Eldorado (1992-1993)

[Joseph]

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

[dc11786]

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.