Rainha da Sucata

Rainha da Sucata (Portuguese for Queen of Scrap) is a Brazilian telenovela that first aired on TV Globo from 2 April to 26 October 1990, in 179 episodes.

Production

Rainha da Sucata was the first telenovela written by Silvio de Abreu for Globo's 8 p.m. primetime slot; until then he had authored several plots presented at 7 p.m. He was assigned to write a humorous telenovela as, at the time, there was a determination by Globo's Teledrama Department to avoid presenting overly dramatic plots in the slot, a practice that began with the airing of O Salvador da Pátria (1989). However, this proposal prevailed only at the beginning of the plot: due to the rejection of the excessive comedic tone by the public (a factor noted in focus groups), from June 1990 onwards, De Abreu decided to put comedy in the background and focus more on drama.

Also in June, the airings began to show longer episodes with the goal of reducing the impact that the telenovela Pantanal, aired by competitor Rede Manchete, had on later programs. This movement caused Pantanal to lose advertisements as it started to be aired later and later as a reaction. In addition, the "scenes from the next episode" segment shown at the end of each episode was removed.

Economic reforms implemented by then President Fernando Collor de Mello with his Collor Plan were incorporated into the story of Rainha da Sucata. Globo has been accused of knowing Collor's intentions and not warning the population of such plan, but in reality many scenes that were already ready for airing had to be rewritten to adapt to the new reality, as the government plan caused deep economic and social impacts.

In the middle of the plot, Silvio de Abreu had to get away from work and Gilberto Braga replaced him, having written 9 episodes.