Desperate Lies

5.5

A telenovela affair and pregnancy story written by people playing Madlibs

Netflix

TV Show

Brazil

Portuguese

Drama

2024

Felipe Abib, João Vitti, Juliana Paes

TLDR

There are Godzilla films that put more thought into build-up than this show, which seems preoccupied with just destroying everything.

What it's about

Amid a strain in her marriage, a woman finds herself pregnant with twins by her husband and another man.

The take

We start off at peak drama straight away, with incredibly stressful plot points at 2 different periods in time—an eerie flash forward cold open, and the more traditional drama bulk of the story. On first glance, it could read like an issue of ill pacing, like these intensely scandalous things could’ve been built up more, to maximize the emotion behind them. But it becomes pretty clear that using every soap opera trope in the book is just the foundation of the whole show. Things happen, things that happen to be traumatic, but there is no discernible story outside of the affair tropes and the reveal at the end of the first episode.

What stands out

As with a lot of drama, hospital visits tend to mend things. More people should talk about the bill.

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