1992 – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Those Were Different Times

Episode 5 of 1992 begins with Richi and Amparo showing up at the tower where Robledo fell. The pair try in vain to get through to him, but they do find his lair. Amparo doesn’t want to look around, despite being in this exact area earlier in the season, but Richi takes the lead.

The duo creep through the hideout, where they find Robledo in a latex bath, bubbling away. He’s dead. The killer blindsides the pair and eventually scarpers away, where a chase ensues outside. Richi doesn’t have great stamina and in the end the killer manages to get away.

Richi running from the scene doesn’t look good, and the police bring him and Amparo in for questioning. The officers reprimand him for not calling the authorities and just heading in himself. Robledo is dead, and as a result, Richi starts to see visions of his dead body alongside Alvaro.

When they’re both let go from custody, Amparo memorizes Rosa’s address and decides to go investigate. Carmen is not happy when the case is closed either, despite spending the weekend looking at boot prints, and decides to pursue this further. As for Richi, he’s ready to throw in the towel and forget everything, continuing to drink.

Amparo goes to the address herself and with the help of a local, gets a boost up through the balcony. Inside, she finds the place a complete mess and empty, save for a cat. She takes the family photo for herself, but unfortunately, walks right into a trap as that strange guy from before ends up bringing his buddies in.

However, Carmen manages to somehow arrive in time and with a gun, gets out with Amparo. They ride away together, where Amparo believes that there may be a tape that could hold crucial clues to blowing this case wide open.

In the archives, Carmen goes looking for what they need, while Amparo distracts the guard. They grab the tape and head back to that tech guy from before, enlisting his help to play the tape.

As for Richi, he’s consumed by guilt after causing a car accident that took the life of his wife and daughter. This explains the dodgy CGI of him flying through the windscreen earlier in the season. It also shows why he’s so guilt-ridden over what’s happened too and why Alvaro and Robledo’s death have affected him so badly.

Meanwhile, Carmen and Amparo check the tape, and it leads them to a local strip club. Whilst there, Richi also stumbles upon another potential clue, coming in the form of the owner, Ramiro Luengo. He clearly has ties to the Expo, but when they bring it up, the girls are taken out back by the security guards. Carmen brandishes a taser and takes the guards out, thanks to her self-defence classes working as a suitable edge in this fight.

Richi shows up to see Victoria, and has some tough questions for him. It turns out that not long after the Expo he managed to get his hands on 100 million pesetas. He was part of the scheme involving the girls over at the strip club, and it seems all of these guys from the Expo cornered the three girls. Ramiro was brought along too, and looked after the kid while the girls got to work.

Unfortunately, things went horribly wrong. Marga ended up falling through a glass table and dying. Everybody covered it up at the time, including Jose who arrived at the crime scene. The Expo guys dealt with the fallout. In fact, they were forced into paying Jose for covering this crime up. With the entire budget of the Expo already spent on all these drugs and drink, they had no choice but to get the police involved.

Jose helped stage the sinking of the Victoria to make it look like an accident. However, it was anything but. Jose planted the bomb and let it go off, while he also set fire to the pavilion, with Marga’s body still inside. The idea here was to stage all of this so the government would cough up the funds needed for them, and also a way to cover up the murder too. 

Marga’s son, Victor, ended up badly burned in the process and Rosa took care of him. This explains who the killer is – it’s Victor. He saw everything and he tried to go back in to save his mum at the pavilion. However, he ended up burnt in the process of trying to get her out.

The Episode Review

So now we get the backstory to Victor and how all of this ties together. It turns out we shouldn’t have cared about any of these guys dying as they’re all crooks and liars in the grand scheme of things.

However, the story itself also relies on a fair amount of farcical plot elements, contrivances and coincidences falling into place, and the fact that this burnt killer can just wander about and remain undetected by police, despite people clearly spotting him in shops and various areas, doesn’t do the believability factor of this one any favours.

However, understanding Victor’s motivation is definitely a welcome inclusion, especially as it seemed obvious that Jose was the one behind all of this. The ending certainly leaves the door wide open though.