Previously on Rebelde Way: Joaquin started school like two weeks ago and is already trying to get into Marizza and Mia’s pants. Marizza was icked out by the idea, especially since he tried to get it on with her in a tree, in broad daylight. Mia, on the other hand, is giving it serious consideration. Don’t do it, Mia! The mystery of Marcos’s asthma continued. And Child Services finally caught up to Nacho, to Marizza’s chagrin. How dare they remove a third grader from a trailer in a school junkyard where he has no access to food or water, and occasionally gets beat up by Marizza’s psychotic classmates.
Opening monologue: Aaah! What the fuck is that!
Sorry, the horribleness of early 2000s graphics just came back to hit me in full force. Anyway, growing up sucks because the real world is full of LIES. I mean, so is high school. And elementary school. I knew a girl in 8th grade who told us that her cousins were in an incestuous gay relationship and she used to tell us stories about them that were basically a bunch of yaoi tropes mashed together, and she somehow got hella popular because everyone was so invested in her fake cousins’ drama. Nobody could verify it because this was before grade schoolers were allowed on Facebook. But I digress.
Feli tries to make amends with Mia. She tells Mia that Manuel broke up with her, and Mia softens a little — but she’s still snippy about Feli spying on her and being cold to her after their initial fight. Mia deigns to forgive Feli for jumping her in the chem lab, but bitters that they can’t be friends like before. Idk, it’s a little rich of her, because the whole thing is kind of Mia’s fault to begin with for not telling Vico to step off when she said Feli was too fat to be in the dance group.
Cafeteria. Luna, Lujan, and Marizza are all crying over Nacho. They miss him so much! He’ll be so unhappy in the orphanage! Oh, sweet Jesus, they’re going to try to get him back, aren’t they? I thought I’d finally gotten rid of him! I knew it was too good to be true 🙁 Joaquin comes in and tries to get with Marizza, but she’s still pissed at him for…trying to kiss her the other day? It’s unclear. She yells at him to stop thinking with his dick and storms out. Joaquin is upset for about half a second, then Mia shows up and he waltzes out with her. Lujan, Luna, and Nico are all witness to this, and yet it doesn’t seem to occur to any of them that Joaquin is playing the two girls. Dammit, Nico, what kind of Boy Detective are you? They all just like, completely move on from the scene they just watched. Lujan darts off to find Marcos, and Nico takes the opportunity to break up with Luna. He gets about three words out before she runs off, already in tears because of the whole Nacho thing. Manuel comes in and is like, “Do you remember how I was going to break your face if you hurt Luna?” Nico wails that it wasn’t him — he didn’t even get to break up with her, he just thought now would be a good time to bring it up because she was already crying. Oh my God, Nico. Manuel’s like, “You dumbass, go apologize.”
Classroom. Lujan confronts Marcos: she did some book learnin’, and she suspects Marcos has asthma, not allergies. I’m glad one of the twelve books in the school library had the information she was looking for. Although it’s entirely possible for allergies to trigger an asthma attack, Lujan. Marcos immediately flips out and yells at her that he doesn’t have asthma OR allergies. He just carries around an inhaler because it looks cool, I guess. He storms out. Marizza comes in all upbeat because Sonia’s going to visit Nacho, but Lujan emos to her that Marcos won’t let her meddle in his life. Lujan? Asthma isn’t a terminal disease. Marcos is kind of a dumbass for leaving his inhaler behind, but like, what else can be done here? Does he secretly need a lung transplant or something?
Nico finds Luna emoing in the main hall. She tells him that she’s crying over Nacho, not him, and she always feels happy when Nico’s around. Nico’s all touched by this, and he fishes out a handkerchief and dabs at her tears. Luna kisses him and tells him that she loves him. Damn, that was fast. Again, have the two of them ever had a real conversation? Nico tells her that he loves her too, for some reason. I guess now that Manuel and Feli are broken up, the relationship idiot ball has passed to Nico.
Teachers’ lounge. Mansilla muses to Alicia that the kids should have more extracurricular activities — for an elite school, there isn’t much to do besides dance group and…that’s about it. There isn’t even a sports team, as Mia pointed out back in episode 2. He says they need to make some changes, and suggests that they start with open auditions for the dance group. Alicia’s like, “Aw hell no, I don’t want to actually take responsibility for them.” It’s so much easier to just let teenage girls run the whole thing. Alicia argues that the group has a reputation to uphold, and Mansilla says that if the group is a failure, they’ll go back to Alicia’s method (or lack thereof), but for now, open auditions it is. It doesn’t occur to either of them that this whole thing could be resolved by just putting the less talented girls on a B team, like every other high school on the planet.
