Narcos: Mexico 3: Lives and Deaths

I really enjoyed the third and final season of Narcos: Mexico, and regret that there won't be another season, devoted to Chapo. Yeah, I know there have been other series and movies about Chapo, but his story deserves to be done up in the inimitable Narcos way, especially his ingenious escape via tunnels, which (as I've mentioned before ) I've always admired.  When I was kid living in the Bronx, I used to think that the best way of escaping police if they were after me was to dig a big tunnel under the Hudson and up to the Catskills.  Fortunately, I didn't commit any crimes and they never came after me,

Back to Narcos: Mexico 3, it was great to see Pacho (good acting by Alberto Ammann) again.  He's the only character to appear in every season of Narcos and Narcos: Mexico, and that's quite an accomplishment.  The character and the real person had a hand in the drug traffic in both Colombia and Mexico.

Alas, Pacho ends up dead.  As does Amado (good acting by José María Yazpik), the Lord of the Skies. Though for Amado, there's a hint at the end of the season that maybe he actually escaped from the hospital plastic surgery, or with that plastic surgery that changed his face.  In real history, Amado definitely died.  But the circumstances -- exactly what went wrong in that hospital -- are not clear. In Narcos: Mexico 3, we see his lover -- the love of his life -- walking back to her house after taking a stroll on a beautiful beach in Chile.  We see two glasses of wine on the bureau.  Who was that second glass for?  And we see a model plane, obviously suggestive of the Lord of the Skies.  So ... who knows what that scene was suggesting, and, who actually knows what happened in real history?  Maybe they did plastic surgery on some recent corpse to make his face look like Amado, while the real Amado, not looking like himself after successful plastic surgery, left the hospital and got to Chile unscathed.

The rest of this final season was good, too, hammering home the message that the U. S. barely knew what it was doing in its war on drugs.   I had to laugh in one of the concluding episodes when Barry McCaffrey, U. S. drug czar, says in a real newsclip that we had the situation well in hand.  I know Barry, he's currently a commentator on MSNBC, and if I ever have a chance I'll ask him how he felt about that clip in Narcos: Mexico.

But drugs, though the U. S. badly bungled our declared war on them, are no laughing matter.  And the whole Narcos series stands as a powerful, brilliant portrayal of how and why that war went so wrong.

See also Narcos: Mexico 2: "I Don't Have Partners" ... Narcos: Mexico: A Riveting Prequel ... Narcos 3: The Gentlemen of Cali ...  Narcos 2: In League with The Godfather Saga .. Narcos on Netflix: Outstanding 

 

                   the Neanderthal cartel

Narcos Mexico 2: "I Don't Have Partners"

As I indicated in my review of the first season of Narcos Mexico (itself a prequel to the three-season Narcos), I always admired the tunnel-building savvy of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán.  Not the drug-dealing empire that he inherited and built.  But there's something about those tunnels.  Maybe because it represents a technology that goes back more than 4000 years (the qanats, that carried water) to defeat the high-tech bravado of government.  Hey, when I was a kid, before I even knew that fact about tunnels, I realized that if could build a tunnel from where I lived with my parents in the Bronx, to somewhere in the woods in say, Ellenville, New York, I could pretty much do anything I wanted and then escape with ease to the Catskills.  Of course, I had no idea what I would do once I got there but, as I said, I was just a kid.

So I've always had a special interest in El Chapo's tunnel-building - well, since 2015, when he had a tunnel built to escape from prison a second time (first time was in a laundry cart, not nearly as cool) - and I was very happy to see him building a tunnel in Narcos Mexico 2.  This one was not to escape prison but smuggle more drugs into the United States.  Alas, a rival gang in Mexico destroys the tunnel, and since it says at the beginning of every episode that, although the overall story is based on truth, some facts have been changed for dramatic effect, I can't even say for sure that the young El Chapo actually built such a tunnel.  But it was good to see.

Meanwhile, that overall story was indeed top-notch action and drama, detailing the continuing story of the handsome Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo (well played by Diego Luna), as he strives to consolidate his hold on and mastery of the drug trade in Mexico.  This is no easy thing, to say the least.  Gallardo already leveraged his weed empire into in effect becoming a middleman for delivery of Colombian coke to the United States.  Now he has to consolidate all the drug gangs in Mexico, and move ever more massive amounts of cocaine from Colombia.  His strategy is to eschew partners in Mexico - "I don't have partners, I have employees," he tells anyone who will listen.  If you know the drug war history, you know how that works out.

