El Chavo

El Chavo Del Ocho
Of 1977 season.
Format Sitcom
Created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños
Starring Roberto Gómez Bolaños
María Antonieta de las Nieves (1971-1973; 1975-1992)
Carlos Villagrán (1971-1978)
Florinda Meza
Ramón Valdéz
Rubén Aguirre
Angelines Fernández
Edgar Vivar
Horácio Gómez Bolaños
Raúl Padilla (1979-1980; 1982-1992)
Country of origin Mexico
Language(s) Spanish
No. of seasons 10
No. of episodes 290
Production
Running time 30 minutes with ads
Broadcast
Original channel XHTIM-TV
Original run June 20, 1971 – January 12, 1992

El Chavo del Ocho, commonly known as El Chavo, is a Mexican television sitcom that gained popularity in Spanish-speaking America as well as in Brazil, Spain, United States and other countries.[1] It centers around the adventures and tribulations of the title character, El Chavo — an orphan played by the show's creator, Roberto Gómez Bolaños, and other inhabitants of a fictional apartment building, or, as called in Spanish, vecindad.

The show traces back to June 20, 1971, where it appeared as a sketch in the "Chespirito" show, produced by "Televisión Independiente de Mexico", broadcast on Mexico's Canal 8, XHTIM-TV (now XEQ-TV, Galavisión).[1] In 1973, El Chavo moved to Televisa (Telesistema mexicano and Televisión Independiente de Mexico merger) and became a weekly half-hour series. The show was cancelled in 1980, but shorts were still produced in Chespirito from that year until 1992. At its peak of popularity during the mid-1970s, El Chavo, having 350 million viewers worldwide, was the most watched show in Mexican television.

The frequent occurrence of Mexican idiomatic expressions makes El Chavo very hard to translate into other languages, save for Portuguese which is similar to Spanish. Theme music for the series was "The Elephant Never Forgets", a playful version of Beethoven's "Turkish March" in 1967 by electronic music pioneers Perrey and Kingsley.

In Brazil, Peru and other South American countries, the series is still very popular and has developed a large cult following by generation Y. It has been broadcast by SBT since 1984 and, since November 1, 2010, it has also been broadcast by the Brazilian version of Cartoon Network. Since May 2, 2011, the show has been airing in the United States on Telefutura.

Contents

History

Origins

By 1971, Roberto Gómez Bolaños was already well-known in Mexico for his self-titled sketch comedy show, which aired on Televisión Independiente de México. He had already introduced El Chapulín Colorado and other characters.

Roberto Gómez Bolaños was the show's main creator and star. He called Florinda Meza to act in the show first; Chespirito and Meza later married. Edgar Vivar was the second actor chosen for the show. Roberto Gómez Bolaños recruited Ramón Valdés because he had known Valdés for years and had seen multiple movies Valdés had made. Then, Rubén Aguirre was cast in the show as the character of "Profesor Jirafales". Aguirre and Roberto Gómez Bolaños had been working on scripts together for years, and Aguirre had already been playing the character of Professor Jirafales on another Chespirito show, Supergenios de la Mesa Cuadrada, which spoofed current events panel discussion. Carlos Villagrán just happened to be a friend of Aguirre who was a newspaper reporter, and he went to a party hosted by Aguirre. Villagrán did a comedy step where he blew his cheeks out of proportion, and Aguirre told Roberto Gómez Bolaños about his friend's hidden talent. Villagrán was promptly hired for the show. María Antonieta de las Nieves was a voice-over only actress who used to go to Televisa to do announcements. Upon hearing her voice, Roberto Gómez Bolaños thought she was perfect for the show (she first refused telling him she was not a comedic actress, but Roberto Gómez Bolaños's retort challenged her: "Then you're not a good actress: there are no dramatic or comic actors — there are only actors."). The last ones to be added to the show were Angelines Fernández, a former telenovela actress and Horacio Gómez Bolaños, Roberto's younger brother who had never considered acting before; he was originally to oversee the show's marketing.

The first El Chavo short appeared on June 20, 1971 and featured El Chavo, Chilindrina and Don Ramón. Several "Chavo" sketches produced before the start of the half-hour series were grouped into half-hour segments and are shown before the "official" half-hour episodes in syndication. Many of these were also re-written and re-shot as half-hour long shows later in the show's life.

Broadcast history

In 1973, Telesistema Mexicano and Televisión Independiente de México (TIM) merged to become Televisa. After the merger, El Chavo del Ocho became a weekly half-hour TV series.

