An assiduous reader of this page asked us to give an opinion about the RCN telenovela “Los Protegidos”, which is currently being broadcasted, and particularly about the Mark Tacher - Verónica Orozco couple; and although it’s not our habit to talk about telenovelas while they‘re on the air we’ll try to please her by telling you here about our first impressions; though we admit they’re a bit limited and based upon the first 10 episodes.

Having left that clear, we think that the whole effort made in “Los Protegidos” went to the production and photography and the plot has been neglected. I mean, the plot’s idea is good, but the characters aren’t properly elaborated and, at least in these first episodes, they’re schematic and shallow. The weight of the plot falls entirely on Mark Tacher, who does what he can, though it’s not much – he seems to be an alien in that family. Where does supposedly Santiago Puerta come from, with all his correctness and goodness? It’s supposed that he admires his father a lot because he is a tireless worker, but in the second or third episode we learn that the father has always been a devil-may-care charlatan, incapable of doing anything good for more than 10 minutes. And what about the sluttish sister? And where does the little brother take from that costumes’ collection? Does he do them himself? Santiago’s family is really terrible; they have very few things in common and hardly love each other - it cannot be understood that Santiago decides to give up his life ‘not to move away from them’. There are too many conflicts and too many things up in the air.

But the worst is Lina Santana’s family. The story of the Puertas was already enough for the plot, so there was no need to get the Santana family in on, with that father, an awfully sick man with clearly incestuous tendencies. Don’t you think it’s extraordinary bad luck, kind of incredible (that’s the question), that his father is promiscuous and her father has unmentionable sexual tendencies?

But the worst is that, though it’s evident that Mr. Santana is sick, his daughter doesn’t realize about it and acts as if nothing happens and as if it were great that daddy fetches her from work and that when daddy finally accepts that she can go with her boyfriend, he decides that he’ll also go with her (what a horror), and she goes and tells it to her boyfriend as if that were a super fantastic plan, to go all together jointly with a father-in-law who disrespects him every time he can, and the girl all happy. To touch a raw nerve, the stupid Lina, who since she arrives in Colombia doesn’t stop phoning in the worst moments (wasn’t it supposed that she was a psychic?) and spends the whole day doing nothing, chats with her boyfriend about every subject, even about marriage, before mom and dad (though she doesn’t see it as something bad that her parents follow her with the car when she goes out) with everybody expressing their opinions as if that were a decision that must be democratically approved - very irritating.

To take advantage of Tacher’s presence, they put some graceless bed scenes – Tacher and Orozco don’t transmit any sensation of love between them, they seem as if they were two people who are just seeing each other, and if that were the case, it would be natural for him to live his own life and act as if they’ve never met, goodbye and good luck, ‘ciao amore’, ‘hasta la vista’. It doesn’t give the impression that Santiago suffers for love, nor that Lina is the love of his life. It seems that Mrs. Uribe forgot that it’s not enough for a character just to say something to make it credible. Santiago may say anything but he doesn’t look as if he loves Lina, or anybody else in particular. It’s also not clear why he doesn’t express his doubts to Lina from the start. I mean, it’s understandable that he doesn’t say that his father is a mafioso, but when his father sends him a first class plane ticket to Colombia while he’s in Italy, he doesn’t wonder ‘where has my father taken so much money from?’ What world does Santiago live in? Don’t the forensic know how much is a first class plane ticket?

Anyway, it seems that Santiago and Lina have spent together only the times we see them together, I mean, three scenes, and that they don’t have an intimate relationship, except for the fact that they sleep together, because they never talk to each other, they don’t know anything about each other, nor had they planned anything after they were back. The normal thing would be that, when they return, a four-year-old steady couple would stay together in one of their parents’ house and not that each one goes to their own house as if those four years together would have been a summer affair. A couple living together for four years is as if they were married, and married people don’t behave that way. And if Lina’s father is so rich, how come he never went to visit her during those years and doesn’t know Santiago? And if he wants to go to New York wit them, what will they do with Lina’s sister? Freeze her like Walt Disney until they come back?

We said that Mark Tacher does what he can, but in Verónica Orozco’s case she’s not able to do anything with such a hollow, foolish character, so insubstantial and insipid. Not even her smiles are believable and when she smiles it seems as if she’s having a back tooth removed, and the fact that she’s so pleased with daddy’s involvement makes you want to hit her on the nose.

Everything is so forced, unreal and artificial that, in our modest opinion, in these first ten episodes “Los Protegidos” is a complete bore, as our Manolito Gafotas would say. Let’s hope it gets better, because if it gets worse, this is the end.