‘Primo’ Recap: ‘The Game Champ’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

(L-R) Carlos Santos, Jonathan Medina, and Christina Vidal as Ryan, Jay, and Drea in ‘Primo’. (Photo Courtesy of Jeff Neumann/Amazon Freevee.)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode Four of ‘Primo’. To revisit the previous episode, click here.
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For the most part, television shows about family… gloss over a lot about family life and understandably so. Because they’re either a sitcom, so the laughs are key and the stuff that really makes up family life has to take a backseat for the plot of the week. Or they’re a stylized drama that is designed to deeply focus on something specific about the family in question. A hardship if you will, that takes us on a powerful journey, wherein that too becomes the focus over anything else in the story, and well… this isn’t a bad thing by any means. Because it gives us good storytelling and it reflects the fact that when we think back upon the days when we and our family all lived together, we look at memories like a show does, and gloss over the more mundane stuff that oddly… offered up a lot of important moments.
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Because those were those developmental moments that taught us a lot about our family members and what made them who they are, and we discovered a lot about ourselves as well, and that’s why it is refreshing that the market is starting to shift into telling stories… that focus on those very moments. So, we can be reminded of what really makes family special, and one particular series that is excelling at this… is Primo on Amazon Freevee. For week in and week out, there are little moments that reflect what growing up in America really looks like, and never was that more evident than during the show’s next episode. For ‘The Game Champ’ was a tale that explored how pettiness teaches us lessons in family life and how… the success of others in the household, can sow discontent and unhealthy competition and how we overcome that.

Feats that this story accomplished via two key storylines. One of which revolved around Mike and Jay. The latter of whom decided to trap Mike on the roof a decade ago. Who in turn… decided to get revenge on this particular day by trapping Jay up there and tormenting him. Only to have his revenge blow up in his face at the end of it all, giving rise to a direct yet hilarious lesson in how, revenge and pettiness in family life is never worth it. Because we know one another too well, and that will always allow for the plan to backfire. As for the more complex message, that was explored by way of Rafa and Ryan. Who earned quite the scholarly honor, one that required Ryan’s certificate from a technical school to be removed from the family’s Wall of Fame, and well… that freaked him out. Because he felt he earned his spot on the wall and that prompted him to invoke the power… of The Game Champ.

A brutal competition where the family would duke it out through intellectual and physical challenges, designed to crown a champion that would decide all on a matter at hand. And this was so wild a game, that the police had been called out to the house several times and thankfully… it didn’t get to that point here. And well… the sour nature of the competition that was quickly whittled down to Rafa and Ryan, eventually revealed through Drea… that Ryan felt marginalized by Rafa’s intellect. For up until this point, he was the brains in the family and now there was a new challenger to his throne and what he was proud of. Which prompted Rafa to find a way to include his uncle and keep him feeling on high and well, in the end, that plot was quite the way to harken back to game nights in our own homes and moments such as these where we were able to learn how our family thinks and how they tick. And it also did a wonderful job of pointing out, how tough it can be in a family to feel marginalized, intentional, or not, and how kindness and love gets us past that point.

Plus, this is an episode that once again threw in a bonus examination. For Rollie and Mondo used their time away from the game… to help Rollie deal with grief. For he lost a friend and didn’t know how to process that. But Mondo figured out the path of least resistance to make that happen. Which led to a beautiful moment between these brothers, one that reminded us of how easily family can help us heal when we let them in and really… all of these plot threads made for a magnificent tale. One that really did cover topics that we don’t see touched upon all that often in family themed stories and of course… it was handled in the hilarious manner that only this show knows how to pull off. Because the revenge plot was damn funny through and through, and Drea’s Scarface moment and what followed was legendary and well, now that we’ve reached the end of this fascinating chapter in this family’s life, it’s onto the next one and all of the amazing lessons it will send our way. Until next time.

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