Opening monologue: You helped me once so now I am dedicated to your cause FOREVER.
Dunoff’s all giddy because the school board’s given him the green light to kick Mansilla out of school. Finally, total power will be his again! Mansilla’s like, “Whatevs, do what you want,” and heads off to go comfort Cata, who you will recall just got stood up by Tomás. Dunoff’s inner drama queen is disappointed.
Cata’s crying at the cafeteria counter, which has suddenly acquired a desktop computer. What?
Was this always here? Where do the cables go?
Mansilla offers to take Cata out for dinner and a movie. Aw!
Meanwhile, Marcos is in the chem lab like a nerd. Actually, in fairness I think this is meant to be a weeknight. Do these kids ever do homework? Lujan’s passing by, and she’s like, “Omg, he’s so hot when he’s obsessed with school.” She goes in to talk to him, and he tells her how he’s working on some super special scientific breakthrough that will win him the Nobel Prize one day. Marcos lowkey has an ego, doesn’t he? But, he tells Lujan sadly, he’s more likely to win the Nobel Prize than he is to get a girlfriend. Except he totally does have a girlfriend, because Lujan gives him another email, in which “Marizza” accepts Marcos’s proposal to go steady. “I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND!!!” Marcos shrieks. Hee!
USA! USA!
Some cafe somewhere. Papa B’s being shady about money with some guy, and the guy promises to vote for Papa B in the upcoming elections. Woo! Buying votes! The topic of money reminds Papa B that the check he wrote Paula has gone mysteriously missing, and he decides to pay her a visit. But he won’t until the middle of the episode, which is like half an hour from now.
The next morning. Tomás comes back to school, and Mansilla is PISSED. He marches Tomás to the teachers’ lounge and passive-aggressively hands him a bunch of books on ethics. He’s like, “Read them and learn something from this!” (I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you!) Tomás is annoyed at first, but then he gets down to it and music montages his way to being a good person. The song in question, by the way, is “Hands Clean” by Alanis Morissette. (At first I thought it was “Falling is Like This” by Ani DiFranco, which thematically makes no sense, but has this show ever?)
“Another day, another student saved. God, I’m good.”
Lujan and Marcos are in the bathroom together. Not weird at all! He’s gotten rid of his glasses and gelled his hair, and Lujan’s all like, “Omg, sexy can I.” It actually looks terrible, though, because THEY HAVEN’T CUT THE BACK OF HIS HAIR:
WHY, JESUS.
Marcos is all pleased that Lujan is helping transform him into boyfriend material, and he gives her a hug. An excellent time for Rodrigo to walk in! Marcos pulls away all, “UGH, I was just hugging her to show her how DISGUSTING I think scholarship students are! Totally!” Rodrigo might be even dumber than Tomás, because he appears to accept this.
Mia and Vico meet in the gym to trap Joaquin. Vico is flipping out, but Mia reminds her that if everything goes to plan, Joaquin will be out of the school this very day! I bet everything won’t go to plan. Joaquin comes in and shoos Mia out, then hands over the drugs and is like, “K, pay me.” Vico’s like, “Whoa hold up, this drug deal is going way too fast for me!” Joaquin’s like, “What? Pay money, get drugs, it’s not hard.” Vico panics at going through with it without backup, and she runs away. Joaquin ends up just…standing there with the drugs? I don’t know what Vico and Mia were planning to do here. Mia and Vico meet up again in the bathroom, and Mia muses that she wasn’t expecting Joaquin to be so fast with the pills. “Then again, he’s fast with everything.” Heh. Anyway, she ends up calling Papa C, which I guess was their Plan B.
Tatiana shows up to school, and she tells Nico that they should go sailing sometime, blah blah she’s super in love with him and with guilt-tripping him blah. Nico passive-aggressively asks about her family, in particularly one member of her family, a family member around their age with distressingly superior eyebrows…”Oh, Matías is great! He loves tutoring here because then he can be near Luna! They’re CRAZY about each other!” Nico’s like, “WHAT.” How many times is he gonna have this conversation?
