Column by Ómar Rincón: The red of RCN

One thing was proven: being a network scandal (The House of the Famous) does not bring TV ratings (El Desafío). They are two different modes of success. The digital hysteria, especially that of X, is for the passions of egos and nothing more. Television is still about slow rituals of emotional contemplation.

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RCN arrived with its new soap opera Rojo Carmesí. The story seems like something out of one of the many commercials that are shown about beauty products: what lipstick, what red, what crimson, what seduction. But this is just the appearance, behind it is the classic melodrama: envy, bad people, capitalist dreams, interested loves.

The channel says that “Juana and Jorge are a couple of lovers and entrepreneurs, who They seek to enter the cosmetics industry with Rojo Crimesí. Valeria won’t be calm until she has Jorge and Crimson Red to herself. The ambitious Valeria, owner of VR, will not want to see how Jorge and Juana get married, because in her plans, there will only be room for one.”

Everything is similar to the usual soap operas. And soap operas are an aesthetic of repetition: telling the same thing over and over again, where the enjoyment and pleasure are in the variations that tell and make the story seductive. And in finding a singular something that makes it all work.

The casting is defended since Laura León is a nice and outgoing actress, Carolina Gaitán plays the hysterical with tumbao, Carlos Báez is the gallant who is funny to seduce, Marcelo Dos Santos is repeated as the arrogant badass, and Don Kepa is affectionate grandfather.

The production is a great lipstick commercial: everything hygienic, luminous, catwalk. Everything looks very clean. Nothing. There are things as unlikely as the manager of a large company riding a bus and other minor things that don’t matter.

One finishes seeing it. And he wonders where the singular detail is: the nice protagonist? the funny gallant? The old man who created the formula? the villain’s amantazgos? the cosmetics? The little music that sounds like an elevator or a clinic?

You don’t see that singular thing, that which makes it unique. It is not the protagonist or the villain or the kalif of memory or the memory of the grandmother, it is the undertaking. The story is about entrepreneurship or rummaging, that sure way to fail, but with style.

A formula for success these days: Entrepreneurship is the capitalist dream. And if you “dress” with lipstick to seduce, it seems that failure does not exist.

Coaches say that you don’t have to have talent or study, just God, good vibes and “having a purpose” are enough. Will that be enough for Crimson Red?

It seems not.