Sometimes you have to negotiate with blackmailers, and play double-dutch with a time loop. Sometimes you have to say, “You can’t ask for the impossible.” (but people sure try.)
For Salvador it is just a typical day along with trying to get auditor’s to understand that VAT can’t always be collected.
Today it is a lawyer representing the interests of the direct descendants of Rabbi Levi who found the book of doors which made the ministry possible. Now HOW exactly did this lawyer find that out? Is this Lola at work again? Or someone else? For an institution that is a state secret, a lot of people sure seem to know about it. It is just a nice little ministry operating as best it can under austerity and this lawyer is acting like they are B613. The lawyer brings up the origins of how Rabbi Levi brought the book to Queen Isabella and asked for protection in exchange for knowledge of this book that he had worked on and managed to rescue from a fire in a synagogue. At this point in time there had been a pogrom and violence against non-Christian people in 14th and 15th century Spain.There had been forced conversions by people of Jewish and Muslim faith. While some Jewish people converted to Christianity supposedly of their own volition, it was mostly to keep themselves safe and a number still practiced their old faith in private.Those who did not convert were expelled from Spain. (the feeling being that it was better to remove this dangerous influence which might make people convert back to their original faith.) Why yes Spain has long lived for the drama. If Spain was applying for a job, it could use Joanne Prada’s resume and say, “I love being problematic.”
Isabella didn’t believe Rabbi Levi until he brought up how she acquired a scar. (yes a flashback within a flashback. This reminds me of a priest from my childhood parish who would do homilies where he would tell a story about someone who told him a story about someone who told that person a story. One would get so lost over those ten minutes. Usually it was something about the Communists. The priest was really hung up on Communism -even after the Iron Curtain fell. Oh dear lord, I am doing the same, a story within a story. Next I will be incepted. Let’s go back to Spain.) She is convinced that Levi needs protection. I love how she says, “OMG magic” and the Rabbi says, “nah Queenie, science.” Doors in time have a perfectly sensible scientific reason for existing. What that reason is we aren’t entirely sure but it is laid out in the book.
Only Isabella doesn’t protect him in the end. (which is slightly unusual as Isabella was very much about justice and sticking to her word. Of course some of that goes out the window when you do things like expel whole groups of people from your country.) Rabbi Levi ends up being labeled a heretic by the Inquisition and is murdered. The descendants don’t want justice or acknowledgement of what was done, they want cash and the book. If they don’t get those things, they will make the ministry’s existence public knowledge in five days.
All holidays are cut short as the team is brought in to deal with this hot pile of blackmail. Amelia had been trying to make sense of her possibly short future in her journal, Julián had been sticking to his favorite hobby: stalking his dead wife and wearing his cozy hoodie of manpain, and Alonso had been occupied with learning everything he can about his new hot sexy love: the motorcycle. (seriously, it was love/lust at first sight for him.)
This rescue mission is full of more rules than a game of Monopoly or Cones of Dunshire. The door they enter (148) is in a time loop and always leads to the same day (the execution) in Toledo in 1491. There aren’t any doors that are closer. (they are years apart.) Julián, a true amateur modern cinema studies scholar, compares it to “Groundhog Day”. They have 24 hours to get in and out, otherwise they are trapped for several years. And to make this even more complicated the door is 40km away from where they need to be. They will be without cars or trains, relying on horsepower in a time of the casual highway robbery and they have to save someone’s life, and THEN travel back to the door. Just what everyone needs; a low pressure gig.
They bring with them Don Manuel an expert in medieval law. (Amelia knows his work.) Yes, they are going to lawyer their way out of this one. (but for a bit of adventure they will get rid of the original lawyers.) They arrive just as the auto-da-fé was happening. During the Inquisition (what a show) they would have a public procession with the heretic. In this case Levi was wearing a conical hat and a sambenito and carrying a wax candle. This is kind of a peculiar fashion history note. The sembenito was a garment (and the hat) worn by the alleged heretic as as a form of penance. The garment would have a number of images painted on it. (It depended on whether they had repented or if they had been found guilty.) There were symbols of hell, along with the cross of Saint Andrew, and dragons.
