One Hundred Years of Solitude – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

It’s Like An Earthquake

 Episode 2 of One Hundred Years of Solitude starts with a young Aureliano and Arcadio going for a swim. Aureliano gets a premonition about men wearing a red bandana dying in the river. He grabs the bandana, but when Arcadio pulls him up, the item is gone.

In the meantime, Jose continues to be obsessed with his discoveries, frustrating Ursula, who feels his ideas are not helping the family. With Jose on his expeditions or locked in his office, Ursula takes a more active role in the family. Thankfully, she has her inheritance to rely on. One of the local women, Matilde, convinces Ursula to sell her candies.

In March, Melquíades returns, and Jose shows him his discoveries. Melquíades encourages Jose to keep exploring and introduces him to alchemy. One day, the young boys, Arcadio and Aureliano, go hunting and Ursula forces Jose to take more time to be active in their sons’ life. Following Ursula’s request, Jose starts spending more time with his children. He teaches them to read and write, and the three of them bask in the joy of every discovery.

Soon, the kids grow up and Arcadio turns into a fine young man. However, Ursula worries after stumbling upon him naked.

She visits the town’s gypsy, Pilar and shares her concern. Pilar suggests that Ursula send Arcadio for a card reading and disperses Ursula’s fear that Arcadio has a penis deformity. Sadly, Pilar also crosses the line and starts an ill-fated relationship with Arcadio. The young man starts sneaking out of the house at night to sleep with Pilar. When Aureliano asks where he has been going, Arcadio reveals his secret and expresses his wonder at the art of lovemaking. He tells Aureliano that it felt like an earthquake.

On the other hand, the gypsies return and this time, they bring with them the discovery of ice. Jose takes his boys to see the discoveries, and they are fascinated and scared of it at the same time. Unfortunately, the gypsies also inform Jose about the passing of Melquíades. The news breaks Jose, who was excited to show his friend his latest discovery. To honour Melquíades, Jose throws himself deeper into alchemy. He tries his best to turn simple metals into gold.

Meanwhile, Ursula gives birth to their daughter, Amaranta. On the other hand, Arcadio grows tired of being treated like a child and vents to Pilar. A few days later, she reveals to Arcadio that she is pregnant. The news hits Arcadio like lightning, and he pulls away from her. He ends up leaving town and joining the gypsies to hook up with a gypsy girl. Jose spends three days trying to find Arcadio but gives up after losing all traces of him. Arcadio’s departure hits Ursula and Aureliano hard, too. Ursula spends three months travelling, hoping for news about her son. Jose stays home with the kids, missing Ursula and devoting his time to the alchemy lab and consternation.

Finally, after three months, Ursula returns but with no news about Arcadio. However, she brings more people to the town. Among the newcomers, she and Jose chose to help a woman named Visitacion, and a man named Cataure. Upon Ursula’s return, Pilar visits the house one night and announces that her newborn baby is Arcadio’s son. She begs the Buendias to take the child. Ursula and Jose agree on the condition that the boy will never know his true parents.

Pilar agrees, and the boy is named after his dad, Arcadio. As the days pass, Aureliano spends his time in the lab and grows into a young man. One day, he has a premonition about a visitor. The scene ends with a chair floating in a pink lake.

The Episode Review

What Pilar did tore the Buendias apart and led to the disappearance of Jose Arcadio. Now, Jose and Ursula have to raise Arcadio’s son and have a reminder of what Pilar did to their son every day. It won’t be easy. The loss of Jose Arcadio’s innocence marks the first trouble in Macondo and sets the family on a different path.  

It is interesting how the series utilises García Márquez’s tactics to express the fluidity of time on Macondo. The show moves from one point in the family’s life to another so casually, but you never get the sense that you’ve missed something important. The flash-forwards and the narrator give viewers a perfect sense of time, thus avoiding confusion in the complex, multi-generational story.

At the beginning of the episode, we can see how Jose’s obsession is straining his marriage. However, by the end, the kids are all grown and Jose tries to do right by them. 

The same applies to the use of cinematography to explain the realism and magical realism in Macondo and the Buendia family. It all feels natural for them to have such gifts as premonition, etc.