Sounds Like it Shared The Fate of The Aussie Soap "The Power, The Passion" from 1989

Anyways I always try The short lived Soaps since I feel like there's a possibility of me Watching it all, I tried ElDorado but not finding it that interesting and gave up after about 10 Episodes

I've resumed my viewing of "Eldorado" from the DVD set I purchased a couple years back. I'm in the episode 91-100 range so I am in February, 1993. It is really solid show. 

Roland Curram as Freddie Martin, the retired gay nurse, has got to be one of the best written and performed characters in the show. Curram gives you a whole meal of emotions in an episode. In this set, his character is set with a double-header. The arc with Natalie, the daughter he had from the disastrous first marriage when he was still in the closet, comes to a close when Natalie returns to England with Freddie agreeing to give his daughter away at Natalie's wedding, even though her husband to be is homophobic (and possibly closeted). Freddie and Natalie's goodbye referenced their first meeting and how far they had come. I am sad to see Natalie go, but I appreciate that the character isn't being forced to stay and forced onto the canvas. 

Freddie is immediately shifted into his next big drama: the revelation that his secret Saturday night sidepiece Paco is actually Javier Fernandez, the twenty something year old son of his friends Roberto and Rosario. Javier has recently married his girlfriend Ingrid, pregnant with his child, in a civil service  but the Fernandez clan planned a larger celebration including a church blessing of the union. The preparations take up most of the episodes and then the fall out. 

Freddie visits Javier hours before the wedding to give him a gift, an Egyptian cat statue which I imagine will come back into play later. Freddie seems to know that it is over, and Javier gives him a letter not to be read until after the ceremony. After Freddie departs, Javier slips into the hotel bath with a faulty gas water heater and dies from carbon monoxide poisoning though it initially appears he may have drowned. 

Curram is wonderful in playing his well hidden grief, while the real surprise is Buki Armstong as Gerry, Freddie's tomboy best mate who seems to be a comic character for the most part. The night before the blessing, Gerry caught Javier slipping into Freddie's for one of their Friday night rendezvouses. Armstrong plays every little look as Freddie avoids her attempts to talk and then later when the infamous Bunny arrives to tell Gerry and Freddie, who have been preparing Giorgio's restaurant for the reception, that Javier has died. The friendships on this show are just beautiful. Gerry gets ugly in order to force Freddie to open up (she typically prepared the meal for Freddie and his mystery man and wonders if Freddie is going to ask her to do it again this week?). They are a pair who I've come to enjoy dearly. 

The rest of the Fernandez family is also doing well. A lot of the emotion is coming in waves. The initial shock wears off and they each lose it one by one. Mother Rosario Fernandez had been walking around in a daze in the days leading up to the blessing haunted over whether or not she made the right choice by aborting her late in life pregnancy. When her youngest, Maria puts the pieces together and learns that her mother had an abortion, she lashes out. In the days after Javier's death, Maria disappears only to return to brutally tell her mother that Javier's death is God's punishment for her abortion. It is powerful stuff even if a bit stilted by the acting. 

A real treat in the midst of all the blessing preparation and fallout has been the character of Monika Olson, Ingrid's mother who has come in for the wedding. Monika isn't pleased with the union, but isn't the typical soapy mother from hell actively scheming to break up the duo. She just makes some suggestions to Lars, her husband and Ingrid's father, about how better off Ingrid would be back in Stockholm. It sets up the impending drama well; what happens to Ingrid, pregnant with Javier's child, now that her husband has died? Ingrid has been a source of some drama in the household as she was Rosario's sounding board during the pregnancy drama as she had considered an abortion herself when she first discovered it. 

The trajectory of the Fernandez clan the past few months of episodes has been wonderful weaving in the drama of both pregnancies, the impact it has had on Rosario's sense of independence, the backdoored revelation that quiet and brooding Javier has been living a double life, and the question of how will they all go on. Will Ingrid stay in Los Barcos? Will Maria ever forgive her mother? Will Rosario forgive herself? Will the Fernandez family find out that Freddie and Javier were lovers? If so, how will this impact Roberto and Freddie who are working together at Giorgio's restaurant, the dream left behind by the dead Javier? 

