Vida is a new series about two Mexican-American estranged sisters, Lyn (Melissa Barrera) and Emma (Mishel Prada), they are
brought back to Boyle Heights by the death of their mother, Vidalia —
the titular Vida, the sisters learn more about their mother than she revealed in her life.
Before their mother died, the cold, flinty Emma
had been pursuing a white-collar career in Chicago, while flaky sex
enthusiast Lyn had been floating around San Francisco
having pie-in-the-sky ideas. Their return to their old neighborhood on
the east side of Los Angeles has landed them armpit-deep in personal and
political quandaries.
Their first shock was that their mother had
remarried – to a woman named Eddy (Ser Anzoategui). The second was that
she bequeathed her estate – an old apartment building with a
neighbourhood bar underneath – to be split between the three of them.
Hovering over everything is the accelerating gentrification of the
working-class Hispanic area by white developers – a gentrification
vociferously opposed by young social media firebrand Mari (Chelsea
Rendon).
Series creator Tanya Saracho, a Mexican-American playwright
whose TV credits include Looking and How to Get Away with Murder,
immediately gets into interesting territory. The early episodes range
across such things as Mexican-American attitudes towards homosexuality;
the different ways in which Emma and Lyn have chosen to engage (or not)
with the culture in which they were raised; and what responsibility they
might owe to undocumented immigrants in the apartment building – many
of whom face homelessness or deportation should they sell it.
Principal parts are well-written and cast, but the series seems overly
intent on an anything-but-vanilla approach to sex. The dialogue is also
hampered by a bloody-minded determination to shoehorn at least one
Spanish word – often one lost, lonely conjunction – into every English
line.
