La Rosa de Guadalupe

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La Rosa de Guadalupe (English: The Rose of Guadalupe, often abbreviated as LRDG) is a Mexican anthology drama series created and produced by Carlos Mercado Orduña for Televisa. It is mainly aimed at teens ages 12-18. Each episode presents a self-contained story (set in modern times mostly in Mexico City, but the location may vary in some episodes) featuring the main character whose conflict is resolved as a miracle after they pray to La Virgen (The Virgin) and is delivered a white rose (that never wilts) from her, hence the title. After the conflict is resolved, the white rose disappears. It premiered in February 2008 on XEW-TV (Las Estrellas) and has been airing since with 10 seasons and 1,000+ episodes.

La Rosa de Guadalupe
Cómo NO hacer un programa sobre el catolicismo. (How NOT to make a show about Catholicism).
Genre: Melodrama Drama Running Time: 41-44 minutes Country: Mexico Release Date: February 5, 2008 – present Network(s): Las Estrellas Created by: Carlos Mercado Orduña Distributed by: Televisa Seasons: 16 Episodes: 2,000+

Premise

There are two types of beginnings for the episodes: a regular one, which begins with a happy start, or the main scene where something awful has happened to the main character. If the latter choice were to happen, the credits depicting who edited, starred, and directed the episode come out during the second scene.

Some of these people, being devout to the Virgin of Guadalupe, asks her to protect that person. At the same time, a white rose appears before an altar, statue, drawing, figurine, etc. of the Virgin that belongs to the person who prayed or is in trouble and remains there during the development of the story, which is usually when the problem is compounded. The appearance of the rose means that the petition has been heard by the Virgin.

At the climax of the story, which is the time when the main character is in a serious situation, the closest person "asked" intercedes for him and tries to help. When the issue is resolved, the main character is "fondled" by a 10-second wind that represents the act of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and at the end of the episode, the white rose disappears as one character narrates the moral of the episode.

