Gentefied wanted to avoid "trauma porn" of having Pop in immigration custody in Season 2

Variety

Joaquín Cosio's character was stopped by the police on his way to a family event and ended up being taken into detention for not having papers at the end of Season 1 of the Netflix comedy that tackles gentrification in Boyle Heights. But 21 months passed and a pandemic happened between when the Season 1 finale aired in February 2020 and when Season 2 picks up on Thursday. As a result, Gentefied creators Marvin Lemus and Linda Yvette Chávez were no longer interested in producing trauma porn or re-saturating their community and their audience with imagery of undocumented individuals behind bars. Instead, they wanted to take Pop, who represented many in the older generation who “come from the fear of sharing their status,” Chávez notes, and turn him into “a very empowered person who can stand in their status and say, ‘I’m here.'” So Season 2 begins with Pop being returned to his family, opting to show him wearing an ankle monitor as he goes through the legal process. “It ended up becoming a symbol throughout the season for Pop and the purgatory that he’s in. He’s not able to wear his favorite boots because he has to wear the ankle bracelet all the time. We wanted to capture that nuance, but we didn’t want it to turn into a procedural or a documentary,” says Lemur.

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• Season 2 has a slight tweak to its format: "Where Season 1 had standalone episodes devoted to various side characters — the episode focusing on Ana’s mom comes to mind — this season goes the standard route of integrating everything," says Kristen Lopez. "Pop becomes more of the fulcrum around which Erik, Ana, and Chris all revolve. The only new addition to the cast of significance is Chris’ father, Ernesto (Manuel Uriza), who was little more than a voice on the other end of the phone in Season 1. Uriza’s performance is great as, up till now, we’ve perceived Ernesto as an enemy, a man who got out of town as quick as he could and who perceives Chris’ work at Mama Fina’s as beneath him. Much of Chris’ storyline this season involves the push-and-pull of his father’s desire to see Chris leave Boyle Heights and pursue his dream, and Chris’ desire to stay connected to his Mexican roots. Santos’ performance this go-round feels more muted than last year — there’s no showy restaurant showdown for him. Instead, we see him embark on a new relationship that, much like Ana, sees him possibly working for the gentrifying forces at work in Boyle Heights. The generational relationship between Casimiro and Ernesto, and Ernesto and Chris, leads to a beautiful and heartfelt conclusion for the trio that sees Chris’ dueling desires coalesce."
• Gentefied wanted Season 2 to "explore this other facet of immigration that we don’t normally get to see": Co-creator Marvin Lemus says they wanted “to get into the nuance of how it affects the entire family and how family separation can look in a way that happens every single day, where people are just trying to be in their joy, trying to create memories… but in the background, always having this looming dark cloud, (that) all of this could be swept out from under us at any point. We wanted to do that while still being able to see all of their joy and how they use the humor to cope with it.”
• Lemus says the reaction in Boyle Heights  has been "overwhelmingly positive": "There was that layer of wanting to do right by Boyle Heights," he says. "And I feel like we accomplished that. I actually just saw, a few weeks ago, somebody from the community that we got to interview in advance, and they were able to talk us through their experiences of gentrification. And I remember when we met them, they were sussing us out. But this was the first time I had seen them since then. I saw them. I said, 'Hi,' because I'm just a fan of them and their work. And they were like, 'Oh my God.' She told me straight up, "When we saw you, you guys asked to take a picture. And I was like, "I don't even know, should I be doing that? Should I be seen with these folks," trying to figure you guys out. And then I watched the show and it felt like home, it felt so full of love. Thank you so much for doing that. It's clear that you guys were trying to make something that felt real.' And so that was like the best compliment to get, because that's what we wanted it to be. We hoped that it would be clear that we infused every moment of this show with love, and filled a void in our own lives by creating something that we hadn't seen yet."
• Gentefied creators already have ideas for Season 3: "Marvin pitched something to me this past summer for season 3 that I thought was really interesting and fascinating," says co-creator Linda Yvette Chávez, with Lemus adding, "This season feels different from first season in like, we're always trying to figure out how do we not repeat ourselves? Part of me was like, 'I think it might be done.' And then I had a spark of creativity that I was like, maybe we have a way in (that would be cool)."
• Chávez says the show has helped spark important conversations among family members watching together: “Someone posted that they had seen the series with their parents, and when they came to the queer scenes they freaked out, they were like, ‘Oh, I don't know what my parents are gonna say after this.’ And they said that right afterwards, they asked her mom like, ‘Oh, is that okay?’ And their mom said, ‘Love is love, mi hija,'" says Chavez. "They had never really had the conversation, and she didn't even realize that her mom was okay with it.”