As in Narcos Mexico 1, and all three seasons of Narcos, there's a great group of supportive actors and actresses, playing characters in all facets of the story.  It was good to see Pacho again (well played by Alberto Ammann, the one character who, if I recall correctly, has appeared in all five seasons, playing one of the big shots in the Cali cartel in Colombia, who do believe in partners.  In Narcos Mexico, he's the sole representative of the Kings of Cali to appear on screen.

This season will keep you glued to the screen, and is highly recommended.

 

the Neanderthal cartel

DNA Nation (Part 3, Chapters 14-17): Two-Edged Swords

I've long held the obvious view that technology is a two-edged sword, ethically speaking: a knife can be used to cut food (good) or cut people (bad, unless the person wielding the knife is a surgeon) (see my "Guns, Knives, and Pillows" in On Behalf of Humanity: The Technological Edge for more).  In Part 3 of the excellent DNA Nation: How the Internet of Genes is Changing Your Lives, Sergio Pistoi looks at some of the dark sides of the revolution in genomics, while keeping his eyes on the astonishing benefits of opening the documents of our DNA that are beginning to come into play.

Pistoi explains that, in contrast to the relatively few deadly diseases (such as Huntington's) which are monogenic or caused by a single harmful mutation, most (including cancers) are multifactorial, "with thick and elaborate plots, where a criminal network of genetic and non-genetic factors conspire to develop the pathology. Think of Breaking Bad, Narcos and The Wire combined – but way more complicated" (p. 121).  Although I and no doubt Pistoi loved those series, the upshot for prevention and control of such illnesses is that identification of a complicit gene tells far less than the whole story.   Pistoi reports on a man who had what was mostly likely unnecessary extensive prostate surgery, after a suspect genetic mutation was flagged in his DNA.

But Pistoi goes on to detail some of the treasure-trove of benefits of DNA testing that are becoming available so fast that Pistoi may need to update his book on at least a yearly basis.  Via "a technique called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnostic ... embryos are obtained in vitro from the egg and sperm of the couple, and DNA tested to select the ones without the mutation” (pp. 123-4).  I still have a book on our shelves called A Fortune in the Junk Pile - about finding valuable antiques in tag sales and flea markets - and Pistoi delves into the value of what was labeled "junk DNA" because it seemed to have no connection to somatic traits.   In fact, this DNA is now known to have the crucial "epigenetic" function of regulating the performance of genes, which allows the "reprogramming" of normal adult cells into stem cells (p. 147).  (As a science fiction author, I was especially glad to see this redemption of junk DNA - my April 1996 novelette in Analog, "The Copyright Notice Case," situated an ancient copyright in our DNA in the junk DNA we all carry; the story is in my 1999 Bestseller anthology).

And, just for good measure, Pistoi tells us that “Our bodies host ten times more microorganisms than our own cells" and "there is evidence that gut bacteria can protect or predispose us to pathologies ranging from inflammation to diabetes and obesity" (p. 149).   I was especially glad to see this, just as with the junk DNA, since my novel The Consciousness Plague hypothesizes that our very consciousness is made possible by communicative bacteria that live in our brains.  Outside of the realm of science fiction, Pistoi notes that bacteria and fungi in our biome add an important dimension to our DNA unveiling.

And I'll be back soon with my concluding review of this book which has updated my knowledge of DNA more than anything else I've read in the past twenty years.  Its overarching message: no food, no medication, can be deemed to be good or right for you, until it's matched to your DNA, a process which is still in its toddlership.

See also: DNA Nation (Part 1, Chapters 1-5): Reconfiguring Your Human Family ... DNA Nation (Part 2, Chapters 6-13): The Extraordinary Revolution and Its Intrinsic Limitations .... DNA Nation (Part 4, Chapters 18-24, Epilogue): Talkative Cookies

                                                    The Consciousness Plague

Narcos Mexico: A Riveting Prequel

With Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán on trial in New York, what better time to watch - and review - Narcos Mexico, the fourth installment in Netflix's justly acclaimed Narcos series.  Actually, it's a prequel to the other three Narcos, but it's just as powerful.   It takes place (obviously) in Mexico, but it's the story of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and the massive weed cartel he and his brother Rafael Caro Quintero put together in the 1980s.

El Chapo appears as a low-to-high-level henchman of Rafael's.   And Pablo Escabar and the Kings of Cali put in an appearance in a great episode in which Gallardo goes to Colombia to get make a deal for the coke distribution which is beginning to rival and exceed his weed trade.   Indeed, Gallardo's shift from marijuana to cocaine is one of the turning point in Narcos Mexico, and has some unforeseen and unhappy consequences for Gallardo.

