I really loved how the show treated it too! I always support the Dan Levy no-homophobia approach. I think both were genuinely surprised, you could see it in their reactions when they found out, and not just that it was Vera and Marcela but Vera and a girl, but they absolutely made it clear how okay they were with it and handled it in the way that most made her comfortable. With some light teasing, lol.
I liked how in a group with such strong personalities like Vera’s and Marcela’s, Ro and Carly, the two softer ones, get their way so often. It’s because Vera and Marcela are actually total marshmallows inside that they allow that to happen. It still makes me laugh how in the car in that first scene, Marcela started off with the gun and being irritated at Ro’s attempts to calm down Vera and then ended up doing it herself, unloading the gun and everything.
All the girls got to be so three dimensional! Ro was the smart and responsible and kind one but she was also the one whose breakdown started all this, who got frustrated with Vera and victim-blamed her, who made her parents worry (not that they were the best parents). She’s not perfect, but she apologizes to those she hurts and she tries her best. She was the one who tried to help Marcela, many times, and has probably tried similarly to deal with and help Vera (not that that excuses the victim-blaming!). I’m not saying she’s my fave, but I do always love the nice mom friend type and she’s played by Barbara Lopez, so. :p
You know, I wonder if she will tease them together about it. I wonder when the second season will pick up. Ready to see Carly’s rainbow paraphernalia in support and Vera absolutely not knowing how to deal with any of it!
How dare–you come into MY house and you–I’m kidding, I’m kidding, obviously, you can feel however you want about her, lol. Uh, I suppose I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t agree with it. As with AAM, where she often acted against people who reacted in much larger ways, she comes across as more subdued, but I think that again fits her character pretty well. She’s the dutiful, responsible, med school daughter, always content to stay in the shadows of her sister and friends.
I thought she was perfect. As others have mentioned, her eyes are super expressive and I certainly felt that was the case here too. As with Juls, she’s more of a watchful character, observing people, and then in the last few eps she came out of her shell and how she played Rocio reflected that, more confident, less self-aware, moving more easily. And I’m not sure what you meant by the right tone for Rocio, but it was kind of funny, I was thinking to myself during the first ep that if we’re going by rich girl going into her father’s career, this is FAR closer to Barbara in real life than Juls ever was.
Actually, when I was making that trigger warning list last night and had to skim through the whole show again very quickly, I stopped, for MarVera reasons, at the strip scene and rewatched about 50 times to just absorb what was happening. The reactions, the music, the fact that we were watching a female character–the top credited cast member as a matter of fact–absolutely SPRUNG on this other woman, in this setting, with that song, with the absurd parallels between Vera and Sapo, both of them looking at Marcela with this contrasting hunger, his skeevy, hers honestly kind of unaware, the way the camera returned again and again to Vera, the urgent but gentle way Rocio made Vera sit down again, it was all just–But before I keep going on about that, the reason I bring it up right now, the reactions when they first recognize Marcela:
This wordless couple of seconds conveys everything necessary in that moment, doesn’t it? The surprise, the “obviously she’s here”, the measuring “what do we do now?”, it’s all there! I think she’s perfect as Rocio, someone who’s grown up in a restrained atmosphere, while her sister coped by rebelling, she just folded into it.
But I will agree, Tessa was ah-mazing. I honestly wasn’t looking to get into a new series this much, I thought I’d watch it almost as a chore, you know?, for Barbara, gif a bit of her face and that’d be that, but I ended up really loving it, probably one of the top two shows of the year so far for me. Give me main character Spanish-speaking wlw and I’m yours, apparently. 😛 I really didn’t need another show to be into to this degree. So many gifs to make! So many actresses to stan! There are only so many hours in the day! Oh, lol, speaking of which, the pics with Maca and Tessa gave me such strong dissonance, trying to reconcile these two fandoms, heh.
But yeah, she was very, very good as Vera. And I know I keep obsessing on the treatment of MarVera, the meta of it all, how groundbreaking that is, but I also really just the girls and their characters and dynamics and arcs, separate and together. She was so natural and genuine, totally being this character, good at turning you off at times, and almost rooting against her, at least for her comeuppance, like, “you brought this on yourself” and “what did you expect” (re: the dresses), but a second later, feeling so deeply, impossibly protective of her. The same way Marcela felt, I imagine, lol. And the way Vera felt for Marcela. Ah, I enjoyed watching this show.
