Oh, Lord. I tried to resist, you guys. I told myself, “You’re only going to watch a few episodes to practice your listening skills. You are not going to actually get invested in these early-2000s Argentine teenager shenanigans.” And yet…I can’t help it. I love Rebelde Way, much in the same way that I love Sweet Valley High, right down to the terrible dated fashion (Mia wears a knee-length denim jacket. I CAN’T) and the love octagons.
That said, this show? Is hilariously inappropriate. I realize the US is rather puritanical compared to South America (or you know…anywhere), but surely someone, somewhere, was equally as disturbed as I was by a 15-year-old girl performing a striptease.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Rebelde Way, for those of you who don’t know (I’m assuming I’m catering to English-speakers here), is a telenovela created by Cris Morena, who has produced pretty much every popular teen show in Argentina since the dawn of time (or at least since 1995). I don’t know much about Argentina’s media, but as far as I can tell, Cris Morena rules the teenage demographic with an iron fist. Kind of like Francine “Yzma” Pascal in the ’80s. (I am going to be drawing a lot of Sweet Valley parallels, I can tell.) Anyway, RW ran from 2002-03 and in that time managed to churn out 318(!) episodes. Presumably Cris Morena made the actors sign their contracts in blood and only let them sleep for an hour a day.
Anyway. The show. Opening credits! Our protagonists are established: Mia Colucci is a rich blonde girl who likes pink and has a maid. Pablo Bustamante is a rich blonde boy who has a maid. Marizza Spirito washes her hair in the sink, because she is ~edgy~ and gives no fucks. Manuel Aguirre is less rich than Mia and Pablo because he rides the bus, but he gives up his seat for a pregnant lady, so you know he has a ~heart of gold. Oh, and we see shots of the secondary cast hanging out with each other, even though most of them hate each other in-universe. This is all set to a song that is way too catchy for its own good.
Opening narration! Every episode starts off with a sort of fauxlosophic narration that deals with the ~theme~ of each episode. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it just makes me laugh. Today’s episode: “When exactly do we start making our own choices? Who tested our parents to make sure they know what’s best for us? When they choose a school for us, do they know that they’re affecting the rest of our lives forever?” Or at the very least, affecting their lives for the next 318 episodes (oh, God).
(Also, can we talk about what a stupid name “Elite Way” is for a school? That’s the kind of name I would expect from a shoujo anime. Although I suppose, theme-wise, shoujo anime and this show aren’t all that far apart.)
Hands typing on a keyboard. Check out that early-2000s keyboard, before we realized black keys hid our fingers’ dirty smudges better. A mysterious character types in “NAME: MIA COLUCCI.” And indeed, Mia Colucci is the center of the following scene. What you need to know about Mia: she’s rich, she’s blonde, she likes fashion, she runs the Elite Way School’s dance group, and she likes to drop random English words in her sentences. It’s the last day of school and her dance group is putting on a performance, and she’s waiting for her neglectful father to show up. Aw, Mia. I’m not going to lie, I like her a lot. She’s my second-favorite character. I know a lot of people hate her/think she’s boring/don’t like Luisana Lopilato in general, but I’ve always liked the Defrosting Ice Queen/Loveable Alpha Bitch/Spoiled Sweet trope. Some guy sidles up to her all, “What are you doing after the ceremony?” and she blows him off. “Call me during vacation!” “But Mia, you’re not going to be here during vacation.” “Exactly.” Heh.
Also introduced: Mia’s Hollywood Pudgy best friend, Felicitas Mitre, who mostly stands around and enables Mia.
Anyway, the “closing ceremonies” begin (damn, this school is fancy) and Mia’s father still hasn’t arrived. “Don’t worry!” some random girl in the background says. “Your driver will be here! He always comes!” And indeed, the driver shows up, but not Mia’s dad. Bad move, Papa Colucci. “I wonder why your dad’s always so reluctant to come see you?” asks the random girl, which is so hilariously blunt and bitchy that I started laughing.
So Papa Colucci doesn’t show up, Mia feels rejected, and so she enacts her vengeance by performing a striptease during the closing ceremonies. As you do.
NAME: MANUEL AGUIRRE. “Do you know you look a lot like Dad?” lisps his tiny little sister (who we are never going to see again). “Sometimes I go into your room at night and look at you. It makes me feel like Dad is back.” Er…yeah. Indeed, Manuel’s father is dead, by the fault of none other than…Franco Colucci! You don’t say! Apparently a business deal gone wrong caused Manuel’s father to commit suicide, and now they’re in debt and have to sell their house and move to an apartment. Partly because apartments are smaller than houses, and partly because of a desire for vengeance, Manuel’s going to travel from Mexico to Argentina to enroll in the same boarding school as Franco Colucci’s daughter and…get vengeance. The word of the day! I’m not sure how he’s going to do that, but whatever.
