And Another Thing: Los Espookys Is Silly and Charming

Ashley Spurgeon is a lifelong TV fan — nay, expert — and with her recurring television and pop-culture column "And Another Thing," she'll tell you what to watch, what to skip, and what's worth thinking more about. 

Hey everyone, I’d like you to introduce you to my new best friends: The resourceful, creeptastic gang from Los Espookys! Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco) is the “leader” of Los Espookys and cutest boy at the goth club; he loves horror cinema and throwing horror-themed parties. Wealthy, enigmatic Andrés (Julio Torres) is heir to a major chocolate corporation, but struggles with literal demons from his childhood. Their deadpan friend Úrsula (Cassandra Ciangherotti) works in a dentist’s office and is a pro with prosthetics and fake teeth, while her sister Tati (Ana Fabrea) is one of my favorite new “types” — in a way not dissimilar to Orla from Derry Girls, Tati is a profoundly weird girl who is so wrong about how human interactions work that she may be operating on another level of existence. Big-time Luna Lovegood vibes.

But wait! What is Los Espookys? “We’re Not Ghostbusters, It’s Different,” the business cards say. The group of rapidly aging millennials is trying its best to earn money doing what they love, which is setting up spooky tricks and schemes to scare people — from your “standard inheritance scare” wherein the last one standing after a night of terror gets the money, to creating a sea monster to drum up tourism for a seaside town (the town’s last tourist attraction was a little owl in a wig, but the wig fell off, possibly in the ocean, because it wasn’t secured with bobby pins). The group was inspired to get into business by Renaldo’s Tío Tico (Fred Armisen), a man living out his childhood dream of parking cars. 

Silly and charming, Los Espookys takes place mostly en Español (the language that gave us “y,” a conjunction such leaps and bounds better than “and” that it staggers the mind), and is set in a nameless Latin American country within driving distance of Los Angeles. (It was shot in Santiago, Chile.) A great joy of watching this show for me was the parsing of my own ignorance — my lazy monolinguist’s brain (think Peggy Hill-level understanding of Español) couldn’t tell when Tati put on an American accent, or even that Renaldo’s name is odd. As a child, he was mocked by other kids because his name was not Reynaldo with a “y.” The children called him a monster because a part of him was missing. But lo, this was the origin story for Renaldo’s love of horror, because he learned that missing a part of himself was what makes him special. 

Los Espookys has been on my watch list for a while, and it instantly won me over in the very first scene. Pre-credits! I walked in fairly clean: I had no idea Fred Armisen was involved, let alone an executive producer. Lorne Michaels also executive produces. And Julio Torres, the chocolate prince Andrés himself, is a SNL writer as well. Torres, Ana Fabrea and Fred Armisen all co-created the project, with Torres and Fabrea writing all six episodes. 

Los Espookys isn’t spooky at all; it’s insanely funny and tight as hell. Like, here’s how you write a comedy show: In the first episode, we learn the chocolate company is releasing a new bar called the “Charlie Wonka.” Two episodes later, a joke about how they’re being sued for copyright infringement. Not to be like, “You really root for the characters!” but ... you really root for the characters. As I said, they are all my new best friends. I especially have a soft spot for Tati, always hustling in this busted gig economy of ours — she has one job in which she breaks in other people’s shoes, and another where she moves the second hand in a clock tower. 

This show smartly utilizes the short-season format by building out a champion stable of tertiary characters, each of whom could easily lead their own series. A nun, up for the inheritance scare money, on what she’d do with her winnings: “I’d get tickets to see the Pope in Miami, buy some Versace and rosaries — lots of diamond rosaries.” There are a few English-language scenes that feature Carol Kane, who plays a throwback Scream Queen beloved by Renaldo and the gang. “Big Carol Kane energy” is overall a good way to describe the cracked, fun, bizarre spookiness that is the show’s true ethos. 

I feel like a very lazy critic to point out that, hey, this show is also an A+ example of magical realism in a Latin American storytelling, but it’s true! You get halfway through the season and, oh, look, a magic mirror! (“That one is cursed,” the mirror salesman tells Andrés. “I’m just letting you know because some people don’t like that.”) I feel like a very needy critic too, because I did some light Instagram stalking of cast members recently — I want more episodes. It looks like they were remote rehearsing about six months ago, so fingers crossed for more this year.