Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

One Day at a Time: “Supermoon”

A lot of the episodes that I've seen of this series have been surprisingly meh, making me wonder what exactly TV critics saw in this show in order to make it a "critically acclaimed" series. I don't expect every TV show about Hispanics to feature characters who act like the Hispanics I know in real life -- especially since few of those Hispanics are Cuban-Americans like the ones in this show. On the other hand, I would like to see some type of recognizable emotion in the characters who do appear on the show as well as the commitment on the part of the writers to at least try to keep things interesting. But up until this episode, I've been disappointed in all that.

Then, toward the end of the episode, Lydia -- the mother of the lead character -- talked about visiting her home in Cuba and not feeling at home and then suddenly for the first time since I started watching this show, I saw something I could identify with. After all, when I last visited my hometown of Detroit back in the 1980s, I had a similar feeling. A feeling that, yes, Detroit will always be my home -- but not in the same way that Dallas was. Dallas was where I grew up. Where I first fell in love. Where I first met my best friend. For the longest time, I did not want to admit this. After all, I loved Detroit and I missed my kinfolk there. For many years, I felt closer to them than to anyone in Texas outside of my own family. And yet the last time I visited there, I found myself missing Dallas. And like Lydia, I was forced to face the fact that my former home was no longer my home.

I still don't yet know whether to regard this episode as a lucky fluke. After all, the writing is still very mediocre and while I have a strong affection for Rita Moreno and Justina Machado, I can't help but feel that both actresses have done better work on other TV shows. And yet part of me is starting to become optimistic about this show's future -- as odd as that seems in the Age of Social Distancing.