Loveday Writing

While the motive is assumed to be Beatriz turning Gavin down romantically, Harry questions why he would leave her body outside his house all night, and points out that it wasn’t robbery-motivated as nothing was stolen from her body. Harry mentions that Gavin was seen on his own CCTV camera leaving his house at the time of the murder, and that Beatriz had a healing broken toe at the time of her death. Alexa also questions why Beatriz was outside if she wasn’t waiting for a car and if she was making a phone call. Harry tells her that she was calling her father in Buenos Aires but he didn’t answer, and that camelia oil was found in Beatriz’s fatal stab wound.

Alexa starts her investigation by bribing Reuben with baked treats to get him to be her dance partner and fake fiancé at the dance studio. In their first dance class, we meet the owners, mother-and-son duo, Eva and Cesar Borges, and regular student, Hilary, who tells them that the studio has recently re-opened. During the class, Alexa dances with another student, Reg, who asks her why she’s trying to dig up info on Beatriz’s death, and then she dances with Cesar and sees Hilary watching them, clearly jealous. After the class, Alexa asks Hilary her thoughts on Beatriz, and she tells her that Beatriz was a bit of a flirt and that Gavin spent his time in the dance class taking creepy photos. Hilary also warns Alexa that Cesar likes to play games and they don’t always end well.

When Alexa asks Harry for more information on Cesar, he tells her that he left Argentina with Eva when he was two, he grew up in Melbourne and moved to Auckland 10 years ago and opened the dance studio. Alexa and Madison go to Gavin’s house, and as he refuses to go outside due to being hassled by reporters, Alexa has Madison pretend to sprain her ankle in front of his house and yell for help. This works, with Alexa sneaking in behind them, only for Madison to accidentally drop the façade when she discovers that Gavin designed one of her favourite video games, Aucktropolis.

Just as Gavin tells Madison to leave, Alexa comes into the house, and tells him that she found a dead patch of grass in his yard that is dead to due to someone standing on it, which means that someone was waiting for Beatriz to leave Gavin’s house. When Alexa tells Gavin this, he offers up Hilary as a suspect, due to her jealousy of Beatriz, which was so bad that she stomped on Beatriz’s toe, breaking it.

Alexa books in a private lesson with Cesar straight after his lesson with Hilary. After Hilary leaves, peeved that her lesson with Cesar was cut short by two minutes, Alexa has her lesson with Cesar and asks him about Hilary and Beatriz, which leads to him changing the subject after she brings up the latter. Afterwards, Hilary tells Alexa to stick to group classes or find another dance studio and that Cesar pretends he cares about people. Later, Alexa goes to Hilary’s apartment building to check if Hilary could leave her apartment without being seen by security cameras, and whilst she finds a blind spot, she also gets caught in the act by Hilary herself.

Madison and Alexa later discover that Hilary placed an Uber Eats order for her apartment consisting of two mains and two drinks, which means she was with someone the night that Beatriz was murdered. It’s revealed that she was with Reg as they were having an affair.

As Alexa is on her way to her next dance class, she tries to reassure Gavin that she is working on proving his innocence and that he needs to be patient, but she sends Madison to talk to him. When she gets to the dance class, she offers to buy Eva a drink and discovers the locket around her neck with a baby photo of Cesar inside. Meanwhile, Madison misses Gavin leaving his house and he shows up at the dance studio and causes a commotion, yelling at Cesar that he’s a murderer.

The next day, Harry and Alexa discuss the case at her apartment, with Harry pointing out that all roads of the case lead to Cesar. Moments later, Cesar texts Alexa to invite her over for dinner at his place. When she gets the chance to snoop around, she finds a photo of Eva holding baby Cesar, which reveals she was a nurse in her past, and she also finds a wooden box and starts to dig through it, only for Eva to catch her in the act. As Cesar is cooking her dinner, Alexa notices that he uses tea seed oil (also known as camelia oil) when he cooks. When Alexa asks him about his relationship with Beatriz, he reveals to her that they were just friends and unlike Hilary, she had visited his apartment, becoming close due to their shared Argentinian background. Meanwhile, to keep Gavin from causing trouble, Madison spends the night handcuffed to him, only for him to escape through his bathroom window when he asks to use it. Harry later tells Alexa and Madison that he was caught trying to flee to Montenegro as New Zealand has no extradition treaty with them and he was arrested.