The other central theme is the dedication - some would say obsession - of American DEA Agent  Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena to bring down Gallardo's Guadalajara/Mexican/world drug cartel.   In case you're not familiar with the real history, and/or haven't seen Narcos Mexico, I won't tell you how this all turns out.  But I will say that there are close calls galore, and death expected and unexpected meted out in almost every episode.

There's a narrator - Scoot McNairy - who sounds a lot like like the narrator of the first three seasons but is not.  The acting is excellent - especially Diego Luna as Miguel, Tenoch Huerta as Rafael, and Joaquín Cosio as their uncle 'Don Neto' Fonseca Carrillo. Michael Peña does memorable work as Kiki, as does Alyssa Diaz as his wife. And it was a real treat was seeing Wagner Moura as Escobar and Francisco Denis and Alberto Ammann as the Cali bosses back in the 1980s one more time.

And here's the confession I often make when I watch these series:  I know the drug cartels murdered a lot of people and did a lot of very evil things.  But in the narrative framework of the story on screen, I always feel a little bad when things don't go right for them, and a little bit glad when they do.  For that reason, I wouldn't be totally devastated if El Chapo dug a tunnel and got out his jail in New York, just as he did in Mexico, but that's another story.

See this series.  If you like this kind of stuff, you'll love it.

 

the Neanderthal cartel

The Man from the Future: Time-Traveling Escobar

This one's from Brazil, in Portuguese, from 2011, by way of Netflix in 2016, and I just watched it as part of my 2017 end-of-year time-travel movie and TV extravaganza.  The Man from the Future - O Homem do Futuro in Portuguese - stars Wagner Moura as an accidental time-traveling scientist who finds himself some twenty years in his past - in 1991 - and in a position to change the course of his personal history, and get the girl (played by Alinne Moraes) he's loved all of these years, but lost for some reason at that crucial moment in 1991.

If Wagner Moura's name sounds familiar, it's because he played Pablo Escobar in Netflix's Narcos.  (Alinne Moraes currently stars in Além do Tempo, a reincarnation TV series that I've yet to see, but will as soon as it's available here.)  Moura is excellent in both Narcos and The Man from the Future, which is praise indeed, since the time-travel movie only has drugs as part of its comedy, which it mostly but not completely is.  As a time-traveling romance, The Man from the Future also bears some kinship with Peggy Sue Got Married and even Back to the Future, though it's somehow a little bit more funny and serious than both of those classics.

Director Cláudio Torres has a good sense of what's needed in a time-travel story.  A smart phone, which looks like a mobile phone to someone in 1991, but one that takes pictures and is also a little computer, is a good way to show someone in that past that you come from the future.  It's of course also easy to carry along with you in your trip through time.

The Man from the Future is also unafraid to have the same character at different times of his life, and from different alternate realities, in the same place at the same time, talking (and screaming) at one another.  Other time-travel narratives, like 12 Monkeys the television series, look at those kinds of impossible meetings as literally destructive of reality, and thus paradoxes to be literally avoided like the plague.  This might make for a strong plot mechanism, but it deprives the story of the fun of three versions of yourself yelling at yourself.

The 1991 music is also good, with R.E.M. and Radiohead in the background at appropriate times.  It's always good to see a time-travel story in which the hero is looking to change his life rather than the world, and The Man from the Future is recommended.

watch The Chronology Protection Case FREE on Amazon Prime

  

read time travel stories FREE on Amazon Prime

My List of the Top 10 Television Series of 2017

Continuing the tradition - just started two years ago - here is my Top 10 list for 2017,  from who knows how many series I've seen this past year on network television, cable, and streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Acorn):

Honorable mention (narrowly not making the list, for a variety of reasons):  On the list last year: Vikings was on my Top 10 list last year (that would be season 3).  Season 4 was excellent, but not quite as good in previous seasons.  (Season 5 has just begun, and I'm already liking it a little more than Season 4.) Returning in honorable mention: Chicago Fire is still superb, but still suffers from the limitations of network television.   Apples and oranges: Veep is still hilarious, but it's impossible to rank a comedy with dramas, so I put it here in honorable mentions. Same for the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is in an hilarious class of its own. Closest runners-up: Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime): sequels, especially broadcast years later, are always a difficult proposition, but Twin Peaks did this insanely well, literally;  Game of Thrones (Season 7) (HBO): best season so far, we finally got to see the dragons in action; Ozark (Netflix): an original, engrossing crime drama in an unlikely place; The Break (Netflix): top-notch Belgian noir, The Crown (Netflix): peerless drama of the first years of Queen Elizabeth II;  Mindhunter (Netflix) think Criminal Minds, unhindered by network mores

-> 17 December 2017 shoutout to Erased, a charming, very different kind of time travel series on Netflix, which I just saw last night.  It will definitely be on my Top 10 list next year.