The Inquisition was very much a community affair. People in the crowd were in a frenzy. Everyone was worked up almost in an angry delight about this man likely being sentenced to death. The laity and the Church had a dysfunctional relationship that encouraged this violence. (and it wasn’t just Spain. Many countries across Europe were kicking Jewish people out of their countries or engaging in genocide. Everyone just added their own local flavor to the atrocities.) Julián rightly comments that humans have always enjoyed the miseries of others.
Now comes the sentencing and the grand inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada strolls right in and HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD HE LOOKS LIKE ERNESTO! Everyone take a moment, grab something to hold onto. (The team certainly looked like they needed a drink and about five minutes to straighten their wigs and collars.) Before we address all of that, we should talk a tiny bit about Torquemada. He was a bit of a Rasputin character. He was tight with Isabella (he was her confessor/spiritual advisor.) He was a nobody who came up quickly through the ranks, and much like fascists who are all about purity, he had a few interesting people in the old family woodpile. But we will get to that later. Let’s go back to putting our eyeballs back in our head because seriously Ernesto?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjIBbvPaYe8?rel=0
Oh wait no, instead we are going to observe Amelia’s parents discussing her journal/fiction. (This journal is more like real life friend fic. Full confession: I would read the chapter on Lope de Vega with enthusiasm.) Her father sees her talent, her mother sees a daughter who has a ton of liabilities on the marriage market. Who is going to marry an uppity girl who writes experimental fiction, in addition to going to university. She might as well have two heads, a non-working uterus, and no dowry.
Let’s return to the Inquisition (here we go) where Don Manuel the lawyer brought in by the ministry gets into a quote-off with Torquemada. Bible, saints, popes, you name it. Anyone with a connection to Christianity gets a mention. In the end Torquemada’s ego is the deciding vote and Levi is executed. So back to the drawing board. There are questions to Salvador about Torquemada looking exactly like Ernesto. They ask about his origins (because he has always been the first to side-step that question.) It is brushed off with the fact that there are people who look like each other. (He even throws a little shade at a well known Spanish personality in answering that question about doubles.) Julián isn’t buying any of this. When Alonso and Amelia pass by Ernesto there is an exchange of looks where both sides look at each other as if to say, “what weirdness are you hiding?” The fact is, everyone in the ministry is hiding something. It comes with the personalities that choose to work in a place like that.
Amelia goes home that evening and her mother catches her in her lie about going to the library (when she had been trying to save Levi’s life.) and tells her she has to come to a tea to meet an eligible bachelor. In a moment of fear Amelia does what all young people do when it comes to their non-existent love life; she claims an imaginary boyfriend. Imaginary suitors live in very specific places. Canada, up north, next town over. I have no idea where imaginary boyfriends live in Spain. Portugal? France? Cuba? Amelia’s imaginary boyfriend has been invited to dinner. The look on her face says everything. “Ah Motherforker.”
She relates this problem to Julián and Alonso (because truly they are the only people who understand these problems of what amounts to work/life balance. It is like the world of intelligence services where the only people who understand the life are your fellow officers. It is also why places like the CIA aren’t opposed to co-workers being married to each other. It provides further support.) Alonso suggest getting someone to pretend to be a suitor and points to Julián who isn’t fond of this idea. Alonso’s reasons for not playing the part is the fear of using antiquated language and feeling that he isn’t refined enough for her parents. But before they engage in that farce they have to leap into the fray of the Inquisition. This time they are going to try a last minute reprieve from the Vatican. If you know ANYTHING about the Church, you know they are great at paperwork. We are treated to the same song and dance with the auto-da-fé (which they ought not do but they do anyway.) and the sentencing to death. They roll in with the last minute papal bull from the Holy See but Torquemada doubts its legitimacy. There is another amazing talent within the church. They are solid at gossip. (If you are going to rank gossip, it is political, royal and Vatican. Vatican gossip is always going to be the best stuff you will ever hear. Three words: Banquet of Chestnuts.) Torquemada knows the Holy Father has been ill and is on his deathbed so how could he sign that? He refuses to accept it and sentences Rabbi Levi to death.
