La Edición de Tati
A review of HBO’s ‘Los Espookys’
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰½
Romance ✰
Sex ✰✰
Storytelling ✰✰✰✰✰
Performance ✰✰✰✰✰
Yearning ✰✰✰
Spoilers ahead. If you’re not caught up on Los Espookys, you can watch here.
Written by Ali Romig
I have a problem paying attention. I know I am not the sole sufferer of this particular affliction—who among us isn’t seeking increasingly mindless distractions to lift us out of the mundane?—but for me, it’s intensified over the last few years. Even writing this paragraph, I’ve taken no less than seven breaks to look at my phone. I’ve been noticing this particularly while watching television. Something that used to hold my attention within its iron grip has now become more like background noise, a dull thrum to fill the space while I scroll through one of the many pointless apps that my hungry little brain feeds from. In short, it is a rare and special show that will get me to cast all distractions aside and focus.
Los Espookys, a (primarily) Spanish-language HBO comedy which kicked off its second season last month, is exactly that kind of rare and special show. This is a program that demands its audience’s undivided attention. In full transparency, if you’re a non-Spanish speaker like me, then this is in part due to the fact that you have to rely on subtitles in order to follow along—but it certainly goes deeper than that. Each episode is brimming with cleverly placed details, ones that usually come back into play in surprising ways to reward the most vigilant viewer. Whether it’s a seemingly innocuous bag of carrots that later causes the destruction of a marriage, or a slapstick television show called “Mi Puta Suegra” (My Fucking Mother-in-Law) playing in the background of multiple scenes, these small, perfect breadcrumbs, together with the overall deadpan tone of the show, create a “blink-and-you-miss-it” effect. And trust me, you don’t want to miss it.
The first season of Los Espookys—co-created by Fred Armisen, Julio Torres, and Ana Fabrega—aired way back in 2019, aka a global pandemic ago. If you haven’t dipped your toes into its singular waters yet, then get to it1. The show follows a group of four friends (at least two of which are expressly queer) in an unnamed Latin American country whose love of horror leads them to stage elaborate, if slapdash, hauntings-for-hire. These jobs range from the twisted to the downright silly—in an early episode of Season 1, los Espookys (the name they’ve given themselves) create a sea monster to attract tourists to a coastal town at the mayor’s request. There’s something a bit nostalgic about its “monster of the week” style; but while other iterations of this narrative structure might leave our binge-greedy minds wanting, Los Espookys seamlessly blends the episodic and overarching, interpersonal storylines to create something truly addictive.
Los Espookys’ aesthetic is a thing to behold. At once highly stylized and extremely DIY, it perfectly captures the show’s ethos—melodramatic plot delivered via understated humor. And while the setting may be technically unspecified—a choice that is underlined by the various Spanish accents and vernaculars heard in the show—it appears to be at least partially inspired by Mexico City. Our Espookys—with the exception of Tati, who’s proclivity for the tacky we’ll get to later—present as varying degrees of punk-goth, resembling Mexico City’s robust alternative subculture.
Despite having been off the air for three years, Season 2 impressively picks up on nearly all of the show's threads without missing a beat. Of the four main characters, Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco) is often left to play the straight, i.e. grounded, one amidst the group’s antics. (He may not, in fact, be “straight”—he is trying to figure out his sexuality by searching for straight porn, gay porn, bisexual porn, and videos of a deaf man hearing his wife for the first time, respectively). But Renaldo’s character forges a path for us into this spooky world—he’s the OG horror obsessive who put this ragtag group together, and he’s dogged about the work they're doing. In this most recent season, he’s haunted by the ghost of a beauty queen who was unceremoniously impaled by an anchor seconds after being crowned. While at this point in the season we are unsure of what it all means, this is the perfect example of a standard Los Espookys arc—at once completely nonsensical and totally captivating.
Crashing at Renaldo’s house, we have Andrés (a pitch-perfect Julio Torres, who co-writes with Fabrega) whose otherworldly vibe is miles apart from the very real-world problems he’s currently facing. Having chosen at the end of Season 1 to leave the cushy privilege of his parents’ chocolate fortune, he’s now struggling with “normal” life. It’s a story we’ve seen play out a million times in as many forms, but in Torres’ hands it feels surprisingly fresh—probably because of his blunt delivery of lines like, “All I want is someone with lots of money who puts me in a gold cage.” Torres is what I’d describe as an incredible face actor—his usually blank expression both enhances the writing and somehow makes it more unnerving. It’s fun to see these two—Andrés and Renaldo—kind of switch places this season. Last season, it was Andrés who regularly communed with spirits, the Water Spirit to be precise, and now Renaldo gets to experience a bit of magical realism for himself. That said, Andrés is still fully in his own, decidedly mystifying world—one in which he can casually chat with the literal Moon (played by Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio in a sparkly onesie).