While Fernandez crew has been soaring, the Lockhead crew is facing a similar risen from the ashes situation. The Lockhead women have been shipped off (temporarily) to England so that Nessa can have surgery. In his wife Gwen's absence, Drew has just deteriorated. His alcoholism has truly gotten out of control. He allowed his second hand book stand to get ransacked, the family's flat is in shambles, and he is getting into drunken altercations with many of his worried friends who have been asked by Gwen to look after her wayward husband. Complicating the situation, Drew and Gwen's son, Blair, has moved into a caravan given to him by his employer, the nefarious Marcus Tandy. The relationship between father and son is in a bad place; Blair is embarased by his father's alcoholism and Drew jealous and hurt by Blair's fatherly relationship with his crime boss employer. 

Blair, one of the characters I thought should have gotten the axe in the first round of cuts, has emerged as one of my favorites at this stage. His relationship with Marcus is intriguing as Marcus enjoys playing Daddy War(crime)bucks to Blair gifiting him the caravan and then nickling and diming him on every expense. This plays out as Pilar, Marcus' girlfriend, is considering her own future and desire to start a family. She is starting to realize that Marcus isn't father of the year material and I feel like there might be hints that Marcus has had a vasectomy. 

With Nessa away, Trine Svendesen, her pal, has made a play for 'Razor' Sharpe, the latest addition to the younger set now that Arnaud LeDuc has been written out. Trine is quickly growing bored with the young man and has informed an overly friendly Bunny (he of the marriage to underage tart with a hart Fizz) who informs her she needs an older man. On an American soap, Trine would have gone after Phillipe LeDuc, her ex-boyfriend's father and her mother's secret lover, but I think it heads in a different direction. 

Phillipe and Lene's affair was enjoyable in my viewing last time, but we've hit a lull. It is not an A story at the moment, but we've entered a bizarre arc where Phillipe wants a contract drawn between the two of them equivalent of a marraige where they won't cheat, which is wild given the fact both are married. Per Svendsen, Lene's husband and Phillipe's best friend, seems to be onto the fact that Phillipe and Lene are carrying on. He's not in much position to judge as he and Isabella, Phillipe's wife, were running around earlier in the series. 

The last bit that seems to be weaving into the show's fabric is the mystery of Joy Slater's attack that left her in a coma and hospitalized for a good bit of time. Joy is now awake and doesn't remember who attacked her, but the police have had a field day interviewing most of the male cast. The money seems to be on Terry, Joy's abusive boyfriend who has also been running her bar in her absence. I appreciate that the Terry-Joy story has allowed Polly Perkins' Trish Valentine to play mother hen. Joy and Trish feel like Eldorado's attempt at "Absolutely Fabulous," which I am not sure is intentional given that AF only would have premiered after Eldorado's launch.

If it comes up again on YouTube or elsewhere, I'd suggest people give it a shot, but probably start in the 30s and not at the beginning which is a really not a good period.

 

That Gem Of A Guy on OK.RU uploaded the whole series!

Spoiler

https://ok.ru/profile/583777959629/video/c30470349

 

I watched another 9 episodes this weekend. It takes a bit for me to get back into this, but when I do, I enjoy it.

A good bulk of the story surrounds the continuation of the fallout of Javier Fernandez's death. While I hate the dead gay character trope, this all is decently done. The show is several weeks out from Javier's death and it still guides so much. Rosario's grief has landed her in therapy where she has fallen in love with her therapist. It's not my favorite story, but Rosario spiraling is and this seems like something she would do. I do wish there was more internal conflict within Rosario / Roberto's marriage over the emotional affair, but I know how this all ends so I imagine it may have been subtext. The therapist thread ends very quickly and Rosario (conveniently) recovers from the moment as if she had just had to deal with a bad hair day. While this is annoying, I did find the follow up in the story rather well played.

