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Mexican teen soap Like, la Leyenda finds its villain in the classroom

Like, la Leyenda ran 97 episodes on Las Estrellas, a teen soap about a school that preaches modern values and runs on old rules. Scored 7.8/10.

By mitch·3 min read
A boy with wings stands between a peaceful forest and a polluted industrial city.

“Like, la Leyenda” ran for 97 episodes on Las Estrellas, from September 10, 2018 to January 22, 2019, and it built its whole first season on a single sharp joke: a school that calls itself modern while running on the oldest rules there are. Pedro Damián created it. The Life Institute of Knowledge and Evolution — LIKE — is the setting, and the gap between its brochure and its hallways is the engine.

The Life Institute of Knowledge and Evolution

The premise is laid out plainly. LIKE is a “prestigious and cosmopolitan educational institution, with a supposedly modern and open educational system, but in reality it is deeply traditional and schematic.” That is the show’s whole thesis in one line, and it commits to it. The drama and soap genres do the rest.

Antonia De Haro and Ulises Reyes

Roberta Damián plays Antonia De Haro, and Mauricio Abad plays Ulises Reyes. Around them the cast spreads wide: Macarena García as Machu Salas, Santiago Achaga as Claudio Meyer, Alejandra Müller as Emilia Ruiz Ayala, Carlos Said as León Rubio, Anna Iriyama as Keiko Kobayashi, Víctor Varona as Silverio Gil, Christian Chávez as Gabriel Rey “Gabo,” Óscar Schwebel as Humberto del Águila Ramírez, Candela Márquez as Candela, and Gina Castellanos as Victoria.

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A Soap With a Point

Ninety-seven episodes is a lot of room, and the show uses it the way a soap should — the institution is the antagonist, not any one person. The young people interned there are the story. The adults who run LIKE are the system they are up against.

What the Score Says

The TMDB audience score is 7.8 out of 10, from 502 votes. That is a solid number for a series that never pretended to be subtle. It is not a perfect score, and it should not be. The show’s best trick is also its limit: once you have said the school is a lie, you have said most of what you have to say.

Where the Show Lands

The weakness is structural. A premise this clean tends to run out of new angles before the episode order does, and 97 episodes is a long time to keep finding fresh ways to say the same true thing. The cast is large enough to carry it, and the soap format gives every character room. That is the trade.

The experiences of a group of young people interned at the Life Institute of Knowledge and Evolution (LIKE), a prestigious and cosmopolitan educational institution, with a supposedly modern and open educational system, but in reality it is deeply traditional and schematic.

The Verdict on LIKE

What matters here is the target. “Like, la Leyenda” aims at the gap between what institutions promise and what they do, and it hits it. What is noise is the length — a tighter run would have sharpened the point. As it stands, the show is convincing enough, and the audience score reflects that.

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