Rounding out our core four are sisters Tati (scene-stealer Ana Fabrega) and Úrsula (Cassandra Ciangherotti, simply enchanting). While it’s true that Los Espookys is able to mostly pick up right where it left off, certain through-lines from last season are resolved more satisfyingly than others. One beat I wish had been given more attention is Tati’s sham marriage to Juan Carlos, Andrés’ ex-fiancé. The whole storyline is pretty much dropped early in the new season after a chaotic scene that made me more than a little uncomfortable—but then again, the world of Los Espookys isn’t meant to swath you in comfort. The only thing that saves this fairly haphazard turn of events is that in an attempt to stay busy after her divorce, Tati begins writing (ie. transcribing) truncated versions of old classics and selling them to undersupplied schools as “La Edición de Tati” (The Tati Edition). Truthfully, I’d probably forgive any and all plot holes where Tati is involved simply because Fabrega plays her so brilliantly. From her absolutely hideous wardrobe (I’m talking the kind of brown-and-pink plaid bermuda shorts you wore on your sixth grade field trip to Gettysburg paired with an ill-fitting pageboy cap) to her awkward yet somehow deservedly confident body language, Fabrega breathes life into Tati in a way that feels all-encompassing. She could get on screen and deliver complete word-salad and I’d eat it up. (Sometimes, that’s exactly what she does.)
Resting on the more satisfying end of the spectrum is Úrsula’s storyline. In last season’s finale, Úrsula was pursued by the ravenous producers of the sensationalist news program Mira Esto. They hoped to turn her into their next automaton host, Gregoria Santos #9, after #8 sort of…broke down? While this plotline also wraps up quickly, it offers more closure than Tati’s as we ultimately come to understand Úrsula better. In Season 1, Úrsula was the practical one, making sure the gang actually got paid and looking after her kooky sister. But after luring her to the Mira Esto studio under the guise of hosting a “free radical queer vegan tarot book swap,” the producers attempt to brainwash Úrsula into submission—only to find out that she is completely un-fuckwithable. The look Ciangherotti gives the flustered would-be hypnotists at this moment—one I can only describe as saying is that really all you’ve got?—is worthy of the needle-drop it receives and easily cements her as my personal idol and new primary crush. The image of a queer woman as a wholly independent, self-assured punk is something I’ll never tire of seeing.
I appreciate that each member of the main quartet gets their own lived-in story, but what I really love about this show is the comedic chemistry between the group as a whole. The best parts of the series are the scenes where los Espookys are working together to create mayhem. And while it’s never stated that all four are queer, there is an undeniably queer sensibility among their gang. In their world, the “unusual” is comforting, commonplace even, and the more stereotypically “ordinary”—say, a group of bros in polos having beers on a rooftop–is wearisome.
Queerness is as integral to the fabric of Los Espookys as horror is. In many ways, the two go hand in hand—the show underlines many of the queer themes that people have been finding within the horror genre for years. In his introduction for the new anthology, It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, Joe Vallese writes, “Like most things touched by queerness, horror becomes more textured, more nuanced, and far more exciting when viewed through a queer lens.” Los Espookys takes this idea to heart, but also satirizes it with unyielding camp absurdity. Historically, the queer community has identified with the monsters—and this show isn’t about hunting or unmasking them, it’s about turning yourself into one.
Queerness permeates the show’s world in smaller ways, too. Visibly and openly queer side-characters like Oliver Twix (Sebastián Ayala), Pony (Felipe Criado), and Water Spirit (Spike Einbinder2) don’t stick out amongst the core four—they could just as easily be members of los Espookys. Despite the show’s numerous flights of fancy, I feel this is a grounded and refreshing reflection of the world that Los Espookys’ target audience probably lives in—where queerness is everyday.
Joining the younger standouts in the cast is co-creator Fred Armisen, who plays Renaldo’s Uncle Tico. Despite arguably being the most well-known name connected to the show, Armisen’s role is fairly small. He’s often upstaged by his scene partner, River L. Ramirez, who plays his self-described “terror of completely dependent and abusive thirty-two-year-old daughter.” But honestly, I get the sense that he wants it that way–which is admirable. This isn’t his show, and he doesn’t pretend that it is.
Los Espookys is distinctive, clever, and utterly weird—it invites its audience to engage with it at every level while managing to never come off as self-important. In the capable and exacting hands of Torres and Fabrega, Season 2 has built on the outlandishness of the first, all while genuinely developing the characters in unexpected ways. If you haven’t tuned in yet—I am begging you, do it!
The Season 2 finale airs Friday, October 21st at 11pm ET on HBO Max.
Yearners! We want to do our first “From the Archives” review as a Halloween treat—but we need your help picking the subject. Let us know what you’d be most excited to read about by voting below:
Next week on The Yearning, Meg will solve her own puzzle box with a review of the 2022 remake of Hellraiser.
Its first season boasts a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes
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