SASJALAND

There’s a red herring about Cloe hiring a photographer for the BdlR party who we know will have an accident so Fina can take the job, and Marta is present for that, but more than placing that intel, the scene underlines Marta’s sadness.

Cloe, in her Old Dependienta Look How Former Fina I Can Be blouse is happy with how negotiations are going and, from that standpoint, asks Sad Marta what is wrong.

And while Marta tries to deflect at first, she’s at the point her troubles with Fina once more with most very wrong person after Don Agustín.

Saved by Digna walking in!

But Digna, too, wants to talk about Fina, so Marta gets a chance to show the audience her headspace, just like Fina, with Claudia, offered an insight into her headspace in #598.

Marta is bothered by Fina’s unwillingness to talk and to accept her visit, and she fears that Fina will not forgive her and is instead pushing her out of her life – a serious fear that Digna brushes away without giving it the concern it deserves, and which stems from situations the audience has witnessed repeatedly since Fina’s return. So Marta (and the audience) feel left along and insecure about a worry that is well-founded, while being told that it is not well-founded.

Fina isn’t one to hold a grudge, Digna says. Fina is different now, Marta replies, illustrating once more that Marta doesn’t even know how to adapt, and to whom (even though she is – other than what Fina states – willing to do so, she just gets rebuffed by Fina every time she tires).

Digna insists that Fina is the same, only stronger, which may be a fact from Digna’s perspective, or wacky writing, since Fina is hardened and reticent and standoffish and so afraid of letting Marta in, but not of that is a sign of strength, merely of a toughness that points towards Fina’s fear of vulnerability underneath. And Digna, as a mother figure, should be able to see that.

Marta’s world view is starkly at odds with Digna’s: where Digna says “Stop worrying,” Marta says, “I fear Fina will end up leaving me.” (which might be a hook for a constantly dismissed and denigrated Marta to leave Fina instead, in a few episodes, because she cannot take the constant slights any longer and cannot make herself even smaller to accommodate Fina).

Fina calls, and Belmonte combines a skyward soap-look with a tiny smile of relief that actually makes the dialog unnecessary in under half a second.

We also get the True Flutes Love Motif underneath (00:13:44 in the Mafin Drive Cut, with added strings at 00:13:50, highlighting the moment further) to drive home the connection: Fina wants to talk, but Marta looks scared more than overjoyed.

Digna says everything will be all right; Marta just offers a nervous lip bite. (how bad have things gotten if the thought of a date with your wife have you be this afraid what the outcome might be?)

Claudia is visiting and praising Fina’s very nice apartment (the set crews love Fina: they gave her an entire darkroom set, now they are giving her an entire apartment set. The lesbian toolbox is still centerstage and I hope those curtains close well because someone might look in from that nice balcony visible through the windows in case that sofa will see some action down the road).

To Claudia’s “How I missed you!”, Fina is able to reply, “I missed you, too,” and give her a tight hug.

The empathy is only off around Marta – because Marta is the one who can disassemble Fina with just one look. But the walls also come up around Claudia when Claudia remarks that Fina seems sad lately, and there is a pointed pause and side look when Claudia asks whether Fina misses Argentina. She says no in a way that means yes (or at least, to paraphrase another lesbian classic, “There are things I miss about it.”).

The audience gets an insight into Fina self-world here: she feels she doesn’t fit in (Claudia immediately asks about Marta, recognizing her importance), that she and Marta don’t really connect and have been unable to pick up where they left off, that the issue is Marta not adapting to a changed Fina, and Fina’s experiences in Argentina.

Woooot. Hold your horses. If SdL were a regular soap, I’d say “sloppy writing” and drink myself into amnesia, but this is SdL, and it is too opposite of what the audience knows and sees to be true to be unintentional.

The audience has seen and heard Fina say that she is different and that she cannot and does not want to continue on from how things were (and much of that may be Fina wishing to be different deep down, but she is still the same woman who would die for Marta even if she has become a photographer with a chip on her shoulder meanwhile). The audience has seen that Fina actively sabotages connecting with Marta, even if not consciously; the audience has also seen Marta adapting to everything despite not being in agreement (e.g. Fina moving out) or being insecure (Fina not making time for her), and the audience has also seen that Fina has not shared any of her Argentina experiences, other than Bianca, and only because Marta found out, and then she didn’t want to share more when Marta asked.

So this is a scene about Fina, to Claudia, giving insight into her thought processes, and the audience can see that her impressions don’t add up with her behavior.

“Our love should be above all that,” a frustrated Fina says over the little Love Meander Motif (00:35:46 in the Mafin Drive Cut) and that love still seems an abstract thing for her that she values, but cannot access at the moment. And it is Claudia walking around that apartment, alone, while Fina bustles in the kitchen, who gets the Fina Happy at Home Swell Chords and Little Love Motif Changed to Major (00:36:12).

The scene changed to Mabel and Salva, and him avoiding a chance to sleep with her when she clearly wants to: lovers miscommunicating (with Nieves walking in and quickly out again, too).

This parallels Fina and Claudia and then Marta ringing unexpectedly at the door. And Fina’s first expression is discomfort.

Her eyes still drop down Marta’s body then...

...but when Marta – standing in the hallway lit like a dreamboat – says, “I couldn’t stop thinking about here, I just needed an excuse to drop by and talk” while giving Fina a sad, longing look...

...Fina’s expression closes off fully (but caged, not cold. Something is panicking beneath the surface there, I'd say).

