I'm not sure if this topic is too broad, or if we need one for specific shows, but I was wondering if there are others who enjoy watching Spanish soap operas here. I don't speak Spanish, I took French, so I only pick up bits and pieces.

I'd love to hear if people follow them, both from those who speak the language and from those who just enjoy watching them for fun without understanding a single thing.

I remember, as a kid, my local channel used to show the dubbed version of 'Direito de Amar', Das Recht zu lieben. I only saw bits and pieces of it, but for some reasons it's totally haunting me. Precisely because I remember only bits and pieces.

The story was something along the lines of:

Young pretty girl falls in luuuuv with young pretty guy (Eduardo something?) during a masquerade ball. But young pretty girl's father is in dept and therefore is forced to sell her off into marriage with the FATHER of young pretty guy, creepy FATHER who also fell in love with young pretty girl during that masquerade ball. She married old creepy father and starts snooping around the house discovering mysterious! creepy! clues for whatever. Meanwhile young pretty guy pines away for her and plans for them to run off together.

I remember that the intro showed her (black and white) getting dressed to be photographed in her wedding dress. The end of the into sequence is the picture of her being shot, her in the wedding dress looking as moody and unhappy as can be.

Ohmygod! I was actually thinking about starting/ searching for this thread last week. I have no Spanish background (I took 3 years of French and that was really for an easy "A".) However, my favorite show is "Uga Uga". I have no idea what the plot of this show is, but it is very close to Days as far as it works overtime to show the featured studs shirtless, or better yet in skivvies.
I have spent countless hours pretending to understand the action when I'm really oogling the cast.

Yum!

I grew up watching some of the telenovelas and must say that Uga Uga is rather like Days with the amount of shirtless men. If I remember correctly, the show was dubbed from Portuguese.

Uga Uga remains one of my favorites, that and the one that had Shakira for the opening titles.

Uga Uga is the best! It is orginally from Brazil but Telemundo dubs it in Spanish. They actually are rerunning it, they gave it about a year ago. If anyone needs help understanding the plot I could probably help (even though my Spanish is limited). But I did love looking at all the pretty men. I must say that I tend to enjoy the Brazilian soaps more because the plots are a bit more original. The ones that come from Mexico seem to follow the same plot every time.

StephenTrendy the soap that had Shakira in the opening, is that El Clon? That's another Brazilian soap.

Did anyone ever watch Betty La Fea? That was one of my favorites until Univision got a hold of it and its sequel sucked so badly. I hear Salma Hayek is trying to bring an English version to network tv.

I rarely catch any of these shows, but when I do it's a lot of fun. I took French and Italian, so sometimes I can actually grok the meaning of a short scene. For example, I saw part of an episode of one called Aventuras En El Tiempo, and I realized that the one guy asked the other one if he had a car, and the second guy said that they'd ride their skateboards. Mainly, though, all I have to go on are the ridiculous facial expressions of the cast. But I once saw part of one with a friend of mine who does speak Spanish, and she was explaining it to me. The woman in the show was blind, and the man was taunting her because she could not implicate him in a crime, or something. Then the woman says something else, and my friend practically jumped out of her chair, shouting, "She's not blind! She's not blind!" Evidently, she'd been pulling a Tony DiMera, and the guy was now totally screwed. Hee!

Gemneye, it was "El Clon." Thanks for reminding me. I've seen a few episodes of "Betty La Fea" but I wasn't impressed. One that I also really liked was "Pedro El Escamosco." That one was pretty funny sometimes.

I check them out from time to time, but I paid lots more attention to Xica and Betty la Fea. Would love to see an English version of Betty, as long as the finale is less predictable. Can anyone tell me what was the name of the novela that featured Melina Leon's song "Bano de Luna"- I love both versions of that song.

Uga Uga and Xica are actually Brazilian novellas that have been redubbed in spanish. They are still good novellas but they were done in portugese orginally. Just thought you would like to know.

Telenovelas are a lot of fun but I can never watch them for more than a few episodes...with the exception of Betty La Fea, that is.

I used to love watching them on Friday nights after a stressful day. Instead of going out and being social, I'd just put a pizza in the oven and watch one or two episodes of a telenovela. I'd scream at the TV and react in an overly dramatic way, have fun and then not return to the show until I was in the mood for it again.

