The more we see Cecelia Suárez, the more we realize that she is one of those actors that can very effectively disappear into whatever part she plays. We realized it when we saw her play a restrained and super-ethical prefect in the Mexican Netflix comedy Snakes And Ladders and didn’t even realize we saw her in a completely different role in The Gardener only a month ago.
Opening Shot: A bell rings. A crowd of kids arrives at the Andes San Javier School, one of Guadalajara, Mexico’s most prestigious elementary schools.
The Gist: As we hear the voice of Dora (Cecilia Suárez) the school’s prefect — she helps enforce behavior and discipline at the school — talk about ethics, two six year-olds get into a schoolyard fight.
It’s broken up quickly, but at the beginning of the next school day, Dora is called into the headmistress’ office and sees the parents of the boy who was in the fight: Vicente Garcia (Martiño Rivas), the Spanish consul to Mexico, and his wife Tamara (Marimar Vega). They recently moved with Vicente’s new job, but Tamara is originally from Guadalajara. Their son claims that the girl he fought with — who has been his best friend since arriving at the school, no less – “crushed his nut.” The boy’s parents are claiming this is a sexual assault, despite the kids’ young age.
The dad of the girl, Olmo Muriel (Juan Pablo Medina), arrives to the meeting, claiming everything the Garcias are accusing his daughter of doing is ridiculous. Olmo is a chocolatier known as “The Choco,” and is one of the most popular parents in the school.
Dora is determined to be elected as the next headmistress, which is a parents’ vote. Her boss encourages her to rule for the Garcias, given their influence. But given Olmo’s popularity with the other parents, that would cost her dearly.
She has other issues at home to deal with, namely the fact that her teenage son Toño (Benny Emmanuel) has owes some very violent people money in gambling debts. While dealing with that, though, Olmo pulls up in an SUV and invites her to a party for some of the other parents he’s throwing, so she can market herself to them. For Dora, it’s an ethical grey area, but she relents because she knows it can help.
While at the party, a few events converge — from a dead partygoer to a worrying video from Toño — that make Dora start to waver on her staunch ethics.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? On the spectrum of recent school-related comedies, Snakes And Ladders lies firmly in the middle between English Teacher and Abbott Elementary.
Our Take: If we were to be completely honest about Snakes And Ladders, which was created by Manolo Caro, there are certainly elements of telenovela mixed into the stories about school politics and overprotective parents. While it seems that being headmistress is too small a goal for Dora to be compromising herself over, without that willingness to soften her previously-rigid stance on ethics and rules, there would be no show.
But, like in many telenovelas, a ton of stuff happens in the first episode, starting with the fight between the kids that sets this whole thing off. Of course, the fight becomes secondary once the parents get involved, and we see the complications it brings; while the two combatants are playing pattycake together by the end of the day, the parents are just starting to dig into their respective positions. What we find out is that things are even more complicated than they seem, because Olmo and Tamara had a serious relationship that he ended before she left for Spain many years prior.
So there’s the original fight, there’s the parents digging in for battle, Olmo and Tamara’s history, Dora’s moral and ethical dilemma in order to ensure she becomes headmistress, her struggles getting her son on the straight and narrow. Then the episode ends with Olmo and Dora striking a deal. From there, this story can go in all sorts of directions, as now it seems that Olmo, who spits at ethics and Dora, who probably gets hives when she has to lie about something, are now in cahoots. That’s the making of a fun series, and given the lighthearted tone of the first episode, fun is what we should be getting.
We’re also here to watch Suárez, whose constrained and brittle performance as Dora is in stark contrast to her emotional, at times over-the-top performance as China Jurado in the recent series The Gardener. She’s so good as Dora, we completely forgot that she was on a show not that long ago.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: To get her silence, Olmo asks Dora what she wants. “Money,” she says. Then over the credits, we see the cast dancing in various groups.
Sleeper Star: Michelle Rodríguez is Martha Sánchez, a tarot-card reading colleague of Dora’s that tries to predict the election through the cards and tries to invite herself over to dinner.
Most Pilot-y Line: Olmo cares so little about Dora that he keeps calling her “Nora” and saying she’s a teacher. She keeps correcting him, telling him what a prefect’s role is at the school.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Yes, the first episode of Snakes And Ladders is packed with plot, but what fun, campy show isn’t?
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.