Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish is an Edutainment Show produced in 1992 by the Annenberg Foundation and Boston PBS affiliate WGBH, created by language professor Bill VanPatten, for use in schools (though it's also aired on PBS stations, and also on Télé-Québec, that province's Francophone public broadcaster).
It's done in the style of a Telenovela. The story follows the adventures of Raquel Rodríguez, a Mexican-American lawyer, as she travels to different Spanish-speaking countries to investigate the secret past of the Castillo family. All the dialogue is in Spanish, but with some narration in English for much of the first fifth of the series. The show also includes scenes that cut away from the action to present vocabulary or information about the culture of the country being visited. The story begins in Mexico, but it eventually takes Raquel to Spain, Argentina, and Puerto Rico.
The series includes 52 half-hour episodes, all available for viewing at the Annenberg Foundation website
. The show has accompanying textbooks, compact discs, etc., and is used as the foundation for Spanish courses in high school and college. French In Action and Fokus Deutsch are similar Annenberg-funded shows, focusing on French and German, respectively.
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Bienvenidos a la pagina de los Tropos de Destinos. Esta serie contiene ejemplos de:
- Alliterative Name: Raquel Rodríguez, presumably chosen in part to help students get accustomed to the Trrrilling Rrrs of Spanish.
- Backstory: Raquel's previous boyfriend shows up late in the series, as her mother tries to get them back together. (Dad thinks it's best to stay out of the matter and let his daughter handle her own love life).
- Big Fancy House: La Gavia, the Castillo family's huge estate in Mexico.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Castillos, what with Don Fernando's Mexican family, Rosario's later marriage (which produced Arturo) and their son Ángel's branch (with Ángela as his daughter and Roberto as his son). One Twitter user even put together a helpful family tree.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Each episodio ends with Raquel directly addressing the viewers reviewing what happened in the episode, sharing her thoughts about the situation, plus asking review questions about it, which serves the additional purposes of reminding us of the latest developments in the story and emphasizing whatever the main lesson theme for the episode was.
- The Ditz: Ángela Castillo (Fernando's granddaughter) works as a computer programmer, but is very notably naïve, particularly in her adoration of her money-grubbing, womanizing boyfriend Jorge.
- Lady In A Powersuit: As a somewhat glam Los Angeles lawyer from the first part of The '90s, Raquel has a preference for blazers and shoulder pads (some quite huge).
- Lampshade Hanging: When various parts of Raquel’s journey and the saga of the lost Castillos are recounted, the characters listening remark that the story is “like a movie” or “like a telenovela”.
- The Lost Lenore: The story is kicked off when elderly, ill industrialist Don Fernando Castillo, who's spent his life pining for his first wife Rosario, who he thought was killed in the Spanish Civil War, learns that she survived. His family hires Raquel to investigate what happened to her.
- Love Triangle:
- Arturo/Raquel/Luis, with Raquel's mother as the Shipper on Deck for Raquel and Luis.
- Ángela's boyfriend Jorge tries to come on to Raquel, which briefly drives a wedge between her and Ángela.
- Multinational Team: One of the themes of the series is the varieties of Spanish in different countries that speak the language, so the main characters hail from various nations—the Mexican Castillo family, headed by Spanish immigrant Fernando, Arturo from Argentina, Ángela from Puerto Rico, and Raquel, from a Mexican family, but born and raised in California (and
played by a Mexican actress). - My Beloved Smother: Raquel’s mother María engages in the less-common mother-daughter version of this, where she disapproves of Raquel’s deepening relationship with Arturo, tries to reintroduce Raquel’s old boyfriend into her life, and thinks of (the very competent, self-possessed) Raquel as not quite an adult yet.
- Nice Guy: Arturo is very friendly, helps Raquel as much as he can, and frequently buys her gifts (which conveniently helps introduce new vocabulary words to showcase).
- One-Word Title: Though as mentioned above, it has a descriptive subtitle.
- Precap: Every episode opens with highlights from that particular episode.
- Recap Episode: One or two at the end of each country, and four in a row before the end of the series. They didn't just recap the plot but also served as review of vocabulary learned during the parts being recapped.
- Reality Has No Subtitles: The entire point of the show. The goal is to teach Spanish-learners to understand the spoken language without assistance. While the early episodes have an English narrator, toward the end it's all in (fairly basic, leisurely-paced) Spanish. The episodes have Spanish captions in case you want a written form of the dialogue to follow.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ángela is the outgoing, bubbly Red counterpart to the more reserved Blue Raquel.
- Separated by a Common Language: Discussed between various characters from the different countries regarding the Spanish dialects, and both Raquel and Arturo must adjust their use of specific vocabulary words when they aren’t understood.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Episode 4. Made even more aggravating in that the call, while important, wasn't urgent enough that they had to drop everything.
- Trapped by Gambling Debts: One of several problems the Castillos have to deal with over the course of the series is finding out that Carlos has been covering wife Gloria's gambling debts by embezzling from the family business.
- Your Favorite: After a blowup between Raquel and her mother over the aforementioned meddling involving the ex-boyfriend, Mamá brings pumpkin turnovers, which Raquel was very partial to when younger, as a peace offering.
