Chinese Whispers
Episode 6 of Elite begins with Guzman confronting Nano in the eerily quiet streets in the night. As he walks away, Guzman tells him he doesn’t have the balls to confront him, which he replies he doesn’t… he has brains instead. He tells him straight he didn’t kill Marina and walks away as Marina’s brother trashes Nano’s car. Following the sibling fight, Samuel is approached at school by Lu who pleads with him not to get the wrong idea over what he saw at the party. After shrugging off her threat, in class the group receive their test results back while they all learn it’s Ander’s birthday. After the incident at the pool from before, he can’t even look at Ander who watches on awkwardly as Guzman tries in vain to lighten the mood and invite him to a party. On the war path, Lu confronts Nadia about her secret and tells her she can choose to fail her classes or have her secret revealed to her parents. Meanwhile, Samuel and Rebecca continue looking into the case together, this time settling on old photos from the end of the last school year. It’s here they spy some photos of Polo wearing Christian’s shirt. They deduce that Christian and Polo may have known something about Marina’s murder and hurry off to do more digging. Polo, now with a free evening, decides to spend it with Cayetana where she struggles to tell him about her difficult home life while Samuel and Nano discuss the possibility of him leaving the country. At school, Samuel confronts Guzman and tells him the truth. He tells him Polo is behind Marina’s death and that Christian had something to do with it. Pulled aside by the teachers, they suspend Guzman thanks to Lu’s input, before she tells him that he owes her one now. At school, Nadia admits to Valerio that she’s being blackmailed into failing class, prompting him to tell her to relay the message on to his sister about the “Valerio Incident”. None the wiser to exactly what this incident is, she questions him but he holds his cards close to his chest. Relaying the message on to Lu, she immediately believes its Samuel that’s said something and screws her papers up in anger. After the fight, Guzman confronts Polo who tells him he didn’t do anything and tells him to control his anger. Meanwhile, Omar confronts his Father about his sexuality, admitting that it’s tough to lose a Father as Ander comforts him in the wake of their face to face. Samuel confronts Carla and asks her who put Christian in the hospital but Carla smiles confidently, asking him why he keeps playing this game if he keeps losing. In the future, Polo lies about being near Nano as the Inspector shows his last known location where his cell phone was active – it was Polo’s grandparent’s house. It’s here we learn the last time both brothers were seen alive was at his house which really doesn’t paint the student in a particularly favourable light. It’s here we cut back in time as we see Nano admitting to Marina’s Mum how much he loved Nano and how he could never kill her. Guzman decides to leave the interview midway through, where he leaves with a confident smile on his face, clearly hiding something. As we cut back to the past one last time, we see Nano outside in the pouring rain clutching a picture of Marina and Samuel before heading off with his bags packed. As he disappears, Guzman confronts Samuel in the street. As Guzman begins beating him down, Samuel plays the audio snippets of his talk with Carla to him. Elite’s latest episode feels like one big game of Chinese whispers. While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, at times it feels like these students would probably benefit from a group meeting and getting all their feelings out in the air. Then again, that’s probably the cynic in me watching and in doing so, we wouldn’t have much of a melodramatic show on our hands. As it happens, Elite delivers another decent episode here and while technically the show doesn’t do anything wholly different than what’s come before, there’s some nice shots in the rain at the end that does help the show stand out a little. Quite where this is likely to go next remains to be seen but for now, Elite continues to entertain despite some illogical character decisions. If you can switch off to that though, the series does well to keep things consistently interesting and dramatic.