-> 28 December 2017 I just finished streaming Travelers 2 - the first season was on my Top 10 list last year (2016) - Travelers 2 will surely be on my Top 10 list next year.

And now the Top 10:

10. 19-2 (final season, Acorn): back on the list from last year, one of the best cop shows ever on television; sorry to see it conclude

9. The Deuce (HBO): a gritty, in-your-face look at prostitution and the dawn of the porn industry in 1970s New York City, as only HBO can do it

8. Big Little Lies (HBO): sly, well-acted, delicious, brutal, and criminal

7. Four Seasons in Havana (Netflix): Cuban noir, based on four novels, about the exploits of detective with a secret life as a writer - you can't go wrong with this gem

6. Narcos (Season 3) (Netflix): 3rd year in a row on my Top 10 list, you can't beat the pace, the realism, and the sarcasm of the DEA-agent narrator

5. Dark (Netflix): there was a lot of time-travel on television in 2017 (12 Monkeys, Timeless, Time After Time, Somewhere Between, Outlander), but this German outing was the best, and wove at least half a dozen major paradoxes into the story

4. The Orville (Fox): the closest thing ever on television to the original Star Trek series, with some of The Next Generation on board with equivalent characters; and The Orville is often laugh-out-loud funny

3. Fauda (Netflix): a brilliant, riveting Mossad spy story, swat-team narrative, which treats Israelis and Arabs with almost equal sensitivity

2. Longmire (final season, 6) Netflix: this series just got better and better every every season, and saved the best for last with a truly satisfying story that tied up most of the loose ends

1. Sense8 (season 2) Netflix: telepathy is a relative rarity in science fiction, and Sense8 did it masterfully and memorably; destined to become a classic which will be watched for decades to come

See also My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2015 and My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2016

Narcos 3: The Gentlemen of Cali

Narcos was back the first of September with its third streaming season on Netflix.   It had a lot to live up to with the death of Escobar at the end of the second season, someone who in his own way is right up there with everyone from Robin Hood to Michael Corleone, and who was actually real in recent history.  But Narcos 3 did it, and manages to present a season every bit as riveting if not quite as biographically significant as in the first two runs.

And that's because the Rodriguez brothers, aka the Cali Cartel along with Pacho and a guy in New York, want to keep a low profile, or a much lower profile than their late rival, Pablo Escobar.  They -- or at least, the Rodriguez brothers -- consider themselves not only corporate executives but "gentlemen".  And they are, of sorts.

Miguel Rodriguez - very well played by Francisco Denis, by the way - has a fairly important high-level manager in their organization killed because Miguel covets his wife.  She takes him up on his offer of a free luxury apartment for her and her son, because what can she do?  But when she starts taking her dress off for Miguel, he gently puts it back on her.  That's gentlemanly, right?  I mean, he did kill her husband, but ... (They do sleep together a little later.)

DEA agent Peña (continually well acted by Pedro Pascal) has become a USA hero of sorts, having brought down the legendary Escobar, but he of course has his hands more than full trying to do the same for the Cali Cartel.  He's assisted by two young, gung-ho agents, but the crucial difference is made by Jorge Salcedo, the ace Cali tech wizard and security chief who (spoilers) switches sides.  (Good performance here by Matias Varela.) As was the case with the first two seasons, we know the ending of this true story, but not how everyone gets there, and there's lots of great action -- especially from Chepe, the guy in New York, who actually does not keep such a low profile - and surprises along the way.

Highly recommended!

See also Narcos on Netflix: Outstanding ... Narcos 2: In League with The Godfather Saga



a different kind of crime

El Chapo: Awaiting the Tunnel

I have to admit that from the moment I heard about El Chapo's escape from a Mexican prison via a tunnel built for him from his cell to a house somewhat down the road from the prison ... well, it struck a chord in me. When I was a kid, a long time ago, I thought that one way of remaining free if anyone from the government or wherever came after me was to build a tunnel from underneath my house to some nondescript town in upstate New York.  Of course, that tunnel would have needed to be a lot longer than what El Chapo had built, but, I still had to admire his accomplishment.

