants to be held. The way she just becomes so so small in that scene like a baby and when Marcela touches her arm she sinks in and the way she breathes in the touch I just ahhh I didn’t expect to fall so much for Vera and Tessa. I honestly thought I would actually hate her but this show just shows you starts breaking her down episode by episode.
Oh, that was SUCH an excellent scene for her! Tessa’s great throughout the show, but Vera absolutely does start off as insufferable, and then as you said, the show starts to break her down, you see behind that facade, how people actually view her, how secretly nice she can be with Rocio and Carly, how much she’s just searching for something, a connection, validation, at her job, with Chris, on SM, that ring.
And then the scene with Marcela you mentioned, when she’d realized Marcela wasn’t going to judge her or tell the others, and like, that was such a different Vera than we often see, not trying to show off or impress her superiority over anyone, which she did with coworkers and followers and strangers and at times even friends, but just earnestly engaging in whispered slumber party girl talk, tell me a secret, how many boys have you slept with? And then as exactly as you said, once Marcela just casually turned it back on her, the way Vera folded into herself and even her voice changed. The mood changed so quickly and completely.
And kudos to Marcela as a person for understanding that and not pushing but just quietly offering Vera that bit of comfort, of knowing what she needed, because rather heartbreakingly, of course she understood perfectly. She didn’t know the depths of Vera’s suffering but what she’d interrupted the other night, she knew enough. And she’s the one other girl of the three who did share that experience (that we know of). It was just a really lovely moment between two women, almost strangers, understanding each other and their pain easing momentarily because of it. Not to be a huge shipper but it was SUCH a good scene, one of the best of the season, and it was with these two, as they slowly started to become friends. It was such a significant scene between two survivors, it would have been so in any case, but it was part of this dynamic, elevating it. This is how I want f/f all the time, obviously not always so heavy but so important and significant to the show.
Hey! I was wondering if you could tell me rape trigger warnings for desenfrenadas or point out anyone who’s documented it please? I was watching but had to stop after that Vera backstory, but sexual violence seems pretty prevalent throughout so far and I remember the start where Marcela is all beat up and the bad guys have been threatening her from the start, so will the show go there? I’d like to skip those scenes if so.
Sorry, I don’t know anybody who has, and if you’ve gotten that far, you’ve probably seen most of it, Vera’s backstory was the worst of it to me, but there are a couple of scenes left, with Marcela and Joshua, where it’s their same dynamic as earlier except ramped up, on both their ends, but it feels like Marcela’s more doing it to put on a show and yeah, it feels pretty icky. The beaten up Marcela in the flashforward at the beginning isn’t actually from that, it’s just Joshua being “regular” violent (not that that makes it better), but let me see if I can put together a list:
I’m not really sure what to include and what not to, so I’ll err on the side of going with more, but not all of it is at the same level of awful. I italicized the most egregious cases, to me.
Ep 1:
34:55 Marcela’s gone up to talk to Sapo to go easy on them but he says Joshua’s made a deal where Marcela has to sleep with him, Marcela pretends to go along, Sapo starts being aggressive, she hits him with a bottle – 35:28 There’s a brief cut to another scene – 35:50 The scene continues with Marcela in the aftermath of hitting Sapo and running off
Ep 2:
1:20 Male truck driver is nasty and propositions Marcela when she’s just walking by, scene ending at 1:41
Ep 3:
5:47 Joshua and Marcela’s sex turns kinda rough, though still consensual, scene ending at 6:11
25:06 Marcela calls Joshua, Sapo answers and is his creepy self and threatens Marcela using Mike, if she doesn’t return, with the call ending at 25:45
30:35 The guy Vera connected with on the app and who met up with her again carries drunk Vera out, lies to her when she says she needs to tell Ro and Carly she’s leaving, then outside tries too hurry her into sex and then attempts to try to rape her, as she tries hard to fight him off. 32:10 Marcela shows up with a gun and forces him away. She beats him up and that scene is the last in the ep.
Ep 4:
00:19 Vera, now in her hotel room, flashbacks a couple of times to the attempted rape, the second scene ending at 0:51
2:26 Vera sobs in the shower, scene going into the credits at 2:47
13:50 Rocio yells at Vera in the car for what happened the previous night (not cool, Ro!), Vera has a bit of a breakdown, Marcela and Carly calm her down at 14:40
Ep 5:
1:03 A flashback with young Vera, like 6 or 7 years old, at a party, that the ep started with turns into a nightmare when suddenly the guy who tried to rape her is there and creepily saying gross things to her young self, she wakes up at 1:11
32:10 Vera in bed, flashback again to young Vera at the party, this old guy, in his 40s or 50s, a friend of her parents, who seems nice takes her up to her bedroom and tucks her in, asks her if she likes tickling, we don’t see anything explicit but hear a zipper. Throughout this scene, we jump back to current Vera in bed, unable to keep her eyes closed, staring emptily. The scene ends at 34:40.
Ep 7:
5:35 Gas station guy leers at Vera stretching, it’s a couple of seconds long, nobody notices and nothing happens
Ep 8:
27:00 Marcela’s back at their home with Joshua, he’s just very physically aggressive, it seems as if Marcela is into it too but once they start to have sex she turns her face away, scene ends at 28:43
35:08 Last scene of the ep, Carly’s sister calls her and starts yelling at her, eventually Carly realizes the guy she’d send explicit nudes and videos to released a video with her, including the toy dolphin she used,
and it’s all over the Internet. There are references throughout Ep 9, including dolphin noises, but it’s also just genuinely frustrating and heartbreaking to watch, Carly is understandably very hurt and embarrassed.
Ep 9:
7:24 Joshua’s brought Marcela breakfast in bed, she brings up Mike again, he thinks she’s ungrateful and smashes the whole tray into the wall, she smacks him, they continue to bicker, he gets physically aggressive with her again, she pretends to seduce him, then knees him in the stomach, he laughs it off, scene ends at 8:54
13:19 Marcela and Joshua playing around on the bed, roughly, but it seems like teasing with Marcela on top until Joshua manhandles her down and it’s not so light-hearted anymore. Marcela hits him and escapes from the bed, the scene ends at 14:45 with him not particularly angry still on the bed, Marcela on the dresser.
Ep 10:
14:25 I guess at this point this level of Joshua and Marcela bickering is mild for them, although Joshua still gets in a facegrab and slapping Marcela’s butt, scene ends at 14:35
20:16 Joshua asks Marcela if she’s okay and when she doesn’t answer immediately, grabs her neck to turn her around, the conversation going back to “normal” at 20:39 for a bit until when Marcela asks him to run away together, and gets mad when he refuses and says he has no balls, at which he says he’ll prove he does and tries to initiate sex, increasingly aggressively, hard enough to leave bruises, while Marcela tries to push him away, until finally the combination of that and another stripper calling from outside the dressing room gets him to stop., scene ends at 21:54
29:30 Joshua questions Marcela on where she got the ring from, increasingly hostile, then straight up shoving her against the wall and when she finally breaks free and gets mad and starts throwing things at his feet, he slaps her, knocking her down, scene ends at 30:43
31:04 Well, the next scene is basically the other trio watching the strip joint’s exit, waiting for Marcela to come out, and she does, and in her viewpoint we see her and Joshua walking, him still being very rough with her, both basically physically fighting on their short walk to the car, ending at 31:29
34:06 Joshua realizes who the girls are and gets mad at Marcela and attacks her, throws her into the car, until at 34:22 Vera stops him