Betta La Fea, however, was a telenovela I saw years ago and then watched when it was rerun on Univision's new station. I would actually tape the episodes. Unlike most other novelas, I found myself actually giving a damn for the characters.

I've got a question about El Clon. I actually followed it for a few weeks and since it was subtitled in English, I actually understood some of what was going on. Does El Clon mean clan, like I first thought, or does it mean clone? I somehow got the impression that there was a clone on that show but I never watched the show through to its conclusion. I tried finding out on the 'net but any websites I could find were in Spanish or Portugese and I've never studied either of those languages.

I bearly remember the names of the ones I've watched over the years. Corozon Savaje? was a historical & MariMar with a young Thalia. There was another who's title I forgot with serious male exposure and a fellow a girl & a boat. My then young son would watch with me...I probably provided him with lots of stimulus for wet dreams with the half clothed females. He loves Latina women, and swears he was latino in a previous life. The good news is he likes curvy women not the skinny ones!

I don't speak spanish but can spanglish with my client's. Watching the novellas helped me with cadence and pronuncation...the tapes are too European! I don't know the soap you have mentioned with the eye candy but I'm gonna look up the channel & time...I have Telemundo and Univision!

The one that was creepiest for me was Kassandra. I can't remember the storyline that well, but I think it was about gypsies who wandered through Venezuela in the 1960s. The gypsy girl got pregnant by a rich man, they left, and the daughter basically lived out the life story of her mother.

Oh my I remember Kassandra. It was sorta creepy at points but it was easy to follow.

big chicken, the direct translation is "The Clone".

Hello, first time TWoP here so if i make mistakes on writing a post please let me know.

I grew up watching telenovelas, it was like family hour where everyone in the house gathered around the tv and watched mostly Mexican soap operas. my family was so invested in these novelas and talked about for hours. now i watched mexican soap opera just to laugh at the bad acting.

someone mentioned earlier that mexican soap operas have the same plot. though i agree, I remember an exception to that. I forgot how it was called, I think it was called [/I] Alguna Vez Tendermos Allas[I] with Kate Del Castillo. I has so hooked to the unconventional plot and most all the characters were multi-dimensional and the music score was beautiful and haunting. Did anyone else saw it? It came out around 1998.

Enough of my blabber:)

HATED Betty La Fea...Everyone here in Puerto Rico LOVED it and I wanted to gauge my eyes out whenever I saw it. However, I did love Alondra, La Duena, Agujetas de Color de Rosa and I really can't remember which ones.

I know Maria Conchita Alonso and Salma Hayek were in telenovelas. Which ones, though?

I never saw it but I think the novela that Salma Hayek was in was called Teresa. She starred opposite Luis Miguel IIRC.

While a lot of Mexican soap operas follow the same plot there are some great exceptions. I just get tired of the same damn plot where the beautiful young girl falls in love with the rich guy but because of class differences they always had obstacles in their way. (Although it never stopped me from watching any of Thalia's soaps) And of course there is the villainess that is in love with said rich guy and tries to make the poor girl's life a living hell. That is probably why I was so pissed when Telemundo stopped airing Solterita y de la Orden (a Columbian soap) because it centered on a young woman and her friends. And she was a 20-something and was focused on having a career and had a complicated love life. Kind of like a Spanish language version of Friends meets Sex and the City.

I must admit that I do love teen soaps like Muchachitas, Sonadoras, Amigas y Rivales and Primer Amor.

He He I loved muchachitas and Agujetas de Color de Rosa. Just so you know there is a soundtrack for the novella Agujetas de Color de Rosa. I also loved Baila Con Migo. A good novella is like crack it slowly starts taking over your life. You find yourself rearanging your schedule and pissing off if someone interupts your novella. Not to mention I think for some reason the villans in novellas can be way more evil than the ones in American soap operas. (Not that American villans aren't evil.) Although sometimes I find myself watching novellas and snarking on them. But I can't help becoming nearly obessed when a good novella comes around. I even try and get relatives in Mexico to tell me what happens. A good one I catch every now and then is Clase 406 but it comes on in the afternoon so I don't get to watch it on a regular basis. But when I do its usually awesome. Does anybody here watch that one? What novellas are you guys currently watching? The last one I was into was
El Manantial. It was awesome. They main girl in that cried in like nearly every episode. I think Adela Noriega who played her. She is usually awesome. What soap actors and actresses do you guys like? Among my favorites are Alejandro Camacho
(The bad guy from Muchachitas), Thalia's sister ( I don't remember her name), Maurico Islas, Kate del Castillo, Erik del Castillo, the evil girl from El Manatial.