I was therefore eager to see this new Netflix series (shown first on Univision).  Alas, it leaves El Chapo in prison long before his tunnel, before even his earlier successful prison escape via other means.  But it's still a pretty good short series, with more to follow in September.

This first season in effect consists of two parts: El Chapo rising to power as a drug lord, and his apprehension and incarceration in prison.  Both are interesting in different ways.  The first has young El Chapo meeting Pablo Escobar in Colombia - a harkening back to Narcos and Pablo's story.  The second is a grim and gritty prison story, and the hell that El Chapo was put through, his spirit remaining unbroken.

There's also a lot, in both parts, about the Mexican government, and its struggle to contain corruption in its own ranks.  All in all, a riveting story, well told and well acted by Marco de la O in the title role, and I'm looking forward to more.  Although El Chapo cannot be considered a good man, his story nonetheless is a tableau of the resilience of the human spirit.

no tunnels here but plenty of crime

My List of the Top 10 Television Series of 2016

Continuing the tradition - just started last year - here is my Top 10 list for 2016,  from who knows how many series I've seen this past year on network television, cable, and streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Acorn):

Honorable mention (narrowly not making the list, for a variety of reasons):  On the list last year: Rectify concluded its run this Fall, and although it was still excellent and unique in many ways, some of the episodes lacked the intensity of the earlier seasons.  The Affair has just begun a new season on Showtime, and so far it's too soon to know if this will be another Top 10 season.   Returning in honorable mention: Chicago Fire is still superb, but still suffers from the limitations of network television.  Nordic noir:  Case, The Department Q Trilogy, Dicte - all outstanding, subtitled Scandinavian police drama that almost made the list.  Apples and oranges: Veep is hilarious, but it's impossible to rank a comedy with dramas, so I put it here in honorable mentions. Closest runner-up: The Fall's third season (BBC, streamed on Neflix) was its best yet for this sociopathic crime drama, with an Emmy-worthy performance by Gillian Anderson.

And now the Top 10:

10. Designated Survivor (ABC TV):  The only network series on my Top 10, which says how far cable and streaming have surpassed traditional network TV in the U.S.  But Designated Survivor is a worthy exception, in effect a blend of 24 and House of Cards - or Jack Bauer in the White House. Fast-paced, dangerous, and unafraid to address current controversial political issues.

9. Vikings (History Channel):  Moving up from honorable mention last year to #9 on my list this year, Vikings is superbly rendered historical drama.   What and how the Vikings managed to conquer is fascinating just as straight history, but this series brings these stories alive with unforgettable characters and breathtaking battle scenes.

8. Colony (USA Network):  Near-future Los Angeles under totalitarian alien control - aliens from outer space not other countries - debuted in 2016.  A taut, excellent mix of action and intelligent political philosophy.

7. House of Cards (Season 4) (Netflix): Back on the list, down one notch, but that's because of the tougher competition, not because of any loss of quality.  Frank and Claire Underwood remain brilliant templates of American Presidential politics and governance, becoming less hyperbolic and more in tune with our reality with every passing year, and not because House of Cards is changing.

6. Narcos (Season 2) (Netflix): We streamed seasons 1 (2015) and 2 (2016) in 2016, and loved them both.  Irresistible, brutal (how's that for a combination) docu-drama about Colombian drug-lord Pablo Escobar.

5. 19-2 (Acorn).  This is among the best beat-cop shows ever on television.  All three seasons are streaming on Acorn, with Season 3 first airing in the summer of 2016.  Originally a French-Canadian series, my wife and I enjoyed the English version so much we'll probably see the French sooner or later too. Indelible characters.

4. Travelers (Netflix).  Ok, I love science fiction, but I especially love time travel.  I said in my review of this Canadian series, now streaming on Netflix, that it was in some ways as good as 12 Monkeys.  Now that it's settled in, I think it's even better.  The thing is, Travelers starts out very slowly, so much so that I wouldn't have kept watching if I didn't have an insatiable interest in time travel stories.  But Travelers gets better very quickly, and the last four episodes are pure, incandescent genius.

3. The Girlfriend Experience (Starz): Both a lawyer and a call-girl show, and a gem of a drama.  The "girlfriend experience" gives the customer not just sex but a girlfriend for the rented time, and the situations this engenders make for an outstanding portrayal of life in the fast lane.

