Amor 80

Amor 80 (in english: Love '80) is a Mexican telenovela produced and shown by Canal Extra, authored by Arnaldo Corrêa and Theodoro Giancommo, being shown between March 9, 2007 and February 8, 2008, totalizing 249 episodes.

Plot
The telenovela follows three young couples: the first being formed by Sergio Rojas and Claudia Ribriane, Sergio is the youngest son of the mayor and first lady of an interior town, Richard Rojas and Francia Rojas, and moves to Cancún to study at a private university after completing high school, the young boy has a relaxed, mocking personality and without many worries, being considered "childish", on the other hand, Claudia is a girl already used to the big city who dates Teodoro, a young man with a "bad boy" vibe, and who is a compulsive alcoholic and smoker, which displeases Cláudia, to the point where she ends up deciding to break up with him in a small bar, where Sergio happened to be present. Shortly afterwards, Sergio ends up finding the girl desperate for not being able to find a taxi or a bus, and offers her a ride, and discovers that she will be staying at the same hotel where he is staying. As the plot evolves, Sergio matures and gradually loses his childish, while Claudia nurtures a loving feeling for him and finally manifests it a few times, finally feeling sure that she has found the right man after a disappointment with Teodoro.

The second couple is formed by Teodoro Rueda and Luna Valdez, Teodoro is a young man in a bad boy mood and with a mentality as immature as Sergio, he is an alcoholic and compulsive smoker, in addition to being a metalhead who sings in a bar in the neighborhood where he lives, he always gets involved in fights and gets arrested. Teodoro initially dates Claudia, but after a fight due to his irresponsibility for having left her waiting for a long time at the bus station, they break up,he meets Luna right after breaking up with Cláudia, after having drunk compulsively and running her over while driving, he decides to take her to the hospital and, the next day, when he returns on his sober side, Teodoro decides to see the state of una in the hospital. When she recovers, she ends up moving from where she lives, and her new home is exactly in the neighborhood where Teodoro lives, being, above all, his neighbor, she hates his behavior and attitudes, often getting into discussions like "bad boy", who responds with jokes, from these discussions, Teodoro and Luna, get to know each other and gradually nurture the romantic feeling within both, this loving feeling merges with hate, and the couple's first kiss it is, exactly, during a big argument between the two.

The third couple is formed by Jhon Tejedor and Sophie As'ad, Jhon is a young man who lives helping his father, Carlos, who is a street vendor, and who, with his death, decides to rent a small property where he puts a typical Mexican food store, the most frequent customer of the new establishment is Sophie, Sergio's classmate who is the daughter of a businessman in the culinary branch of Arab descent, Sophie then decides to ask her father, Bahij, to help the young man, Sophie's father answers the request. request and closes a partnership with Jhon. In addition to becoming a great friend of Bahij, Jhon approaches Sophie, this couple goes against the grain of the old tale of a love between a poor man and a rich woman who is opposed by the father, who only wants a rich man to marry his daughter, Bahij, instead of wanting a rich man to marry his daughter, actually wants a man of character and fighter, without worrying about the financial side.

Another plots that surround the soap opera are: the mystery behind the murder of Sophie's mother, Lateefa, to which Jhon is unfairly punished even with Bahij and Sophie having total known of the boy's innocence, arrested by maneuver made by Bahij's self-serving advisor, Nico, which was unmasked the real murderer of Lateefa, becoming a fugitive, and at the end, committing suicide by jumping from a ravine, after a car chase that ends when his car runs out of gas and also shooting Bahij in revenge.

