Telenovela Plot Includes Lesbian Couple, Sexy Content

Telemundo, the NBC Universal corporation that produces some of the finest, strangest, and most hectic telenovelas you’ve ever seen mamasita, recently began airing a novela on their new youth-oriented station, Mun2, that features a same-sex relationship.

By same-sex relationship, I mean lesbian relationship. And by a novela, I mean programming intended to depict sexual content as much as possible.

Or at least that’s how this fanvid makes it look:

(Also, this video features James Franco music so grab some tissues or something.)

“Las Aparicio,” the show in question, is about a family of women in Mexico City. Julia, a character who runs a catering business, has a lesbian best friend named Mariana. And the drama begins when Mariana’s girlfriend calls her out for having feelings for Julia. This is proof that even if this show is in Spanish, it captures experiences like falling in love with your best friend that all lesbians can understand, language barrier or not. And they know it, too: the show is subtitled and intended to appeal to audiences of Spanish- and English-speaking backgrounds.

The romance blossoming in the catering shop is all over the lesbian internet, especially now that it’s been covered by Autostraddle dot com. And a quick visit to AfterEllen shows that the show is everything you’d expect from a telenovela: lots of confused sexual orientations, awkward confrontations, sex with people of all genders, and encounters that are filled with fast language and strong feelings. Are you roped in yet?

Mun2 will feature more queer characters and programming as it grows. A new series, RPM, includes a bisexual, too! It premieres May 1.

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Carmen

Carmen spent six years at Autostraddle, ultimately serving as Straddleverse Director, Feminism Editor and Social Media Co-Director. She is now the Consulting Digital Editor at Ms. and writes regularly for DAME, the Women’s Media Center, the National Women’s History Museum and other prominent feminist platforms; her work has also been published in print and online by outlets like BuzzFeed, Bitch, Bust, CityLab, ElixHER, Feministing, Feminist Formations, GirlBoss, GrokNation, MEL, Mic and SIGNS, and she is a co-founder of Argot Magazine. You can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr or in the drive-thru line at the nearest In-N-Out.

Carmen has written 919 articles for us.

41 Comments

  1. Whoa!! My closeted friend told me about this months ago – this was her way of getting the lesbian action since L Word is too much of a giveaway.

    Pretty steamy stuff, might I add… I wish I could speak Spanish for this lol

  2. i wish that every time something intense happened in my life, the dramatic telenovela music would start playing. you know, like when i find out that i have no milk AFTER my cereal is already in the bowl. #suchanintensefeelingoflame

    • i HATE that! it’s like “well what the fuck am i supposed to do now? i could try and pour the cereal back into the box but it’s probably gonna go everywhere and then i’ll have to get the broom and i guess i could go run to cvs and get some milk but that seems like so much work and i’m so hungry and goddammit i just wanted some cereal!”

      • exactly! i typically a) don’t pour it back and b) don’t buy milk. instead, i c) just drink beer & contemplate what else there is to eat.

  3. i find all languages other than english hot. ok maybe not hebrew, german and african dialects…

    • but what about when foreigners (any language) speak english? my theory = they can make english sound so so exotic and sexy. yet i’m sure when i attempt to speak any other language, they are not thinking, “wow..that sounds so exotic/sexy.”

      ps. i think hebrew is pretty hot though.

      • My favorite language is th language of lurve!! Come here, I shall SHOW you, as it is the only language that is… Unspoken!!

        (in my head that should be read with a deep Spanish accent not a nasel nothern Irish one!! )

    • There is no such thing as an African dialect, seeing as there is no African language, ugh.

  4. Now these are the kind of makeouts that should be happening on glee for Brittana and Kurt&Blaine, or whatever lesbosexy characters there are on Pretty Little Liars.

    STEP IT UP ENGLISH-LANGUAGE TEEVEE.

  5. yay! THIS!

    man i used to watch Telemundo back when my grandma was still alive.

    it was futbol and novelas all day errryyday.

    julia y mariana make me wonder what old gram gram woulda thought about lesbianas on her novelas…

    haha

    ps- i’ve watched this video way too many times already.

