I started watching this show like 8 years ago, expecting a nice story, the concept looked interest. It's the old cliché of identical twins who were separated at birth and are completely different in personality, but I wanted to give it a try.
While Paola is the rich, elegant, arrogant woman who does bad things and gets away with them, Paulina is the poor version of a Mary-Sue, living a humble life, working and trying to save her ill mother. She meets Paola, who immediately points to how similar they look and Paulina denies - was it just an attempt to get rid of her? They were identical and their only difference was the hair!
Paola promises money as long as Paulina takes her place, and has a boyfriend who she seems to be very emotionally invested on, he disappears, and not much later on, their mother passes away, which can be sad but as it seems, these two events are convenient for the plot. And of course: their mother writes a letter revealing the truth before that.
Paulina, now having nothing keeping her at her town, agrees to live Paola's life and instantly falls in love with Carlos Daniel, forgetting her previous boyfriend. Very soon she's crying and saying "my God, how much I love him" and she cries in literally every scene, that's exaggerated and forced.
And of course, as I said, she's a Mary-Sue. She's supposed to know things that no one knows, be the mother of two children she doesn't even know, treat Stephanie well and support her even though she's completely obnoxious, heal her husband's grandmother, work in her husband's factory - and the series presents it as the ultimate novelty, as if no women worked in 1998! - give life advice to her work colleagues, talk to people who makes protests and convince them, and even say she forced her sister to do what she did after realizing she's gone through an accident and that they are sisters. And only to add some drama, she gets in petty arguments with Carlos Daniel all the time and refuses to start a relationship with him even after they could without any moral implications.
Later on, she meets her previous boyfriend who abandoned her and is now with a middle-aged woman (with an old mother who has dementia) and spends her money. Ok, what he did was no good and he is an opportunistic person, the detail is that she says "someone who does this or that isn't worth anything" some three times and that's not creative and even lazy. The third thing is "a man who lives at a woman's expense isn't worth anything". Wow, huge double standards here!
Another thing that's awful in this series is the child abuse and neglect and their normalization. Carlos Daniel's son is in a school in which other kids bully him and scare him, he always wants to sleep with the door open and the lights on, and his aunt doesn't let him, it's clear that it's just because she's evil but it doesn't change the fact that no one does anything to make him feel safe. Later on, they try to wake him up to go to school, and he pretends to be sleeping because he doesn't want to go through that, so Paulina hits him. The only ones who don't condone this are the maid - who doesn't say or do anything - and Stephanie, but of course the latter only opposed it because she hated Paulina (Stephanie made her niece and nephew turn to the wall, threatening to beat them once). The whole family and even Carlos Daniel take Paulina's side. The son even said he deserved that. This made me lose all my respect for Paulina, this family and this show. I don't care how much angelic they try to make her, this is despicable. Later on, Piedade also threatens to hit the same child after he disappeared and her grandson says "when we find him, you can do whatever you want with him".
Speaking of that event... totally unrealistic. The boy falls and loses all his memory, bonds with another family who gets in trouble only to add more drama.
I don't recommend it, really.
While Paola is the rich, elegant, arrogant woman who does bad things and gets away with them, Paulina is the poor version of a Mary-Sue, living a humble life, working and trying to save her ill mother. She meets Paola, who immediately points to how similar they look and Paulina denies - was it just an attempt to get rid of her? They were identical and their only difference was the hair!
Paola promises money as long as Paulina takes her place, and has a boyfriend who she seems to be very emotionally invested on, he disappears, and not much later on, their mother passes away, which can be sad but as it seems, these two events are convenient for the plot. And of course: their mother writes a letter revealing the truth before that.
Paulina, now having nothing keeping her at her town, agrees to live Paola's life and instantly falls in love with Carlos Daniel, forgetting her previous boyfriend. Very soon she's crying and saying "my God, how much I love him" and she cries in literally every scene, that's exaggerated and forced.
And of course, as I said, she's a Mary-Sue. She's supposed to know things that no one knows, be the mother of two children she doesn't even know, treat Stephanie well and support her even though she's completely obnoxious, heal her husband's grandmother, work in her husband's factory - and the series presents it as the ultimate novelty, as if no women worked in 1998! - give life advice to her work colleagues, talk to people who makes protests and convince them, and even say she forced her sister to do what she did after realizing she's gone through an accident and that they are sisters. And only to add some drama, she gets in petty arguments with Carlos Daniel all the time and refuses to start a relationship with him even after they could without any moral implications.
Later on, she meets her previous boyfriend who abandoned her and is now with a middle-aged woman (with an old mother who has dementia) and spends her money. Ok, what he did was no good and he is an opportunistic person, the detail is that she says "someone who does this or that isn't worth anything" some three times and that's not creative and even lazy. The third thing is "a man who lives at a woman's expense isn't worth anything". Wow, huge double standards here!
Another thing that's awful in this series is the child abuse and neglect and their normalization. Carlos Daniel's son is in a school in which other kids bully him and scare him, he always wants to sleep with the door open and the lights on, and his aunt doesn't let him, it's clear that it's just because she's evil but it doesn't change the fact that no one does anything to make him feel safe. Later on, they try to wake him up to go to school, and he pretends to be sleeping because he doesn't want to go through that, so Paulina hits him. The only ones who don't condone this are the maid - who doesn't say or do anything - and Stephanie, but of course the latter only opposed it because she hated Paulina (Stephanie made her niece and nephew turn to the wall, threatening to beat them once). The whole family and even Carlos Daniel take Paulina's side. The son even said he deserved that. This made me lose all my respect for Paulina, this family and this show. I don't care how much angelic they try to make her, this is despicable. Later on, Piedade also threatens to hit the same child after he disappeared and her grandson says "when we find him, you can do whatever you want with him".
Speaking of that event... totally unrealistic. The boy falls and loses all his memory, bonds with another family who gets in trouble only to add more drama.
I don't recommend it, really.