The early shows composed of a sketch at the beginning, featuring Dr. Chapatín, El Chómpiras, or one of Roberto Gómez Bolaños' other characters, and two short episodes of the main character. Those episodes were actually sketches filmed in 1972 which probably were supposed to be showed on "Chespirito" which was cancelled. After some of those episodes which introduced the first years of the show, the show began to be comprised by an almost half-hour episode preceded by one sketch starred by the same Roberto Gómez Bolaños characters as the first show structure.

At the end of the first season, María Antonieta de las Nieves left the show because of her pregnancy. During the episodes of the 1973 season, including those probably filmed in 1972, it was noted De Las Nieves generally played the female leads and was the first actor credited after Chespirito. With her absence, Florinda Meza took over the female roles for the non-Chavo del 8 sketches, and El Chavo and Quico became to be a great comic pair.

The 1974 season began with El Chavo and Quico as the comic child characters, including Don Ramón as the charismatic adult character. During that season, the classroom scene began to appear, alongside other child characters like Ñoño (the son of Mr. Barriga) and the relaxed Godínez (played by Horacio Gómez Bolaños, brother of Roberto Gómez Bolaños).

De las Nieves was given "distinctive" last billing when she returned in 1975. After Valdés and Villagrán left in 1979, she was moved to top billing after Chespirito again. On the hour-long "Chespirito", De las Nieves was often given third billing behind Chespirito and Florinda Meza if playing another character besides Chilindrina, otherwise she always got the special final credit.

When Carlos Villagrán left the show, it was explained that his character had gone to live with his rich grandmother. "He couldn't stand the riffraff anymore", Doña Florinda explained. Not long after, Ramón Valdés also left the series, Chilindrina explained that her father left the country to look for a job and that he wouldn't return until he was a millionaire. In 1980, El Chavo was cancelled by Televisa.

Chespirito

Starting in 1980, "Chespirito" began to air, featuring El Chavo, El Chapulín Colorado and other characters. The debut of El Chavo in this program was auspicious, with a wealth of new episodes being produced. Moreover, in 1981, Valdés returned to the cast, after starring in some unsuccessful shows alongside Villagrán. However, he left again at the end of the year. The number of new episodes started to decline in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so once again, many early episodes were remade. In addition, as Robert Gomez Bolańos grew older, he no longer considered adequate to play the role of an 8-year-old kid. As a result, production of El Chavo stopped in 1992, three years before the cancellation of the "Chespirito" show.

Animated series

After several years of successful reruns, Televisa launched simultaneously in all Latin America an animated version of the program made by Ánima Estudios on October 2006. As a background, a 3D computer model was used, though for the characters, 2D drawings were used, created with Flash. A huge program was made to launch it in on a scenario made to imitate the computerized background. Some things about the original program were reminisced and they showed how the animated series was made.

The cartoon also allowed depicting the children to the right scale. Previously, since the children were played by adults in the show, the feel was given to the character through their way of dressing, speaking, and mainly through giving them oversized toys. However, this was not the first attempt to animate it. Previously, during the credits, claymation sequences could be watched.

In this animated series, Chilindrina doesn't appear due to on-going disputes between María Antonieta de las Nieves and Roberto Gómez Bolaños on the rights of "La Chilindrina". De las Nieves feels that she should be entitled to monetary compensation if "La Chilindrina", the character she brought to life in the television series, appears in the animated series. Roberto Gómez Bolaños claims that since he created the character, only he owns the rights to such character. This dispute still hasn't been resolved and so, the character Popis has since taken over the role that once belonged to La Chilindrina.

Characters and cast

Production and setting

El Chavo is set in "La Vecindad", a typical Mexican townhouse neighborhood, owned by Senor Barriga who constantly comes to collect due rent, especially from Don Ramon. The sitcom explores, in a comic manner, the problems that many homeless children face on a daily basis, such as hunger, sadness and not having someone responsible to watch over them. On one episode, for example, Chavo was sitting on the stair steps of the vecindad at night, dreaming of all the toys he wished he could have and how he'd play with them. It ended with him returning to the present, sighing wistfully, then pulling out a balero (the only toy he'd ever had on a regular basis) made of a stick, a tin can, and a piece of string. He begins to play with it as the camera slowly fades out. Some episodes also have educational endings, teaching, for example, that it's good to take a shower and to not judge a book for its cover.

El Patio, the central courtyard, is the setting for most of the episodes. Surrounding the patio, are the homes of Jaimito "El Cartero", Doña Florinda, Doña Cleotilde, and Don Ramon. The hallway on the right leads to another courtyard ("el otro patio"), the other courtyard, which has a fountain in the middle. On the street facade at the left, La tienda de la esquina and a barber shop are shown adjacent to the neighborhood's entry.

