#jose luis is still hot af tho

[jobey-wan-kenobi]

My Lo Qué La Vida Me Robó Re-Watch Take That Literally No One Asked For

I used to be salty that the writers “forced” Jose Luis to be “evil” later in the series... lazily “ruining” his character in order to make their solution to the love triangle acceptable to the audience.

This time around, I gotta give them credit, they were being pretty consistent all along. 

My sympathy with JL (which was probably 50% based on him being my physical “type” tbh... like, not that Alejandro is hard on the eyes, but I prefer my men dark) definitely biased me and made me overlook or excuse some pretty big red flags. Which is scary. JL is pretty scary, even as far back as the hacienda sequence. Boundary-stomping mfer with untreated PTSD and a death wish in a city basically controlled by a cartel, how could this have gone wrong? Whoops.

As much as I was always cutting JL breaks, I was simultaneously being very hard on Alejandro. This time around, I am more understanding about his breakdown (with the hammer! which is hilarious! but then also the six-month funk afterwards). This is also a dude who had been hit with a lot and hasn’t had a chance to breathe. Apart from the telenovela of it all screwing with his head, he’s pretty stable.

Obviously, Alejandro continues to still engage in a lot of infuriating machismo. I always knew JL suffered from that too, and used to write off a lot of his weird behavior as “this show is just way too accepting of men being idiot dickheads.” But I’m noticing this time that the show is actually a lot smarter than just “men will be men.” Machismo—and machisma!—are definitely not portrayed as bad in themselves... though sometimes people go to extremes... usually it’s external circumstances that poison the well, though. It’s the lying, scheming, and greed that create toxic environments where healthy machismo then turns dark. Again, in show-logic. Not real-life. But it makes a ton of sense in show logic, because (my final revelation) this mess of a winding plot is largely a story about abuse—specifically abuse victims. 

Every single one of the major characters are pretty cruelly victimized, and this is a story about how most of them find the courage to escape their circumstances, come out of the fog, hold themselves accountable, set better boundaries, develop healthier relationships, and live a better life (until the writers kill many of them off, which definitely IS something that I hate about the writing). 

I really like this recurring theme—for one thing, it’s one of the only ways to justify all the “omigod all the poor rich people” and beautiful clothes/scenery. But honestly it’s pretty shallow and inaccurate to dismiss this as “rich girl problems.” There are also rich and poor boys who are suffering, for one thing. “The world’s smallest violin/Really needs an audience” and all that. ‘Sides, these violins aren’t all that small. Look at poor Nadia. She might be rich, but her crimelord husband is also abusing her in nearly every way possible. Josefina is not only honeytrapped, but the people who are scamming her not only mock her and her looks behind her back, but eventually to her face. Montserrat’s mother is a lying, scheming, gaslighting vendor of her children. Alejandro grew up on basically a fief ruled by a cruel despotic dickhead who later forced him to take the fall for his crime. These people are all relatable to anyone who has been a victim—even if they get to look a lot prettier than you and me while they suffer.

And in this context, I accept the need for the show to mostly showcase machismo (and machisma! the girls are all shown to need to develop this quality, and Montserrat is the “leader” primarily because she has the most of it!) as an antidote to victimization and a defensive measure against abuse.

Altogether, Jose Luis’s struggle—while it sucked—was not unique within the cast. They were all struggling to free themselves and to heal from abuse. JL, uh... well, he fucked up. He chose, again and again, to make his problems other people’s problems. He chose to stomp on people’s boundaries in a way that turned him from a hero/anti-hero into a full-on villain at times. It’s actually all the more tragic because you can see a very good and loving and lovable man under there, but it’s a good man who never grows beyond his initial goodness and who eventually is nearly strangled, not by others, but by his own character flaws turned to self-pity and bitterness.