TELENOVELA WATCH: ROSA DIAMANTE Ending; PASIÓN PROHIBIDA Premieres Jan. 22; ¿QUIÉN ERES TÚ? Pulled

ROSA DIAMANTE comes to an end this Monday, January 21 at 8 p.m. ET on Telemundo. The last week of a telenovela often brings to mind a line from the cult televisionseries MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, the show with the little silhouettes sitting in the movie theater lobbing comments at a cheesy movie: “Okay people, everybody wear eye protection – there’s a lot of loose ends flying together all at once.”

TELENOVELA WATCH: UniMás Premieres Three Shows, And A Trio Of Villains In The Spotlight

FIRST THOUGHTS ON THREE PREMIERES
The relaunch of Telefutura into UniMás this week with a pair of new telenovelas in prime time means viewing options for fans of telenovelas are more plentiful than ever before – four hours on Univision, three hours on Telemundo and a pair of hours on both MundoFox and UniMás.

Unfortunately, neither of the offerings from UniMás – MADE IN CARTAGENA or ¿QUIÉN ERES TÚ? - are English friendly, a curious decision from the network given Univision’s concerted efforts of late to provide English captioning on their telenovelas.

TELENOVELA WATCH: UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR's Final Week; EL CAPO 2 Finale; AMOR BRAVÍO; ROSA DIAMANTE; Premieres: CORONA DE LÁGRIMAS (Dec. 3), LA MARIPOSA (Dec. 4)

UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR
I intend to write more on UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR as a whole later this month when I run down my favorite telenovelas of the year. For now, some words on the final week, which was darker and more somber than I anticipated. This novela managed to maintain a wonderfully balanced tone through its run, but the humor waned in these final episodes as the novela went after tears instead and earned them: Don Aquiles making peace with the daughter he never knew he had, Violeta, and her mother before his death and funeral; Patricio discovering the proof that street ragamuffin Mateo was Luciana and Rodrigo’s son, missing five years and the subsequent reunion of them all as a family; and saddest of all, Patricio’s death in the final episode after complications in surgery he hoped would allow him to walk again.

TELENOVELA WATCH: UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR Finale Airing November 30; Plus, AMORES VERDADEROS, ROSA DIAMANTE & CORREO DE INOCENTES

The finale of UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR (weeknights at 7 p.m. ET) airs this Friday, November 30th on Univision, though it would be understandable if viewers were confused as to the date of the finale as the promos affixed to the end of episodes until this week were listing the finale date as December 3rd.

To end UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR on the 30th meant Univision had ten days to air eleven episodes, and rather than give the telenovela an extra hour on Friday, Univision decided instead to egregiously chop up a few episodes, most noticeable on Monday’s broadcast – at one point, there were three consecutive cuts, in effect, jumpcuts, to Gala in her office, three separate scenes forced to run consecutively as a single awkwardly disjointed scene. Would it really make that big a difference in the scheme of things if the new novela started on the 4th rather than the 3rd or if POR ELLA SOY EVA was given a single Friday off?

TELENOVELA WATCH: AMORES VERDADEROS, UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR, AMOR BRAVÍO, ROSA DIAMANTE

AMORES VERDADEROS
Watching the second week of AMORES VERDADEROS (weeknights at 9 p.m. ET on Univision), I found myself enjoying the interaction between the protagonists while not much caring for the overall story – a not too uncommon response for me with telenovelas. The poor-meets-rich intertwining of the simple farmer turned bodyguard, José Ángel (Eduardo Yáñez), and his wealthy employer and charge, Victoria Balvanera (Erika Buenfil), is obviously something that’s been done many times before, but it is being played here with considerable charm and good humor by Yáñez and Buenfil. Victoria, a classy, cultured woman who reads Marguerite Duras and shuts herself in a private studio to paint while listening to Mozart, endearingly juvenilized into a mischievous, giggling schoolgirl as she snuck a peek at José Ángel in the shower. In a parallel scene in a later episode, José Ángel accidentally wanders upon Victoria while she is in the bathtub. He exits unnoticed by her only to have to then conceal himself in her bedroom from her husband Nelson (Guillermo Capetillo), attempting to hide his hulking frame at the side of the bed and behind some curtains before finally taking a leap from the second story to the ground below.

TELENOVELA WATCH: CORAZONES BLINDADOS Premieres Monday! Plus, ROSA DIAMANTE, AMOR BRAVIO & UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR

CORAZONES BLINDADOS
The Colombian production CORAZONES BLINDADOS (ARMORED HEARTS) premieres this Monday, October 22nd on MundoFox at 8 p.m. ET. Following the lives of police officers that patrol the dangerous streets of Bogotá, CORAZONES BLINDADOS is the second of what MundoFox dubs as “teleseries,” expensively produced, action-based nightly serials with a shorter run than most modern telenovelas, lasting under 90 episodes. Along with EL CAPO, these “teleseries” also seem aimed more directly at male audiences – the promos for CORAZONES BLINDADOS are filled to the brim with explosions, machine guns blaring, and bodies flying.

Andrés Sandoval (TRES MILAGROS; ROSARIO TIJERAS) plays Raúl Ávila, a young man who becomes a police officer after his father is murdered. He falls in love with a fellow officer named Diana Ochoa (Majida Issa), but she is resistant to the new romance because she is unsure of the fate of the father of her child, who was kidnapped by guerillas and has been missing for six years.