In the classroom, Luna doodles a big ol’ NICO + LUNA heart and gives it to Nico. She probably has a few Mrs. Nico Provenzas lying around somewhere, too. Nico’s like, “Yikes.” All the kids file in except for Marcos, and Lujan frets to Marizza that this is the first time he’s missed class. He hasn’t responded to any of her texts, either. In what world does Lujan have Marcos’s number? She begs Marizza to stalk him for her, since Marcos is still all twitterpated over the time Marizza told him he was hotter than Brad Pitt. She leaves just as the teacher comes in, which I’m just mentioning because this is a brand-new teacher who we’ve never seen before. Like, not even in the teachers’ lounge scenes. Where did he come from?
Who is this dude?
Marizza finds Marcos ditching class in the cafeteria. She’s like, “You’re a nerd stereotype! What are you doing in here?” He blows her off when she asks about his asthma, and asks if she’s going out with Joaquin. “How did you know?” she asks. “I watch you,” Marcos says. It actually doesn’t come off that creepy, surprisingly. There’s some sad music playing in the background, so obviously now is the best time for a jarring switch to the music video for “Inmortal.” Again. Blah blah video!Marcos has a crush on video!Marizza, just like show!Marcos likes show!Marizza blah. Back in the episode, Marcos asks Marizza if she can get some information out of Joaquin about his (Joaquin’s) brother. Marizza agrees, then threatens the cafeteria worker into messing with the school’s PA system. Three guesses what she’s planning to do.
Luna announces to Manuel that she and Nico are dating now. Manuel is Not Pleased.
Cafeteria. Pablo is trying to puzzle out who spilled the beans about Nacho and took away his blackmail material. Guido tells him that he saw beer bottles in their room, and suggests that maybe Pablo got drunk and said something and now doesn’t remember it. Apparently that’s all it takes to bring Pablo’s memory back. “I was drinking, and Pilar was there,” he muses. Now would be an excellent time for Guido to remember that he knows that Pilar writes the newspaper, but he doesn’t. He does remember that he mentioned Pablo’s blackmail in front of Pilar, but he keeps quiet about it.
Joaquin catches up to Marizza and wants to know why she hasn’t been feeding his ego as of late, and she snaps at him that she’s been kind of busy worrying about the orphan kid who’s just been whisked off into the foster system after a month of living in a trailer off of soda and cocoa puffs. Joaquin’s like, “But what about ME?” Man, I’d be happy too if everyone just collectively forgot Nacho existed, but Joaquin’s being such a dick about this. Anyway, Marizza rants at him about the great injustice of not letting an orphaned child live out his life in the school junkyard under the care of three teenagers, and Joaquin’s like, “Your anger is super hot. Let’s have sex in the gym later.” Marizza agrees, before actually thinking about what she’s agreeing to.
Guido confronts Pilar: he suspects that she brought beer into the school, got Pablo drunk on it, and got Marizza’s secret out of him. And that’s not all! Guido suspects that she had SOMETHING to do with it being published in the newspaper! Oh my God, Guido. You already know Pilar writes the newspaper! You found out almost twenty episodes ago!
Teachers’ lounge. Mama D’s like, “Mansilla is alone! I must go drop awkward hints about my crush to him!” She tells him that he deserved to be made dean (a fair observation, actually) and gives him a present. I can’t tell what it is. Cufflinks? Who knows. Anyway, Mansilla gives her a hug and the econ teacher walks in on them. He’s like, “Oh! Am I INTERRUPTING something?” Mansilla is snippy with him, which honestly I think kind of makes him look more suspicious.
Classroom. Hilda’s talking about patriotism, and decides to throw some antisemitism into her lesson: she tells them that it’s important to be loyal to your country, because SOME PEOPLE don’t care about the countries they live in. Like Jews! All they care about is money! Nico’s like, “WHAT.”
Manuel rightly tells her that she’s being hella offensive, and Pablo’s like, “To who? There are no Jewish people at this school!” Lujan raises her hand and says she disagrees with Hilda, and Manuel backs her up. Marizza mutters under her breath that Pablo is a Nazi, but it’s sad that Lujan and Manuel are the only two who are willing to say anything in front of the whole class. Mia says she loves Jewish people because they have the best clothing stores in New York. Oh, Mia. Hilda’s like, “Whoa, back up, I didn’t actually want a DISCUSSION about this.” She snaps that she doesn’t care if they agree with her or not; if she wants to be racist in class, ain’t nothing they can do about it.
This is a pretty intense moment about a serious topic, right? An excellent time for Marizza’s revenge to be put into effect! Pablo’s song comes on over the PA, and across town, his dad hears it on the radio. Uh-oh. (The song, by the way, is “Mi vida” by Erreway. Also, even though Nacho supposedly secretly recorded this in the sad trailer, it’s a professional recording with like, a backing band and harmonizing singers. The acoustics in that trailer are really something!)
We’ve been building up to Marizza’s revenge for a couple of episodes now, right? It’s kind of a big deal? It really is. So let’s skip over the scene where everyone hears Pablo’s song, and go right ahead to Marizza and Joaquin hooking up in the gym room. It looks basically like the map room, but with balls instead of maps.
