It seems like a simple formula: Make characters people want to spend time with and let their personalities drive the humor in a show, whether it’s a light drama, a dramedy or a straight sitcom. It’s a formula that’s been at the heart of the best shows during the past fifty or so years, which is why it always makes us scratch our heads when writers lard their shows down with gags and one-liners instead of trusting their characters. Acapulco never had that problem, because it’s trusted its characters since its first episode two-and-a-half years ago. Season 3 shows what happens when a show with that level of trust gets into a groove.
ACAPULCO SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A two minute recap of Season 2, in the form of now-billionaire Máximo Gallardo (Eugenio Derbez) telling his nephew Hugo (Raphael Alejandro) about everything that happened to him at the Las Calinas resort in Acapulco in 1985, and concluding with Hugo and Max being greeted at the door by a woman who calls Max “Dad.”
The Gist: The woman is Paloma (Vico Escorcia), who has been living in an Acapulco house that Max has been paying for for some time. But, given the attitude she has towards him when she opens the door, their relationship isn’t exactly the best. As it is Hugo is shocked that he has a cousin, given he’s never mentioned Paloma before.
Max admits to Paloma that he’s been getting up the courage to see her, and she reluctantly invites him and Hugo in. There, he starts telling the next chapter about the beginnings of his relationship with Julia (Camila Perez).
Young Max (Enrique Arrizon) is about to start his new position as the Assistant Head of Operations, working under his idol Don Pablo (Damián Alcázar). Everyone is happy for him, including his best friend Memo (Fernando Carsa), who has been promoted to head pool boy. Julia even sewed a new uniform shirt for him. And while they’re public with Max’s family, Julia still wants to keep their relationship quiet at Las Calinas.
Don Pablo sees Max still being buddy-buddy with the people he is now in charge of, and tells him that he has to put up boundaries if he’s going to be a good boss. One of those buddy-buddy moves is promising Memo the most scenic site at the resort for his proposal to his girlfriend Lorena (Carolina Moreno), a proposal that was mandated to Memo by her stern aunt Lupe (Regina Orozco).
One problem: Alejandro Vera (Jaime Camil), the brother of the man who co-owns the resort with Diane Davies (Jessica Collins), has arrived to see if he can make improvements to his brother’s investment. And when he meets Max, whom he knows as “the ceviche guy”, he proposes a ceviche tasting at the same scenic spot — at the same time as Memo’s proposal.
Back at home, Max’s mother Nora (Vanessa Bauche) is still getting used to having her new husband Esteban (Carlos Corona) around. Not that she doesn’t want him there, but he’s so adept at doing housework, cleaning and being helpful, there’s not much left for her to do around the house, and for Nora that’s not a good thing.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like its Apple TV+ cousin Ted Lasso, Acapulco has done a great job of building a world around its main characters, and giving those side characters funny stories of their own.
Our Take: The comedic sensibility of Acapulco, created by Eduardo Cisneros, Jason Shuman and Austin Winsberg, is now well-established, and that can be seen in the show’s confidence in letting its characters lead the way. From the start, they haven’t relied on gags or joke-a-minute pacing to get laughs, and now that most of these characters have been entrenched for a few years, the humor is even more rooted in the characters’ personalities and motivations.
So when we run into something that might come off as a sitcommy plotline, like Max scrambling to cover the conflict between Memo’s proposal and Alejandro’s ceviche tasting, we’re more willing to buy into it because it comes out of Max’s loyalty to his friends conflicting with his desire to make a big impression in his new job.
What we’re also liking about this new season is that middle-aged Max is becoming as much a character in his present story as he is a narrator of his past. While it seems unnatural that he’s continuing to tell Hugo this story over what seems like a couple of years, many visits, and a flight from Miami to Acapulco, we like the fact that now he’s going to try to reconnect with the daughter he doesn’t really know. Is she Julia’s daughter? We’re not sure. But having her sit in and listen to Max’s stories about his love affair with Julia sure makes us think so.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Paloma invites Hugo to have dinner, and says since Max is Hugo’s ride, he can stay, too. Max and Hugo give each other a high five.
Sleeper Star: We’re looking forward to seeing more from Camil, as well as Cristo Fernández (Ted Lasso), who is also guest starring this season.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re surprised people see through the “business talk” gibberish Max and Julia spew when they don’t want co-workers to know that they’ve just been holding hands or making out by the Dumpsters.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Acapulco continues to be a delightful show to watch because it’s built a fun group of characters and trusts them to give audiences a lot to laugh along with.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
