Review: Victor and Valentino “Carmelita”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Chata unpacks a preserved car that used to belong to Victor and Valentino’s father and will belong to them one day. Xochi, looking for her own wheels, asks if she can use it until then, which Chata agrees to if she will driver the two boys around. They take the car to be fixed, though something possesses the mechanic, which in turn possesses the car. Eventually the car tries to kill the three of them, forcing them to drive it into the lake and revealing that the Tzitzimime were behind this all along.

OUR TAKE

We cap off our month of Victor and Valentino episodes with another horror movie homage, this time of Stephen King’s “Christine” which also involved a possessed and evil car. It also acts a sort of follow up to “Starry Night”, which also involved the Tzitzimime specifically targeting Chata through Victor and Valentino. And honestly, I can’t be sure whether or not Chata didn’t set this car up as bait to lure this kind of reaction. I mean I’m sure she loves her grandchildren and wouldn’t want them getting in harm’s way, but something about how she let Xochi take the car so easily makes me think this was a plot to get some potential assailants to show themselves. It’s also clearer more than ever that the Tzitzimime are definitely a threat that is constantly escalating, targeting townsfolk, then their kids, and now this car, all to find out more about Chata in order to attack her. And yet we don’t really know anything more than when last episode when this happened. Maybe we’ll get some more build up closer to the end of the season, where this may come to a head and we’ll finally learn what this conflict is really about.

And one last time, let’s rank the episodes that came out in the past week. In last place is probably “In Your Own Skin”, though mainly for it having a bit of an odd plot than it being all that bad. Next up would be this episode, which I think benefits from having some serialization to it, though that may be the most interesting thing about it. At second place would be the La Llorona episode as the next part of the Lonely Haunts Club series, which I would say takes that prize for its nice use of stop motion animation and good balance of horror homages with character development. But Ghosted definitely wins by a long shot, using cultural touches along with introducing a very fun character who will hopefully be around in the future. I can’t really go back and say which of these seventeen episodes I’ve enjoyed the most, but what I can say is that there really wasn’t that many actual bad ones in the bunch, if at all. Victor and Valentino is definitely an important show, even if it doesn’t seem to have been as big of a hit as its peers on the channel like Steven Universe or even the short lived OK KO. For the moment though, it does look to be continuing for the time being, which gives it plenty of time to expand its fanbase to appreciate its contribution to representation and education of this culture through its potential for storytelling. And also it’s pretty creepy. Happy Halloween!