The official logo of the series
Depois do Adeus ("After the Goodbye", in English) is a Period Piece about the period after the Carnation Revolution (which happened on 25 April 1974) known as the Processo Revolucionário em Curso or PREC (in English, the "Ongoing Revolutionary Process") - thus covered the Revolution and immediate post-Revolutionary period, ending with the approval of a new Constitution and the democratic election of the first non-provisional President -, and more exactly about the Retornados (literally "the returned", as in "returned from the Portuguese colonies", but the majority of the retornados were actually born in the colonies or had lived there for so long that it didn't remind them of anything related to Continental Portugal).The series is centered on the Mendonças, a couple with two children, who "returned" to Portugal in July 1975, at the start of the Angolan Civil War, along with 500,000 other people. It tells us how the life of the retornados was in that period, and their interactions with those around them, who often were hostile to them.
The official site of the series
(in Portuguese).
Provides examples of
- Adults Are Useless: The Cunha siblings lived all by themselves in one house (well, they are relatively old enough for that), but one day Catarina Cunha and Ana Maria Mendonça are arrested for guns that weren't theirs (they were from Bia, a LUAR guerrillawoman and Gonçalo's ex-girlfriend). The Cunha parents come from Paris to admonish them and stay with them in Lisbon. For a while. The Cunha father wants to bring Catarina with him and his wife, but his wife and all their children dissuade him from doing so. (Although he threatened to bring all his children with him if they did crap again...)
- All There in the Manual: On their website and on their Facebook page (Warning: Teasers). They also published a book.
- An Immigrant's Tale/The Migration: The main family, the Mendonças, along with other (but not all) families, are in fact immigrants (or even refugees) from Angola to Portugal.
- The Casanova: Filipe Perdigão and Joaquim Cardoso.
- Con Man: Sílvio Palma (see also "The Scrappy" on the YMMV page).
- Correspondence Course: Micá wishes to take one in accounting
- Costume Drama/Period Piece/Historical Series: About the period after the Carnation Revolution, known as the Processo Revolucionário em Curso or PREC.
- Costume Porn: And how. But it's important for a Period Piece.
- Disappeared Dad:
- Paulo Barbosa's dad (he's an orphan).
- Jorge Moreira's dad, Daniel, was this before the beginning of the show.
- Domestic Abuse:
- Daniel Moreira beats his wife, Joana, after an argument about his son, Jorge, and his deceased wife. Then he beats her after discovering she was sleeping with Filipe Perdigão. This was the last straw.
- Horácio towards his wife, Júlia, and their daughter, Filomena. He's a highly controlling person, so much so that she came to Portugal to flee him. Unlike Daniel, he has absolutely no excuse.
- Draft Dodging: Filipe Perdigão dodged the draft for the Colonial War with a "scoliosis" Cidália Figueiredo invented.
- Driven to Suicide: Daniel Moreira, due to the severe changes in his life after having had to abandon Angola, beating his wife, his wife having an affair with Filipe Perdigão and, finally, his wife leaving him.
- Economy Cast: The series is centered on the same characters and families. Purely secondary characters are rare and there are no one-time characters.
- More specifically, in the first episode, was that IARN employee Natália or a really, really look-alike woman? (It doesn't help that Natália didn't recognise anyone but her brother, the Mendonças having been far away for years and her having not met her own nephews, only knowing her sister-in-law for a while).
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted. It was discovered during the run of the series that Natália and Luísa Cardoso both had an abortion.
- Housewife: Almost all the wives on the show.
- Killed Off for Real:
- Victor Castro, after a confrontation with an anti-colonialist revolutionary group (today, he's seen in videos Álvaro Mendonça recorded in Luanda). Or so you'd think. The Red Cross found him in South Africa and then he came back to Portugal.
- Daniel Moreira, after his suicide.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Natália's and Luísa's abortions. Although Joaquim was for a while always harping about it.
- Living Prop/Demoted to Extra:
- Luísa Cardoso was once an important character, but she now appears one scene per episode, if so. Her dumping her boyfriend Gonçalo after her abortion, then him dating her cousin/rival Ana Maria, then her rival dumping his then girlfriend, combined with her being not interested anymore in the MRPP (which she only was interested anyway because of Gonçalo), diminished her importance.
- For that matter, Pedro Cardoso and Jorge Moreira. Of all the characters, they are the only ones still active on the MRPP, from which their former friends split in the course of the show (Gonçalo because he read a book by José Luís Saldanha Sanches, a Real Life former member of the MRPP and writer of a book which was critical of the party, Joana because of what was mentioned in the previous paragraph) and this, combined with the suicide of Jorge's father, Daniel, which diminished the tension between them, dimished their importance as characters in the show.
