Television Junkie

Editing has placed the Sad Coffee Date Mafin sequence in between scenes of Salva and Mabel this time, another couple reckoning with an unknown and traumatic stretch of past for one of the partners that leads to a (temporary) breakup.

It is interesting (and fitting) how both Fina’s and Marta’s conversations with Digna are more direct and more open than the conversations they have with each other where they trigger each other’s fears: Marta fears to be abandoned (again) and frames Fina leaving her as her own fault of not being deserving of her (Pelayo’s Ominous Woodwinds at 00:40:36 (Mafin Cut Drive) for that); Fina fears vulnerability and cannot trust anyone at the moment, she blames herself for her trauma mode responses and for hurting Marta.

Fina is trying to reach out as much as she can (wearing Marta’s scarf, searching her out, affirming that she will stay, seeking Marta’s love – going so far as to plead with Marta to “love her again like before” (uhm, Fina: she never stopped and she hasn’t stopped now)), but it is still so muted that Marta reads it as rejection; Marta, like a proper lesbian, wants to process on her own first, but it is so clear-cut that Fina reads it as rejection that has her trail behind Marta with a pout and an appeasement tilt to her head, trying to fix with a gesture what she will slowly have to rebuild without a safety net, in actions and feelings.

She still looks lost. She still isn’t really back yet:

But Fina stays: that is her decision to be with Marta, but also Fina lied (by generous omission) and that is, for Marta, a decision against their relationship and its foundation, no matter what Fina might say in the aftermath. That damage is done, even if the main culprit is, again, Pelayo.

But they manage to make good decisions over sad coffee even as they don’t really manage to have a conversation: Fina decides to move out, find her own place and a job, and Marta, despite wanting to help, respects that.

And the Sound Department actually unpacks the True Flutes Love Motif  (00:41:19) when Fina says (repeating her own words to Marta in episode 37, after Fina has broken off her fake relationship with Gaspar, "sé perfectamente lo que siento") “I know perfectly well what I feel” and “you are the center of my life”.

Hang in there, Mafin crowd. They don’t unpack the True Flutes for nothing.

Although Fina explicitly apologizing and asking for only one thing – Marta’s love – was so explicitly stated that it will probably come back to haunt her once Chacracore Barbie rides into town to remind Fina of the tale she has spun for her, and of their very recent romance that had no chance to wilt away over the memory of Marta.

Meanwhile, Digna, one generation ahead, remains remarkably chill while she nudges her daughters in all the right directions and tries to remind them of what actually matters: they love each other, they have another chance, nothing else really matters in the long run.