One Day At A Time: 10 Things That Make No Sense About Alex

Alex Alvarez of One Day at a Time is, in his own words, “the pretty one” of the family. He’s charming and sweet, but like all teenagers, has a predilection towards rebellion and succumbing to peer pressure. One of his best features is, of course, his trademark sarcasm: none of the other characters, except maybe Lydia, comes even close.

As confident as he might seem, Alex is as confused as anyone else his age, but he rarely shows it because he wants to maintain his “cool” demeanor as long as possible. Sometimes, though, the things he does or says clashes with his personality or narrative arc, and on several occasions, his thoughts and actions make little sense, if at all.

10 Thinks His Mom Is Richer Than She Is

Alex loves his kicks, but when he asks Penelope for an exorbitant amount of money (in order to buy five pairs), she scoffs at his audacity, counter-offering him one pair at less than $40.

At this point, Alex is bewildered by the revelation that his mother cannot actually afford hundreds of dollars for shoes, and asks her, “Mom, are we poor?” He has a home, clothes, as much food he can eat, a weekly allowance, and he still thinks that the Alvarezes are poor.

9 Tries To Steal His Mother’s Medication

When Alex is coerced into supplying his friends with a bottle of painkillers, he decides to steal Penelope’s pills, specifically meant for her severe shoulder pain (from her stint in the army.) He claims he does this because his “pals” threaten to have him ousted from their “group chat,” which is one of the silliest possible reasons for his theft.

Alex certainly understands how much his mother has sacrificed for their family, and him taking away her one source of physical comfort is quite unbelievable.

8 Secretly Meets His Father

After Victor shamelessly walks out on Elena’s quinceañera, it falls to Penelope to pick up the pieces and sew them back together again. A few months later, the girl is still distraught over what had happened but is distracted when Alex discloses his theoretical new paramour, Paige.

Unfortunately for Elena, Alex lies about having a date and instead is caught meeting up with his dad at the restaurant. Penelope is understandably furious; he should have known better than to sneak around like that.

7 Stereotypes His Family In His Film

For someone who knows what it feels like to be at the receiving end of racist remarks, it’s odd that Alex is fine with playing on stereotypes of his own family when making his movie.

This seems quite thoughtless and doesn’t quite match his character or his experiences.

6 Blames His Mom For His Weed

Penelope grounds Alex for a long, long time (in teen years) after he’s caught redhanded vaping marijuana, but Lydia has been left in the dark over this whole event. Until she finds his vape and a bag of weed while doing laundry, which he tries to pretend is a pen and some catnip.

Terrified by what his beloved Abuelita would think of him, Alex chooses to lay the blame on Penelope, and Lydia instantly falls for it. Although he does come clean about it later, the fact that he even allows it to get this far is ridiculous.

5 Allows His Grandma To Do Everything For Him

Lydia dotes on Alex to the point of openly shunning her other grandchild, Elena (who has mostly gotten used to it.) But their relationship is cutely parasitic — she does his chores on his behalf, regularly massages his ego, purchases expensive footwear for him, hand-feeds him slices of orange, among others.

Penelope is exhausted by this mollycoddling; she insists that Alex needs to be able to look after himself. The other two don’t really give a hoot, however. They really should.

4 Thinks Twitch Streaming Is Instantly Lucrative

Alex is persuaded to get a job working for the sweet but naive Dr. Berkowitz, helping his mother out in her everyday duties. He finds the whole rigmarole intolerably boring and has nothing but complaints to offer from the very beginning.

What’s stranger is the fact that he believes Elena’s new “career” as a twitch streamer is the quickest way to cash, so he quits his own job. Alex doesn’t seem to comprehend that this pathway is indeed extremely lucrative, but it takes months or years to get to a survivable point. He’s certainly smart enough to see that.

3 Almost Reveals Lydia’s Secret

Lydia has kept the family mantilla with her for over twenty years, or so she thinks. But she cannot allow her sister, Mirtha, to learn about this, and foists the blame on one of her dead cousins (at her funeral.)

Alex and she are so close that it would make sense that he’d know of her mistakes, especially since she claims that they have no secrets between them. And yet, he nearly shatters his grandma’s perfect facade by uttering the wrong words at the wrong time.

2 Unable To Recognize His Toxic Masculinity

Alex spends the day with Chloe at the museum, and his mother naturally finds out by forcing Schneider to reveal her son’s finsta. She is horrified to find out that he casually performs misogynistic acts, like fondling a statue and his friend in “inappropriate ways”.

His excuse is that “Chloe thought it was funny”, and that it shouldn’t be blown out of proportion. Fortunately, Elena relates a story about men harassing her and Syd in a bus, which changes Alex’s mind about the situation.

1 The Focus On His Hair

OK, so Alex takes pride in his appearance, but does that mean he has to run around screeching at the top of his voice if something happens to his hair? It’s not a Renaissance sculpture that requires thousands of hours of careful shaping, all it needs is some mousse and a few spritzes of hairspray.

It’s gotten so bad that whenever anyone even hints at his hairstyle being off, he resorts to copious quantities of drama. Teenagers can be really obsessed with these things, but this level of theatrics seems to go a little bit too far.

About The Author

Ajay Aravind
(429 Articles Published)

In real life, Ajay disguises himself as an academic, mainly writing textbooks for children — who all hate him for making their lives more miserable. He also writes about TV and film, strewing his opinions across the internet to see if people care (they don’t). You can find him @stain_dprinc_ss on Twitter.

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