Guardian Rock

This reconciliation didn’t fix the larger issues, but at least it broadcast that they love each other, even if Fina doesn’t know how, at the moment, and Marta still doesn’t realize that.

So. Episode 600. An opening scene for Began, whose long game is so long that it has been lost somewhere in space, and a small make-up sequence for Mafin to likewise remind their fanbase that this game is still on. Belmonte even gets some comedy, and Tasio gets roasted: celebrations all around!

Tasio, you want to put Paula in the shop that your wife led? You want to emotionally blackmail Claudia by mentioning Mateo?

No. Way.

The not-quite-there Mafin reunion (a kiss while clinging to the precipice, basically) is cut in between Miguel and Claudia being adorable and going on a movie date, so Editing is giving us a little flashlight sign. So does Costuming: as @ignorant-rat-carcass pointed out, Marta, kissing Fina over one of her photographs, is wearing the same suit she wore when she kissed Fina over the photography manual she gave her (nice reminder, too, that Marta has always championed Fina’s growth). And there’s Prop Design, taking the cake again, as @wirepaladin observed: there’s a bouquet of white roses in Fina’s living room. As at the end of #548. #IsidroInTheHouse.

We got this. Go, Mafin! And as the scene (a full five minutes!) progresses and they say all the wrong things, I had to keep reminding myself of that.

We start with Fina’s Home Swell Chords at 00:35:07 (Mafin Drive Cut). Fina is hanging up framed photos, she seems nervous when the doorbell rings, and she is dressed in a double protective layer of armor: high turtleneck and chunky knit cardigan (white, and reminiscent of the one she wore when she broke down in front of Marta over Santiago’s rape attempt, as @wirepaladin realized).

Brunet makes the nerves clear: Fina takes a deep breath before opening the door, then scratches her nose, brushes back her hair. Marta, ever educated, asks whether she is bothering her, and this time Fina cannot say no. But she continues to be nervous: Marta looks around the apartment, Fina looks at Marta, her hands at her sides as if she wants to throw herself into her arms and has forgotten how to do that. The she crosses her arms in front of her chest, unconsciously building distance again.

Marta doesn’t want a drink, Marta wants Fina. They sit, uncomfortably, despite the white roses behind them saying “we’ve got you, you’ll get there, perhaps by episode 700” and the toolbox in front of them saying “Lesbians. Always processing, amirite?”

Marta sits so stiffly she might break, Fina (I think @bloomsberries pointed that out first) has the cardigan pulled over her hand, and again rubs her nose.

Fina admits Marta dropping by the other day bothered her, and instead of asking, “Why?” Marta apologizes for her impulse to “invade her personal space” (we do remember a Fina for whom “invading personal space with Marta” was the best thing in life. Why are these two sitting here like two strangers instead of testing that new sofa? That’s how bad things are.)

The dialog enters the twilight zone: Fina, who seems honestly frustrated with the distance she keeps creating, says she doesn’t know what’s going on. But in her next phrase, she says she knows, Marta knows, because Marta is the problem: “What is happening to you, Marta?”

And instead of saying, “That is my question”, Marta apologizes for the omitted news about the Bianca call, again. Then she apologizes for her own insecurities. If Fina keeps looking at her with this kind of disappointed judgment, she will apologize for breathing, probably.

None of this is healthy or clearing anything up, it just reiterates unhealthy patterns: Fina shifting the blame to Marta, Marta accepting the blame. Fina offering to do something (“Is there something I could do differently?” – yes, Fina, just about everything), Marta taking more blame.

The dialog continues to stay falsehood after falsehood, even if the characters may believe them at the moment, but the Writing Room must be aware that the audience recognizes them: such as, Marta wouldn’t have been insecure before (when actually, Marta was insecure a lot and Fina always supported her and never treated it as a weakness).

In turn, Marta states that post-Argentina Fina is so much more self-confident and knows what she wants, and the audience has seen that neither is true and Fina’s desperate expression agrees with the audience.

Marta continues to be frank: she feels smaller next to Fina now. And while they both chalk it up to Fina being more worldly now, the audience knows that it is due to Fina having pushed Marta away for weeks now.

Fina saying that Marta would now have to learn to live with a woman who is her equal instead of a girl intimidated by the social status of her “girlfriend” smells like retconning, but could also be part of the long game. Because Fina up to 377 wasn’t intimidated by the social status of her wife, and Marta never unpacked it between them. (If anything, Fina was the one to uphold Marta and call the shots, from “temenos toda la vida por delante” to “sssh” in the darkroom.)

Marta, at this point, expects Fina to break up with her – “Is that what you want?” (because Marta still tries to accommodate Fina). That was, to me, the most gutting moment of the scene because that’s the amount of trust and safety Marta feels around Fina right now: she is expecting that Fina might get up and leave at any moment.