My first novella was from the mid eighties. It had a young man who was a guitar player and he marries his young pregnant girlfriend. He was shown trying to break into the club scene and she was dutifully waiting for him. The staging was poor, the lighting bad and the acting cheesy but the story rocked! ( I think the girl was the producers daughter.) It was early Univision.

Agujetas rocked. I was obssesed with it! But here in Puerto Rico they cut it short and ended it with Paola choosing her lawyer husband instead of Martin. It pissed me off.

Omg, all of Thalia's novelas are the same! Poor girl falls for rich guy, obstales happen, they love each other, she gets pregnant, he marries the bad girl, she becomes rich and inherets money and becomes a bitch, blah, blah, blah. We used to watch Marimar (I think) and we would make SOOO much fun of her wimp son Nandito. He was SOOOOO gay.

I just remembered when I was younger I was OBSSESED with Carrusel de Ninos and Quinceaneras (Thalia was in this).

HELP!!! What was the name of the subtitled AZTECA TV soap that aired on Telemundo about 4 years ago?

I use to watch it on AZTECA TV when it first aired, after Sailor Moon of course. It had the hairy younger guy (always in white underwear, strange sight) and the older woman with three kids?

And how can no one mention XICA? Hello?!?!?! That was some fine work!

Oh! I'm happy I found this thread.
Since I only have Univision at this point, I'm pretty limited on novela choices, but I adore Primer Amor. My favorite of all time, however, is a novela from about three years ago called Carita de Angel, about a little girl at a school run by nuns. All the nuns wear pink, and the little girl talks to the ghost of her dead mother, and her dad had a romance with one of the younger nuns and she was forced to kick the habit [pun alert] to be with him. Cute, cute stuff.

I'm so glad there's telenovela thread! I started watching Pasion de Gavilanes on Telemundo soon after it started and I had no one to discuss it with. I've since slacked off since it comes on at 7 p.m. which is a bad time for me. Fortunately it's close captioned in English.
I was flipping across the channls one day and became entranced by Mario Cimarro who plays Juan. I've had a thing for Antonio Banderas circa Desperado- looking guys for a long time so I was in love. And it helps that he removes his shirt at least once an episode. Then I stopped watching for maybe a month or six weeks and the timeline was like a year later. Norma had had a baby, people were married to different people, etc.
I have to ask, do these shows just go on for years like American soaps, or is it a shorter run? I always see Telemundo commercials for new series, so I figure that they can't last that long.

jackiecarr to answer your question novelas have a pretty short life span. They aren't like American soaps that go on and last for a few months. Which is a system I like because it can keep things fresh. Can you imagine and American soap pulling off something like Uga Uga, El Clon or some other historical novelas.

Does anyone remember a novela with Natalia Oreiro called Muneca Brava? I just loved that one mainly because the protagonist wasn't freakin crying all the time. She actually had fun.

I love historical novelas like Corazon Salvaje, Xica, Amor Gitano and Alondra most of which are awesome. Plus Corazon and Alondra had Ana Colchero and she rocks in all of her roles.

I do wonder what everyone thinks of this trend of having so many Eastern European actresses starring in novelas nowadays. So many of them are blond and blue-eyed like Ana Laevska, Joana Benedek and Ludwika Paleta. I know this bothers some people because they say that this causes image problems among latinas.