Marizza doesn’t really want to hang around and mack it with Joaquin. She keeps saying that she wants to go back and watch everyone mock Pablo and Joaquin’s like, “I did not show up here so we could talk about someone other than me.” Marizza is weirded out when he tries to kiss her, but in the same breath she tells him that she wants to be with him publicly. He’s like, “Well, if you still like me, we should make out.” Marizza says that the dance team is having a meeting and scrams.
Gym. Alicia calls all the girls together and tells them that the dance team is now open to anyone who wants to join, and their new team will be going to a dance competition. All the girls start whining, and Alicia’s like, “Oh, and one more thing, organizing a dance team the way every other school on earth does it is too much responsibility for me, so I’m quitting.” All the girls protest, as though Alicia was ever actually involved in running this team to begin with.
Pablo’s room. Papa B’s secretary calls him and tells him that Papa B is on his way to the school right now to yell at Pablo for his music. Tomás has come back into the room to pack up his stuff, and dramatically overhears this.
Classroom. All the girls gather to complain about having to actually let other students into a student club. Mia suggests they go to Mansilla to protest Alicia’s resignation. Why? It’s not like she was contributing anything anyway. Mia and Marizza immediately turn it into a pissing match over who gets to talk to Mansilla, and they both run off to find him. The new rando teacher pops in and says Lujan’s mysterious tutor is waiting for her in the office. Man, you can’t just bring back plotlines outta nowhere like that. I think I got whiplash.
Lujan gets to Dunoff’s office and he tells her that when they said her tutor was waiting, what they actually meant was that a message from the tutor was waiting. Seriously, it is so shady that this person refuses to meet Lujan in person. I feel like a better school would be troubled by this, but that school is not Elite Way. Anyway, Lujan’s tutor has sent an email to Dunoff, which Lujan reads on Dunoff’s laptop. It’s kind of incredible:
“You know, in the future, these will be a lot smaller.”
Lujan’s tutor snipes at her (in all caps!) that they don’t pay for her to attend the best school in the country so she can hide orphans on campus and go to nightclubs with Sonia Rey. It turns out that Lujan was caught in one of the photos of Sonia, and it ended up in the newspaper. She protests that it was the weekend, but Dunoff’s like, “Lmao don’t involve me in this, I’m just the principal.” She writes back to her tutor that she wants to meet them face-to-face, but Dunoff tells her that the mysterious tutor wants to write to her, and the computer has to stay in Lujan’s room 24/7. Seriously, is no one weirded out by this? Not a single adult? SIGH.
Mia and Marizza go to Mansilla, but he tells them that if Alicia wants to leave, then he can’t stop her. He promises to find someone to replace her, and Mia and Marizza protest that Alicia is the best. The best at what? Letting teenagers walk all over her?
Manuel finds Feli in the chem room and asks why she’s alone. She tells him that she has no friends left, and Manuel says he still likes her (platonically). They banter a little and it’s mildly cute.
Marizza thanks the cafeteria lady for helping her with her revenge. Pablo totally deserved it for spilling the beans about Nacho! “Well, what if I told you it wasn’t Pablo?” cafeteria lady says. How does she know this? I guess she tells Marizza that it was really Pilar, because Marizza goes off to find her. Pilar is announcing to a bunch of kids that they’re going to finally be allowed to participate in their own school’s extracurricular activities, and everyone starts dancing. Marizza drags Pilar off to her room to interrogate her, with Lujan standing guard at the door to keep her from escaping. That’s hilarious. Luna interrupts them and tells them that knocking Pilar around isn’t going to help them, and Pilar threatens to tell Dunoff. Marizza grudgingly admits she doesn’t need more problems with Dunoff, and lets Pilar go. And Pilar escapes detection yet again!
Feli overhears Mia and Vico squealing about Mia having sex with Joaquin. When Vico leaves to make sure no one will see Mia sneaking out, Feli locks Mia in the room. Seriously, why can none of the doors on this show be opened from the inside? In the gym room, Joaquin checks his watch and sighs. Eventually he gives up and leaves, and Feli unlocks the door. She tells Mia she locked her in for her own good: “Remember when we talked about our first times? We said we wanted to do it with someone we loved, who we were close to. What do you know about Joaquin? Absolutely nothing! You just met him!” Mia’s like, “So what?” and Feli’s like, “Do you even know that he’s two-timing you?” That gets Mia’s attention, which makes me think Feli should’ve just said that in the first place. Also, how on earth does Feli know about it?
Pablo’s room. Manuel and Joaquin come in to ask if Pablo and Guido want to play pool with them. I mean, I know Nico and Marcos don’t really play pool, but you’d think Manuel would hang out with literally any of the other guys in class instead of deciding that he needs Joaquin and Pablo to play pool. Anyway, an excellent time for Papa B to walk in and slap Pablo across the face. Joaquin and Manuel are like, “Damn, this is awkward.”
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