by Jill Ciment
She told her Filipina producer to have the writers kill off Maria, she wasn’t going to do another season.
In the six remaining episodes, a plot twist had Maria drink her own poison and suffer a stroke. The last three shows took place in a hospital room, where Maria lingered long enough to end the season with a teaser. In the last shot on the last day, Vida asked to end her performance with an extreme close-up. She didn’t want any help from the makeup department to achieve the droop of paralysis. All she wanted was her right eye taped shut. As the camera moved in for the final shot, Vida opened her good eye. The left half of her face remained unchanged, but the right half drooped as if the musculature underneath had turned to jelly. The taped lid began struggling against its bondage. The good eye stared unblinking into the widening lens, lest the audience forget that a human being was looking back at them from the far side of the glass.