Ludwika Paleta, Ana Laevska, and Joana Benedek are actually from eastern european decent. They were all born in latin american counties. At least Ludwika Paleta was born in Mexico. She was also a child actress (she was the snotty girl in CAROSEL). Besides when speaking of novellas there were already tons of image problems to begin with. For instance why is it that dark looking girls are always cast as servants or peasants. That is something that happens reguardless of blond and blue-eyed actresses. Besides people of latin decent can be blond and light-eyed. It all depends on what genes you get. The whole skin color thing is one of latin america's dirty secrets. Its something that people won't recognize as something that is wrong or discriminating. Lighter skinned people have always been cast in better roles in spanish television. I mean look at La India Maria, the last time I saw her she look rather light skinned in spite of the fact that she is supposed to be of indignous decent. Its something that is cultural and isn't limited to actresses of european decent. Well I'm done on my rant. And for the record its all good no matter what skin color you happen to be as long as you look hot on my television screen.

The historicals are usually well produced. The costuming and househould items blow my mind. I sorry, I don't remember the names at all. There was one set in Mexico with Indians and the setting was amazing. I know there was a catering wagon parked off screen but watching always took my breath away.

The color issue will always be with us. I'm black american & we cause most of of our problems as we try to out black each other. The indigenous plus european layered with the asian/middle eastern cultures make it all colored to me. I enjoy seing the Indian and black people represented. The new world hid a lot of families secrets.

I. Loved. El Manantial. It was so addictive. It was amazing how suspenseful it was for a novela. The scenes between Alfonsina Valdes and Justo Ramirez/Margarita Ramirez always had me the edge of my seat. It was a little frustrating at times, though. Alfonsina just took so much with out slapping anyone. That's what I hate about female leads in novelas, they cry too much and don't slap enough. Although Alfonsina was better than most leading characters.

Usually if one has curiousity in watching a novela (you'd be surprised how many non-spanish speakers do. It's the over dramatic acting that pulls people in. It's hilarious yet gripping.) one should start with one with Adela Noriega (El Manantial). She knows how to pick them. I went to Mexico this summer and for those of you who like period novelas, there was one airing called "Amor Real," which Adela stars in. From what I managed to see, it looked pretty good. Its final episode supposedly pulled in gigantic numbers for Televisa.

I just found out that a girl from Gata Salvaje just got cast on Passions, and I'm excited to see what she can do in English.

What a fun thread! Has anyone ever seen Argentine novelas? My parents are from Argentina, so my mom would watch the Argentine ones when she could find them. Andrea del Boca is a popular Argentine novela actress. Her first one was Andrea Celeste when she was pretty young. Thought her mother was dead, but her mom was really the kind teacher who had amnesia. That was back in the late 70's, early 80's. Are any Argentine novelas airing right now?

I remember there was a spanish network called GEMS television it often featured shows from argentina. I remember there were a few argentine novellas. I can't remember their names. One featured a bunch of high school kids in Buenos Aires. The only show I remember is a talk show called HOLA SUSANA. But as far as I know there isn't any argentine novellas airing in the US right now.

i'm pleased to find a novela forum here, although i'm a pretty dedicated member/poster at an independent novela forum (not owned or administered by any tv network).

i love LOVE betty la fea (i taped the whole series when it was reissued on telefutura). i also watched ladron de corazones with some regularity. now i'm watching mariana de la noche although i think the offering on tv is pretty weak right now. i'm hoping for some colombian novelas to come to the US. and there was an entertaining mexican novela advertised last time i was there (about two single bachelors) that i'm hoping makes it here.

also, word on the street is that fernando gaitan (the guy who wrote betty la fea) is drafting a new novela. AND that they're doing a remake of one of his earlier novelas: cafe con aroma de mujer.

What forum was this cfolch? I have been looking for a novella forum for sometime now. It would be much apprciated if you could post a link or something.

Telenovelas rock! I'm so glad I found this forum, even though, it would be nice if we all posted regularly. But that would require me to actually watch a soap and there aren't many that I'm really into. The only one I sometimes watch is the Brazilian Mujeres Apasionadas on the Telemundo channel. And that's mostly because hot Rodrigo Santoro (of Love Actually) is on it.

You know you can actually buy some novelas on DVD. My sister bought Corazon Salvaje, which we absolutely loved, but it was sort of a let down. They cut out about 1/2 of the actual episodes in order to fit it onto two DVD's. Total bummer.

Any novelas not on Univision that any of you would recommend? Televisa produced novelas are way too predictable. But I will admit that I sometimes get hooked on them. Sonadoras anyone? That was on TV my last year in college and we would all sit around and watch it every night, boys included.

