The Manny is just one of those shows that you don't like even though people have done a good job. There's not much to criticize The Manny. It's helpful to remember that whatever clichés the series title makes you think of, they are all true and implemented into the story. But that's never a complaint. In fact, The Manny has done a commendable job of taking the "good clichés" and writing them with nuance and depth rather than simply presenting them at a regular plot point. This fact holds true for most of history.
The ex-husband is shown to be vain, but he is also portrayed as someone who cares about the people around him, although he cares more about himself. The series has handled the "career woman" trope very well, and the real hypocrisy of the expectations placed on her is openly discussed. We also appreciated the way the kids were written to offer the right amount of cuteness and teenage problems. Like we said, there's no fault with the characters, except maybe the titular one.
Stars: Sandra Echeverría, Iván Amozurrutia, Diana Bovio
It's a surprise that the show's central character seems the most bland. He is described as healthy and certainly attractive. But the only thing that went wrong was that perhaps the actor himself lacked charisma. This becomes more evident when he shares screen space with other, more capable actors. Take as an example the scenes of Gabriel (Iván Amozurrutia) with Joaquín (Moises Arizmendi). This last actor brings a lot to the screen, with his body language, micro-expressions and even the occasional lost expression that nails the scene on your head. As irritating as the character was, it was as if the audience understood him and why Jimena kept coming back to him.
As for Jimena, Diana Bovio did a great job conveying the constant struggle within the character. We would even say that she masterfully conveyed to the audience the different things that her character was struggling with at each moment, without any dialogue. How is it possible that even the children managed to leave an impression, but the man did not? Why is he the character whose face we don't remember, even though he's definitely handsome and has enough screen presence? The casting team failed with him.
Moving on to the story, let's address the negatives first, because they will be brief. Manny begins with Jimena who desperately needs someone to take care of her children because they are a difficult group. Why wasn't the public shown why they were difficult? Her running around the house seemed like normal teenage behavior. Are we supposed to believe that experienced babysitters weren't able to handle this? Frankly speaking, this can be ignored as a minor story detail, but we mention it because the writers missed an opportunity for good comedy by leaving out this detail.
There's no doubt that The Manny needed more humor. Constantly objectifying Gabriel isn't funny, and not for any moral reason, but for the simple fact that the jokes are lame. In that case, why not use children more? There's plenty of reference material for everyone, like Nanny McPhee, Mary Poppins, or literally any movie or series with a similar plot. This also meant that we never understood why Gabriel was so good with children because everything shown in the series was something pretty generic that literally any caregiver could do or say.
Moving on to the good part of the story, we have mentioned in another article that this story is more about Jimena than Gabriel, and rightly so. Manny has kept a light hand in discussing issues like sexism in the workplace and the pressure on women to be superheroes or "do it all," but he's still done well. It was fantastic to see the insidious nature of the “well-intentioned” help given and the way women are forced to take on the unspoken pressure, without which they risk losing everything. This was put to good use in setting up the central love story of the series.
But the film was not free of caricatured characters. We're tired of seeing teenage girls divided into two sections: the bad girl and the woke girl trying to join the "cool girl group." Adolescents have progressed beyond this generalization. But perhaps, after getting a good handle on the “pressure” on women in the workplace, the writers wanted to take it easy on progressivism in the rest of the story. In that sense, credit must be given to how well the arc of Rogelio's sexuality was handled. It was a very sensitive script and one of the best emotional arcs of the series. This is also the part where the actor who plays Rogelio shines the most.
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