'Vida' Season 3 Episode 4 Review: Lyn is unhappy and it takes her a queer quinceañera on a high to realize
Have you ever been the only sober person in a party that is otherwise tripping on all forms of substance? That's what Lyn is going through in 'Vida' Season 3 Episode 4. Emma, on the other hand, has decided to not give a sh** about anything and had had some mushrooms at Lyn's friend's queer quinceañera. She ends up doing this after Lyn tells her to stop interfering with the relationship that Lyn is trying to build with their father, Victor. Both Emma and Lyn are facing issues in their relationships as well and to add this to the mix of conflicts that the two have to face is something that Lyn doesn't want to do.
When her boyfriend Rudy freaks out after Lyn tries to experiment while the two are having sex, Lyn finds it strange. He was completely interested when she had tried a strap on, but to do something similar while looking at her makes him uncomfortable. This makes Lyn, in turn, uncomfortable, but Rudy doesn't seem to understand the confusion that his girlfriend is facing at the moment. Instead, Rudy suggests that Lyn spend some time with his mother who Lyn addresses as a monster-in-law because nothing Lyn does ever makes her happy. He tries to pass it off as Lyn trying to borrow centerpieces for a party that she is organizing for her best friend's birthday party as queer quinceañera. Surprisingly, Lyn shares all her struggles with her boyfriend and his mother with her newfound father and not her friends or her sister.
Her relationship with her father is getting a lot more serious. So much so, when Emma tries to show Lyn police reports of how their father had physically abused their mother, Lyn doesn't want to see. Not because she doesn't believe in them, but because she believes that her father is now a changed man and deserves another chance at getting to know her. Lyn is not trying to erase everything that her father has done in the past, but because Victor had so far been honest with her, Lyn wants to start from the beginning with him and see where their relationship goes.
This bothers Emma who had already gone a round with Nico about going back to a home where she is physically assaulted. When Emma asks "Why do women do that?" In frustration, she is not just referring to Nico, but her own mother as well and all of this plays into Emma's decision to use drugs to escape it all. However, things take a dramatic turn when Emma in her trip ends up breaking the bowl that Lyn was forced to borrow from Rudy's mother.
For the first time this season, we finally see how Lyn loses her temper after claiming to be on this new and improved path to only concentrate on the well being of her bar. The pressure that Lyn is facing from her boyfriend who continually treats her as nothing but a trophy girlfriend who accompanies him to look pretty, in addition to the pressure that she puts on herself when it comes to making people around her happy is getting to her. The entire quinceañera was something that Lyn was not too happy about, to begin with. Yes, she did offer to throw a big birthday party for her best friend but she did not except the party to become a complete blowout with drugs and more.
With Vida, Lyn had been trying to create something that she would be proud of and she was happy with the way things were at the bar. Ever since Rudy and she decided that they would go steady, however, Lyn's opinions about a lot of things have changed. She wants Rudy to be able to look at the bar as something more than his girlfriend's hobby. She was Vida to something that is respectable and somehow that is not the vibe she is getting at her friend's birthday party.
At the end, all that Lyn is left with is a deep sense of dissatisfaction with everything around her. Her relationships and her work. She is embarrassed not about her friends, but their taste in decor and she finds all the people at the party lowering their inhibitions distasteful. In fact, the final few shots of the episode are colored with a sense of distaste.