Ride Out Your Quarantine With The Horrible Spanish Children of ELITE

In many ways, the coronavirus outbreak was poorly timed for those of us who need constant entertainment. Sports are gone. Bars are operating at lesser capacities. Movie theaters? Locking yourself in for two hours with other people seems above my threshold for risk. Thankfully, one beautifully horny rainbow has blessed us on this, Friday the 13th. And that is the third season of Netflix's Spanish high school dramedy ÉLITE.
Taking place in a Spanish private school that is equal parts Gossip Girl (everyone is hot, rich, and horrible) and Hogwarts (every year comes with a new catastrophe, usually murder), ÉLITE is a page-turner in the form of a TV show. While the show's three seasons all set up with a similar format — a horrible accident or mystery is established via flash-forward before the show rewinds and moves its way to that in present time (similarly to Big Little Lies) — each differentiates itself by both the fluctuating character relationships and the amount of sex everyone is having. (Season 2 is the horniest, for those keeping track.)

Truly, what more could you want from a show while you're holed up at home? The cast is incredible, and even if they all play to types, those types are more interesting than "nerd" and "jock." You've got Samuel, the ersatz protagonist, a poor newcomer who somehow becomes wrapped up with all the rich kids and their aforementioned murders. You've got Guzman, who starts off as the antagonist before becoming a rage-filled teddy bear. You've got Lu, a Mexican tornado of drama who also is maybe, sort of into light incest.  And you've got Carla, the show's best and most complex character. She's presented as an evil rich girl, who then turns into a cuckolding queen and murder accomplice, and that's just in season one.

The rest of the cast is filled out by characters coming to terms with their sexuality, the pressures of cutthroat private school education, sex tapes, and betrayals so plentiful that it's hard to keep track of who is friends with whom. And it's all performed in oftentimes hard to understand thick Spanish accents; if you speak Spanish from Latin America, prepare to struggle with everyone except Lu (particularly, Mariana, the female lead of season one), and if you don't speak Spanish, well, you're probably not gonna learn anything besides new slang for fucking ("follar"), douchebag ("filipollas"), and fuck buddies (follamigos).

So, if you've got roughly 24 hours of TV time over the next however-long while you're socially distancing yourself, give ÉLITE a shot. Mostly because it's pulpy fun with Spanish accents, but also because I need to indoctrinate more people into the Cult of Carla.