TELENOVELA WATCH: UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR's Final Weeks, BELLA CALAMIDADES Comes To U.S.; Plus, AMOR BRAVIO, ROSA DIAMANTE & EL ROSTRO DE LA VENGANZA

UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR (weeknights at 7 p.m. ET on Univision) is heading into its final weeks and presumably the final story arcs are beginning to be set up. The action moved forward five months to the birth of Luciana’s son, milked for all its dramatic worth with a difficult, suspenseful delivery with mother and baby in precarious states before coming through healthy, the joyous celebration of the birth with Luciana’s family and friends, all counterbalanced by Rosalena (Laura Flores) and Gala (Jessica Coch) conspiring against the newborn. Portents were plentiful with the baby’s father (Gabriel Soto) and grandfather (David Ostrosky) away on a business trip to China and the arrival of Luciana’s mother delayed by inclement weather.

TELENOVELA WATCH: The Latest on AMOR BRAVIO, UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR & ROSA DIAMANTE! Plus, CORAZON VALIENTE & EL ROSTRO DE LA VENGANZA

AMOR BRAVÍO
It was an eventful week on AMOR BRAVÍO (weeknights at 10 p.m. ET on Univision) as the protagonists, Camila (Silvia Navarro) and Daniel (Cristián de la Fuente), caught riding in a storm, shared their first passionate kiss.  As this is a fairly traditional Televisa production, the audience is sure to see flashbacks to that kissregularly, anytime either character is in a solitary moment of reflection, you can bet that kiss is what they will be reflecting upon.  After the smooch, Camila fled to church where she pleaded that she didn’t want to feel for Daniel what she felt for Luis, her first love and fiancé who died in the first episode in a car accident.

TELENOVELA WATCH: EL ROSTRO DE LA VENGANZA Premieres July 30, ROSA DIAMANTE Expands, LA QUE NO PODÍA AMAR Nears End; Plus, PABLO ESCOBAR, UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR, PREMIOS TU MUNDO

EL ROSTRO DE LA VENGANZA PREMIERE
EL ROSTRO DE LA VENGANZA premieres this Monday at 10:30 p.m. ET on Telemundo, the third telenovela to premiere on the network this month.  Bizarrely, the television promos for the show vaguely state the start time as “after PABLO ESCOBAR;” EL ROSTRO DE LA VENGANZA looks to be a mystery telenovela, but does the time the show is airing really have to be kept a mystery as well?

TELENOVELA WATCH: POR ELLA SOY EVA, PABLO ESCOBAR First Thoughts Plus, UNA MAID EN MANHATTAN, CORAZON APASIONADO

POR ELLA…SOY EVA (weeknights at 8 p.m. ET on Univision) premiered this week, a Televisa comedy telenovela that breaks up the similarly toned, mostly dramatic telenovelas currently on Univision’s primetime schedule.  I confess, I’m generally not a fan of Televisa’s comedies, and through three episodes of POR ELLA, that hasn’t really changed.

RATINGS: PABLO ESCOBAR: EL PATRON DEL MAL Averages Nearly 2.1 Million Viewers During Premiere Week

In its premiere week, Telemundo Media’s broadcast of PABLO ESCOBAR: EL PATRON DEL MAL (Pablo Escobar: The Drug Lord), Monday-Friday at 10 p.m. ET, averaged nearly 2.1 million total viewers (persons 2+) and nearly 1.2 million adults 18-49, according to Nielsen. On the heels of a highly-rated premiere, the international hit starring Andres Parra as Pablo Escobar ranked as the second-highest novela premiere week in Telemundo’s history among adults 18-49, behind 2011’s smash hit LA REINA DEL SUR (Queen of the South), and outperformed CBS and NBC each night at 10pm among adults 18-34 and outperformed ABC Monday-Thursday in the demo.

TELENOVELA WATCH: PABLO ESCOBAR, ROSA DIAMANTE Premiered; Plus, UNA MAID EN MANHATTAN, UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR & POR ELLA SOY EVA

ROSA DIAMANTE and PABLO ESCOBAR: EL PATRÓN DEL MAL premiered this week on Telemundo, two productions that could not be farther apart on the telenovela spectrum: the former, an assortment of fairly traditional telenovela story elements such as an abandoned newborn, wicked matriarch, corporate power struggle, and deep family secrets; and the latter, a big-budget docudrama about the rise and fall of a notorious cocaine trafficker.  About the only thing the two shows have in common is they both offer a welcome respite from Telemundo’s Miami studio productions which have dominated the network’s schedule this year, with ROSA filmed entirely in Mexico and PABLO mostly filmed in Colombia.

TELENOVELA WATCH: ROSA DIAMANTE, PABLO ESCOBAR Starting Next Week; Plus, CORAZON VALIENTE

TELEMUNDO PREMIERES ROSA DIAMANTE & PABLO ESCOBAR
Telemundo announced this week their new telenovela, ROSA DIAMANTE, will premiere on Tuesday, July 10th at 8:30 p.m. ET, sharing the hour with UNA MAID EN MANHATTAN, which is in its final chapters.  The move to rush ROSA DIAMANTE out this week in half-hour installments seems designed to get the jump on Univision who is premiering the Jaime Camil/Lucero telenovela POR ELLA…SOY EVA the following week.  This tinkering with schedules is fairly common during premiere weeks between the rival networks and I imagine will get even worse when the third Spanish-language broadcast network, MundoFox, hits the air in August.