Vida Sea­son 2 review – Oper­at­ing on Ching­o­na Level

It’s not easy to depict what it means to grow up in cul­tur­al lim­bo, feel­ing the pull from both your family’s her­itage and your coun­try of res­i­dence. Nor is it an easy feat to find a nar­ra­tive that explores these com­plex­i­ties in terms that feel both per­son­al and com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tred, as well as glob­al­ly recog­nis­able by minor­i­ty groups from the US to Mex­i­co, Britain to Pak­istan. And yet writer Tanya Sara­cho has man­aged to do exact­ly that with her excep­tion­al Starz dra­ma, Vida.

The show fol­lows the Hernán­dez sis­ters Emma (Mishel Pra­da) and Lynn (Melis­sa Bar­rera), polar oppo­sites who are forcibly reunit­ed fol­low­ing the death of their moth­er, Vidalia (Rose Por­tillo). The first sea­son saw the sis­ters try­ing to nav­i­gate through the chaos their moth­er left behind: a fail­ing neigh­bour­hood bar in deep debt, sport­ing a name that feeds into the igno­rant, racist atti­tudes pre­vail­ing in this LA com­mu­ni­ty (name­ly, ​“La Chini­ta”); a whole host of unre­solved rela­tion­ship ten­sions; and, of course, Vida’s wife, Eddy (Ser Anzoategui) – a huge sur­prise to both sis­ters who were not even aware of their moth­er being les­bian, let alone married.

Through­out the sea­son, Sara­cho did a fan­tas­tic job at intro­duc­ing the many beau­ti­ful gente that make up this unique com­mu­ni­ty – peo­ple who unite in their shared strug­gles and are not afraid to fight for their rights and the preser­va­tion of their neigh­bour­hood. Vida’s vibrant, urban Cal­i­forn­ian back­drop brings the char­ac­ters’ envi­ron­ment to life, espe­cial­ly Marisol’s (Chelsea Ren­don), the vig­i­lante fight­ing for a ​“pueblo unido” and against the gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of her neighbourhood.

Marisol’s run-ins with Emma and Lynn also point to the racial con­flicts with­in the Lati­no com­mu­ni­ty, with colourism evi­dent­ly play­ing an essen­tial role in the divi­sion of la gente – hence, Emma’s fair skin and high­er edu­ca­tion is not only not­ed, but often despised by oth­ers who view her as ​“a cer­tain type of peo­ple”. In oth­er words, the same type of peo­ple who are adamant to gen­tri­fy the neigh­bour­hood in favour of white-washed riches.

In its sec­ond sea­son, Vida picks up right where it left off. With the Hernán­dez sis­ters hav­ing decid­ed on ​“buck­ing up” and adopt­ing a new form of ​“shit togeth­er­ness”, they are adamant to save their mother’s bar, despite the lin­ger­ing emo­tion­al resent­ment Emma feels towards her. Hav­ing spent so much time away from home, Emma and Lynn are often treat­ed like out­siders, mak­ing their ambi­tious project to save Vida’s bar lega­cy, as well as the build­ing that homes it, all the more challenging.

Emma’s approach to gen­er­at­ing the income need­ed for them to sur­vive goes against every­thing Eddy and Vidalia worked for their entire lives: leas­ing agents would attract the peo­ple who are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tak­ing over the neigh­bour­hood – read, white, upper-class grin­gos – where­as fly­ers at the laun­dro­mat would attract la gente, the peo­ple Vidalia and Eddy have housed in their build­ing for decades.

Vida dives into the cul­tur­al make-up of this Cal­i­forn­ian Latin-com­mu­ni­ty with­out leav­ing one stone uncov­ered. Offer­ing an hon­est depic­tion of the real­i­ties Lati­no fam­i­lies and (par­tic­u­lar­ly queer) indi­vid­u­als are faced with, not just in the throes of Trump’s reign but the deeply root­ed (reli­gious) ideals in their cul­ture, the audi­ence becomes wit­ness to the racial and sex­u­al inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty pre­vail­ing in these com­mu­ni­ties, and how a new gen­er­a­tion is push­ing for a much-need­ed shift in this cul­tur­al dia­logue – with our beloved Marisol as always at the very fore­front of the fight.

There are so many com­plex lay­ers to this series that are explored with such warm, authen­tic inti­ma­cy, that it is hard to do Vida just with a write-up of any­thing below the 10,000 words mark. The sec­ond sea­son of Vida is oper­at­ing on Ching­o­na lev­el as Emma and Lynn, Marisol and Eddy con­tin­ue to try and ​“turn shit around”: local­ly, in the con­fines of the series; glob­al­ly in terms of relat­able nar­ra­tives and the char­ac­ters’ inspi­ra­tional approach to the lucha against gentrification.