Capadocia: Un Lugar Sin Perdón (Capadocia: An Unforgiving Place) is a Mexican drama produced and aired by HBO Latin America. It lasted three series, from March 2008 to December 2012.
Capadocia is a privately-owned prison for women in Mexico City, owned by a corrupt business conglomerate called ECSO. It was created after a riot in a woman's prison and promoted as an experimental rehabilitation-oriented prison for the least dangerous inmates. Most of the episodes have a new character enter the prison, as well as telling their stories and those of the inmates.
Teresa Lagos, the prison governor, and Federico Marcos, ECSO's employee and representative in the prison, have constant disagreements regarding the inmates' rights and treatment. Unknown to most except Federico and a few inmates and wardens, ECSO uses the prison as a front for drug trafficking through "Cautiva", a rehabilitation program where inmates sew garments for the lingerie line of the same name. The secondary storyline covers Lorena Guerra (Ana de la Reguera), an upper-middle class stay-at-home mother who accidentally kills her best friend, after catching her having sex with her husband. She is imprisoned and transferred to Capadocia.
This show provides examples of:
- Abortion Fallout Drama: La Negra rubs in Sofia's face that her husband has been imprisoned for stealing money to get her released. She goes to the showers and does the job herself. She nearly bleeds out.
- Arc Words: During the third series:"Lo que te duele, mátalo" ("Kill what hurts you"). It is part of Dr. Alós's brainwashing process and an episode title.
- Big Bad: ECSO, the company that owns the prison as a front for smuggling drugs. In the third series, La Cofradía (The Brotherhood).
- Bookends: The first episode begins with a prison riot led by La Bambi. In the show's finale, Lorena and Teresa start a prison riot.
- Calling Parents by Their Name: Andrea to Teresa, as a sign of disrespect.
- Chekhov's Skill: Lorena's degree in chemistry comes in handy when La Colombiana ODs. She ends up joining the prison's drug operation.
- Divorce Is Temporary: Santiago and Teresa get back together. However, it's never clear if they remarried, or if they ever got divorced.
- Distinguishing Mark: Teresa catches her husband having sex with another woman, who has a Sagittarius tattoo on her shoulder. Then she sees that tattoo on Isabel's shoulder.
- The Dog Bites Back: La Bambi tries to kill Lorena, not anticipating Lorena would fight back in a drug-fueled stupor and bludgeon her to death.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Patrick (Lorena's ex) to Lorena, in the second series finale.
- Evil, Inc.: ECSO, who use Capadocia and Cautiva as a front for trafficking with designer drugs.
- Faking the Dead: In the final episode of the second series, Lorena and Teresa fake their deaths to escape Capadocia. In the show's finale, Teresa's daughter Ruth is revealed to have survived the bomb blast that killed her father.
- How We Got Here
- In the first series, the first episode's opening scenes are the aftermath of a prison riot and the search for the inmate who started it.
- In the second series, a bride is seen running through a field, escaping from police helicopters. She's Monserrat, wife of a powerful drug lord. Later in the episode it's revealed she was escaping a massacre started by Federal Police raid during the wedding reception.
- Impaled Palm: Yolanda starts teasing Marta (who was denied a conjugal visit with her girlfriend) about how the girlfriend had been with her only due Situational Sexuality and would later dump her for a guy. She gets a pair of scissors through her hand for being a smartass.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Part of La Santita de la Roma's backstory: she was one of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake's "miracle babies" who survived for days under rubble before being rescued from the maternity ward of a collapsed hospital. (A bit of Truth in Television; there was such a group of babies
). - Ironic Name: The prison work program has the inmates make lingerie for the "Cautiva" lingerie line. "Cautiva" is Spanish for "captive". Of course, the inmates themselves wear plain, boring undergarments.
- Language Barrier: Guadalupe is in Capadocia for the murder of her employer. It is not until Teresa tracks an interpreter for Guadalupe, an Indigenous inmate who does not speak Spanish, that she can tell anybody about her baby being left behind at the alleged murder victim's home (he turns out to be OK when Teresa finds him even though it must have been days) and that she was framed by the victim's husband. When he is arrested, Guadalupe is released.
- Literary Allusion Title: Most of the show's episodes are quotes from the Bible.
- Love Triangle: Teresa has an affair with one of her students, Daniel. He loves her, she doesn't. To get back at her, he starts dating her daughter. She falls for him hard, he doesn't.
- Mad Doctor: Hirám Alós conducts strange psychological experiments on the inmates.
- Mafia Princess: Played with. Monserrat knows her fiancé is a very powerful drug lord, and some of her family members even work for him, but she doesn't take part in it.
- Misplaced Retribution: La Saiko's backstory involves being a victim of Human Trafficking as a child. She eventually attacks Zaide, a madam involved in trafficking East European young women, biting off a piece of her ear.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: La Saiko. Her name is the Spanish phonetic rendition of the word "psycho". She ends up biting off a piece of another inmate's ear.
- No Matter How Much I Beg: Lorena beats an inmate to death and nearly kills another while under the influence of drugs. Ashamed of herself and determined to get clean, she handcuffs herself to the bars of her cell. Then she gives the keys to La Colombiana, with instructions to NOT release her no matter what.
- Odd Friendship: Cellmates Andrea and Monserrat. The first is the daughter of the prison governor, the latter a drug lord's wife.
- Offing the Offspring: Magos's backstory. Her husband beat her and molested their children. To spare them, she poisoned their dinner. Magos is horrified to learn that her husband continues to have sex with her one surviving daughter, now an adult.
- Panopticon of Surveillance: The opening credits feature a shot of Capadocia's blueprints, showing that it was built in this design.
- Poor Communication Kills: Guadalupe is an indigenous housekeeper who doesn't speak Spanish. She is arrested after being framed for murder by the victim's husband. The arresting officers ignore her as she screams when she is taking away, and no one realizes that her baby was left behind by himself.
- Prison Rape: it's an HBO drama set in a woman's prison. Enough said.
- It is the main reason why Antonia begs to be transferred to a woman's prison; being a transwoman in the overcrowded men's prisons has made her a target for this.
- Inmate Yolanda terrorizes a young new inmate (Andrea, Teresa's daughter) and is about to rape her. Lorena stops Yolanda by nearly bludgeoning her to death.
- Prison Changes People: Before going to prison, Lorena was a suburban wife and mother. By the time the first series ends, she has joined the designer drug smuggling operation, become addicted, killed La Bambi in self-defense, and entered into a relationship with La Colombiana.
- Prison Riot: In the beginning of the first episode and most of the show's finale.
- Prisoner's Work: Under the pretense of teaching job skills to the inmates, ECSO has them sew garments for the "Cautiva" lingerie line. They do earn wages they can send to their families.
- Sleazy Politician: If a politician is part of ECSO or connected to them in any way, assume they fit the trope.
- So Beautiful, It's a Curse: La Colombiana. She says so herself, as her beauty has managed to get her nothing but trouble.
- Taking the Heat: Sofia is in jail for driving under the influence, except her husband was the one driving. She counts on him being able to get her released. Except he ended up in jail trying to embezzle the money needed.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Teresa and Daniel. But she's just not that into him.
- Trans Tribulations: Transwoman Antonia is incarcerated in an overcrowded men's prison and is not allowed her hormones. This changes after she is transferred to Capadocia.
- Yandere: La Bambi, towards La Colombiana.
