Taylor's descent into madness is creepy, but once she's in the throes of a full scale meltdown, she starts mumbling about how everything needs to be fixed, and then suddenly the crazy-talk disappears for a moment. She sounds like a child, and even says something that echoes what her mom said when she left.
Taylor [quietly]:I can't be what you want me to be.
Narm: Sometimes. For instance, the scene where Fernan walks in on Dahlia and Precy kissing is pretty unintentionally funny. Fernan faints in the most absurd, unnatural way, and this is supposed to be the reason he died.
Casting a cis man as a trans woman would attract copious backlash in the West, especially paired with the egregious stereotype perpetuated by Rica's character (i.e. her name being merely a feminized version of her deadname, Rico). At the same time, it's miles better than possibly any other depiction of a trans woman in Philippine mainstream media so far. Rica is shown as an erudite, normal, successful woman with a stable job (as a professor); is respected by her students; and has a handsome, loving boyfriend. Her story doesn't end in tragedy either (unlike, say, in Die Beautiful).
In an early episode, Dahlia chews April out for not disclosing that she's a gossip columnist. All the others in the room get mad at Dahlia for this, yet outside the Philippines, anyone would probably feel the same as Dahlia — particularly because Dahlia had been relaying the tragic story of her mother to her family and understandably felt that a gossip columnist's presence was a violation of privacy. Gossip is associated with vile publications such as TMZ in the West, but in the Philippines, plenty of gossip columnists worm their way into highly esteemed positions within the journalistic world.
