It's been weeks since viewers of Like it was yesterday Viewers have watched as the relationship between Salva, the lawyer played by Ernest Villegas, and Aina, his master's student portrayed by actress Tai Fati, unfolded. The series has slowly built a conflict whose outcome the audience anticipated before the characters themselves, and which, at the same time, they hoped would not come to pass.
The TV3 series has boldly presented a situation of abuse of power perpetrated by a beloved character who always plays a positive role in the plot. A successful and upright lawyer, he is the partner of Marta, played by Sílvia Bel. The way the script has painstakingly woven the plot, adding nuances and doubts, has lent realism to the conflict.
The starting point was the young student's admiration for her professor, which inflates the lawyer's ego. He, twenty years her senior, feels flattered and interprets the young woman's professional recognition as a personal interest. He feels seduced and decides to assume a mentor role to manage the student's infatuation. A superb, yet symptomatic and very well-conceived, secondary incident unfolds throughout this process: Salva's biased account of the student to his partner, explaining that he has hired her, leads Marta to believe the student is a man.
Little by little, the audience has witnessed how Salva subtly forged the bond: he hires her, suggests meeting outside of work to discuss professional matters, they go to a restaurant with a romantic ambiance, and then, quite naturally, claims to be talking amicably about other things. When he feels trapped by the couple, he conceals it, even firing the student to save face. But he insists on maintaining contact and favors, always appealing to a friendly and natural approach, so that nothing appears to be what it is. Meanwhile, we see the girl's confusion, unsure how to manage her legitimate professional aspirations with an intuition that some deny her: "Salva is a really good guy." And the audience believes it too. Until his veiled intentions become explicit. After she rejects a kiss and groping in the car, he fails her. He hesitated between an eight and a nine, but finally gives her a four and a half. And this injustice will precipitate the end. In front of Marta, who has been suspicious for days, Aina explodes: "You only gave me the job because you wanted to sleep with me? The day of the party, in the car, you jumped on me and groped me all over! I ran away! I even ended up throwing up from disgust!" I ended up throwing up from disgust! Looks play a key role in the scene. It's a story that has explored the darker, more insidious aspects of abuse of power: the ambiguities of the abuser and the doubts of the victim. And it has successfully portrayed the idea that abuse doesn't always erupt in a blatant way, but can be disguised in everyday gestures and by people you'd never guess.
