Summary
Secret sex lives, troubled families, and increasing panic define “friday night-monday morning”, and the kids, being kids, rebel in the stupidest way possible.
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Check out all our Kissing Game recaps in the episode archive.
Bel is a social media sensation, but not for good reasons in Kissing Game episode 2 — a picture is doing the rounds of her wide, glassy eyes and rotten mouth. Fran, Chico, and Alex try to figure out what the cause might be since the doctors confirmed it wasn’t the drugs, and wonder if more people might be due to get sick since everyone at the party was kissing everyone else.
What better way to keep track of things than a kissing map? Starting with Bel, there’s a whole network of kisses shared between the various students, and immediately Caio, wannabe influencer Marina, and Jeferson are added. Nanda and her boyfriend Guilherme are next, but according to Chico, Guilherme is into “a different scene”. They kissed, so he’s added too. And Fran kissed Bel and Chico, so she’s on the map. Alex isn’t into drinking other peoples’ saliva, so he’s safe for now. All of this is intercut with brief snippets of slow-motion snogging at the party, just to get the point across.
Chico, it becomes clear in “friday night-monday morning”, is gay, and also promiscuous. He enjoys a quiet woodland hookup with a local man he met on a dating app. At this point, the subtitles fell behind and some terms were thrown around that I’m not familiar with, so I had to Google what “frotting” was. It’s always nice to learn new things.
These hookups continue in Kissing Game episode 2. And it turns out that Alex isn’t as buttoned-up as he suggested, though his insistence about not swallowing saliva was kind of accurate. He instant-messages some mask-wearing girl (I think girl, but you never know) who he kissed through a piece of plastic — that sounds odd written down, but it’s the best way of describing it — and who “looked after” him at the party. Her(?) username is “Da’Mask”. I mean, why not?
A theme that’s emerging is of forbidden romance; Chico’s fancy-man wants to keep their dalliances quiet, and Alex isn’t keen on his own excursions being made public either. But the way social media works in this show doesn’t seem to bode well for secrecy. As things continue to develop in “friday night-monday morning”, the kissing map begins to fill in, as those infected are color-coded, and their closest link on the chain has to be informed. Fran and Chico take this task upon themselves, but neither Marina nor Guilherme wants to hear it.
But fear of death and public humiliation overrides the fear of gossip. As news gets out around the school, parents demand that classes be cancelled — forcibly dragging their children out in some instances — and other students, such as Gabi, begin to panic about getting sick. A patient zero begins to emerge; some boy from the village, all painted gold, who seemed to be getting it on with everyone. The school’s principal continues to insist that danger of infection comes from “crossing the border”. But the kids know better.
When Fran goes to see Bel in the hospital, we get a sense of what the virus does people — which is unusual. It doesn’t turn them into ravenous zombies or anything of that sort. Bel is simply laid still, with a hole rotted into her face, and multicoloured cracks running down her chin and neck. From her glassy eyes, a tear emerges and rolls down her face. She seems lucid and conscious, but unable to move or speak. She’s simply rotting and dying.
Chico and Alex also discuss the death of Fran’s twin sister, which has affected her strongly and informed a lot of her artwork, which is pretty much exclusively about two halves of one whole being separated. What follows is one of Bel’s old makeup video tutorials, a “two-face test” — Fran, who is watching the video on her phone, was the only student who told Bel the truth and said her makeup looked ridiculous. Point proved, I guess.
As Alex’s mother Carminha pushes for testing of the students around the farm, the fear and paranoia continue to expand, but the kids rebel in a typically stupid way with a “kissing challenge” that sends the map spiralling out of control. Speaking of Alex, his interactions with Da’Mask over webcam turn up a disturbing clue, since the neon veins we saw on Bel’s face also extend down this mysterious woman’s chest. When Alex brings it up she quickly goes offline.
Kissing Game episode 3 ends on a tragic note, as Fran’s social media informs her that Bel has died. She’s the first, but it’s easy to imagine she won’t be the last.
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