Later, Alexa goes to see Reg and asks him what Beatriz was doing at an event the night she died if she wasn’t there to dance. He tells her that she was there with Gavin and that she used to be close to Eva due to her relationship with Cesar. He also comments that he thought it was disrespectful of Cesar not to close the studio out of respect to Beatriz, and that he and Eva went to the South Island for a while to get away from reporters. Later, Cesar goes to Alexa’s apartment with roses, having gotten her address from the dance studio’s registry, but when she asks him if he met Beatriz’s family when they were in New Zealand dealing with her death, he leaves.

Later when Alexa tells Madison about her interaction with Cesar, she questions why he would avoid Beatriz’s parents as her father was a human rights lawyer who was putting war criminals from the Dirty War on trial and getting justice for victims. Beatriz’s father is someone he and Eva should want to meet, not avoid. Madison’s answer to this question would be because Cesar is not who he says he is.

Alexa goes to the dance studio to see Cesar and reveals to him (and the audience) that Eva’s real name is Lucrecia Cebellos, and she was a midwife at a concentration camp in Buenos Aires where children were kidnapped. Beatriz saw a photo of Eva holding Cesar as a baby and recognised her, as her father had a copy of the same photo due to his work. Eva got Gavin’s address from the dance studio registry, followed Beatriz, waited for her, and stabbed her. Alexa also reveals that Eva kidnapped Cesar as a baby and raised him as her own. After Eva is arrested, Alexa encourages Cesar to try and find his biological parents.

The episode ends with Alexa coming home to find Reuben giving Madison a tango lesson, and Harry and Alexa joining them, revealing Harry’s dancing talent.

Overall, I felt that this was a solid season premiere with a compelling mystery that explored a dark era of Argentinian history, with the dance classes providing great moments of comic relief. As mentioned at the beginning of my review, I also appreciated Reuben having a more active role with becoming involved in Alexa’s investigation and I hope this happens more as the season progresses.

I’m looking forward to reviewing the rest of the season.

Stray Observations:

-Apparently, Reuben has two left feet.

-Alexa takes a lot of pictures on her phone of the bread she bakes.

-There seems to be more splashes of colour, at least in this episode, specifically with Alexa’s wardrobe. Although no reason for this has been provided yet.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “People trust Reuben.” “People trust me!” “By people, I mean bored women who like his muscles.” “Hm, the way you like his muscles?” “See? You do understand.” (Alexa-Madison going back and forth on Alexa taking Reuben to the tango dance class instead of Madison)
• “How do I look?” “I hate you.” “Good.” “You look great.” (Alexa-Madison going back and forth on Alexa’s outfit for the tango dance class)
• “We’re planning a small November ceremony, and the tango thing’s your idea.” “Wait, why was it my idea?” “Because you’re a closet romantic, Mr. Crowe.” “Oh! So we’re taking your last name, are we?” (Alexa-Reuben going back and forth on the cover story Alexa came up with for the tango dance class)
• “People always say to me, ‘Cesar, tango, tango is not dancing. Tango is sex standing up.’” “He said that’s his mother right?” (Cesar to the class, and then Reuben to Alexa on Cesar saying this after dancing a tango with his mother)
• “If I said that to my customers, they’d report me!” (Reuben to Alexa on Cesar telling a couple in the dance class, jokingly, to try sex standing up)
• “That was a large slice of victim blaming with a dollop of ‘don’t take my man.’” (Alexa to Reuben on her conversation with Hilary)
• “What the hell are you doing here?” “You can stalk me but I can’t stalk you?” “You’re stalking me?” “Well, a little bit.” (Hilary-Alexa going back and forth when Hilary catches Alexa outside of her apartment)
• “Oh, you’ve never slept with a married man?” “You mean, apart from the one who was married to me?” (Madison-Alexa)
• “Reuben, coffee!” “And that’s why I’m marrying her.” (Alexa-Reuben when Alexa arrives at Reuben’s café)