The ego of this guy is unbelievable. He is like McCarthy. They consider the fact that Queen Isabella had promised protection to Rabbi Levi and his family. Why didn’t she stop them. At the time there was a lot that she was handling. (it was just before Columbus set out.) Thankfully she was in Toledo and that is their next plan. Isabella wasn’t just the wife of Ferdinand. She was a real badass with a lot of patience and a shrewd gift for negotiating. Her older half-brother and her younger brother went to war regarding the succession and she hung back and waited it out. Her younger brother died and those who had backed him tried to make her the new figurehead for the cause to overthrow her older brother. She wasn’t so much for that so instead she had a chat with her brother and came away with a really strong position where she didn’t question his position and in exchange she got to be the heir presumptive, AND while he had to give the final say on who she married, he couldn’t force her to marry anyone. She kept this up and ended up getting pretty much everything she wanted over the years. Married the guy she wanted to marry, brought the crime-rate down, made the country and empire pretty wealthy, and formed all kinds of alliances through the marriages of her children. Lady got things done. (yes she wasn’t perfect because hello INQUISITION, and the conquest/colonization of the new world.)
But before we get to her we have Alonso questioning Ernesto about how creepy it is that Torquemada looks like him and maybe he should do something, speaking warrior to warrior. (there is also a really honest moment about Alonso’s bigotry which was not uncommon for someone of his era.) Julián goes to dinner with Amelia as her imaginary boyfriend. While it isn’t a Mary Tyler Moore disaster of a dinner party, it definitely took a left turn where no one really wanted dessert because Julián served up a heaping dose of manpain à la mode with a pretty coulis of heartbreak for color. He is so pretty and so broken. (Ladies the queue forms to the right.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxQD65lTxX4?rel=0
Let’s distract ourselves with horses, pretty scenery, and yet another attempt to save the author of the book of doors. They go to see Queen Isabella. (nice joke from Julián regarding the actress playing Isabella, as she played the same character a couple years prior in another television series.) She finds out her husband knew about Levi being accused of heresy and doing nothing to prevent it.. (This was a bit of a theme in Isabella’s reign.) They go to Torquemada who is working the crowd like an evangelical preacher hoping to end up with a television deal. He ignores the letter from Isabella because he is on a roll. Nothing will stop this guy. He is like a bus without brakes. A really bigoted bus.
Poor Alonso just wants to go in like a warrior, kill the heck out of Torquemada and do an extraction. Salvador who admires Alonso has to explain why it can’t be done. There is only one option left: Ernesto
The trio are consumed with how to fix this Rabbi Levi problem, whilst being occupied by their own worries. It is Alonso (a man of unapologetic machismo) who displays a direct and tender honesty with the other two about their worries. He explains that they are his family now and how they have to sort certain things so they can focus on this larger task. Julián goes with Amelia once again to her family’s home for dinner and they sort the problem of the imaginary boyfriend. He becomes the imaginary fiance who has to go to Cuba as a doctor. She isn’t pressured to be on the marriage market and it buys her time and space. There is a slight cost -her journal must no longer exist. A small price to some but still it hurts as it was a way for her to try and make sense of this growing world that doesn’t follow a rational line.
Ernesto must now face a possible suicide mission to save Levi, and the ministry. He goes into it with little fear. The team has someone on the inside and the outside. At least we discover a tied up Torquemada. Rabbi Levi is saved and then the real Torquemada shows up to face Ernesto’s Torquemada. What is this? Jet Li in “The One”? Or the film “Face/Off”?
Levi is taken through the door and trips out on what the doors have become -along with the future. The trio learns that Ernesto wanted no one to save him, even if there were a few hours left before the door closed. But still the question remains -how is Ernesto related to Torquemada.
Ernesto doesn’t even have to cut off any hands when he tells Torquemada, “I am your Father.”
Then to make this reunion even more awkward he brings up the fact that his grandmother was Jewish and was forced to convert. He tries to reason with him but Torquemada is too lost to fear, power, and a perverted idea of justice.
Levi doesn’t want to be saved. He is dying and it is his fate. He even speaks with the lawyer and tells him, let me be. This isn’t good for anyone. The blackmail has no more weight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3afcQZWsw4?rel=0
It takes a certain kind of grace to accept certain kinds of knowledge about one’s future. For Amelia she is wrestling with that. She can’t figure out how she might end up on a potentially short path. For now she has her imaginary fiance in Cuba. Julián knows she is haunted by this knowledge and all he can do is be there.
Where is Alonso?
Ever the warrior.
Sometimes a warrior must employ a deus ex machina. A really bitchin’ one.
Because sometimes you need a happy ending. Most don’t get that chance but once in awhile someone should.
Genevieve Jenner
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