It’s hard to call Salcedo, Leather And Boogaloo a spinoff of the Colombian coming-of-age series Eva Lasting. It’s more like the expansion of a story that was told in brief in the first episode of the final season, namely how Martin Salcedo got a job at a salsa club, became a DJ, and developed a nasty cocaine habit.
Opening Shot: People dancing at a salsa club in Bogotá, Colombia.
The Gist: Martin Salcedo (Sergio Palau) is a frequent customer of the salsa club, Quiebera Canto, and one night that he’s there, he’s wowed by a beautiful waitress named Veronica Pinilla (Paola González). They dance and drink, but she resists Salcedo’s advances. She has some pretty solid boundaries, mainly that she doesn’t date the club’s customers.
But where Veronica doesn’t have a boundary is when it comes to selling cocaine, a business she inherited from Vandalia, the “queenpin with the best cocaine.” Martin continues to visit the bar, get drunk, and buy coke off Veronica. He is so smitten with her that he comes to her aid when some obnoxious customers refuse to pay her for some coke. As he beats the crap out of them outside the bar, Veronica tells the manager, Ismael (Ramiro Meneses), that if he’s looking for a new bouncer, he should hire Salcedo.
Veronica uses the bouncers as dealers, and she finds Salcedo to be an effective salesperson. He’s also a good bouncer, ridding the bar of an annoying customer who doesn’t buy much booze but causes a ton of trouble. But the problem is he’s getting too high on her supply, and Veronica eventually tells him that he needs to make up the gap or she’ll find someone else to sell.
Salcedo decides that, instead of going cold turkey, he’ll cut the coke with something called “brick dust,” which makes users’ noses bleed as soon as the powder is snorted. He sells a brick of it to Ganso (Carlos Mariño), a wealthy but sketchy regular at the club, who wants to throw himself an epic birthday party. But when he snorts his first line, he immediately knows something is wrong, and has his thugs grab Salcedo from his post outside the club.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Salcedo, Leather, And Boogaloo is billed as “An Eva Lasting Story,” an offshoot of the four-season Colombian coming-of-age series that ended earlier this year. In fact, the first episode of Season 4 tells a brief version of this story, where Martin Salcedo goes from bouncer to DJ at the club and can’t kick his cocaine habit.
Our Take: Written by Dago Garcia, Salcedo, Leather, And Boogaloo is more like an extra episode of Eva Lasting told in short, 3-4 minute bursts (the running times are listed as 6-7 minutes, but about half of each episode are the end credits). The story hangs together for the most part, but it certainly takes advantage of the format to tell the story about Salcedo’s time at the club as vignettes, for the most part.
Garcia does make connections between these somewhat self-contained stories, like how his associaton with Ganso comes back to haunt him when Ganso brings an attractive grifter named Daniela (Laura Taylor) back to his house and invites Salcedo to join them. Then there’s an episode where Salcedo joins a scheme to pass off cheap rum as the bar’s pricey variety and pocket the profits.
All of these tales are told from Veronica’s point of view, and they may or may not be true. But it does make for a fun look at Salcedo’s time at the club, and how he managed to become the club’s DJ after becoming a bouncer. As disjointed as the show feels at times, and the fact that Salcedo’s intitial attraction to Veronica goes by the wayside pretty quickly, it’s still a fun way to dive into the extreme psyche of Eva Lasting‘s most intriguing character.
Performance Worth Watching: Paola González is fascinating to watch as Veronica, because she’s pretty obviously the leader of the group of employees at the club, and somehow manages to keep her drug dealing from Ismael and the club’s owner.
Sex And Skin: None, but there are tons of scenes of people salsa dancing.
Parting Shot: Veronica tells Ismael that he should hire Salcedo as his new bouncer.
Sleeper Star: Sara Pinzón, who plays Salcedo’s sister Luisa, is one of the higher-profile cast members from Eva Lasting to appear on the show.
Most Pilot-y Line: We were definitely disappointed that Salcedo and Veronica settled so quickly into “co-workers/friends” chemistry, because his attraction to her is the event that sets off this entire story.
Our Call: STREAM IT. If you liked Eva Lasting, then you’ll enjoy Salcedo, Leather And Boogaloo because it features the original series’ most volatile — and interesting — character. For everyone else, it’s a pretty light watch with a very small time commitmnent, and lots of good music on the soundtrack.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