Dunoff pulls Mansilla way from smugly watching Tomás work, and tells him that a “Dr. Robles” from the school board is coming to look into Mansilla’s case. He starts going in on him for taking Pablo off campus, Guido pops by the office and overhears Dunoff reaming Mansilla out. He heads off to class and Hilda notes that he’s bummed. Guido tells her that they might kick Mansilla out and Hilda’s like, “Pfft, don’t worry about it, they only suspended me for like three episodes.” Pablo’s cutely all worried that they’re going to fire Mansilla because of him. Mansilla is the only adult that cares about him! 🙁 Aw, Pablo. Guido’s like, “That’s why you gotta do something, it’s all because of your dad.” WHY doesn’t Pablo just say he was out losing his virginity? I mean, I guess it’s because he thinks Papa B thinks he’s with Marizza and doesn’t know about Paula, but has Papa B ever given the impression that he’d care if Pablo cheated on his girlfriend?
Speaking of Papa B and Paula, he comes to visit her, asking about his check. She tells him that she didn’t cash it because she doesn’t want it: she won’t take money for sexing Pablo up, because their love is real! They’ve known each other for a whole week now! Papa B’s like, “Look, I got a whole virgin/wh*re thing going on here, you’re not good enough to actually be my son’s GIRLFRIEND.” Paula’s like, “Man…I can’t believe a guy who uses prostitutes has shitty ideas about women.”
Papa C comes to the school and sees Guido macking on Mia in the hallway. Guido’s like, “What up Papa C! How’s it going my dude!” Papa C’s like, “What a douche.” Hee. He tells Mia that Mercedes isn’t going to New York with him. Mia flashbacks to her promise to date Guido if God broke Papa C and Mercedes up.
Tomás finishes taking notes from the ethics books, and Mansilla comes in and passive-aggressively asks for all the definitions of “ethics” that Tomás found. Tomás reads off like five of them, and Mansilla’s like, “Now that we’ve been through all that and you’ve missed half a day of school, do you think what you did to Cata was ETHICAL?” Tomás is like, “…whoops.”
Dunoff meets with the three other teachers in this entire school. He wants their opinion on Mansilla, so that he can report to the school board, and the chem and econ teachers are all ready to throw Mansilla under the bus. Econ teacher’s like, “He hella cockblocked me with the hot dance teacher, I hates him, precious!” They bitter on about how MODERN Mansilla’s teaching methods are, and Dunoff says, “I only want modernity in my household appliances!” HEE! That’s hilarious. Econ teacher brownnoses to Dunoff and promises to give the meanest report he possibly can, and they cackle about how they’re going to get “Professor Hippie” kicked out. Okay, I laughed a little at that, I won’t lie.
Mia, Vico, and Feli are sitting in the empty classroom with Mia’s video camera, vaguely planning to catch Joaquin in the act of selling drugs. WHY didn’t they do this when they originally met with him? Anyway, Blas comes and snippily tells them that the boys have gym class right now, and Mia is sad that he’s all pissed at her. Because see, she actually DID want to date Blas…somehow…for some reason..that she did not express at all when he was creeping on her. Whatever. Vico and Feli are like, “Whatever, he’s still so into you! Go for it!” (Ew! Stop this immediately, you two!), but Mia cries that she has to date Guido now. Vico’s like, “Lmao who gives a shit about Guido,” while Feli moralizes that Mia made a promise. I mean, she never actually TOLD Guido she’d date him, so who cares, but whatever.
Tomás comes into the cafeteria with a rose for Cata. Sandra snaps at him that if he thinks a flower’s going to make things better, he doesn’t know anything about women. “This is true,” Tomás admits. HEE! Cata has enough of spine to let him twist a little before accepting his apology, and she tells him that Mansilla took her out instead. Tomás admits that Mansilla did the decent thing, and Cata tells him that he might grow up not to be a complete dick. Aw.
Nico emos to Manuel that he’s lost Luna to Matías and his eyebrows. FINALLY someone in this show brings up that Tatiana might be trying to split Nico and Luna up, but Nico’s like, “No, that’s impossible. LUNA WANTS MATÍAS’S BODY, THAT IS THE ONLY OPTION.” Manuel’s like, “Okay…well, maybe you should try fighting for her, then, dumbass.” Nico apparently interprets that as “be douchey and passive-aggressive”, because he hauls Luna away from where she’s hanging with Matías and Lujan, and starts bittering about how she totally likes Matías, he can tell! Luna’s like, “Quit getting your insecurity all over me,” and Nico’s like, “NO, I AM VERY INSECURE ABOUT THIS!”, and then he breaks up with her. Well, that was stupid. Manuel rolls up and he’s like, “How did you get that out of ‘fight for her’?”
