Son Amores is an Argentine telenovela that aired from 2002-2003, produced by Pol-ka, and starring Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Mariano Martínez, Nicolás Cabré and Florencia Bertotti. It tells the story of Roberto Sánchez, a football referee who lives on his own and falls in love with Lola, a married woman, and of his nephews, Martín, Pablo and Valeria, who come from Capitán Gómez to live with him. The show was incredibly popular, reaching the highest rating peak at the time, and is still considered one of the best comedy shows of the 2000s.
The series provides examples of:
- Age-Gap Romance: Valeria dates Rafa, her brothers' trainer and a man twice her age.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Valeria for Pablo and, to a lesser degree, Martín.
- Always Second Best: A major source of internal conflict for Pablo in relation to Martín.
- Berserk Button: Pablo absolutely hates when someone hangs up on him. Martín is very protective of his hair.
- Betty and Veronica: María (Betty) and Brigitte (Veronica) for Martín.
- Big Brother Bully: Pablo, much as he loves his sister, tends to play the most pranks on her, and often treats her very harshly. They don't get along much, in contrast to Valeria and Martín.
- Big Brother Instinct: Martín and Pablo with Valeria.
- Cloudcuckoolanguage: Valeria's way of speaking is full of weird grammar and malapropisms.
- Creature of Habit: Roberto prefers his life exactly as he's been living it so far, and doesn't like deviating from what he's used to. His nephews moving in and bringing all their chaos with them is what kickstarts the plot.
- Dinner and a Show: In a family that is loud and prone to arguing, having dinner together often results in chaos.
- Disappeared Dad: The Marquesi dad died years before the beginning of the story.
- The Ditz: Valeria, and Coco.
- Dogged Nice Guy: In the beginning, Coco, along with Pato, gets rejected by Valeria, since she has a crush on Rafa. As the story goes on, Coco keeps hoping they'll date, and once her other romantic interests go away, Valeria starts to develop feelings for him. Eventually, they get married, and are expecting twins by the end of the show.
- Drives Like Crazy: Lola gets nervous behind the wheel, and has trouble parking.
- Evil Doppelgänger: Coco pretends to be an old lady's grandson for money, as it seems he looks similar to the real one. Turns out he's the very image of the real grandson, but their personalities are nothing alike. While Coco's shy and honest, the grandson is confident and sly. He even tries to take advantage of his physical similarity to Coco to trick Valeria into sleeping with him.
- Flanderization: Valeria started out as naive and with some grammatical errors when she spoke but otherwise was a normal girl who needed to finish the school year. By the end of the first season, she takes everything so literally, views the world through such a childish lense, and makes so many grammatical mistakes it makes one wonder how she even made it to the last year of high school.
- Gasshole: Pablo makes no secret of it.
- Hypocritical Heartwarming: The Marquesi siblings tease and fight each other constantly, and sometimes barely stand each other, but if anyone else tries to insult one of them, they come to each other's defence.
- If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: All of Valeria's love interests get this treatment. Coco's the worst victim, as he's been with Valeria the longest, and her brothers, taking advantage of his good nature, like to remind him constantly that he's always under threat with some friendly slaps.
- I Shall Taunt You: As part of his plan to shift suspicion off of him being the true father of Anabella's baby, Dardo insults Valeria to Pablo's face, calling her promiscuous and saying she has buck teeth.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Pablo and Roberto. Pablo's easily annoyed and refuses to help with things he finds stupid, but if anyone messes with those he loves or he sees someone in need of help, he comes out in their defence almost always. Roberto acts tough and has a thing about rules, but his soft side comes out whenever he's around Valeria, Lola and Chela.
- Like Father, Like Son: Martín took after his father the most out of the Marquesi siblings (both great football players but too hot-headed, both suffer leg injuries), and this doesn't go unnoticed by other characters.
- Literal-Minded: Valeria, to the annoyance of other characters.
- My Sister Is Off-Limits: The Marquesi's don't take kindly to anyone male taking an interest in Valeria.
- Papa Wolf: Roberto with his nephews.
- Parental Favoritism: It's not super marked, he really does love all three siblings, but Roberto tends to show Valeria a little more special treatment, as she's the youngest and the only girl, as well as better-behaved (in contrast with her brothers, she's the only one who contributes with house chores, and she thanks Roberto for letting them stay at his house out of the blue on the first night she arrives). Her more childlike ways of showing her uncle affection also bring out his softer and kinder side. Pablo and Martín, as they tend to be confrontational with their uncle, see more of his authoritative side.,
- Put on a Bus: At the start of season two, many characters have gone away: María, Candela, Michi, Lola.
- The Bus Came Back: Lola shows up briefly towards the middle of the second season, and María comes back for good towards the end.
- Relationship Revolving Door: María and Martín get broken up and put back together the most out of the show's couples.
- Rich Bitch: How Brigitte is initially portrayed. After losing the Rich part, she becomes a Mock Millionaire.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Valeria. A running gag is she'll ask someone, generally her uncle, if they want to hear the news, and if they want to hear them now, and they'll reply something along the lines of "no, next month," which she interprets literally and complains that it's too far away.
- Sibling Rivalry: Between Martín and Pablo. Both are really close in age and have the same goals, even ocassionally the same love interests, so it's inevitable that they perceive one's victory as the other's failure, and end up clashing when feelings get hurt.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Guillermo Carmona is Roberto's. Roberto hates Carmona because he's the corrupt president of the Referee's Guild, and Carmona hates Roberto because of his obsession with playing by the rules.
- Special Guest: Mirtha Legrand plays herself in one episode where the Marquesi family go to her show. Bandana also show up in a different episode as the band Martín is opening for.
- Temporary Blindness: Valeria becomes temporarily blind after hitting the back of her head days before her wedding, which she refuses to pospone. The blindness also leads to many Blind Mistakes, especially when Pablo teases her by giving her wrong instructions.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: In the beginning, Pablo and Valeria's relationship is closer to this; they bicker a lot but the friendly side is more apparent, and they have more equal footing. After she Took a Level in Dumbass, their relationship becomes more like With Friends Like These....
- World of Snark: Every character, no matter if dumb, smart, rich, poor, old or young, is sarcastic to the highest degree.