I was hooked on Sonadoras. I would tape it and watch it after Buffy. Didn't Sonadoras start the teen novela trend in Mexico? The latest one we have in the U.S. is Clap, which isn't too bad. I could not stand Clase 406, though. It had horrible dialogue and I didn't care for any of the characters with the exception of Jessica (Anahi). She got irritating at times, though.

Does anyone here watch Prisionera on Telemundo? It's a bit cheesy, but the storyline rocks - it made me give up GH, not that it's much of a sacrifice to give up TFGH nowadays. Even better, it's close captioned in English, so I'm finding it helpful in working on my language skills while watching a pretty kickass soap.

I am so happy that this thread exists. Hi everyone.

I am currently watching "Amar Otra Vez" with the girl from Aguetas....anybody watching this one?

I totally remember GEMS...it is off the air?

Some of my past favorites include, Amigas y Rivales, Aguetas, Simplemente Maria, Maria Isabel, El Manatial, (and probably tons of others with Maria in it) Lazos de amor so many more...

I agree with those who said that all the Thalia's novelas are all the same. But I still watch them cause they are nice and predictable.

Slightly OT, I also would suggest to you all that you check out asahi homecast. Japanese soaps are really great and they have subtitles. They are usually a couple of months long and air only on Sundays. But they are really fun and cool for those of you interested in the drama in other cultures.

I look forward to snarking more with all of you!

Heh. I wrote an entry in my blog about telenovelas last week. Anyways, I recently started watching a couple of telenovelas, and I'm hooked. I can remember very little Spanish, but it doesn't matter - in fact, I think that's half the beauty of it. There's a really hilarious one on right now, Mariana De La Noche, where Mariana's father knocked up another lady who thought the baby died, but the baby didn't die, and if I'm following this at all, the baby may or may not have grown up to be Mariana's boyfriend.

Slightly OT, but my favorite part is the commercials. I love that they'll be speaking rapid-fire Spanish and then all of a sudden shout out Geico or McDonald's. Too funny.

I really liked 'Rebecca', especially the theme song and the evil Princesa. Not sure how it turned out though, but I have a decent guess. Also, not really a telenovela I know, but what was the name of that show on Telemundo where people lived in a house like Big Brother and wore shirts w/ their names and would be "amenazado por talento"? I really liked the second season of that one.

Love, love, love the telenovela. I got hooked on Soñadoras in '98 or '99, I believe. It was my first novela. Gabriel Soto...rwor! Eduardo Verástegui...double rwor! My excuse for getting hooked was that since I was minoring in Spanish, I needed to hear the various ways native speakers spoke. I also really liked Amigas y rivales. It was nice not having to listen to Michelle Vieth use that nasally voice she used in Soñadoras. I remember hearing gossip that Michelle did not get along with Ludwika Paleta, Angelica Vale, and Adamaris López. I watched another one with Michelle Vieth, Anahí and Kuno Becker called Mujeres engañadas.

Because Comcast Cable only has Univisión, I'm stuck with those novelas. The few non-Mexican (and non-Venezuelan) soaps on Univisión I've liked, but they always show them during the day, and not during the primetime hours. I absolutely adored María Rosa, Búscame una esposa (a Peruvian soap); Gianella Neyra and Marcelo Cezan had awesome chemistry, and it was such a comical soap, intentionally so. I also liked Secreto de amor (Venezuelan); I forget the name of the actress who played Barbara, but she was great. The dude who played her brother Lisandro was hot!

Um, what else? During spring break last year, I got semi-hooked on Cazando un millonario, a another Peruvian soap, which was also comical (my only experience with Peruvian soaps are the two I mentioned, but I take it that Peruvian soaps generally like including comedy, and I love that. It is a soap, after all.); I also got somewhat hooked recently on La mujer de Lorenzo -- I think it's Peruvian also -- but that didn't last because I would always forget to tape it. Univisión has been running adverts for a new novela called Al filo de la ley; the guy who played Carlos Raúl on Secreto de amor is going to be on it.

I always wish that I'd had the chance to see Xica (I have seen the movie, though). I remember when Xica was on, Entertainment Tonight did a little segment about it, and Latin American soaps in general. (The gist: Latin soaps are steamer than their cousins in the U.S. Yes, yes they are.)