In the later seasons, sometimes an unnamed park was shown. Several episodes are set in Professor Jirafales's classroom, where he teaches, all the child characters in the sitcom attend the same classroom. Others are set inside Doña Florinda's restaurant. Three episodes were filmed in Acapulco, which also served as a vacation for the entire cast.

Episodes

Humor style

El Chavo is a farcical sitcom: it relied heavily upon physical comedy, running gags, literal interpretations, double entendres, misinterpretation (and even, sometimes, elements from the comedy of errors) in order to amuse the audience, and the characters and situations were mostly persistent.

Some of the best-known examples of recurring humor are:

Quotes and famous phrases

Chespirito created several words and phrases that nowadays are widely used as part of the Spanish language, at least in Mexico City and country and other countries of Latin America:

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "It figures it was you, Chavo!". Some occasions would have Don Ramon say "It's always the same with you, Chavo!".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "I did it on purpose, but I didn't mean to".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "I've come to collect the rent".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "You're just not patient enough with me".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "That's true, that's true, that's true".

In the English dub of the animated series, the phrase is "OK, just don't get angry".

In the English dub of the animated series, the phrase is "It just slipped up".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "I heard that! I heard that! I heard that!".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "Your lucky I don't give you another one".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "Oh, shut up, shut up, shut up, you're driving me crazy!".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "I don't like you today!".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "I gotta go now".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "I give up" or "Forget it".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "No, no, no, no... NO!".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "Now I'm gonna pop those chubby cheeks to teach you a lesson", "Hold still while I punch those chubby cheeks" and "OK, that's it, now I'm gonna pop your cheeks".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "Come along, Quico/Muffin! Let's get away from this lowlife!". Special occasions would have her saying "Muffin, don't stay out here with this lowlife!".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "Yes, mommy! Lowlife, lowlife!".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "And the next time, (go)... your grandmother!".

In the English dub of the animated series, the catchphrase is "Yeah, Yeah..." or "Okey dokey, okey dokey!".

Impact and reception

The show is the most translated Latin-American show in history, after being shown in several countries. It is the most popular sitcom in the history of Mexican television and lasted for 1,300 episodes.[2] It has been rerun on several TV stations since the 1970s. El Chavo del Ocho is also highly popular in Brazil, where it has been dubbed into Portuguese, broadcast by SBT since the beginning of the 1980s it was the biggest audience at many different times according to IBOPE. This popularity may be explained because Mexico and Brazil have social and cultural similarities, Spanish and Portuguese are similar languages. In the United States, the show is still shown on TeleFutura and Galavisión as of 2011. The show in the United States is consistently the No. 1-rated Spanish-language cable program.

The show was so popular in other parts of Latin America and among the Spanish speaking community of the United States that in Peru and Uruguay, other shows involving the main actors of El Chavo del Ocho began to be televised, in Argentina. Rubén Aguirre has been able to enjoy some success playing his character at a circus, and in Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Uruguay many of the phrases El Chavo and his friends used have become normal part of everyday dialogue. Chespirito has established legal battles with former El Chavo del Ocho actors out of a desire to prevent them from using the show's characters in Mexico without his permission. Villagrán moved to Argentina in order to use his character's name on his shows (Chespirito is not copyrighted in Argentina).

There is also a Brazilian fan-made game named "Street Chaves - O Lutador da Vila" (in English: "Street Chavo - The Vecindad Fighter", in Spanish: "Street Chavo - El Luchador De La Vecindad"), which parodies various famous fighting games (most notably Capcom and SNK Playmore franchises such as Street Fighter, Art of Fighting and The King of Fighters) using characters from the show (examples: El Chavo parodies Terry Bogard, Don Ramón imitates Robert Garcia, Señor Barriga incarnates Chang Koehan, Professor Jirafales impersonates Sagat, Quico "is" Andy Bogard and so).[3] The game was translated (badly) in Spanish by Carlos Varela. There's also a currently in-building 3D update named "Chaves Arena".

The only Spanish-speaking country where El Chavo has never been formally transmitted is Cuba.

Denied series finale

During a visit to Peru in 2008, Roberto Gómez Bolaños told the media that he originally planned to make a proper finale to El Chavo del Ocho: in this finale, El Chavo would die trampled by a car. However, one of Bolaños' daughters, who is a psychologist, convinced his father to drop the idea, since, according to her, it could depress many children and even lead them to suicide.[4][5]

Product promotions

References

External links

In Spanish
In English
In Portuguese