It may not be officially fall, but unofficially, “Hot Girl Summer” has ended and everyone is looking for the next track. In honor of the changing season, let me recommend HBO’s Los Espookys. It came out in June and while it takes place in Los Angeles and some sunny, Pan Latin American country, it’s the perfect show for the ironic faux start of fall.
Created by Fred Armisen and Ana Fabrega, Los Espookys follows a group of friends who are trying to turn their love of horror into a business by staging spooks, like a monster-sighting and an exorcism, for hire. The show is delightfully odd with absurdist gags ranging from the random (a demon demanding to see The King’s Speech before cooperating) to the insightful (a group of LA-based valets doesn’t understand what “to snowball” means, having never seen snow).
It also happens to be very Latinx. In case you forgot, there’s not a lot of media featuring or made by Latinxs (did you see that Annenberg study? Its findings were dismal). And when Latinxs do make it on the screen, we’re generally gang members and drug runners — just like what the man currently occupying the White House thinks.
To have a show like Los Espookys on HBO is a pretty big deal. It’s in English and Spanish. The Latinx cast are different generations, skin tones, social classes, and personalities. It’s created by Latinxs (did you know Fred Armisen was one of ours? I didn’t! But it turns out his mother is Venezuelan). And it’s really good.
It’s also not about being Latinx, in the way, say Vida (the other prestige show we’ve got) is. The characters on Vida are dealing with identity in heavy ways, trying to figure out how race and class and color intersect within and outside their communities.
Not so on Los Espookys. Renaldo, Úrsula, Andrés, Tati, and Tico are just living their lives, figuring out who they are and how to get by without questions of racial identity playing a major role. That’s not to say Los Espookys is racially or ethnically agnostic. It’s not. It’s very Latinx. It just portrays our identities as the default, refusing to contrast our experiences with Anglo ones.
This centering of the Latinx experience starts with subtle nods. The series opens with an elaborate quinceañera. There’s a whole bit about how Renaldo spells his name, which while explained, works much better if you’re familiar with actual Reynaldos. The Catholic church makes appearances in the form of nun and priest characters but instead of being saints or pedophiles, these clergy members are regular, petty people motivated not by good or evil but rather by jealousy or simply the desire to finish their favorite telenovela. It’s the stuff of Latinx life, told with HBO dollars and a silly, experimental point of view.
This centering of the Latinx experience is not just in the details of the show but the politics too. Take the one white American character: US Ambassador Gibbons. She’s a sort of evil Elle Woods with platinum blond hair, pink everything, and a blasé colonist attitude. Superficial and willfully ignorant, she couldn’t care less about her powerful job as evidenced by her disdain for the language (she gets an invitation and declares that it’s in “code” before her one Latinx aid tells her it’s in Spanish) to deciding randomly who gets a visa and who does not. This understanding of Los Estados Unidos as irrational, mercurial, and careless is about as Latinx as it gets. And it’s particularly funny and cutting in the Trump era.
Which is not to say Los Espookys takes itself seriously or leans in politically (although it does take pains to hilariously decimate the Herbalife pyramid schemes that prey on our communities). No, the show is all about the laughs, the absurd, and the spooks, using the Latinx point of view as its building blocks.
On HBO, series are divided into “All,” “Latino,” “International,” and “Family” but don’t let that “All” fool you — most of the “Latino” programs are not listed there. Los Espookys is. The show is claiming space in the mainstream HBO platform and I love it. The idea that a bilingual, silly, fun Latinx show is as much for everyone as Insecure and Sex and the City is just powerful. So before the days get too short and your TV options too vast, spend a few hours enjoying Los Espookys.