Every episode of “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” averages out to around 11 minutes, but the show packs a lot in with what little time it has. In its first two episodes, which premiered August 17, the Adult Swim series includes murder plots; steamy lesbian sex scenes; a little girl riding around the streets of Quito, Ecuador on a giant guinea pig (or cuy, as the show’s subtitles name them); and some of the soapiest melodrama seen on American TV since the heights of “Melrose Place.” With such creativity on display, the stop-motion series’ status as the channel’s first Spanish-language series is only half of what makes it distinctive.
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Set in a fantasy version of ’80s Ecuador, the series tells a complex tale of romantic love and corporate intrigue via the medium of stop-motion, focusing on the women surrounding Marioneta Negocios (Pepa Pallarés), a businesswoman attempting to promote cuys as pets rather than food, a campaign that puts her in the crosshairs of Doña Quispe (Laura Torres), a celebrity chef who operates butcher shops serving the tiny rodents as meals. Their feud — which drags their friends, families, and lovers in with them — has the arch tone and fabulous ’80s fashion of a Pedro Almodóvar movie. It’s a singular show, one that creator Gonzalo Cordova describes as the result of wanting to make a series that truly represents him.
“In the middle of a pandemic, I was looking for work, like a lot of people, a little bit more desperate than usual, and I was getting a lot of development stuff that didn’t feel quite like me, but it felt like it was being brought to me because I’m Latino,” Cordova said in an interview with IndieWire. “It would be stuff like a working class Mexican family in East LA, and I’m not trying to put down those ideas, but I’m Ecuadorian. I’m from South Florida, literally the other side of the continent. I would have had to do as much research as anybody else to get that right. Point of desperation, I said yes to one of those things, and it didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t feel like the person telling that story. So in a big fit of frustration, I wrote this pitch in a weekend, I told my agents, I don’t want to take that other thing, I want to pitch this as soon as possible. A few weeks later, I pitched it to Adult Swim, and the whole thing was there.”
Cordova, who cut his teeth as a writer on animated series like “Tuca & Bertie” and “Undone,” first had the vague ideas for what would become “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” a few years before he pitched it, when he went to a puppet show at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles. Around the same time, he had been watching Almodóvar films on the Criterion Channel, and wondered what would happen if the two were mixed together.
Prior to working on the show, Cordova had been a fan of melodramas: He cites women’s pictures of the ’40s like Joan Crawford’s “Mildred Pierce” as movies he adores, and said Almodóvar’s films like “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” speak to him because of their mix of camp and sincerity. Cordova said that, while trying to depict Ecuador on the show, he felt that tone was one that felt appropriate.
“I grew up hearing all these family stories about Ecuador, and about things that happened in my family, and they were all so melodramatic and over the top and exaggerated,” Cordova said. “For me, it had a connection to his world, to the way his films in the ‘80s are very colorful and over the top. And I wanted to see if I could put pluck a character from his world, and kind of put it in that world and see what would happen.”
To capture the ’80s aesthetic, Cordova researched the decade at the Downtown Los Angeles library, where he looked at design books from the time period to help him craft the bright outfits and fabulous power suits that give the show a distinctive look. One thing he wanted to set out to avoid was making a show that looked “movie ’80s,” a parody of the decade with jeggings and poofed up hair, but instead create something that felt like a piece of media from the actual time period like “Working Girl.” To ground the fantasy, he and his team did research into Ecuador, taking research from the city to design the streets and
Animation for the series was done by Cinema Fantasma, a Mexico City-based studio operated by brothers Arturo and Roy Ambriz. Working on the show was a challenge, Arturo said, because of the unusual scope of the series for a stop-motion production. He estimated about 60 miniatures were used during the creation of the series, many of which had multiple costume changes. “Every day we were running and trying to figure out where this puppet was required, if maybe the hand had become loose and it had to be replaced, which animator was going to be animating on which scenery,” he told IndieWire.
“Usually when you see stop-motion productions, there is one set with two characters and with the same clothing. But for this production, we needed to create a lot of different sets,” Roy Ambriz told IndieWire. “Some sets were used only for one shot or for one scene, but that creates and helps the melodrama. They’re real people working, but they are miniatures, they are toys. So I think that’s something comedic in the medium, this kind of animation is used to create a parody of life.”
Through the full eight-episode season, “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” has plenty of laughs stemming from its absurdist fantasy world. But Cordova and his writing team keep the overall plot heightened drama, resulting in a series where the humor and the serious moments are often completely intertwined.
“Some of the stuff that made me laugh the most is going to be the stuff that people think is dramatic. This speech that is so emotional is what I was laughing about,” Cordova said. “It’s all done with puppets. That’s the funny element of the show is to treat it dead serious, but then have this disconnect between real life and the reality of the show.”
“Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” has not yet been renewed for a second season, but Cordova already has ideas for where he wants to take these characters should he get more episodes to play around with them. One of his plans? To slightly tone down the melodrama next season in favor of a full season that takes inspirations from other genres, including but not limited to film noir.
“In researching this I got really into erotic thrillers,” Cordova said. “I think I want to go in that direction.”
Talking about his creative philosophy while making the series, Cordova cites his experience working with “Tuca & Bertie” creator Lisa Hanawalt as particularly influential for how he went about running the series. The most important advice he learned from her? That it’s OK to throw anything at the wall if you’re bringing your own passions and obsessions to the experience.
“I want to show my whole ass,” Cordova said. “It’s okay to do something and just not be sure if it’s gonna work, but you like it. I really tried to hold on to that while making the show. This show’s not made to please anybody except me.”
“Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” airs Sunday nights on Adult Swim.
