Critic Reviews

Excellent. ... It’s the rare show about family, identity and community that captures the complexity of how we perceive ourselves and others. ... The same insights help to power its pleasures—of which there are many. Despite the show’s seriousness, and the grief that forms its emotional core, Saracho and her writers season each script with moments of beauty and bliss. ... Wise, empathetic, exhilarating show.

Although the show occasionally gets tripped up in its world-building, the story it’s telling remains one of the most vital, heartwarming, and fraught on TV.

How to honor the memory of a beloved is its theme, or one of them. You can't get much more universal than that. Fine newcomer with excellent cast, and some universal themes.

There is no easy way to address everything Vida wants to while also emotionally sewing up the stories of these players we’ve come to love over the years in just three and a half hours. But the feelings we are left with in each episode, including the finale, are the same as those we’ve lived through in past seasons: love, sincerity, hope. We’re fortunate to have been able to spend more time with Vida. Not enough, maybe, but every moment has been a treasure.

The series could go anywhere, but it’s off to a good start in the first hour.

“Vida” is an important series — for representation, for diversity, for women — but it’s also an entrancing and enjoyable bar story. Whatever you’re looking for, “Vida” has it.

The show is definitely more adventurous in theme and subject matter than visual storytelling.

At typical drama length, this series might have been bogged down with plot digressions and expansions. As it is, it sometimes slips into melodrama, but the lapses pass quickly. Life may be too short, but Vida is just right.

Vida accomplishes a lot in only six episodes, more than some shows that loiter and linger for 13-plus hour-long installments. It establishes a strong sense of place and self--the dialogue frequently hopscotches between Spanish and English without ever feeling the need to translate--while provocatively poking at the hornet’s nest of feelings stirred up by home, grief, cultural identity, and the fear that as a society we are purging and rehabbing away the things that should be considered precious.

Every actor on Vida is great; Barrera’s performance in particular blooms with searing clarity as Lyn is forced to face her own reckless choices. But it’s Prada’s Emma who becomes both the backbone and the beating heart of Vida as she grapples with her mother’s truth and the painful reality of learning it too late.