NAME: PABLO BUSTAMANTE. “Why do we have to go to London? I thought we were going to the beach!” whines Pablo. Oh, Pablo, your life is so hard. I don’t know how you deal. His mom is really pretty and his father is kind of a douche. Also he has a best friend, a rather attractive but also extremely dumb kid named Tomás. Pablo’s father snips that either Pablo can come to Europe with his parents or he can stay at school for the summer. Before Pablo can answer, two girls (one of whom is Mia’s other best friend, the awesomely bitchy Vico) show up and drag him off. He’ll miss the show! (And what a show it is, what with Mia stripping in the middle of it.) “Hey, I’m not invisible! Wait for me!” Tomás shouts after them. Aw, Tomás.
NAME: MARIZZA PIA SPIRITO. Marizza is the ~rebellious~ daughter of overdramatic Argentine personality and presumable sex symbol, Sonia Rey. I have to admit, I don’t like Marizza as much as other people seem to. My big problem with her is that while Mia gets called out whenever she treats people badly, Marizza generally gets away with it, and we’re supposed to think it’s funny. But whatever. She travels around the country with her mother and her mother’s assistant, Pepa. There is a “Papa Spirito” in the picture, except not literally, since he shows up like, twice in the whole show. Anyway. Marizza, knowing how important fanservice is to this show, makes her introduction topless. (Not really. There’s like, paint covering up her bits. STILL.) Papa Spirito shows up and argues with Sonia about…something vague. OMINOUS!
Introductions out of the way, onwards with the plot! Pablo decides to lie to his parents and spend his vacation with Tomás (I’m…not exactly sure what he’s going to tell his parents, but whatever, it’s not important). Manuel sells his motorcycle to pay for his revenge-trip to Argentina. Sonia tells Marizza that she’s sending her to boarding school at the request of Papa Spirito. I’m sort of confused as to how Marizza went this long without being in school at all. There’s no mention of her being homeschooled or anything. Pablo hits on Mia. I feel like, what with the two of them being the most ~popular~ in the school, they should have some kind of seedy dating history with each other. Mia’s father cancels her vacation so she’ll have to stay at summer school (the horror!) as punishment for showing her bra to God and everybody. She kind of whines at him, and I can’t tell you what’s she’s saying because literally nothing she says in her baby voice is intelligible. So yeah.
Marizza yells at Papa Spirito, except she calls him Spirito and he snips that he is her father and she snips back, “Really? Because I never see you!” Oh snap. “Look, daughter — ” “Call me Marizza, because you see, we’re like strangers here.” OH SNAP. I do like Marizza sometimes.
Gloria, the school’s secretary, shows a woman with really big hair around the school. While Gloria tries to sell the school to Big Haired Lady, the random bitchy girl from earlier runs up and wails that she can’t live with Mia Colucci anymore, she thinks she’s la Rrrreina de Inglaterrrrra, and I am not even exaggerating the R-rolling. Big Haired Lady is just like, “Oh…kay, then.” It turns out she’s looking at the school for her niece, who will we meet later. Pablo’s parents show up looking for him and Big Haired Lady is starstruck. It’s the Mayor of Buenos Aires! Er…yeah. The Bustamantes discover that Pablo’s room is empty! Oh, nevermind, I guess he didn’t lie to them after all. He just didn’t tell them where he was going.
Random bitchy girl moves out of Mia’s room. Oh, I guess they were living together and that’s why she’s so mad at Mia? I should add that it’s three people to a room, so someone new is going to have to move in with Mia and Felicitas. Ominous! We get a bit of backstory on Feli: she was a normal, slightly loser-ish girl, and then Mia took her under her wing and now Feli is popular, although forever in Mia’s shadow. Also, she eats her feelings. Feli’s portrayal is kind of weird to me — I feel like there’s this awkward “Fat people can’t control themselves!” kind of undertone. You kind of have to wonder about how Angeles Balbiani felt about always being shown eating. Anway, Feli doesn’t want to leave Mia alone with the “losers” from the summer school club. “Don’t worry!” Mia says. “You know I love to turn losers into normal people!” Hee. To be honest, Mia’s lack of tact is like, 40% of the reason I love her. “In fact, over the break, I’ll take one of the new girls and make her one of us!”