Bunny, who still owns part of Giorgio's, has sent word through the Costa del Sol grapevine that he has no intentions of returning and wants to sell his part of the restaurant. Because Freddie has been so helpful, Roberto is hoping that he will buy out Bunny. While Freddie enjoys the idea, Freddie is not financially in a place to do so. This question of ownership lingers and is nice day to day fodder to build into the bigger conflict. On a visit to a sick patient, Roberto seems visibly uncomfortable as the sick man is being cared for by his male lover. As Roberto attempts to slip out quickly, he stumbled upon a photo of the couple and Roberto's son, Javier. A shocked Roberto asks how they know him and they say that they were friends with Javier. And if Roberto knows Javier, he must know the Englishman... Freddie.

This leads to the big confrontation, which happens when Roberto drives Fredide off into the country to confront him in a tower (which I believe was previously featured during Pilar's kidnapping by the SIngh brothers). The confrontation itself is weak. The dialogue skirts around calling Javier, which I assume is in part a sign of the times and in part due to Roberto's unease at the conversation. Roberto even brings up Paco, which was the codename that everyone used for Freddie's mysterious Saturday night dinner partner. Roland Curram has done particularly well in all leading up to this (there was a nice near miss at Javier's grace and one where Rosario found Freddie there). I find Franco Rey less convincing because I feel like Roberto isn't this type of character for the big confrontation. I'm not sure which of the Fernandezes I would have wanted to discover this. I would have written it as a more of a betrayal because of Roberto and Freddie's growing closeness in the wake of Javier's death. I don't know. I'll be curious to see how everyone else reacts.

In another good story, Rosemary and Stanley Webb are about to get remarried, but Stanley is driving all over to get the paperwork in order only to slide off the road and be missing for nearly a day. Everyone assumes that Stanley has done a runner, and Rosemary even goes through Stanley's address book and discovers a bunch of names that she's never heard of. It is a nice little story because we know the outcome, but Rosemary's suspicions aren't unwaranted. Together with Drew, she finds Stanley on the side of the road and manages to get the medical services to treat him. In the wake of the accident, Stephen Law (Rosemary's son) returns to the Costa del Sol in order to seek solace and refuge as his marriage continues to disintegrate back home. Stephen is a nice comfort for Rosemary and a delightful diversion for the ever bored Isabelle De Luc.

I'm less interested in the show's gangster characters Alex Morris and Marcus Tandy, though I do appreciate that the shift in their stories is more romantic. Alex is reconnecting with Trish, the lounger singer, and we get a bit of backstory how she was a rising star and he was just a young punk. It's not a bad background, but I am not sure if this is what I would want for Trish. Meanwhile, Pilar and Marcus' relationship is deteriorating, which I am kinda happy for. Marcus and Pilar reminded me of when I watched EastEnders on PBS in the late 1990s or early 2000s and you had Phil and Tiffany. Just a toxic relationship that is not super fun to watch play out. Pilar has gone home and has reconnected with a man, Sergio, while keeping Marcus in the dark. I don't hate it. In addition, Alex spilled the beans that he and Marcus were so close Alex was best man at Marcus' wedding.

A lot of characters are travelling. As previously stated, Pilar is off to her local to be with her family. Olive King has gone off to Jerusalem, but not before a showdown with both Gwen Lockhead and Marcus Tandy over Tandy's influence over Gwen's son Blair. Blair had been frequenting Marcus' health spa which was a cover for a brothel. When the show started, Olive was an ornery individual, but she has softened quite a bit. I think this sorta a situation is perfect for her because she is clearly overstepping, but she does seem to care about Blair. In addition, when Marcus shows her everything is on the up and up (its not, but he managed to convince her it was), Olive was repetent. Gwen gets snappy at Olive, and I am not sure who to root for. A broke Blair keeps thinking about stealing tourists goods while also trying to land a night with an older prostitute.

Gerry has left Los Barcos for Morocco with Wilkie, as her paid companion. Wilkie is always a character who is praised and she is neat. She clearly is living in the past thinking she is still the person she was before she lost it all. There is a rather downtrodden moment where Wilkie goes to the hotel bar where she always stays, greets the waiter Fayed and asks for her regular, and he has no clue what that is. It seems that she is living in denial and its all quite tragic.

I was hoping to continue my journey, but I have noticed I misplaced the last disc with the final three or four episodes and I'm a bit at a loss. I'm sure it'll turn up because I remember watching a bit to see how things were going at the end, but I have no clue presently where I placed it.