When we left Valeria at the end of season one, she was burdened with the decision about what to do regarding her book deal for a manuscript called Impostora. While, yes, it’s every writer’s dream to get published (especially when the material is rather uninspired), it’s also a key part of that dream for the book to include one’s real name. Not, as the publisher requests, a nom de plume (and a shitty male one at that—Pierre Duvont).
As one of the central struggles of season two—whether or not Valeria will remain true to herself or give in to the pressure of someone else taking the lead—we’re almost surprised that she opts to turn down the fifteen thousand-euro advance in favor of self-publishing. After all, her complaints of broke assery reach a zenith in the first episode, “Stop Running,” when she has the epiphany, “To run away with dignity, you have to be able to take a taxi.” This being a reference to her showing up drenched from riding a rented bike to Victor’s (Maxi Iglesias) house, only to find him with another woman and therefore forced to take the bus while watching him stare back at her. This after their three-week lack of communication, with Victor leaving the ball in a still-married (but separated) Valeria’s court. Her ex, Adrián (Ibrahim Al Shami J.), has also been absent from her life since they split. So yes, in part because of this additional blow to her self-esteem, she does come as close to signing the “Devil’s contract” as she can before her friends, Lola (Silma López), Carmen (Paula Malia) and Nerea (Teresa Riott), hear the voice message of her announcing her intentions and then run into the publishing building to stop her from making a huge mistake: creative surrender.
Turns out, that’s, at first, one of the last times she’ll feel good about her decision to “self-publish.” Because, soon after, she realizes that it isn’t quite as “rewarding” (especially not financially) as she thought it would be (this will be mitigated by an extremely-infuriating-to-any-actual-writer “road to success”). Finding herself staring in front of her computer as it also deals her some technical issues, her chicas are eventually forced to fish her out of her apartment, mocking, “Your First World drama will still be here when you get back” as they dress her to leave the house in episode two, “If You Don’t Know What to Do, Write.” It’s worth remarking that this would have been a useful line for Carrie Bradshaw’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) friends to wield against her as well. It might have gotten her to shut the fuck up once in a while about her rather grating “problems.”
After getting Valeria out of her bunker of an apartment (sort of like when Miranda [Cynthia Nixon] quips to Carrie, “Get your coat, Anne Frank, we’re going out” after her first major breakup with Big), the quartet stands in line waiting for something we won’t yet see until the next scene. But while they stand in the queue, Nerea echoes Miranda complaints in season two’s debut episode, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” regarding their group constantly failing the Bechdel test. Nerea says they should try, for at least ten minutes, to talk about something besides—and that’s when the scene cuts to the four carrying three dick-shaped waffles and a vag-shaped one for Nerea to reflect her own sexual preference. Because yes, even this show about white women has more sexual diversity than SATC and its narrow-minded comments in the vein of, “I’m not even sure bisexuality exists. I think it’s just a layover on the way to Gaytown.”
Not long after this outing, Valeria “publishes” her work, solely available as a download online. Such is the way of “modern” literature, after all. She then feels such a boost of confidence that she heads over to Victor’s place in a dress she previously claimed to be too broke to buy (in this sense, the Carrie Bradshaw Finances Syndrome rears its unrealistic head). That surge of bravado has disappeared in the first scene of episode three, “A Book Isn’t Just A Book.” Staring lustfully at the bookshop window as the aloof worker stocks it with Un Cuento Perfecto, the latest novel from Elísabet Benavent (in a meta moment that would be the equivalent of a book by Candace Bushnell appearing in a window Carrie gazes into), Valeria walks inside, buys it and some other titles, trying her best to chat up the increasingly icy cashier she saw stocking the novel. Thus far, she’s not feeling very encouraged, especially when the only thing the cashier asks her when she boasts about having published a book is, “How many copies have you sold?” The answer to that would be three—all purchased by her best friends.
Like the trapeze episode of SATC, “The Catch,” the quartet subsequently engages in some aerial yoga exercise together, courtesy of a freebie class Carmen received. Here another Carrie-esque trait is highlighted in Valeria (think: that time Carrie assured, “Shopping is my cardio”). That is, when her friends tell her Valeria is lucky she simply has “good genes” that allow her to stay so “fit.” Otherwise, she’d be fucked (a.k.a. fat) due to her aversion to exercise. After falling abruptly on her knee when trying to unlatch from the pose, she’s happy to go back to eating macarons and forgetting all about notions of a workout. And, speaking of French cliches, there is something Emily in Paris-esque about Valeria, except the latter actually does a good job of showcasing its city-as-secondary-character in a positive way rather than an utterly two-dimensional one that appeals primarily to Midwestern ilk.
