SUMMARY

This is the story of Rafael Mendez, a modest and young trader who sells whatever as long as he can provide for his mother and sister. An unfortunate night, while driving home in his old car from a disastrous business meeting, he accidentally pushes a luxurious car off the road and sends it to a deep rift. After doubting it quite a lot, Rafael finally decides to help the victim, and he finds the victim is a beautiful woman who is badly wounded and delirious. He takes her to a clinic and there his life undergoes a complete and unexpected turn that will make him wonder whether it had been worth to save the woman’s life. From that moment on, Rafael is indebted to the victim, Dr. Alejandra Maldonado, to pay her for all the damages. Obviously, he does not have the great amount of $110 million, so Alejandra hires him in her own company (ColombiAutos) so that he can pay her what he owes her.

Source: Wikipedia

OUR COMMENT

We have deeply thought about how to focus our comment about Fernando Gaitán’s last telenovela. Partly because, enraptured by his previous telenovelas “Café Con Aroma De Mujer” and “Betty La Fea”, we expected a telenovela that would exceed them. “Hasta Que La Plata Nos Separe” is a good telenovela, it has a good script, but we cannot compare it with the other telenovelas; we’d even dare to classify it as a great series or as a great sitcom, but for our taste, it sacrifices the love story, or at least it doesn’t take it to the usual extremes of most telenovelas. The fact that the greatest love scene takes place almost in the last episode is the typical formula of the American series, in which the unresolved sexual tension is exploited. This aspect, which is not bad, is maybe what caused us to consider it a telenovela that is not at the same level of the previous ones.

The script is logic: Rafael and Alejandra ‘accidentally’ meet in an accident (if you excuse the repetition). Alejandra, because of the accident, loses a lot of money, so she makes Rafael give her that money in exchange for not reporting him, and therefore avoiding his going to jail. The amount is astronomical, but Mendez, a survivor, promises to pay it all in installments. What none of them expected was that they would end up falling in love. The infatuation is very slow because it has to be that way. Alejandra hates Rafael at the beginning, so she will start seeing his virtues little by little.

The character Alejandra surprises us, and a lot. First, because we find it hard to understand her. The theory we created to understand her is that a person like Alejandra, in real life, could actually fall for Mendez, but what doesn’t fit in is that a woman in her position, authoritarian, bossy, intelligent, hard-working, strong and witty would never, never last more than two days with Rubén. And that aspect is the one we cannot figure out; everybody realizes that Rubén is deceiving her on all aspects, but she does not realize – she just holds him tight simply because she is afraid of falling for Mendez. But why is she afraid of Mendez? It is here where we developed our theory that Alejandra, in the end, is a fragile and sensitive person disguised as a beast. To everybody’s eyes, she is authoritarian; she wisely managed to build a good professional profile for herself but she is weak and is afraid of everything that she cannot control, and among those things is Rubén. Although she knows Rubén may not love her as she would want, she knows he depends on her and will never leave her. On the other hand, Alejandra does not dare to truly fall in love for fear of being abandoned.

Set out in this way, we understand why the story is so slow and why it is cooked on a low flame. That is not an obstacle not to get hooked by those type of stories all the same; but when there is a wild passion we glue to the screen.

The fact that the story is so real is a bit odd, in the sense that we surely meet somebody like Alejandra and Mendez somewhere. Telenovelas are meant to dream, that is why we like that the stories have an unreal and dreamy point.

The character Mendez is the most normal one; we like him and we find him likable because he falls for Alejandra from the first moment. He provides the comic touch - he is a funny character that knows how to behave like a hero in the love scenes, though the character was set out as an antihero.

In “Hasta Que La Plata Nos Separe” the comic side is over-exploited; we have seen the same thing in “Yo Soy Betty, La Fea”, but here it is doubly exploited. The workmates at the dealers’ are like a new headquarters of the ugly (Betty’s friends in “Yo Soy Betty, La Fea”) but elevated to the maximum power. All the characters are very well developed because the actors excellently perform every typical and topical character. The bad thing is that many of the plots of the comic part distract us from the real story, the one that interests us.

We guess that the success of this telenovela lies in the fact that it is not precisely a totally romantic story, so it attracts much more public.

THE BEST

The story itself is very realistic as regards the love story, but more roundabout as regards the economic aspect, because it is almost impossible that Mendez could fulfill the monthly installment and that he would come up with all those ideas to gain the money.

All the actors know how to get the best out of their characters. We could highlight many of them, like Lincoln Palomeque who is great as Dandy, or Liliana Gonzalez as Vicky, “La Pajarita”; although she is a hateful shit stirrer she is a character that will surely stay into many viewers’ mind. In general, the cast was very well chosen.

Marcela Carvajal is great as Alejandra, with whom you end up suffering.

We want to comment about the conspiratorial wink with the other telenovela that was being broadcasted at that time, “La Hija Del Mariachi”. There are some episodes in which the protagonists appear in the Plaza Garibaldi and even the troop sings a serenade to Alejandra – a very nice resource.

THE WORST

That there is no passion and that Alejandra does not let her hair down, except when she is under the effects of alcohol.

That the comic side is overexploited in the telenovela. There are times that comedy is used to parody and satirize society, and even if we sense some social criticism, mainly to the Colombian workers’ policy, the abuse of parody ends up being a tiresome caricature of society and of the prototypes of the characters they pretend to satirize.