Another mystery that also surrounded the plot was the question whether or not Perla had betrayed Sergio's older brother, Benito, the mystery begins in chapter 63, when Benito suspects that Perla has betrayed him with his friend, Rafael, after she has gone to her friend's country house, and returned with strange marks apparent from hickeys on her neck and back, Perla justifies herself by saying that Rafael's country house was suffering from an infestation of mosquitoes. Perla becomes pregnant over the course of the episodes, and this encourages Benito to take a DNA test, but at the request of his parents, he stops thinking about it, when the daughter, named Lupe, is born, Benito finds even more similarities between the baby and Rafael, and decides to take the exam once and for all, without caring about his parents' requests that he keep the family together, Perla, however, asks Benito for a divorce, they break up, and she is the one who ends up having possession of the exam result, going away from La Mira (fictional city created for the plot) with Lupe and leaving the mystery of the supposed betrayal unsolved, thus leaving the audience to have its conviction if Perla betrayed or not Benito with Rafael, who despite all the suspicions, in the end peaceful with Benito and remains his friend.

Another subplot of the telenovela is the comic power dispute between Richard Rosas and Cesar Castán, who attack each other in different ways, one of the striking moments of this dispute is when Richard puts mice and cats to destroy Cesar's wife's birthday party, Diane Castán, and also "presents" her with a bath of pink paint. The sequence of Richard destroying Diane's birthday meant that the episode in which the scenes were aired (episode 201) had the third highest recorded audiences for that telenovela and also one of the highest recorded audiences of a episode from all Canal Extra soap operas.

The plot takes place in Mexico at the height of the 1980s, portraying music, outfits, cars, accessories, utensils, innovations and other highlights of this decade.

Conception
At the end of 2006, Canal Extra commissioned Arnaldo Corrêa and Theodoro Giancommo, two of the most renowned authors of Brazilian soap operas and who have many exceptional audiences with their signatures, to idealize the successor to El Cuarto Hermano, which had its final episodes already written and its finale was scheduled for March 2007, the authors agreed with the amount of time proposed by the broadcaster so that they could idealize the plot and write their first 40 episodes.

Cast

 * Jorge Bautista as Sergio Rojas
 * Iris Alcabú as Claudia Ribriane (first appearance at episode 22)
 * Pedro Cubas as Teodoro Rueda (first appearance at episode 22)
 * Mía Rosas as Luna Valdez (first appearance at episode 23)
 * Fernando Añez as Jhon Tejedor (first appearance at episode 22)
 * Catalina Zorita as Sophie As'ad (first appearance at episode 27)
 * Javier Botín as Richard Rosas (Sergio father)
 * Patricia Cendele as Francia Rojas (Sergio Mother)
 * Rubio Bardo as Benito Rojas (Sergio brother)
 * Tonia Villacrés as Perla Veléz-Rojas (Benito wife, Richard and Francia daughter-in-law, Sergio sister-in-law)
 * Gustavo Carrera as Rafael Nubis
 * Clara Vialpando as Nina Nubis (Rafael wife)
 * Juan Sebastián Encarnación as Bahij As'ad (Sophie father, first appearance at episode 34)
 * Linda Zuñiga as Lateefa As'ad (Sophie mother, first appearance at episode 30, killed at episode 158)
 * Asdrúbal Polock as Nico Corientes (Bahij advisor, first appearance at episode 34)
 * Moises Villa as Cesar Castán
 * Gloria Zorita as Diane Castán (Cesar wife)
 * Floriano Milagros as Carlos Tejedor (Jhon father, first appearance at episode 22, dies at episode 92)

Exhibition
The soap opera was shown between March 9, 2007 and February 8, 2008, with a total of 249 chapters, although it was planned to have 1 more episode, but on December 31, 2007, the chapter that would be shown on that day it was not shown due to the airing of the annual New Year's Eve special on Canal Extra, which in the 2007 edition started to be shown from 8 o'clock in the evening, unlike all other editions, which are only televised from at 9:30 pm, therefore, the episode of December 31, 2007 was merged with the episode shown the following day, thus obtaining more than 1 hour, this mark is usually only reached in the first, penultimate and last episode of a telenovela.

It is the second longest-running telenovela on Mexican television, surpassed only by Dulce Amor (2009-10), which had 255 episodes.