[OT: This isn't a soap, but I used to love watching a game show with various novela and TV stars called La guerra de los sexos on Saturday morning, but then I think they switched the show to Telefutura. Of course, it's a station that I don't get and all I'm stuck with is Univisión.]

La guerra de los sexos is fantastic! I liked the audience taunting the opposite sex (men sit on one side, women on the other, and they sing out taunts at times).
There are also games, but IMO the games are not really central to the main purpose of the show, which is to get various attractive (male and female) people to remove articles of clothing and/or get very, very, very wet, to the point that the articles of clothing that remain are practically pointless anyway.

I saw the show during its TeleFutura run, but they have abandoned it now in favor of Codigo F.A.M.A. IIRC.

I wish Univision and/or TeleFutura would show some telenovelas with English captioning available, as I would have to switch to a different, more expensive package to get Telemundo. I have wondered now that NBC owns Telemundo why they don't get more aggressive about getting into more cable & satellite packages with it.

You know, for a while there Televisa was coming out with some pretty good stuff. I loved Te Sigo Amando and La Mentira, two great novelas with two great lead actresses. I think Kate del Castillo (from La Mentira) is on a novela currently on Univision, but it has a really laughable and predictable storyline. Plus she's currently a little too orange for me, hurts to look at her. The actress from Te Sigo Amando, Claudia Ramirez, went on to star in some really great novelas for Televisa's rival, TVAzteca. The last one she was in, Lo Que es el Amor, was really really good. Her character, the main female lead, was actually killed off 2/3 of the way into the story. When does that ever happen in a Televisa novela? Not only was the storyline interesting and surprising, the primary characters in Lo Que es el Amor were mostly men, which is also very rare. The added plus? All the men were really hot.

Must also confess that I had a soft spot for Betty La Fea. Hated the ending though. I would have kicked the main dude's sick little ass and hooked up with the pretty French boy.

Queen B could you maybe post a link to your blog? I'm curious to read what you wrote about telenovelas. Do you still post over in the GH thread? I'm a daily lurker over there. Sucks that GH is such a bad soap right now, I'm wondering if the telenovela genre in Latin America is better off due to the fact that novelas come to an end, while American soaps go on and on and on.

My opinion? I think so. The fans of North American soap operas seem to like that the trials and tribulations go on forever ad nauseum...even when we say we don't. I remember hearing that when Sunset Beach first debut, it tried to tackle the novela formula of starting a storyline, and resolving it in a few months. Unfortunately, public outcry from those who were not used to that style 'caused TPTB to revert to the tried and true formula of dragging out the story. (I started watching SB the summer of '97, but what I heard was that people were upset that if they truly missed a day, they missd a lot, which was what SB's slogan was -- "Miss a day, miss a lot!") And didn't Port Charles try that method -- creating capítulos that had definite endings instead of one long-ass, boring as fuck story arc with no end in sight *cough* Passions *cough* -- for some time before it was finally given the ax?

I also think that the novela production formula is better because the actors get to travel around and film in different countries as though they were filming a movie. And, if you have a favorite actor, and have access to as many Spanish language stations, you can follow them from novela to novela. Unfortunately, I can't watch a lot of novelas because Univisión sucks.

This seriously needed to be bumped.

LOVE novelas. My first one was Gitanas. I was flipping through channels back in August and thought I had stumbled across a crazy music video. Then I realized it was actually just the (really) long beginning to a show that had english captions.

Te Voy a Ensenar a Querer (at 9c on Telemundo) replaced Gitanas for me after about a month (Gitanas was just NOT moving and I can only hear the word love or gypsy so many times... Sebastian and Salome are married now but I just can't get back into the show).

I am completly obsessed with Miguel Varoni as Alejandro in TVAEAQ. His character is way too trusting, but he's so beautiful I usually forget about it. I also love Empera (who wears scarves all the time), Diana (the vet and Alejandro's love (currently his ex)), Flor (Diana's fun vet assistant)).

Telemundo decided on a whim (it seems) to change the english captions to cc3 (instead of cc1) but I can't quit watching it because I'm hooked now.