Why It's Not A Miracle

1. Quantity over Quality: Even though it's been hated by many, this show has been running for way too long (as it started in 2008) as this shows has 1,500+ episodes which is way too long for a show like this and because of this reason it will often jump the shark.
2. Mean-spirited, dumb, bland, and annoying teenage characters who use outdated slang, making the series look like it was written by a 60-year-old who has only heard the word "Snapchat" once and already believes he's hip with the "far-out youth".
3. The episode names are clichéd, unoriginal, misplaced, cheesy, and terrible.
4. Some episodes are "based" on real stories like incidents but they fail a lot, making it mean spirited, like an episode that was based on the ABC nursery fire one example was the episode "Adios Inocencia" (Goodbye Innocence), which is based on a true case where some girls were raped in a camp by thieves and two were underage, it never aired on TV for the claims of victims who felt it was disrespectful (see Trivia for more information).
5. Terrible music that is stock footage-like in nature.
6. Speaking of the music, they don't use new music for some reason, and because it is used in EVERY episode, it is very irritating to listen to.
7. This controversial episode: "Cosplay, Salvemos al Mundo", proves that the show handles themes in a superficial way.
8. Certain plots and points are introduced at the beginning or middle of an episode, but then they are forgotten and that's why you get a little development because it ends suddenly without a conclusion or the plot ends in a very short time without real development, this is worse when the plots have more than two plots like Heroes.
9. Relation to point #2, bad representation of teens, making them look irresponsible and stupid, and that they always yell to their parents.
10. Little-to-no character development that feels extremely rushed.
11. Tries to take themes like violence, teen pregnancy, incest, Internet trends, drug usage, rape, and bullying seriously, but due to the incompetent handling of issues and the general mean-spirited feeling this show is notorious for, it ends up backfiring and said themes are badly portrayed.
12. Correlating to the previous point, the writers deal poorly with those themes and just focus on scaring or creating suspense for the viewers by including them in the series.
13. The series contains terrible, cheesy, and cringy acting by young, inexperienced actors/actresses. This makes it hard to emotionally react to a dramatic scene that features horrid acting, which is unintentionally funny at times. For example, if they try to mimic a heart attack, it looks like they are trying to dance (in a bad way), and their way of mimicking pain looks like the demon has summoned on them. It is so bad that the English Wikipedia page for the show says that "it is viewed as a source of accidental comedy", and it's not even an official TV genre.
14. The actors/actresses in the show are repeated in various episodes for some reason.
15. Despite the show being made in Mexico, the series portrays Mexican society and culture in a negative light.
    • Even its country of origin, Mexico, has criticized the show for the aforementioned reasons.
16. Great part of episodes has a lot of plotholes.
17. Showcases and tells viewers that every conflict within an episode can be solved if you pray hard enough to La Virgen, and a rose appears, meaning that La Virgen has heard the prayers. This magical bit to the series is often out-of-place in a supposedly realistic series. The series has been criticized for exaggerating the Catholic religion due to this one reason. The premise that a problem can be resolved if La Virgen delivers you a white rose is already bad enough on its own, but it actually caused a suicide. The victim believed that La Virgen would save him at the last minute from killing himself after getting inspiration from the series, but obviously, that never occurred, and he went along with the suicide.
18. Remarkably, the writers are running out of ideas, because various episodes had recycled plots from past episodes like: "Brazadas de Amor" (Strokes of Love) and "A toda Bateria" (Full Battery), these episodes had the same plot, just only changing the ambient and the characters, even the dialogues are recycled.
19. Lots of useless fillers, like the scenes in which they eat that last almost 1 minute and there are in episodes at least 2 or 3 scenes of the people of the episode eating.
20. Utilizes cookie-cutter plots (the main character encounters a problem, they pray to La Virgen, she delivers them the titular white rose, problem gets solved, etc.) which always have a happy ending, save for one episode, Busca el Sol (Look for the Sun), which ended in a bittersweet way.
21. It also made fun of Pokémon Go by making an episode called Monsterball Go, an episode where the creators brainwash anyone who watches the episode by making them think their sons will die just because they play Pokémon Go.
22. And it also made an episode about the Blue Whale Challenge called "Cuando Encallan las Ballenas", but it's very uninformed about the real Blue Whale Challenge, making the people believe (usually adults) that the challenge was invented by A SIMPLE FACEBOOK GROUP OF MEMBERS INSTEAD OF A GROUP OF RUSSIAN HACKERS.
23. The show can be hypocritical at times.
24. Some episodes feature incredibly disturbing scenes, such as one with a scene where a kid named Roberto commits suicide in his school via jumping off a balcony.
25. In the earlier episodes, the music being played in the background lasts too long.
26. There are some episodes where the actors are just screaming half the time, especially in the episode “#LadyCuernos.”
27. Whenever a scene ends, they show images of clouds which is just stock footage, you can find the same ones online. They even reuse them from time to time.
28. The episodes have goofs or scenery errors, such as in "El Estallido del Corazón" (The Boom of the Heart) wherein scene a teenager explodes a pigeon in his hand when he has to throw it to the ground although fortunately, nothing happened to the actor.
29. Many of the episodes with themes about the LBGT + community are full of stereotypes towards them, with the most notorious example being the episode "Amor Distinto" (Distinct Love).
30. There's is so much filler that the Latin-American network it airs reruns on, "Galavisión," removes most of the filler scenes.
31. The music being used at the beginning of the episode, "Las 7 Alertas del Bullying," (The 7 Alerts of Bullying,) is music stolen from somewhere else.
32. Even one of Televisa's newest series, "Una Familia de Diez" (A Family of Ten) made fun of this series because in their episode, one of the kids was being a brat and the grandpa said "you're acting like you're in "La Rosa de Guadalupe," may I remind you this is from the same company that made this show, Televisa.
33. Even the creator of this show, Carlos Mercado Orduña, thought it would only last 5 years.
34. The show's idea was rejected many times by different networks when it was pitched.
35. It now has 6 episodes about a pandemic.