- Although, just for final episode, Luísa and Jorge start themselves dating, which gives them a certain importance again, although not as much as before - they end as sort of the Beta Couple to Gonçalo and Ana Maria long after he and Luísa end their own relationship. Pedro remains the only Living Prop até the end.
- Military Coup: How the show starts (the already mentioned Carnation Revolution).
- A counter-coup is averted, but there is still a threat of a coup or a civil war on the air. (Truth in Television).
- Ms. Fanservice: Ana Maria Mendonça, who always wears skimpy clothes (well, from the Portuguese standard, but not from the Angolan standard).
- Nuclear Family: The main family, the Mendonças (a couple with a boy and a girl), along with the Cardosos (another couple with two children, whose mother, Natália, is the sister of the Mendonça father, Álvaro) and other families. A complete list of the nuclear families can be seen here.
- Only One Name: Júlia, her estranged husband Horácio, and their daughter, Filomena.
- Police Are Useless/Police Brutality: A strange hybrid of the two. After a coup attempt, Catarina Cunha and Ana Maria Mendonça are arrested for guns which aren't even theirs, along with a whole other bunch of people, and they don't have access to anyone - they are absolutely isolated from outside contact.
- People's Republic of Tyranny: What Portugal is slowly becoming, with inter-party fights on the streets.
- Scenery Porn: And how. But it's important for a Period Piece.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Alferes (Lieutenant) Manuel Machado, who fought in Angola and in Guinea, broke his right leg after a being hit by a G3 weapon (a Portuguese government-issued weapon) as a plot by members of his unit, due to his militaristic tendencies. He's a bitter, lonely and solitary man who is a part of an underground pro-Spinola army, the Exército de Libertação de Portugal (ELP, the Portuguese Liberation Army).
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Spiritual Successor: To Conta-me Como Foi, a Foreign Remake of Cuéntame Cómo Pasó centered around the Lopes (who share the same first names as the Alcantaras), which however lasted only 5 seasons, covering the time period from April 1968 (last months of the Salazar period just before his fall from the chair and substitution by Marcello Caetano on 27 September 1968) then the whole Marcellist period all the way to 25 April 1974 (the Carnation Revolution). - The '70s.
- Token Minority: Filipe Perdigão and Júlia are the only black characters in an otherwise all-white cast. Some extras are also black.
- Truth in Television: Pretty much everything that happened on this show is true, from hostily to the retornados, to companies being taken over by worker's assemblies, to those worker's assemblies firing the bosses, to assemblies in buses deciding where the bus would go and stop, etc, etc, etc.
- War Is Hell: The Mendonças, along with other families, are forced to leave everything they had in Angola behind due to a civil war between liberation movements. Their maid and the maid's son are killed by one of the liberators. It is implied Teresa Castro was raped by guerrillamen in one of the liberation movements.
- We ARE Struggling Together:
- The anti-colonial liberation movements, MPLA, FNLA and UNITA, who are waging a war amongst themselves.
- The various rival communist parties, one of which is the maoist MRPP, which is the party Luísa Cardoso (the daughter of the Cardosos), her boyfriend and her friends belong to.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist:
- Everyone at the factory where Álvaro and his brother-in-law Joaquim Cardoso work, but especially Jacinto Sousa, one of the most radical workers at the factory. (They prefer to focus on "antifascist" activity when the factory, which they took over from their boss, is at the verge of bankruptcy.)
- Luísa Cardoso (the daughter of the Cardosos), her boyfriend Gonçalo Cunha Pereira, her friend Jorge Moreira and her brother Pedro, who belong to a maoist communist party, the MRPP, and state they are fighting for the workers against the bourgeoisie, while in fact they're bourgeois! (But, in the case of Gonçalo and Luísa, not anymore).
- In Real Life, they'd be killed if they were in Maoist China, and also in Real Life the MRPP had a reputation as a rich boys and girls club.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Gonçalo Cunha, who is Luísa Cardoso's boyfriend, is in love with her cousin, Ana Maria Mendonça, and they've already kissed a lot and even had sex. Gonçalo eventually dumped Luísa. Then, it was discovered Luísa was pregnant, she made an abortion - dangerous and illegal - and Ana Maria dumped Gonçalo after his jerkiness about the fact. They're, however, dating on and off. For a while.
- Will They or Won't They?:
- Gonçalo and Ana Maria (they do);
- Gonçalo and Rita (they don't);
- Jorge and Luísa (they do).
