Posted by Sarah
We open with Alex telling Santo he’s got a new job for him, that requires less work and pays more money — he wants him to be his driver. “There’s no uniform — just a clean shirt, and a gun. And make sure you shave every day.”
Cut to Henry, who’s having The Tall Guy-esque sex with a woman we don’t know yet. Then he asks her, “How much?” and she says, “$500,000.” She means that she’s an architect and that’s how much it’ll cost to build the new VIP room at his club and continue sleeping with her.
Alex goes out for a drive, sees Frank and Alice making out in a cane field, and is not amused. He goes to Pancho and asks to be allowed to tell Frank why the Duques hate the Samuels so much. To his credit, he doesn’t tell Pancho about Frank and Alice — he phrases it so that it seems like he wants Frank in the loop so that he’ll stop resenting Alex so much. Pancho says no, not to tell Frank. Everything is on a “need to know” basis, and Frank doesn’t need to know the crimes of the Samuels family. Oh, Pancho — if only you knew!
We find out that Pancho is still hiding his cancer from the family, and is spending excessive amounts of time on the Internet at all hours of the night.
Supper at the Duque house, with everyone in attendance, as usual. Alex and Frank fight because Alex proposes that Duque Rum seek a merger with a coffee company, as a way to increase profits. Frank reminds Alex that the coffee partnership is a Samuels family venture, and tells him not to pursue it — leave it for the Samuels instead of pissing them off more. No dice.
Henry asks Alex for the half a mil he needs to build the VIP room, and Alex refuses. Henry says, “Due respect, but you’re not exactly the right demographic to know what you’re talking about.” Alex says, “You can’t say ‘due respect’ and then tell me I’m ignorant and geriatric…”
Frank tells Henry to find the funding elsewhere. Henry gets it from some “Israeli businessmen.” Because that won’t end badly.
Then Frank asks Amalia, his mother (played by Rita Moreno who, up to this point, has had almost no lines and no purpose), why the Duques hate the Samuels. She doesn’t know. “I don’t hate them. I don’t trust them. Because your father hates them, and he’s the fairest man I know.” One almost expects Frank to break out into “Oh, the Farmer and the Cow Man Should Be Friends.” Instead, he goes to Alice, and asks her what the deal is, but she says the fault lies entirely with Alex’s arrogance. Yeah, that’s it.
Alex, meanwhile, is home getting a little Afternoon Delight. He promises never to keep secrets from Isabel, but his eyes say otherwise.
Alice meets with a P.I. she’s hired to tail Alex, and sees that Alex has bought a fancy new gun. Oooooh.
Alex calls the coffee guy and tells him to expect a visit and an offer of partnership that afternoon. As the camera pans out, we see that Old Man Samuels is in the room with the coffee guy, and heard the whole conversation on speakerphone. When Alex arrives at the office, he meets the Old Man coming out of the elevator, and Samuels tells him not to bother making an offer, “You’re a dia late and a peso short.”
Turns out, Frank told Alice about the coffee thing so that she’d alert her daddy and Alex would be humiliated. At the Duque family supper, Frank tries to embarrass Alex by saying “Oh, I hear you got shut down by Samuels — bet you feel like an idiot.” Alex is cool as a cuke and says that actually, it was all part of the plan. He pulls Frank aside and asks him how long he’s been banging Alice and selling out his family. Frank gets all indignant, and Alex tells him that he purposely told Frank about the coffee thing so he’d tell Alice and she’d tell the Old Man and the Old Man would waste millions of his dollars trying to keep Alex from making a deal that Alex wasn’t interested in, anyway.
BURN!
Alex threatens to tell Pancho about Frank’s sleeping with the enemy, and Frank threatens to tell Pancho about the murder investigation (which he knows about through Alice). COUNTER-BURN!!!
In other family news, Jaime proposes to Rebecca, and Isabel is not happy about it. Isabel goes into the safe in the bedroom and finds Alex’s gun. She’s even less happy about that. We find out that Pancho’s late-night Internet binges are nothing untoward — he’s just studying for his citizenship test, because he wants to die an American. Another secret he’s kept from his wife. He needs some serious communication lessons.
The last scene involves Alice leaving her love boat with Frank waving to her from the deck, and Alex smoking a big, studly cigar across the way, giving Frank a smoldering “I know what you did last summer” look in the best close-up of the season so far.
