‘ Vida’ could use a jolt of life, storytelling
“Vida,” a confident yet dawdling new dramedy premiering Sunday on Starz, is about two estranged sisters, Emma and Lyn (Mishel Prada and Melissa Barrera), who are summoned back to their East Los Angeles neighborhood by the news that their mother, the eponymous Vida, has died after an illness and left them her only asset: a run-down apartment building full of quirky longtime tenants and a beloved but unprofitable dive bar on the ground floor.
To the sisters’ surprise, Vida also left behind a devoted and deeply grieving wife, Eddy (Ser Anzoategui). This is especially galling to Emma, whom Vida once banished from the home for being a lesbian. Neither Emma nor Lyn knew their
mother was in a same-sex relationship, so old resentments and new confusion make it difficult to decide what to do with the building. A weaselly developer has already come sniffing, ready to buy the place out from under its considerable debt.
At a mere six episodes, “Vida” is frontloaded with declarations of cultural identity (Latino, Latina, Latinx, Mexican, lesbian, hetero), sprinkled with explanatory Spanglish so the gabacho cable subscribers can fol-
low along. “Vida’s” characters sling pejorative terms at any other character who acts too gringa or otherwise downplays her heritage: Chipsters off to their pinche yoga classes, and so on. An electric sense of anger runs through the show.
Created by playwright Tanya Saracho (who previously wrote for “Looking,” “Girls,” “How to Get Away With Murder” and “Devious Maids”), “Vida” needn’t fret so much about its authenticity – of which it has plenty to spare – and should instead focus more on its story lines, which sometimes verge on trite.
While fumbling around with its family tale about strong women at odds, the show more effortlessly delves into the always compelling drama of neighborhood gentrification, as seen through the eyes of its most meaningful character, Marisol (Chelsea Rendon), who patrols the streets on her bike to confront food vloggers in front of taco stands or spray paint her dissent on new coffee shops and condo developments.
“Vida” presents redevelopment and jacked-up rents from a predictable yet accurate viewpoint (that it’s ruinous for longtime residents and harms communities), but it also
takes time to explore how Marisol’s strident wokeness is itself a bit of a facade, fed by some of her own insecurities. It also carefully weighs the temptation the sisters feel to sell out and move on, even as the girlghost of their mother metaphorically expresses her disapproval.
Somehow this is all far more interesting than the marquee plot of who’s a lesbian and who’s not, or the tortured affair Lyn resumes with her old flame, Johnny (Carlos Miranda), who cheats on his pregnant fiancee to be with her. “Vida” makes a lot of racket while trying to be sex-positive; like “Looking”
and “Girls,” these scenes aim to be frank and provocative but can just as easily come off as gratuitous and immature.
Still, there’s a worthy show to be found in the characters who live in and hang out at Vida’s old place, a story that is unerring in its details and full of ideas about the cultures it portrays. These initial episodes do little more than set a table, as if viewers are watching an extra-long pilot. Just when it’s really starting, it’s over.