Warning: this article contains spoilers about the new season of “Strawberries with Sugar”. If you don’t want to know details, please don’t read on.
“On a scale of 0-10, how cringe?”; “Too much ‘Elite’ vibes?”; “Are they [Simão and Soraia] the same? Is she still a little crazy?”. These were the questions that my colleagues from MAGG, all under-25, asked me after returning from watching the first two episodes of the new “Morangos com Açúcar” (“MCA”). I brought good tidings from the Plural studios, in Bucelas, and the tidings are good.
The episodes of the new season of “MCA” arrive on Prime Video and TVI on October 23rd. The Queluz de Baixo channel will broadcast one episode per week, and the streaming platform will make the 10 episodes of the new season available on that day. A second season will follow in early 2024 and then a third in the summer.
Much has been said about the first images released of this new series, starring Madalena Aragão, Margarida Corceiro and Vicente Gil. There were comparisons with the Netflix youth series “Elite”, many criticisms regarding the change in tone, much closer to streaming narratives than to the soap opera format, shown on TVI between 2003 and 2012.
Times are different and, those who go expecting nostalgia, can take the horse out of the rain. Although there are characters who carry over from previous seasons, and who gain a new life story as adults here, although the school where the action takes place is the same (Colégio da Barra, on the Cascais line), the new ‘moranguitos’ are teenagers from 2023… maybe with more seen clothes and more careful hairstyles.
Beyond the story, the main differences between these “Morangos” and the old ones is the care with the photography, the editing, the soundtrack, the wardrobe and the dialogues, which can only be achieved when there is time and money to build a project like this. The collaboration with Prime Video proved to be essential here to make this 10-episode series a product that fits in any foreign market and can be consumed in Portugal, Brazil or even Japan.
This has just started and we already have a Gabi powder that doesn’t go away
Kika (Beatriz Frazão), the host of the podcast “Morangos com Açúcar” is the “Gossip Girl” of Colégio da Barra. The Lady Whistledown of the tuga. But, unlike the 2000s series and “Bridgterton”, her identity is known a priori and she is also the voice-over that we hear at the beginning of the first episode. The cusca of service, therefore. And also the owner of the most incredible wardrobe of the young core of “MCA” (we want all the sunglasses, okay?).
Gabriela, or rather, Gabi (Margarida Corceiro) is the beta of the school, the queen of Colégio da Barra. In the best style of Regina George, from the movie “Giras e Terrible”, Gabi also has two minions, Pipa (Mafalda Peres) and Emilia (Rita Guerner) who don’t let go of her and say ‘amen’ to everything. Of course Gabi is an influencer, of course everything in her life revolves around clothes, brands, partnerships, lives in front of a ring light.
Gabi is so beta, so beta, so beta that her father has a yacht for Gabi to vacation with friends in Ibiza. #betices. Gabi is so “I’m the most popular girl in school” that she takes it for granted to date Miguel (Vicente Gil)… until the day Olivia (Madalena Aragão) appears.