Candy-colored Apple TV+ comedy Acapulco takes stock of its situation on an eventful trip to the city this week. Sara is sleeping at Las Colinas illegally, and her mother Nora still wants to put the fear of god into her. Meanwhile, Memo’s feeling down and Maximo’s solution just makes things worse. Also, Chad wants to dance, and Don Pablo wants out.
Acapulco goes through a few ups and downs this week as the creative team takes a few risks, and the writers fall back on bad habits.
Acapulco recap: ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’
Season 2, episodes 5: In this week’s episode, entitled “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” Maximo (played by Eugenio Derbez) has finally brought his nephew, Hugo (Raphael Alejandro), to Acapulco after talking up the city for so long.
They’ve already eaten at the restaurant where his one-time girlfriend Isabelle (Gabriella Milla) worked, and now they’re looking at the developments that have taken the place of his childhood haunts. He then continues his story.
Sara (Regina Reynoso) is out of the house and sleeping at the resort where Maximo (Enrique Arrizon) works, out of desperation. Maximo comes home and finds out not only that his mother (Vanessa Bauche) has kicked Sara out, but now she and Esteban (Carlos Corona) are boxing up all her possessions.
They seem to be trying to get rid of even the memory of her daughter. They replace all her stuff with religious paraphernalia, from crosses to a picture of Jesus. (Or so they thought. Maximo points out that it’s actually Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees. Pretty funny.)
Sara crashes at Las Colinas
Julia (Camila Perez) finds Sara stashed away (not particularly well) in a corner of the hotel. She and Maximo agree it’s a bad idea to let her sleep at Las Colinas — it could get them both in a lot of trouble if Diane (Jessica Collins) finds out they are letting people crash without paying. But for one night, they let Sara stay in an empty room in a wing that’s kept deliberately unbooked because renovations are due to begin soon.
Sara decides while she’s there to give her mother’s suggestion — that she try dating boys before she determines it’s not for her — a whirl, and she meets a nice, sensitive, agreeable boy named Daniel (Gustavo Gomez). When they kiss, she finally understands herself. She hates intimacy with guys and has no interest in it.
Off to the club for an adventure
Memo (Fernando Carsa) is feeling down, so Maximo and Isabelle take him to a club to cheer him up. Not just any club, but the one where Memo’s favorite football player, Hugo Sánchez, is supposed to be partying that night.
They get in by telling the bouncer they work at Las Colinas, and the bartender lets them drink for free. When Isabelle suggests they leave, Maximo won’t let Memo give up on their mission to meet him – but of course, the trouble is Maximo himself doesn’t want to go home.
He’s freaked out by his mom’s bigotry. And the idea of living in a house without Sara makes him sad. Even when Hector (Rafael Cebrián) shows up and ruins their night, Maximo can’t be talked into leaving. He has to apologize to Memo, but they work it out in the end because Memo gets why he’s so bent out of shape.
Sometimes a dance lesson isn’t just a dance lesson
Elsewhere, Chad (Chord Overstreet) is nervous because Julia has booked a salsa band instead of a DJ for their wedding. Everyone tells him that Don Pablo (Damián Alcázar) is the best dancer at Las Colinas, and so he asks for salsa lessons. Don Pablo begrudgingly agrees to give him a lesson but insists the dim white boy clean his car as payment.
This is just another thing that makes Don Pablo reconsider his position at Las Colinas. If he still has to be at the beck and call of his boss’ idiot son, what use was getting to where he is in life? Chad thanks him the next day for the lesson and, right in front of Don Pablo, realizes he wasn’t just trying to teach him how to dance but how to live.
In a very touching turn of events, Julia lets Sara stay with her when the rooms start their renovations. Nora returns Sara’s old room to the state it was in. They might figure it out after all.
Fun and games, but is this a happy ending?
Acapulco serves up a few laughs this week, which is important for a comedy, and we also witness a little playfulness from the writers. When the now-grown Sara (Bianca Marroquin) calls Maximo to see how her son is doing, she starts telling the story of meeting Daniel herself, so she and Maximo have to keep wresting control of the narrative from each other as dueling narrators.
It’s pretty funny. But, more importantly, it’s a livelier formal display than usual from this show’s creative team. It’s funny to be jostled between their stories.
I don’t love that the show’s most continuous well of jokes with regard to Sara is that she talks the talk of being a rebel and a punk but the minute she gets a taste of bourgeois life, she becomes a grotesque capitalist.
The whole show is about wealth and the things it’s bought for Maximo, but Acapulco won’t exactly come out and say it also made him a less-interesting person. His money is trotted out this week to show that he was able to use it to revitalize the marina in Acapulco. Sara’s own lifestyle is furnished by being a lawyer.
The trouble for me is these kids are mostly very likable in the past, but look who they became! Not a happy ending in my book!
★★★☆☆
Watch Acapulco on Apple TV+
New episodes of Acapulco season two drop each Friday.
Rated: TV-14
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