International exhibition
The telenovela was exported to many countries after the end of its original transmission in Mexico, notably Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Spain, Portugal, United States, Bolivia, Argentina (where it still holds the record for audience and surpassed soap operas produced in the country), Ecuador, United Kingdom, Ecuador, Uruguay, France, among others

Streaming
Amor 80 was the first Mexican telenovela to be exported to streaming platforms in February 2020.

Reprise
It became the first telenovela on Canal Extra to be repeated when it aired again on May 11, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the stoppage of the recordings of the then current telenovela, Libres y Locos. The soap opera was shown until December 25, 2020, totaling 165 re-exhibited episodes, 84 episodes less than the original showing between 2007 and 2008. It was succeeded by another rerun, El Cuarto Hermano (2006), which in the original broadcast was the predecessor of Amor 80.

Audience
The first episode inherited the good numbers of its predecessor and obtained 36 audience points, having a technical tie with the debut of El Cuarto Hermano, which obtained 38 audience points, until today keeping up the second highest debut audience of all Canal Extra's telenovelas. Throughout the episodes, however, the telenovela began to show signs that it would surpass its predecessor, which had been the most watched Mexican telenovela of the 2000s until then, in episode 88, marked by Teodoro and Luna's first kiss, the series hit its first record, 57 audience points, after this, the telenovela had a weekly audience average that fluctuated between 52 and 56 audience points daily, the highest registered until today.

From episode 158, with Lateefa's murder, the weekly audience average rose, and now the average varied between 59 and 65 audience points. This score had its third increase with the arrival of episode 193, when it is revealed that Nico was the murderer of Lateefa, when the telenovela recorded 89 audience points, finally surpassing its predecessor and consolidating itself as the most watched telenovela in Mexico throughout the 2000s. Its final phase recorded an average weekly audience of between 74 and 80 points, making the soap opera appear in the American magazines The Now York Times, Time and Washington Post, obtaining article titles affirming the soap opera as "The Most Watched Programming of All the Times!" and "The Telenovela Hypnosis!", in episode 201, episode in which the comical scenes of the total destruction of Diane's birthday planned by Richard were shown, the soap opera reached its third highest audience record, 84 audience points. Episodes 240 to 249 recorded an audience score of over 80, with the penultimate episode obtaining the fourth highest audience record for Amor 80, 83 points, and the last episode obtaining the second highest audience record for that telenovela, saying goodbye to the Canal Extra grid with 87 points.

Amor 80 became not only the most watched soap opera in Mexico in the 2000s, but also the most watched Mexican soap opera of all time, in addition to having the title of highest audience and best telenovela ever produced by Canal Extra. Amor 80 overall audience average was 62 points, also the highest audience rating average in the history of Mexican television.

Critical response and Emmy award
At the time of its broadcast, Amor 80 was described as a "pleasant retro experience, and without a doubt a shot on target for Canal Extra", however, over the years, the telenovela was described as "the most perfect Mexican production of all time, and that if there is more than one certainty in life but death, it is that Amor 80 will never lose the throne to ANY other telenovela, series, movie, reality, talk show or whatever". Amor 80 was nominated for the 2008 International Emmy Awards in the Best Telenovela category, winning the first award in this category, which further consolidated its status as "Greatest Mexican Telenovela".

Legacy
Amor 80 is considered in telenovelas around the world, and many other countries and channels that produce telenovelas have tried to match the quality of it. In 2017, the Congress of Mexico approved that this telenovela would be the first on the Maintenance and Restoration List.

Trivia

 * Initially, Amor 80 could have been set in the 90s, but Theodoro Giancommo insisted that something linked to the 80s would be better, convincing Arnaldo Corrêa, it is considered that Corrêa is said to be very hard-headed and hardly changes his scripts, even if he doesn't please the audience.
 * Initially the characters Claudia Ribriane, Teodoro Rueda and Luna Valdez would only be temporary characters, and would withdraw from the plot after appearing in around 50 or 60 episodes, however, the public liked the characters so much that the two authors decided to keep them.