Acapulco, the bilingual Apple TV+ comedy about the staff at a high-end Mexican resort, reaches the end of its wildly uneven second season this week. Maximo and Hugo make it to the former’s childhood home. Nora and Esteban are getting married. Julia and Maximo need to make a choice about the future. Memo gets what he wants in life. And Diane gets her resort back in order.
Indeed, everyone gets exactly what they want. What a very, very pat ending for a show that promised to tackle more real-life issues.
Acapulco recap: ‘Against All Odds’
Season 2, episode 10: In the season 2 finale, entitled “Against All Odds,” Maximo Gallardo (played by Eugenio Derbez), Hugo (Raphael Alejandro) and Joe (Will Sasso) have finally made it back to Maximo’s home after a season’s worth of traveling and reminiscing. In the past, Maximo (Enrique Arrizon) and Sara (Regina Reynoso) must start planning their mother Nora’s (Vanessa Bauche) wedding to Esteban (Carlos Corona). Nora swears she doesn’t want a big-deal wedding, but Esteban lets it slip that he does.
Maximo has arrangements of his own to make. He approaches Don Pablo (Damián Alcázar) to see about getting his old job at Las Colinas back. The trouble would be convincing Diane (Jessica Collins) that he’s not susceptible to corruption from the likes of Fabián (Bayardo De Murguia) anymore. So he presents Diane with an idea: Collaborate with his magazine to craft their own gossip stories, with the participation of the resort’s famous guests. No more hiding in the bushes looking for dirt. Everyone’s on the same page.
That’s a rousing success, and Maximo is promoted to Don Pablo’s assistant. Memo (Fernando Carsa) is made head pool boy. And the whole of Las Colinas shows up to make Nora’s wedding special. It’s all very heartwarming.
Chad (Chord Overstreet) leaves, and Memo gets his girlfriend back. Then Julia (Camila Perez), after getting permission from Isabelle (Gabriella Milla), comes back and tells Maximo she wants to be with him. Don’t you love when a show’s every single problem is solved in half an hour? And then, just before the credits roll, we learn that the woman Maximo has been traveling toward all season with Hugo and Joe in tow is not one of his lost loves, but his estranged daughter. What a twist!
So much for easy laughs
Photo: Apple TV+
After flirting for a half-second with something more thorny and culturally relevant this season, Acapulco retreated to anodyne, sitcom premises and easy laughs. I should have known this show was not equipped to handle the baggage of its plot involving Sara and Roberta. Nor with the bone-deep bigotry that comes with too many of the major religions, and how those religions rule life in rural communities more than anything else.
A show about the competing religions of Catholicism and capitalism would have been quite an interesting one, especially one like Acapulco, which is committed to a candy-colored aesthetic and a frothy musical tone. Alas, this show will always just be a Eugenio Derbez comedy. And nothing in his world of inoffensive high jinks can’t be solved with a gentle talking to, a hug and an easy joke.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem (in theory) with light comedy — the world needs it! But don’t tiptoe up to the line of something darker and heavier, only to pirouette back from it with all your might. It’s like being held up, only for the gun to release a flag with the word “bang” on it.
Acapulco could have been so much more
This season’s reversion is offensive because Acapulco promised more than it had any intention of delivering, just for the sake of seeming like something more interesting and interested in the plight of the marginalized. I let down my guard to see where this show could go, given the directive to try and be something more than the weightless comedy of manners it was in its first season (with the daintiest seasoning of class struggle off to the side). And I was duly rewarded for doing so with more of the same nonsense.
If I have a problem with Derbez, it’s the same problem I have with someone like Hunt for the Wilderpeople director Taika Waititi, who makes content that promises to really blow the lid off of oppressive, colonialist ideas, and instead hands in the laziest possible version of a corporatized product — an SUV with rainbow flags hung from the rearview mirror.
Giving money to creators who wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to do their dream jobs is wonderful and an important step for the U.S. entertainment industry. But when push comes to shove, Derbez doesn’t actually care about the issues in his shows. If he did, he’d be honest about the trauma his characters face, not hint at it and then soft-pedal every hardship and wrap it up with a smile.
Acapulco is a sometimes-charming sitcom with delusions of grandeur. It will never be the show it could be, not so long as this patently false, feel-good attitude persists. I have little doubt it’ll get a third season on Apple TV+. I just hope someone on the show’s writing staff learns something in the meantime.
★★☆☆☆
Watch Acapulco on Apple TV+
You can now watch the first two seasons of Acapulco on Apple TV+.
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.
