It is inevitable that each viewer has certain preferences that lead to certain proposals having more or less chances of catching their attention. In my case, it’s clear to me that ‘Elite’ has always been a title that I shouldn’t like too much on paper, but at the moment of truth it even became my favorite Spanish Netflix series for a while . That honor has been lost for a long time and now he is one step away from simply stopping seeing her in the face of the decline she is suffering.
Already with the fifth installment I was somewhat disappointed despite the fact that it was going from less to more and the sixth season has only served to confirm those feelings. A few days ago I told you that it had become more dramatic and less fun than ever, something that has been even more evident during the subsequent episodes, where that playful touch of ‘Elite’ has practically completely disappeared in favor of something that simply doesn’t deserve me. the sorrow.
A badly shaken cocktail
In its best moments, ‘Elite’ was a series in which adolescent drama, crazy twists, addictive suspense and a curious gallery of characters coexisted in which some actors stood out in the most intimate moments, just as he ended up leaving of course ‘Elite: Brief Stories’. The key for everything to work was knowing how to shake the cocktail well , since separately it would always work worse than taking into account the sum of its parts. That is something that I think began to be lost with the departure of Dario Madrona , co-creator of ‘Elite’ along with Carlos Montero , and that has grown more and more.
Focusing only on this sixth season, the problem is not that a vindictive tone has been chosen, it is to continue exploring everything related to the rape suffered by Isadora (Valentina Zenere), the ill-treatment that Sara ( Carmen Arrufat ) drags or the approach to the reactions of soccer fans when discovering that one of their idols ( Carloto Cotta ) is homosexual. In fact, that is something that should serve to elevate the series, even allowing it to reach a segment of the public that perhaps had no interest in ‘Elite’. The reality is that it has been lost on one side without winning on the other.
Montero commented on more than one occasion that ‘Elite’ has always had a touch of dreamy fantasy, of that ideal that the viewer desires but that really reflects reality. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that as long as you know how to approach it, but I think one of the biggest flaws in Season 6 is that it’s been completely lost. The closest thing to it is that attempt at a love story between Isadora and Didac ( Alvaro de Juana ) that ends up giving more the feeling of being the basis for that season finale that I am still not sure if it is a good hook or a take on hair that the writers have pulled out of nowhere.
The truth is that what has prevailed here has been drama, reducing its most hedonistic touch to a minimum, to the point of being ridiculous in one of the few situations in which it is used – for what sake that ass of an anonymous character who is going to be completely ignored so that the scene starts to focus on one of the protagonists?- and in others the fiery touch of the series ends up being quite light . It is as if the ‘Elite’ team had proposed here to take a kind of leap into the void to evolve as a series, losing some of its distinctive features along the way.
Because I’m not going to deny that one of the things that the series has always done best is its ability to hook the viewer. Their scripts would be everything one wants to criticize, especially when it came to dialogue, but they often managed to work magic with fairly simple ingredients. The sixth season already shows little expertise in this, trying to make us believe that several new characters were already in Las Encinas and then they make the mistake of trusting the stories more separately than in the union of all of them.
For the first time in ‘Elite’ I felt that Las Encinas was an accessory setting whose importance did not go beyond Isadora’s plot and that the series moved away from the school at the slightest opportunity. This has created a feeling of emptiness that is perfectly comparable to most of the characters, something especially unforgivable in a season that drinks more than ever from its personal dramas. And there it is not the fault that its protagonists are worse or better actors -I myself was very happy at the time for the signing of Arrufat-, like the very approach of the scripts.
That also affects the inevitable season cliffhanger . In its beginnings, ‘Elite’ knew how to link very well that mystery that worked as a common thread with what was happening in the different episodes. That does not happen here, to the point that its resolution ends up being a somewhat gratuitous turn instead of a satisfactory consummation of what we have seen so far. At least with the death of Samuel ( Itzan Escamilla ) at the end of the fifth season, that was achieved, but everything related to the abuse of Ivan ( Andre Lamoglia ) falls on deaf ears, even going so far as to convey the idea of ​​what matters more for how it affects Patrick ( Manu Rios ) than anything else.
In short
All in all, I don’t think season 6 was a disaster, but it was the culmination of that decline that the series has been suffering for some time . In addition, its audiences, even though they are still quite good, have also suffered, so perhaps it is time to start thinking about ending it. That or take a radical turn, change the setting completely and start from scratch, because the “silent” renewal of characters and the more dramatic approach has not worked as it should and that promised season 7 is making me lazy more than anything else.