Because Valeria is now on the path toward divorce (though still in denial about what that would actually mean), she’s created the love triangle that was ongoing for Carrie for most of Sex and the City: Big or Aidan? Here, it’s Adri or Victor, with no filler guys thus far in between. Granted, Valeria has plenty of excitement just trying to “date” Victor, who’s more accustomed to ho-ish ways than monogamous ones. Like the season two episode of SATC, “Shortcomings,” when Carrie is invited into the sexually open home of her new boyfriend Vaughn Wysel’s (Justin Theroux) psychiatrist mother, Wallis (Valerie Harper), Valeria is initially floored by the candor of Victor’s sexologist mother. She tells Valeria her book is great, including the parts about Victor’s sexual prowess. Even for Europe, that seems to be too much “openness” for Valeria. Victor walks in to interrupt the conversation, allowing the two to get in a fight about how she still wears her wedding ring. Valeria then leaves the party early, “pointedly” thrusting her gift copy of Lolita at him. Not just a book that “brought them together,” but also one that features the name of Humbert Humbert’s first wife, Valeria.
In the wake of the party’s drama, Valeria turns to her friends once more. “You girls are my best love story,” she tells them, mimicking Charlotte’s (Kristin Davis) sentiment, “Maybe we can be each other’s soul mates.” This idea is later iterated in episode five, when Valeria creates a new “wedding ring” out of Adri’s by getting three more matching ones for her friends.
In episode four, the structural norm is broken again as it is in episode two (when the girls are at a karaoke bar yet also looking to the future event of Valeria meeting up with Adri), as the tone takes a decidedly Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist tack when increased amounts of Valeria’s book start to sell. The reverie of her dancing in the street with singing passersby is interrupted when she sees how little profit she’s actually made from these sales. Possibly the one realistic aspect of her self-publishing journey.
To make matters worse, Adri has invited her to an exhibit of his photography that turns out to be all nude photos of her. Sure, she looks good, but she’s left feeling a little, yes, “exposed”—both physically and emotionally. And one can best believe if this happened Carrie B., she would be way more fuckin’ uppity about it because, well, she never understood art as well as she claimed to.
Playing with tone and structural devices again in episode five, “Melt Down,” a powerful opening scene that elucidates why there’s a movie called A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night also shows why women feel the need to text each other when they finally do arrive back in their abodes safely. Because, more often than not, there’s a chance they won’t. And each of the four women has a dicey situation on their hands when they go their separate ways to get to their apartment after seeing a movie together. Once Valeria makes it inside Victor’s house, a slew of texts from other women throughout the city show up onscreen to reveal just how common that need is for female friends to keep tabs on each other in this way. It’s an effective scene that underscores an important and grim reality for the “single gal in the city” (as Carrie would grossly put it)—one that Sex and the City never thought to address because apparently that wouldn’t be suitable for a “comedy.”
While SATC, too, has its share of pop culture references, the ones in Valeria tend to be for those more seasoned in the esoteric. For example, Lola mentioning Ladyhawke when Valeria discusses her opposite schedule problem with Victor. The dialogue is additionally the overt product of a non-misogynistic gay male (specifically, María López Castaño). Take, for example, Valeria commenting of Lola’s Halloween costume. “She-devil. A hetero-patriarchal classic.”
In episode six, “Omelet Challenge,” we’re reminded of Carrie comparing herself to other “perfect” women Big might prefer to her (like, eventually, his new wife, Natasha [Bridget Moynahan]) by saying something as desperate as, “What if he never calls and three weeks from now I pick up the New York Times and I read that he’s married some perfect little woman who never passes gas under his five hundred-dollar sheets?… [When I’m with him], I’m not like me. I’m, like, Together Carrie. I wear little outfits: Sexy Carrie and Casual Carrie. Sometimes I catch myself actually posing. It’s just—it’s exhausting.” The modern equivalent of this is Valeria comparing herself to other women on Instagram that Victor knows, including his ex. “I don’t look like that when I walk,” Valeria notes to her friends. In this sense, too, Valeria offers something more than SATC for its acknowledgement of how much insecurities among women have ramped up despite this being, supposedly, the most “body positive” time ever. But that means nothing so long as social media serves as the benchmark with which women compare themselves.