Mama D approaches Dunoff about Pilar hanging out with Joaquin again, but Dunoff blows her off. Then Mama D’s like, “I’m going to be an independent woman and become this school’s English teacher!” Oh, so this is how she becomes the English teacher. Dunoff’s all shocked, even though he was telling her to get a job?
Chem class. All the kids are thinking about their various crushes. When we get to Mia, she goes into a daydream dance sequence to “Overprotected.” I think my friends and I also made up a dance to this when we were in school. Also, it’s a little homoerotic, ngl:
That’s Guido and Marcos, jsyk.
Anyway, I guess that daydream helped her figure out her priorities, because she texts Guido and asks him to be her boyfriend. YIKES. He catches up to her after class and kisses her, and she like…has a hallucination of herself dressed like a butterfly? I don’t know.
Would this show make more sense if I were drinking?
Pablo calls Papa B to school and gives him a letter. For a second I thought it was the letter about his dad that he turned into Mansilla, but this one must be much more suck-uppy, because Papa B’s all touched by whatever Pablo’s written. Pablo BSes about how Papa B always helps him out, which is why Pablo is committing himself to Papa B’s campaign — or he will, if Papa B lays off Mansilla. ‘Cause see, the reason he was hanging with Mansilla was because Mansilla was helping him see what an awesome dad Papa B is. Papa B’s like, “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”
Vico, Mia, and Feli are in the cafeteria, laying out their plan to trap Joaquin. I feel like they should’ve done this before they tried to trap him the first time. Belen comes up and they’re like, “You’re not a main character, go away.” She hangs around being useless for a while longer, as Guido comes up and starts PDAing with Mia all over the place. Belen’s like, “Dude, you’re dating GUIDO? I’m a tertiary character and even I think that’s embarrassing.” Frickin’ Belen.
And now for our obligatory five minutes of Sonia! Her ex-boyfriend is here to see her, and Sonia tells Pepa to come back in after twenty minutes and make up an excuse to let Sonia leave. Why she is trusting Pepa to do that, I do not know. It’s like trusting Tomás, it can only end badly. Anyway, Sonia’s ex is weird and pervy, but she needs him to find out information about Mama C. She asks if he remembers the woman who wrote the songs for Power, and he’s like, “Aw, hell no, not MARINA.” Uh oh! Also wow, Catherine Fulop’s shoulders are bony.
Dr. Robles shows up and interviews Hilda and the econ teacher about Mansilla. And none for the new chem teacher, bye! Hilda’s like, “Yeah, he’s the only teacher here that actually does his job, not gonna lie.” The econ teacher, on the other hand is like, “He’s the WORST. He encourages DANCING and DRUGS and PREMARITAL SEX and I’m pretty sure he’s killed someone? Just like, the worst. You should fire him.” Dr. Robles comes back to Dunoff and notes that everyone seems to hate Mansilla except for Hilda, who seems to be the least incompetent of all of them. Hee. Dunoff’s like, “Yeah, but…let’s fire him. But we should be shady and keep it on the DL because the kids like him.” Dr. Robles is like, “So…he’s competent and the kids like him?” He goes to Mansilla and tells him that he can’t stop Elite Way from firing him, but Dr. Robles will recommend him to a school that he knows. “Another school like this one?” Mansilla asks. Dr. Robles is like, “Hell no, an actually good school.” Ha! But Mansilla turns him down: Elite Way, with its shitty curriculum and crappy teachers, is where he’s most needed.
All the boys are in gym class. Guido announces to Pablo and Tomás that Mia is his girlfriend now, and Pablo checks his temperature. Heh.
Mia, Feli, and Vico sneak in with the camera. When class stops for a break, Vico rolls up to Joaquin and is like, “Hey, is now in the middle of class a good time to buy drugs?” and Joaquin’s like, “Sure, you know I love to deal them in front of God and everyone.” Feli tries to film, but she’s shaking too hard to keep the camera still. I don’t know why they even handed it to her in the first place. Mia takes the camera and gets Joaquin handing the drugs over on video. Success! For some reason, the girls stick around for the rest of class, and they see Joaquin suddenly collapse. “I think he’s dead!” Guido says. Whatever, I bet he’s not.
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