Marizza and Sonia roll up to the school. Marizza doesn’t like it. “They’re such babies!” Dude, Marizza, you’re like fifteen. Anyway, Mia sees her from afar and snips to Feli about how ~unstylish~ Marizza is. She’s found her new project! (Also, I’m sure the pink mock-baseball shirt Mia’s wearing is totally the epitome of style. Perhaps it’s been so long that I can’t understand early-2000s class.) Mia and Feli waltz up to Marizza and are condescending. Marizza responds by calling Feli a garbage can and dumping juice (soda?) on Mia’s head. “MY HAIR!” Mia wails. (This will become a running thing, obviously.)
Some girl calls for Tomás’s brother and Pablo jacks the phone and asks her out. “And if you have a friend as pretty as you, you can bring her along too.” Oh, Pablo, you charmer. He and Tomás plot to steal Tomás’s mom’s car and (illegally) drive it to pick up the girls. Well, I say “he and Tomás”, but it’s really all just Pablo doing the planning, and poor dumb Tomás trying to keep up.
Mia rants to Vico on the phone about Marizza. “She’ll never get in! Luckily, this school doesn’t accept freaks like her.” Oh, Mia. You make it so hard to love you. They hang up and Mia begins chanting, “I don’t mind being alone, I don’t mind being alone, I don’t mind being alone…” Aw. I think a lot of people mistake Mia as being a really shallow character, just because she starts off as the Libby. She gets a lot of grief both in- and out-of-universe that the other protagonists don’t, which I think kind of sucks, because I find her pretty interesting. Anyway, Gloria the secretary waltzes in, and guess who’s staying with Mia next year if she gets into the school? If you guessed, “Marizza, because I have seen a teen drama before in my life,” then you are correct! They snipe at each other and Mia hits Marizza in the face with her hair. This will end well.
The Bustamantes and the principal, Dunoff. “I don’t understand how he could have just escaped,” muses Dunoff. “Neither can we! What kind of security do you have here?” asks Pablo’s dad. I feel like, possibly, the security isn’t going to stop a student leaving during summer vacation, Papa Bustamante. I hates him. He rambles on about his political campaign and see here, this is why he pays the school to take care of his son, because he sure as hell doesn’t have time to do it himself! I’m curious, does Papa Bustamante have any redeeming qualities? I’ve watched like, sixty episodes and he has yet to not be an asshole in any of them.
After the Bustamantes and Dunoff go off together, Sonia goes to the office to meet with Dunoff about Marizza. Gloria the secretary is cutely starstruck by Sonia and gets her coffee, shaking the whole way. Aw! Dunoff comes back in, and stops short when he sees Sonia. “YOU?!” says Sonia. Ominous! Do you think, perhaps, these two have some sort of sordid history together?
Manuel finally leaves for Argentina. His friends see him off at the airport. “Don’t worry!” he tells them. “As soon as I get revenge on that dude, I’ll come back.” What? How long do you think this is going to take, Manuel? One of his friends voices my thoughts exactly (“Uh, it’s not that easy.”), and Manuel tells them that he’s been doing plenty of research on how to get to Colucci. “He has a daughter, fifteen years old.” “All right! You should get it on with her!” one of his douchey friends says. That’s…actually exactly what Manuel’s plan is. Apparently Manuel has applied for a scholarship at the school and once there, he is going to seduce Mia and…uh…I’m not really sure. I don’t think breaking up with his daughter is going to hurt Franco Colucci that much, Manuel. Also, what if he doesn’t get that scholarship? Does he have any money left? How is he going to get back to Mexico? Am I the only one wondering this? Also, I don’t think you’ll be able to seduce anyone wearing that outfit, Manuel.
LORD HAMMERCY.
Anyway, Manuel tells them that he’s going to enroll in Mia’s class to get close to her. Except he’s seventeen. “You’re going to do 10th grade again, man?” asks one of his friends. Dude, seriously. Revenge isn’t worth it, Manuel! Go to college!
Pablo and Tomás go pick up the girls. “They’re way older than us! We could go to jail!” Tomás panics. Er, I think they’d be the ones to go to jail, Tomás, but whatever. They drive around in Tomás’s (mom’s) car and everything is awesome until they get in a car crash. Pablo hits his head and falls unconscious! Oh no! Is this like the first episode of Buffy where Joss Whedon set that one kid up to be a main character, only to kill him off in the same episode? Don’t toy with my feelings, Cris Morena!
Also, Manuel, Mia, and Marizza have all signed up for the summer school club. This will end well.
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