Silvio de Abreu e Mauro Alencartwo experts in soap operasgave a real class on gender when debating the crisis in serials and the growth in popularity of Turkish plots on the Dois Pontos vodcast, on Estadão. For both, a broken plot can be fixed: this has been done several times — and with very good results.

Then, You Mania Is there a way? Yes. But, following the tips of experts on the subject, the soap opera needs a big event to attract the attention of the public and a hero, in addition to starting to be retold from this new starting point.

For the author, who was director of Dramaturgy at Globo until 2020 and took care of the supervision and guidance of authors, the biggest problem of nine o’clock soap opera was a flaw in the construction of Molina’s murder (Rodrigo Lombardi): “A completely false setup, the public didn’t believe it because it was false.”

Mauro Alencar, who has a doctorate in Brazilian and Latin American television drama from USP (University of São Paulo), stated that every soap opera needs a hero. As much as the viewer likes the villainshe needs to root for the good guys. There’s a character missing for the audience to identify with.

The academic exemplified the construction of the seven o’clock soap opera from Globo, Come back on topas perfect in every way. In Mania de Você, on the other hand, the viewer is unable to empathize with the protagonists.

Abreu made a point of saying that he no longer watches daily soap operas since leaving Globo. He stopped seeing the written saga João Emanuel Carneiro after following the first chapters. When faced with Molina’s murder, he saw a serious problem: there was a lack of information.

“I think that, for a soap opera to be successful, it needs to be believable, be it comedy, drama, whatever. When you watch it, you have to believe in what you are seeing. Then, the emotion comes. You believed, you cried and you laughed, it worked. If you didn’t believe it, you think it’s wrong or it doesn’t communicate with you in some way, then you abandon it”, he explained.

He remembered that Viola (Gabz) was in a room with Molina at the time of the murder. The public had to find out who shot him afterwards, but the way it was set up was wrong. After watching the character’s final minutes, the problems got worse. Mavi (Chay Suede) disse para Red (Nicolas Prattes) that he was the one who shot, and the young man denied it, but thought it best to leave. Like this?

“Nothing is discussed, nothing is said. Then, what happens? The girl and the young man run away, I don’t know where and, at a certain point, the police arrive after the young man, who runs away. The girl, who was the one who she was being harassed and saw the fight, she went to the police station, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t say she was being harassed”, recalled the former director.

The police chief not investigating the fingerprints on the gun or investigating all the circumstances also seemed to be a disregard for the crime, for those who wanted to follow the story and understand what happened.

I’m not here criticizing João Emanuel, I think he’s an excellent author, but I think there was a mistake in the framing of this point, which was the main point of the story. Because from then on, the good guy leaves, he is separated from the girl. She doesn’t open her mouth to say anything, so she colludes with the bad guy, she’s not in favor of the good guy. I think this misconception really put the public off believing in the story. From then on, everything becomes nonsense.