And instead of saying, “Claudia, you know I love you, but here’s your coat, remember what we talked about, Marta is here and looking at me like *that*, there are priorities,” Fina uses Claudia to block Marta’s offer of reconnection and talking (something she has just told Claudia she misses from Marta!).

And we’re back to Fina saying things, but her tone saying another: “Come in,” over an annoyed little sigh, and Marta stand around awkwardly like a forgotten bourgeois Christmas tree in July, with a box of pastries in hand, and Fina’s “Would you like something to drink?” sounds obliged.

Marta realizes it. Claudia realizes it (thank you for that "Girl, WHAT?!" face, Ms. Moreno).

Marta realizes Claudia has been asked over first because apparently with Claudia, Fina can relax and be imperfect, but not with Marta.

Marta leaves, elegantly and heartbroken, and Fina does nothing to stop her. Well, she says “You can stay” in a tone and facial expression that say, “You are unwanted.” Even as they are are giving off another blue/red combo that is diluted and bright.

But again, Brunet manages to make Fina not transport as intentionally mean, but as lost. Fina so desperately wants to be someone other than her former self she rejects, that self that needed people and was happy in Toledo, but Marta keeps reminding her that she is still that same person underneath and that that person is very much worth loving.

Marta says she likes the apartment, Fina rolls her eyes as if she doesn’t trust that statement. Ouch, the disconnect.

Claudia apologizes and says she would have left, and Fina says, “No worries, you see how things are.”

We see how you make things, Fina. Things aren’t like this on their own. And Fina places Marta’s gift – “Pastries!” – on the couch table with another annoyed huff, next to the ones Claudia already brought, as if it were a personal attack that the woman she used to consider her wife, the woman with whom she dreamed of sharing a living space, stops by to see her to talk.

Why does this visit – which starts like a PWP AO3 entry until Fina messes it up – feel like an attack to Fina?

The Writing Room is piling on the (intentional) incongruencies, and the puzzle piece that will have the image depicted come into view is still missing (but I still believe that it is coming, down the road).

The Mafin crowd trying to figure it out, exhausted by the missing puzzle pieces:

First slight: Fina – covered up in her turtleneck armor even at home – calls Clauda and says her apartment is “ready for visitors.” Yet she invites Claudia first, and not Marta, who walks into the store right then, the world’s happiest dead fox around her shoulders and in her matador epaulet outfit.

Queer Lady Rohrschach (as per @bloomsberries) side question: what do you see on the painting in the background? Two peacocks, or two women, one brown one white, in narrow halterneck dresses that fall down to knees?

(yes, I know this is oddly specific. Yes, I am aware I came out of this particular test as “Christ could you be any gayer? Show me Marta with that business folder under her arm again and we’ll talk.)

Marta is business touch here, Claudia clearly deferring to her as her boss, which contrasts with the nearly three minutes Marta gets with Digna towards the end of the episode. Marta is still in her fighter outfit, but Digna is amplifying Fina’s perspective (Digna says, “We don’t have secrets between us”), thereby increasing Marta’s insecurities, and making her believe that she is the one to blame for her current crisis with Fina.

The scene already starts with a rare full profile take, exposing Marta as someone looked at, and not someone identified with.

On the surface, it’s about Marta concealing that Bianca call, but it is not addressing the reasons for it: Marta’s fears, caused by Fina’s standoffishness interlaced with just enough moments of warmth to have her hold on.

Marta says she feels like a child because she can’t assimilate that Fina was capable of falling in love again after leaving her. In the Mafin OTP setup, this does not compute, and the audience, who has watched Mafin unfold as OTP, looks at it with Marta’s perspective.

Digna insists that Fina suffered, thought she wouldn’t see Marta again, and had a right to rebuild her life. But that is not the point because: of course that’s right, and still the love to Marta should have weighed more, in symmetry to how Marta thought she would never see Fina again and found she was unable to move on even when she tried it, having a affair but not falling in love. (I think that symmetry is part of the dramaturgical setup and we will eventually learn that Bianca did not parallel Marta).

Digna underlines, “Fina chose you”, with Fina’s Haunted Flutes at 42:16, and she adds “She loves you, with everything that entails”. Yet what Marta and the audience experience is that Fina says she chose Marta but does mostly push her away and doesn’t react to her feelings, and that is precisely not what love entails.

Marta, cornered, compares hiding the Bianca call from Fina to Cloe hiding the Rosario call from Marta, which is not comparable: sure, both wanted to keep the woman they want to themselves and away from another, but Cloe knew Marta was desperately seeking Fina. Fina is not desperately seeking her ex. One hopes.

Marta remembers she was mad at Cloe but then realized that Cloe acted out of rejected love/desire and then Marta empathized with her. “Well, then you already know how Fina feels,” is Digna’s conclusion.

Which, again, is not what we see because precisely what Fina cannot do is that kind of empathizing.

Fittingly, Marta says she feels lost, and Digna’s advice of “Open your heart to Fina, admit your weaknesses” may seem solid on the surface, but in terms of the setup, it is once more the opposite: because Marta has been open (while Fina hasn’t), Marta has admitted weaknesses (while Fina is unable to at the moment). And, fittingly, Marta looks up uncertainly over the modulated Meander Motif at the end of the scene – just as the audience looks uncertainly at Digna, gaslit along with Marta by a kind advice that does not fit the situation at all.