  6. I just started watching this show a few weeks ago when I discovered it flipping through the channels. OMG, it is so good. Originally I was watching for the lesbian storyline(cause Mariana is fucking hot) but the other storylines are juicy too and Julia’s sisters are IMO hotter than she is. The oldest, Mercedes, has chemistry with everybody.

    One of the best storylines they did recently was about Mercedes, a lawyer, representing a transgendered woman suing for custody of her son. I have never seen a trans storyline done like that on tv before. It was ridiculously good. And it lead to one of my favorite scenes of the entire series, in which the entire Aparacio family gangs up on Alma’s newly religious daughter for being such a bigot towards lesbians and transgendered people.

    If people are interested in watching it the best part is you don’t have to know Spanish. English subtitles are provided. Seriously y’all need to watch this show. American soaps are nowhere near as ballsy. Maybe that’s why they are getting cancelled.

  7. the show’s tagline makes me want to tell everyone who doesn’t speak spanish that spanish for soulmate is “orange half” which is just about the cutest thing ever.

  8. not a bid deal, but just fyi, Mun2 is not a new channel as it’s been around since at least 2002.

  9. I need to go and find this show, like NOW!…lol nice one ‘Autostraddle’ Sunday afternoon covered. x

  10. Fyi, if your cable service has Telemundo than you should have Mun2. I didn’t know I had the channel until 3 weeks ago. Las Aparicio comes on at 11pm Monday – Thurs where I live.

  11. This soap first aired last year. By your enthusiasm, I assume it’s not even halfway through, when it starts to get really, really bad, IMO. We used to be quite enthusiastic over it at afterellen and then it was the biggest disappointment.

    I just feel the need to point it out to maybe spare some people some pain.

    If you want recaps, you can go here:

    http://myqueerstories.blogspot.com/

  12. Actually you guys should see this. This show is already done, I think it was canceled but most of the story lines wrapped up pretty well especially the Julia/Mariana story line. This show does not disappoint at all and you have got to see it to the end. It is probably the best show depicting lgbt issues and in this case a lesbian love story. I’m Hispanic and I was blown away by the fact that this was a novela coming out of Mexico. They did an amazing job, so give a chance and I’m sure you will not be disappointed, in fact you’ll probably be really turned on! Mexican women are Caliente!!

  13. I started watching this when it came out in Mexico. And it got so boring for me but I dont usually watch novelas so I guess am not used to all the crazy exaggerated plotlines.

    Maybe its of your interest that one of the writers for the novela is a gay lady IRL (and its the sister of the actress playing Mariana, who claimed to have basically stolen her sister’s personality in order to play a lesbian character in a convincing manner. Their dad owns the company producing the novela too (or something like that) the company name is ARGOS and they have continuosly produced some other ballsy/controversial novelas for TV AZTECA one of Mexico’s biggest broadcasting companies.

  14. Hi,

    I wasn’t aware that the word telenovela, which we use also here in Portugal, was also used there.
    I mean, of course that I know that people will use the word in english speaking countries, but I thought that usually they would use the word soap, even when refering to brazilian or mexican ‘telenovelas’.

    Here in Portugal we get mostly brazilian ones and we have our owns. It goes without saying that Brazil produces the best ones in every sense. Even their children act more natural than many grownup portuguese actors :-), although we’re evolving well for something that we started doing not many years ago.
    Unfortunately we usually buy foreign formats and adapt them.

    Kind regards,

    José (Lisbon, Portugal)

  15. wow that is the best fanvid out of all fanvids in the world for fans that i’ve seen.

  16. OMG, I love this telenovela. It is very quality in terms of acting and writing, much much better than the stuff they have on Univisión. I originally wanted to start watching it for the Julia/Mariana (“Juliana”) storyline, the other stories are great, too. I love the Claudio/Mercedes storyline because these actors have such great chemistry.

    Since the show has been airing on Mun2 for a couple of weeks, if you missed some of the beginning, you can catch up by going over to http://msnlatino.telemundo.com/videos to watch older episodes with English subtitles. Just wait for the 15 second commercial to finish, scroll down to Lo más visto, and select Las Aparacio, and start enjoying all of that telenovela lesbian angst. :-) Even though I speak Spanish, my partner does not, so the English captions are great for her. (And I give occasional commentary when the translations are not precise.)

    -Cynthia

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