And the second most gutting thing is Fina then – and only then – being able to open up. Only then, with Marta this afraid, Fina can be sweet and generous and say, “What? No! I just needed to understand what was failing (“you, Marta, it was you and your insecurities”)!”

They get the Family Chords at 00:38:44, and Marta is so devastatingly relieved, but the pattern revealed is ugly: only at the point where Marta is broken, Fina can reach out because then she is the one with the agency to fix it, as she has usually been before she has left. And perhaps it is she who would need a shoulder to cry on or have someone tend to her wounds now, but she nips that at the bud, every time.

This Fina doesn't need an equal. She is less of an equal than Fina up to 377 in terms of emotion because this Fina cannot be with someone who challenges her. She is not the strong one. She needs Marta to be dependent and scared, and that is not a healthy pattern.

Sure, Marta may be more insecure because of her abandonment issues, but Fina has fed them copiously since her return. None of this is about concealing the Bianca call, or about how either of them have changed or not. It is instead about Fina needing control, needing to be the one to say, "I comfort you" and "Silly, why would I leave you?" – thus making light of Marta’s deep-seated fears instead of recognizing them. It is about how Marta apologizes for not respecting Fina's personal space, and how Fina's behavior suggests that such an apology is necessary. And Marta accepts it, and then she calls them "novias" (what a downgrade from “mi mujer”), and, no, this is not a healthy relationship.

Not because they wouldn’t love each other, but because Fina needs to face her trauma and subsequent trust issues to be able to have an actual relationship again. The way she (unconsciously) manipulates Marta is disturbing, and Marta would need to say stop instead of enabling it further in her fear of being abandoned. Marta is bending over backwards in her attempts to hold onto Fina, and a reeling Fina is given no clear feedback of “no. You’ve crossed a line.”

This episode made me doubt, but I still believe there is a larger game going on because both characters made false statements about their previous relationship here and continue to act out of character (Marta disproportionally scared, Fina cold unless Marta is breaking down). The audience knows that the Mafin relationship was balanced: Fina was unimpressed by Marta's status even before they were together. Marta never put Fina down over class issues. More often, Fina was the one to comfort. Marta always supported Fina's growth with pride.

I have problems believing that the Writing Room who has delivered this romance so far would do such a drastic, notable shift of a favorite storyline when there is no narrative gain in sight. Why ruin them for nothing?

And I think beyond the white roses and the double-breasted suit and the True Flutes, this is in the performances. Brunet can play cocky and suave and strong if she wants to (Fina always had a bit of that), but Fina right now seems lost, scared, and shut off, with small moments of reprieve only when Marta is on the floor and Fina herself is the one to call the shots.

Marta, over the family chords calling herself “childish” for her fears (fears that Fina caused), is not met with Fina saying, “Of course you aren’t childish, your feelings are valid!” but with a joking “The tables are turned, now I am comforting you!” (when Fina has usually been the one to comfort Marta all along)

Pelayo purposefully gaslit Marta; the way Fina is characterized at the moment, she engages in acts that gaslight Marta, but from a point of survival instinct and wounded feelings: none of it says "I *want* to hurt and destabilize Marta", but all of it says "I cannot be vulnerable, I am scrambling away from anything that would open me up".

And the way it is written and performed places those impulses on an instinctual level where Fina's own reasonings ("but I am independent! How does Marta dare to infringe on that!") are shown as preposterous and off-kilter (How can Fina get mad at her partner dropping by her apartment? How can Fina ask Marta what has happened when the one who has changed completely is clearly Fina?).

And the artistry at the moment, I find, is in telling this story ("Fina is trauma timebomb!") through the characters insisting and believing that they tell another story ("Marta cannot deal with Fina's gain in status!"), while the deeper truth underneath - the one that the audience sees - pulls at them.

Look at how the scene ends: Marta admitting, “I was afraid I’d lost you” and Fina joking it away “Silly, you won’t lose me, I’m crazy about you”, and, fine, one small kiss and then she leans back in her seat, with her cardigan over her turtleneck. “crazy about you” used to be “I will almost kiss you at the store, until we need to invent an eyelash story for Tasio”. It used to be “let me show you my darkroom and take half-nudes of you over lunch break.” Now, it’s “novias”.

And, sure, Fina has a framed photo (back from when she started out, over the Doña Clara countryside excursion) of Marta to pin to her wall, but that is the image, not the woman in front of her, and even though they get the True Flutes once more, with the bouquet of white roses perfectly centered behind them (00:39:19), and they get to touch hands, and foreheads (nature is healing!), that photo frame is still a barrier between them.

And Marta saying “I’m an idiot!” and Fina replying “yes, you are” rings off: because with the little trust they have right now, both are too close to actually meaning it. I expect the other shoe to drop still.

But look at that forehead touch and how it frames the Queer Lady Rohrschach painting in the background: I still see two women in dresses from the shoulders down.