Have you ever had an inexplicable yet persistent urge to learn Spanish? Me too. And while I thoroughly enjoy my first Spanish class at Vanguard, the soap opera/Sesame Street hybrid makes less than no sense. It’s like a soap opera because the plots are inappropriate for children, but Sesame Street because of the instructional quality. I like watching the episodes—they crack me up. However, the plots are illogical and, in one case, eerily prophetic.
At the beginning of each episode, an Introduction Woman gives a little speech without ever revealing her name, although she asks us how we, the collective and interested students, are. She doesn’t really care about us though. All her movements and gestures are robotic, not unlike those of an under-oiled Tin Man.
Plant a Tree, Write a Book, Have a Child. Um, okay. In one episode, this couple finds out their son is coming to visit, and that the son will have trouble parking his potentially expensive car due to blockage from a skinny tree in the driveway. The father spends the entire week getting rid of the tree while being ridiculed by a balding, insensitive neighbor. The father even tries to cut it with a tiny saw that looks as if it would be hard pressed to cut butter. I could probably saw away at my own arm for days without ever needing a band-aid. At the end of the week, it is revealed that the son isn’t coming. Aw. All that tree-cutting for nothing. So the father goes and plants another tree. Wow. That episode was the most coherent.
In another, a man performs satanic rituals to conjure up the devil in the middle of a street at night. Because that’s very safe, apparently the best place for demonic activity: amidst the possibility of traffic. He has candles, a chalk pentagram, the whole bit. The devil comes and asks him if he needs money, which he does. One of the devil’s eyes is blue and the other is brown and large, creating a chilling effect. The devil puts on a ski mask and throws a gun and ski mask at the man who summoned him. Immediately, the two do the only logical thing after you’ve summoned the devil: rob a bank. After the robbery, the devil departs with the man’s soul and a few drops of blood on a contract, and the man goes to a dusty, celery-colored house, where his family watches the news. On the news, footage from the bank robbery is shown, and the man can see his own face, which has the devil’s eyes. I definitely have a firmer grasp of the Spanish language now. I mean, who doesn’t use phrases like “conjuring up spirits” and “your soul is mine” in everyday conversation?
In “Adios, Mamá”, a poor unsuspecting grocery shopper is confronted by a woman insisting she is his mom. Actually, she tells him he looks like her dead son and asks him to call her mom. After initial confusion, he agrees. She leaves the store and he approaches the checkout only to discover she has stolen her items and he has been charged for them. I guess you can’t trust everybody.
In the first episode, “Momentos de Estación”, the Introduction Woman delivered an extremely creepy introduction, if you know anything about my life. It corresponded more to my life than it did to the actual episode, which had a nondescript young man approaching a woman selling train tickets, proclaiming his love for her. After her surprised reaction, he informs her that he has saved nearly 400 tickets that she sold him. This traveling man is a bit suspicious to me, but the woman asks, “What do you want from me?” A dramatic pause results in the man declaring, “I want to dance."
“I can’t dance, I’m at work.” The woman looks apprehensively at the line of people forming behind her redheaded, train-loving admirer. They end up dancing romantically moments later, just before you realize the whole thing was a dream. Of course. The real story ends with the man hesitantly approaching the woman. Also, a twenty-something shares a kiss with a woman who looks suspiciously like his grandmother after she tells him she hasn’t kissed since her husband died. Ew.
Coming up: a drought, avenging the death of one’s father, a mysterious man in an elevator, someone trying to freeze himself in a sci-fi manner, a soccer demon (what?), and amnesia. Spanish never fails to entertain me.