I do forget sometimes that it's novela time. Yesterday I thought I could miss the first half hour because I figured Grandpa would still be about to be killed by his wife and LC. I turn it on and it's his funeral.

I just found this thread and am dying to ask: Does anyone know what happened between Mariana Levy and Ariel López Padilla? I used to watch Univision telenovelas years ago even though I had no idea what was being said. I watched one that had those two actors (I forget the name. It opened with a vacation and snow was involved)

Then I remember seeing the talk show Christina. They had him on and the audience was very serious and didn't clap. Christina kept showing home movies of the couple, I guess, in happier times. He then left the set and she came on with a baby. The audience was warmer to her, but she was deadly serious.

I figured he was a jerk and cheated on her but after seeing this thread I wondered if anyone knows the story.

OMG! YAY! A thread for my spanish soap lovin' self.

The first soap I ever loved (back when I was 7) was Los Mysterios de Diana Salazar. I still remember that creepy supernatural soap. At that time I also watched Rosa Salvaje with Veronica Castro. What I remember most vividly is that lead guy spanked her.

Four years ago I was taking an Elitelore class at UCLA and the prof. went off on Novelas, saying they upheld the status quo. I agreed. Pretty much you married up into a higher social class. God Forbid you work to climb the ladder or in anyway showed your unhappiness with your place in life- that was an automatic ticket to villainsville. But then Telemundo had a rash of unconventional soaps. Mostly Colombian , but I felt they were subversive.

Did anyone watch Xica 'round here? Damn, that was some graphic sex! But so pioneering. Yeah, there were stereotypes about black people, but that fact that this show was the first to have a black leading lady and the truly sadistic nature of the plot had me hooked. I mean, does anyone but me enjoy the fact that the gang raped white girl becomes the Virgen del Bosque or whatever Madonna of the Soldiers? Ironic and soooo symbolic. *loves it*

I too watched Betty and Porque Diablos?. Supposedly Diablos is being rerun now, but I don't get it on my Boston affiliate, which makes me sad because, Juan Diablos? Devilishly pretty.

When I was in Mexico this summer, I did catch a Mexican soap, Rubi. Last night when I was at the burrito store I looked up and saw that Rubi was being shown in Boston! And they haven't caught up to when I had been watching last summer! YAY! I'm really fascinated with this soap. It is a remake of a very old soap with a classic plot, but I've got a feeling that they might give the ending a twist. Surely social climbing, even Rubi's backstabbing, husband stealing, sleepin' around social climbing might be looked on with more pity since this soap was pretty blatant in displaying how shitty life was for Rubi, the poor girl on scholarship at the fancy University.

I dunno, we'll see!

Oh and one more thing. How long is El Clon? I swear it's always on t.v. Oh and in Ecomoda did Betty get rid of Armando? I hated that she chose him- she totally should have married the French Dude.

dreago and silentforce- I only just started watching novela's so I can't answer your questions- but here are summaries for Ecomoda

It's from my favorite novela site ever Telenovela-World(there are good episode summaries in english there and you find plenty of other people to post about your favorite novela with).

Since Telemundo no longer has the draw of english captions (though I'm still loyal to Te Voy a Ensenar a Querer) I'm wandering over to the other stations, but havn't been able to get interested in any I've seen so far.

ETA- El Clon had 221-222 episodes

Thanks, Simply Michelle!

Hmm, I read the recaps...seems like the finale was left pretty wide open. I find it amusing that Armando was turned into the Model Husband. Boy, Gaitan must have recieved a million angry letters.....


or did he?

Cause Freddie acted like a jerk too and he got the girl. Again. So it's like, marriage turns men into angels. Whatever. Bah. Humbug.

This is from a while ago, but in case you're still around, I remember this show too! It was a mix between Big Brother and American Idol, where ordinary folks were vying for roles on a new novela. I think people could get booted for lack of talent, as well as for not getting along with the others in the house. I think I remember seeing promos for the novela that resulted from the show. Unfortunately, I can't remember the title either. Grrr...

I grew up on telenovelas and the entire family would get caught up in the story lines. I think Maria Isabel was the last soap that I was hooked on. I only have Univision and I haven't found any good novelas to follow. I'm jealous of my family out in the L.A. area. It seems that So Cal gets novelas (at least the Mexican ones) quicker than back east.