Gentleman's Agreement.
This is a review for all 10 new episodes of the third season of Netflix's Narcos, which premieres Friday, September 1st. For those who haven't started (or finished) the new season, this review will be mostly spoiler-free.
As the second season of Narcos came to a close, and famed drug kingpin Pablo Escobar (played splendidly by "face of the series" Wagner Moura) exited the series in storm of bullets, the show notably felt bereft. And yes, seeds were planted right at the end for the saga to continue on with the Cali Cartel (who'd formed as sort of background noise during the first two years of the show), as the new target, but how would the series hold up without its most charismatic player/engaging storyline?
It had been Escoabar's outrageous exploits that fueled the show as things tended to lag considerably whenever the story shifted over to the DEA side of things. Boyd Holbrook's Murphy was dull and often bogged down in cop cliches while Pedro Pascal's (Game of Thrones) Peña was usually pushed off to the side despite being the character we often wanted to know more about.
So then how did the show actually improve in its third season given that "lesser" villains were now at the heart of the conflict? Well, it did so in a few important ways. Firstly, Pascal's Peña is now the central gunslinger. Not that he's ever anything more than shades of the "downtrodden determined lawman disillusioned with corruption on both sides of the drug war" archetype (since this is a show where every win is really several losses in disguise), but Peña, just as a bilingual Latino-American from the Texas border, is instantly more interesting that Holbrook's outsider gringo character who was saddled with the broken marriage arc.
With Peña as the nucleus, now delivering the "The More You Know"-style narration, the show also earns points with a well-crafted quartet of kingpins - leader Gilberto (Damián Alcázar), his quietly more-evil brother Miguel (Francisco Denis), New York violence-wreaker Chepe (Pêpê Rapazote), and distribution madman, who's also mad for men, Pacho (Alberto Ammann). And it's one thing to just flesh out your villains, spotlighting with their "Gentlemen of Cali" dynamic along with their individual dreams and plights, but it's another thing altogether to deliver a catchy hook. A can't-miss premise.
The Cali Cartel...is calling it quits.
The set up here, that really helps suck you in as a viewer, is that the seasons starts with Gilberto, perhaps overstepping his role as the Cali architect, announcing that he's leaving on top. He, and the three other bosses, have made a deal with the government to turn themselves in in six months and face little-to-no punishment. It's an idea that's both brilliant in its simplicity and foolish in the sense that nothing will ever go this perfectly in a criminal world populated with thieves and murderers.
The clock now ticks for both the Cartel and the DEA. The Cali heads need to make sure they make as much money as they can, in one last burst of bad business, while not doing anything that would cause those in charge to second-guess their deal. For the DEA, and Peña, a choice must be made regarding if it's even worth it to go after guys who are so protected. By the end of the second episode, Peña finds his second wind and after an inciting event - a Cali mishap that costs innocent lives - he makes it his personal mission to touch the supposedly untouchable.
Once again, naturally, the complexities of the drug runners overshadow the basic layout of the heroes. Pascal does his absolute best to breathe life into Peña, and no doubt he's the much better choice as the lead here, but Peña's still all about the bust while the villains get to explore a wide spectrum of emotions and storylines. To the rescue here, in place of a DEA parter (though newcomers Michael Stahl-David and Matt Whelan make for solid hungry young agents who help reinvigorate Peña) is a sort of "silent partner" in the form of Gilberto's head of personal security, Jorge Salcedo (Matias Varela).
Jorge is the character this season who's most going to keep you on the edge of your seat when the show spices up history with big intense thriller-style scenes. As the Cartel's seemingly only "decent" member, Jorge has big plans to move on from his employers (hah!) and start his own business. After Gilberto announces the "controlled burn" end of the Cartel, Jorge is forced to stay on until bosses come out clean on the other side. Once things go awry, Jorge, sensing the walls closing in and no way out for himself or his family, begins to cooperate with the DEA, becoming a desperate "man on the inside." It's a formidable addition to the show.
That's not to say, however, that the Jorge character doesn't come with his own baggage. At times, he's too good. So much so that you do sort to question how anyone like him could stand working with people who were obviously crooked psychos. He even comes with his own strange "no guns" code - a trait that gets called out so much that one unfortunately starts to see the story strings being pulled too much.
Also, and perhaps this is the worst part of Jorge's design, his wife, Paola (Taliana Vargas), isn't much more than a hollow disapproval machine - almost echoing Murphy's wife (played by Joanna Christie) from the first two seasons. Paola's either there to get angry about Jorge not quitting when he said he would or she's there to disavow him when things get too dangerous. It's not a good look when you have a character, like Jorge, who's constantly being put through the wringer, risking life and limb, just so she and their two daughters can be safe.
To the show's detriment, and this isn't a new gripe, there's not much place for female characters in general. If there is one, she's usually representing some form of victimization. It's the nature of this particular beast, which is dramatized account of early-90s global crime busting (and it's still fun when we catch intermittent glimpses of all these characters in real life), but the series always takes a hit whenever it short-sheets a particular female's journey, as few as it attempts to depict. An interesting starter arc this season, involving honcho Miguel murdering a rival just so he can swoop in on his wife/widow, Maria (Andrea Londo), all-but vanishes halfway through. Just when you think you'll explore what it's like for Maria to, basically, get snatched up like a prize by a predator, she becomes almost a non-entity.
The Verdict
Narcos isn't out to break the wheel, and most of the bureaucratic "what's it all for?" moments of defeat land with a thud, but when it works it can certainly hold its own as solid crime drama. With history on its side, and as its table settling, Narcos somehow found a way to actually become better in its third season, without the crutch of Pablo Escobar in fact, by delivering a killer (real) premise and some augmented thrills.
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