Her non-perfect ways backfire when she ends up bleeding (thanks to her period) on Victor’s three hundred-euro sheets (pretty close to Big’s five hundred-dollar ones)—which seems somehow more affronting than farting in front of him the way Carrie did in front of Big. And this, after he had just given her a key to his house. Her bull-in-a-china-shop manner amplifies when her friends come over to his house for breakfast and she burns the omelet she’s cooking, leading to a series of broken items as she hurries to turn off the stove. At this point, because of the sheets’ price tag, Lola lets it slip that he would get an allergic reaction from sleeping on cheap material whenever they were together. This sends Valeria reeling, now that the truth comes out about Lola and Victor: before they were friends, they were lovers.
Finding out Lola was with Victor romantically before they became friends is a lot like when Carrie found about Miranda with Asshole Jim (Dominic Fumusa)—save for the part where Victor isn’t an asshole (at least not in the same league) and Miranda isn’t ongoing friends with Jim. Having her confidence shaken anew with regard to Victor, Valeria clams up and flees his house as she keeps having visions of Lola instructing her on how to act better in bed. Her existential crisis (once again, because, well, she’s “a Carrie”) is well-timed for the quartet to visit Hotel RIU Plaza España, a rather expensive location for a rooftop drink but, once more, we’ll suspend disbelief to give in to the allure of the “froth.” It is on this rooftop overlooking the entirety of Madrid that each woman declares what she wants for her future—how she wants to be seen as an old lady. That’s certainly more realism than Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha (Kim Cattrall) or Miranda engaged in, never seeming to acknowledge age at all, until the unfortunate reboot we’re about to see called …And Just Like That. Valeria decides the time has come for her to figure out who she really is on her own—without any male distractions to take the lead in a fashion that turns her all Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride.
By episode seven, “Flicker,” Valeria’s book has become such a runaway hit (complete with the publisher crawling back to her to ask if they could print it with her name on it as she originally wanted) that she’s being heralded as, “The voice of the millennial generation.” This is what her editor reads from one of the reviews. As if that “millennial voice” hasn’t been faux delivered through the mouths of Lena Dunham and Michaela Coel (though more so by the former) before. The flaccidity of said voice is not quite on par with Carrie’s over-use of puns and the contemptible phrase, “I couldn’t help but wonder…” yet Valeria’s prose style really doesn’t scream, “Masterwork!” either. But such are the low standards for “marketable” “novels.”
In the final episode of the season, “Reflection,” Valeria goes all Taylor Swift with the invisible string (or thread, if you will) theory, yet negates it by saying she still believes in making her own destiny instead of waiting for it. Another noticeable break with episode style convention occurs when animation is used to illustrate her point about the string, which shows her heading toward an elevator that we won’t understand the location of until the end of the episode, as well as how it will apply to the man she’s supposed to be “strung” to. For Carmen, despite their ups and downs, that man remains Borja (Juanlu González), now her fiancé—regardless of his mother’s overt disapproval of him having a girlfriend at all thanks to their Psycho relationship. But Carmen, in the spirit of her mirror character, Charlotte, ends up finding an unwitting solution to assert her dominance when Borja’s mom catches them having sex in his childhood bedroom (not unlike Bunny [Frances Sternhagen] catching Charlotte and Trey [Kyle MacLachlan] doing the same in their apartment in the season four episode, “Ghost Town”).
During one of the last scenes, Valeria is shown writing the name of her second book, another Benavent title, Valeria en el Espejo. We’re also given the setup for her “Berger” moment when the introduction of a fellow author under contract at her publishing house comes into play (there’s still no interaction seen between them yet, but that’s certain to change if season three is greenlit).
Thus, Valeria’s second season comes to a close, embracing its Sex and the City comparisons with more outright fervor than in season one (when Valeria was still married), yet still outshining the New York-based show by excising the topics of designer labels, sexuality-oriented narrow-mindedness, “hot” new clubs (don’t forget Bungalow 8) and other assorted vapidities that somehow don’t suit women purported to be in their thirties. And that’s the other fundamental difference here. The women of Valeria are still in their twenties (though they all talk about getting “old” with the looming of thirty on each one’s horizon).
Maybe that means by the time they reach their next decade, they’ll be more “adult” than Carrie and her trio could ever hope to be. Yet the air of the “spoiled brat” will perhaps be unavoidable at any age for heteronormative white women who write about their alleged “issues,” or serve as inspiration for any such “musings.”