36. Most actors from the series, don't follow it on social media platforms but instead follow other shows they were in.
37. The episode "Una Gran Historia de Amor" (A Great Love Story), also known as the "Mi Hijo es Negro" (My Son is Black) episode, tries to show how cruel some parents can be when it comes to their kid's looks, but since the show doesn't know how to properly make episodes about serious situations, it makes the episode racist and it is one of their most controversial episodes.
38. 2011 has got to be the show's worst year ever, giving us episodes like "Amar a Tu Propia Hermana" "La Niña Sicario," the terrible Christmas special "Ave María" which has loads and loads of filler plus cringy acting, the infamous "Un Momento de Vida" episode where one of the girls start screaming because they couldn't see Justin Bieber, and the infamous "Cosplay: Salvemos Al Mundo" episode.
39. It's interesting to know that the show uses new music in their episodes, the thing is, if you listen to them very closely, you'll realize that they are remakes of older music the show used, meaning the new music is useless and sounds worse then it's older versions.
40. The series made young actor, Daney, quit after being bullied for acting in it.
41. The 3 part episode, “La Semilla del Bien,” started interesting enough, but since the series doesn’t know how to write murder mystery plots, the second part reveals that it was all a dream and the second and third parts just feel like your typical LRDG episode. This is because they killed the suspense.
    • In season 1, the New Years’ special they had done the same thing, where a father teaches his kid how to shoot a gun for New Years’ because it’s his family tradition. He ended up accidentally shooting his neighbor which causes suspense, then later on we see the mother waking up because it was all a dream. That killed the story completely.
42. The network Galavision has an obsession with putting this on from 5 pm to 5 am. It’s what happens when a show airs too many episodes and does not worry about the quality of it. Any network can now air it all the time because of that.
43. Season 13 was all about the COVID-19 virus, there was 0 variety. The show did get back on track in Season 14 though.
44. A Season 12 episode did not have any rose or wind, this is a good idea to test out something new for the show. However, the show killed the surprise at the end by acknowledging the fact that they had no wind or rose which doesn’t make any sense. Don’t acknowledge it, just leave it as something people can look back at and draw conclusions as to why the episode was the way it was.
45. "No es Una Prueba De Amor" (It's not a Love Test), has a 3-minute long scene of our main cast playing instruments. Which doesn’t do anything to the plot, plus to more minutes of the guys talking to our protagonist and his girlfriend which makes 5 MINUTES OF FILLER. If you remove these scenes, you won’t miss anything.
46. They have no idea what to do with their intro, it’s very inconsistent when they put it on. An episode from Season 1, “A La Orilla del Cielo,” put the intro in 25 MINUTES after the episode started. An early episode put it in 5 minutes after, sometimes ten minutes, sometimes at the beginning. Very inconsistent.
47. The executive producer and other staff members of LRDG, know about the criticism they receive and have responded with, “Well it doesn’t matter, at least we’re getting more ratings,” meaning that they can’t take constructive criticism and are selfish enough to make their own show bad just to get more ratings as a publicity stunt. Something you should look into in the next point.
48. It seems like Televisa is demanding more and more episodes without much thought or care. It seems like they are waiting for the next terrible episode that people get angry about for attention. It’s not like Televisa’s other long-running show, Vecinos (Neighbors), where it got mediocre because it went on for too long. It didn’t start like that, LRDG’s first episode that people got angry about was, Soy Emo, back in 2008 and they’ve been making more and more bad episodes after. Once Televisa realized that the terrible episodes we were giving them attention, they demanded more and more seasons to see what the next controversial episode would be. They realized that controversy and attention, which is why that show has gone on longer than it was intended to be. Even the program creator thought the show was gonna end in 2013 but due to the company demanding more, they kept going. Televisa isn’t stupid. They just act stupid.
49. They purposely add lines in episodes saying, “the authorities don’t do good at their jobs,” or “the authorities are terrible people,” just to raise controversy.
50. They make episodes over-sexualizing women. These episodes are made because the episodes with sex scenes are the ones with the most ratings. Then tell the audience doing so is wrong when they’ve done it on numerous occasions. One video they uploaded on their official YouTube channel with a boy falling in love with his neighbor and kissing her had over 700M views.
51. The show’s idea makes real situations too simple. For example, the Christmas special, “Ave Maria,” had a baby falling out a window due to the family’s negligence. The baby ends up surviving a 7 story window because the Virgin Mary’s robe was laying on the grass. If the baby died this could have worked for some emotional moments where the parents realize their mistake and promise their daughter to treat her better than her now-dead brother. This could have worked for the parents to reflect on their mistake but no, just a miracle. As usual, the beginning started off as a nightmare and then the daughter warns the parents and so on.
52. The show cutting to people’s faces before they cut to commercial is really annoying and it’s clear that they do it to kill time.
53. The show even goes so far as to dramatize and exaggerate to the limit the everyday things in life. For example, they tell you that by a simple blow to the leg in soccer you will automatically lose it, as it was in episode "Sin barreras".
54. It inspired young girls in Mexico to try and kidnap someone.
55. Some people even make memes out of this show, just for everyone to see how bad this show is.
56. As of 2022, the show is in its 14th season overall, and it has no signs of ending.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The theme song is decent.
2. ZIt gives a good moral to viewers at the end, and tells them not to do drugs, drink alcohol, disobey their mother, trusting strangers, etc.
3. The intro was updated, having more detail such as more shadows on the people walking in it and having realistic background noises.
4. Not all episodes are bad, "La Hermana Bastarda," (The Bastard Sister) along with the other four, two-hour-long specials are considered the only good episodes of the entire series.
5. Some episodes have satisfying endings, like "La Hermana Fea" (The Ugly Sister).
6. Some likable characters like Dulce from the episode "Mi tía, la emo" (My aunt, the emo) or Nicky from "La prima fea" (The ugly cousin).
7. The plot twists of some episodes are decent.
8. The first season can be considered decent.

