Vida

Engrossing and very cool, this drama's interesting setting -- a rapidly gentrifying lower-income Latin neighborhood in East L.A. -- gives it a unique sense of place. Not that Emma and Lyn appreciate it, at least at first. Emma, whose always-in-place carmine-red lipstick is an emblem for her put-together life, has a heavy job with a demanding boss in Chicaco; Lyn's been chasing a bohemian life in San Francisco, with a gringo boyfriend who likes her enough to invest in her line of Aztec lotions. Both of them are surprised to find themselves back home again, quickly embroiled in the neighborhood politics they became a part of as soon as they inherited their mom's building (which is half-filled with undocumented immigrants, Lyn tells us in Vida's first episode).

But while in lesser shows the people in the neighborhood would be types mouthing slogans, these residents quickly emerge as real, complex people -- hot-tempered young Mari (Chelsea Rendon), who's fighting her neighborhood's gentrification in YouTube videos and on the streets, Vidalia's widow, (played sympathetically by non-binary actor Anzoategui), so bereft at her wife's passing that she screams silently in the bathtub in one scene. Emma and Lyn may have tried to escape their pasts. But their lives are woven into the neighborhood -- there's no escape. Not that anyone, even conflicted Emma, would want to get far from this fascinating and complex show.