A Dona do Pedaço

A Dona do Pedaço (Sweet Diva) is a Brazilian telenovela aired on TV Globo from May 20 to November 22, 2019 in 161 chapters. It replaced O Sétimo Guardião and was replaced by Amor de Mãe, being the 16th "novela das nove" produced by the network.

Why It's Not A Sweet Ambition

 * 1) Despite having been inspired by Vale Tudo by the late Gilberto Braga, the plot of the soap opera is a plagiarism of the plot of the already mentioned soap opera, where the mother is the opposite of the daughter and both sell food for a living and the daughter steals from her own mother to have social ascension, with a difference between sandwiches and cakes (Raquel Accioli and Maria de Fátima/Maria da Paz and Josiane "Jô"). Not only that rip-offs the plot of Vale Tudo, but also plagiarized a YouTuber's Facebook text, where the bride finds out that her future husband would have cheated on her in a motel with a lover, exposing his betrayal on her wedding day, where it happens in the telenovela with the character of Paolla Oliveira, Vivi Guedes and as well it copied SBT's Bake Off Brasil, with the telenovela's fictional reality show Best Cake, presented by Angélica, so much so that SBT provoked the soap opera in a commercial for Bake Off Brasil itself, needling with the following sentence: "The original is here".
 * 2) Weak characters, such as:
 * 3) * Maria da Paz is a very irritating and very naive protagonist, as she only gets money if anyone who passes by comes and gives a cake.
 * 4) * Josiane "Jô" is a monstrous person who hides in religion, which is an insult to Christians. Also, she is a serial killer who kills people, as she tries to kill Téo twice with an ice pick and disconnecting his breathing cords in the hospital, pushed Jardel and was run over to death, murdered Lucas, tried to shoot Fabiana (but it ended up unable to shoot her, since it was thrown down by Fabiana herself), tried to kill Kim and killed Régis, pushing him off the viaduct and dying on top of the car, when he asked her to marry him in the final chapter, showing her to be a complete spawn of the devil.
 * 5) Unlike other soap operas on Globo where couples are important, in this soap it is not the case, where the audience doesn't even want to know which couple the soap opera will choose.
 * 6) Just like Amor e Revolução from SBT, the soap opera thinks viewers are silly and not smart, thinking they would believe Josiane's curses.
 * 7) The soap opera's villains like Jô are huge karma houdinis, for not being punished and end up getting away with it.
 * 8) The ending is a pure disgrace, as already mentioned before, Josiane kills Régis, throwing him under a car and ends up with an image of her demonized. To make things worse, Jô's actress Agatha Moreira approved her character not having any redemption.
 * 9) It was only created because Manuela Dias' Amor de Mãe was postponed for some reason.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The opening is very good (for using the song Tá Escrito by Xande de Pilares) and delicious (because of the cake being baked at the opening) at same time.
 * 2) Good acting, mainly from already professional actors from Globo like Juliana Paes, Reynaldo Gianecchini, Paolla Oliveira, Agatha Moreira and others.
 * 3) Some moments in the telenovela are tolerable, such as where Jô deservedly gets slapped and beaten by Capitã in prison, for her murder crimes.

Reception
Despite the good audience, the soap opera was criticized several times for underestimating the public's intelligence. The Notícias da TV website evaluated the soap opera with a negative critique: "A Dona do Pedaço enshrines prime-time mediocrity (...) Doubtful plots and incoherent characters have already become common in Globo's 9 pm telenovelas, just as the name of Walcyr Carrasco was already synonymous with good comedies, in the times of O Cravo e a Rosa (2000) and Chocolate com Pimenta (2003). The rural and unpretentious scripts were a success. The change of the author to prime time produced a new type of recognition: he even gets an audience, but his quality has not existed for some time.

This telenovela is notable for being Globo's last telenovela with Reynaldo Gianecchini, who two years later, in 2021, would not renew his contract with the channel, although he was going to return as Anthony Mariano in Verdades Secretas II on Globoplay, but his character was cut from the second season by the author of the soap opera Walcyr Carrasco. However, he is still on good terms with the channel since then.

Trivia

 * It is the third soap opera that Reynaldo Gianecchini and Agatha Moreira work together, having previously acted together in the last soap opera of Manoel Carlos, Em Família in 2014 and the first season of Verdades Secretas in 2015, that curiously the latter was written by the same author, Walcyr Carrasco.
 * The soap opera got involved in controversy, due to the accessory that the character of Juliana Paes, Maria da Paz use in the soap opera, a turban, more precisely, the tiara of the dove rotates, which is repudiated in the bible, mainly for being maleficent.