Reception

La Rosa De Guadalupe has been heavily panned and ridiculed by Internet users, Mexican people, and even religious people for the cheesy acting, the way it portrays teenagers, the bad quality of the scripts, and for insinuating that society's problems are solved only with prayer and divine intervention. On Google, it holds a 3.3 by 1254 reviews, even if some of the reviews that have 5 stars are made as jokes. It currently holds a 2.8 by 833 users in IMDB . The site Catholic.net criticized the show for the way it portrayed religion. Youtuber Mr. Loquendo ranked it on the first place on his video "Top 5 peores programas de la TV mexicana" ("Top 5 worst shows on Mexican TV").

Televisa has deleted a great part of the criticism and mockery videos (most notably the ones of the YouTuber, Missasinfonia) that have been made, showing that they have not known how to handle criticism.

Episodes with Their Own Pages

Note: all these episodes were written by Carlos Mercado Orduña.

1. La Niña Sicario
2. Cosplay, Salvemos al Mundo
3. El día que se acabó el mundo
4. Mi Nombre Es Venganza

Trivia

• Despite its negative reception, the show currently airs ever since 2008.
• It is a continued spin-off series of Mujeres: Casos De La Vida Real (Women: Real-Life Cases).
• The show has given origin to a lot of memes, including YTPH and parodies, principally making fun of the acting, the air after each miracle, and various common phrases that they say like "Ya no aguanto, ya no aguanto!" (I can't stand it! I can't stand it!) "¿Y esta rosa?" (And this rose?) and "Me lates un buen, ¿quieres ser mi chava?" (Give me a good shot, do you want to be my girl?)
• It is very similar to the shows Black Mirror, Como Dice El Dicho (Like The Saying Goes), and Mujeres Rompiendo el Silencio (Women Breaking the Silence).
• It is one of the longest-running shows produced by Televisa, along with Vecinos (which went through seasonal rot by their 4th season)
• The episode called "Adios Inocencia" was not shown due to the claim of the victims, but it is theorized that it was broadcasted in 2013 or 2014 and is now considered Lost Media .

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