2.  Westworld (HBO): There's going to be more science fiction this year than last year.  I am indeed a science fiction fan (as well as author), but these series were extraordinary, and should be very appealing to everyone who doesn't dislike science fiction.  In the case of Westworld, it was a very close second to The Man in the High Castle, offering the best depiction of the profound issues in human-like artificial intelligence I've ever seen on television or in the movies.  (Humans was #9 on my list last year - its new season will be on in 2017.  I found Westworld better than Humans, as good as it was.)

1. The Man in the High Castle (Season 2) (Amazon):  This was #1 on my list last year, and this year's episodes were even better.  Goes well beyond Philip K. Dick's masterful novel in intelligent, relevant, vivid, and riveting ways.   And speaking of relevant, never more so, given the support President-elect Trump received from white supremacists in the recent election.

See also My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2015

Narcos 2: In League with The Godfather Saga

My wife and streamed Narcos 2 on Neflix the last two evenings, and, what can I say, it was outstanding, a stand-out masterpiece in both true-crime and crime fiction drama, in any medium.  I liked it even better than the first season, and I would now place it in league with The Godfather trilogy and The Sopranos.

Pablo Escobar's crew is portrayed in vivid and memorable detail.  Limon the driver ... La Quica the hitman ... Blackie the masterful bomber ... everywhere you turn in this story you find a subplot as riveting as the overall drama, and acted with style and precision (Limon by Leynar Gomez, La Quica by Diego Cataño, and Blackie by Julián Díaz).

As the pressure mounts on Escobar and the Medellín Cartel, he and we can never be sure who is still loyal.   The story has some shockers, especially if you're not familiar with the real history.   The pressure comes from so many interlocking sources that, as was the case in the first season, you find yourself admiring Escabar's intelligence and survival skills, despite the murders that he ruthlessly dishes out, especially when he's angered.   In addition to (most of) the government of Colombia including its President, and the US DEA, Escobar must fend off increasingly damaging attacks from the rival Cali Cartel and a brutally effective rightwing military group, Los Pepes.   Even worse for Escobar, these groups have an alliance, uneasy but effective enough for the DEA - or at least one agent, Peña - to funnel high-tech surveillance info to Cali and Los Pepes.

Even a fleeting knowledge of history will tell you how Escobar's story ends. What you may not know, though, is the lack of telecom sophistication that sealed his fate, or the joy he took in just buying and eating strawberries and creme like any other citizen of Medellín (assuming that's true, but touchingly shown in the series).  But the bigger questions attendant to his life of crime continue.  Miguel Uribe, husband of Diana Turbay - tragically killed by Colombian National Police in 1991 during a botched rescue attempt after Escobar had kidnapped her (portrayed in Season 1) - told me at dinner in New York City in the late 1980s that the drug cartels wouldn't have grown rich and powerful in his country had there not been such a keen taste for the white powder in ours. And that problem obviously still remains.

And this means there's more than ample Narcos story to tell for a third and subsequent seasons, which I hope are made.  As for the first two, they shouldn't be mistaken for literal history - some of which is left out, such as La Quica's arrest in Queens, NY and his conviction for the bombing of Avianca Flight 203, for which he's still serving time in the U. S. - but that's the difference between documentary and docudrama.  Indeed, even documentaries sometimes leave out material that others deem important to the true story, but what we're left with in Narcos is a fabulous piece of work - not really the "magical realism" with which the narrator Agent Murphy frames the story (clever, given that the late Gabriel García Márquez, one of the pillars of magical realism, also penned News of a Kidnapping, about the cartel's kidnappings, including Diana Turbay) -  but a real epic of our time, or the time that led to our time, brilliantly told and directed, and indelibly acted by Wagner Moura as Escobar and Paulina Gaitan as Tata his wife.  Narcos, like all the great crime drama, takes its place not only with The Sopranos and The Godfather, but Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies - in other words, with stories of greed and yearning for freedom, and right and wrong, and establishment vs. anti-establishment, as old as our very humanity.

See also Narcos on Netflix: Outstanding

#SFWApro



a different kind of crime

El Chapo - Narcos Connection?

The news just came through today that El Chapo was captured because he was attempting to get word out to potential producers to make a bio-pic about his life, and the Mexican Marines picked up on this.

Which led me to think:  Was Narcos, released this past summer on Netflx, what got El Chapo started on thinking he would be a good subject for a movie?   After all, El Chapo likely sees himself as the successor to Pablo Escabar, the Columbian drug lord who was the subject of Narcos.

And El Chapo does have a great, cinematic story.  The tunnel, almost a mile long, which he used to escape was a real feat of engineering.  Ironically, his capture now will made him an even more fitting subject for a movie or TV series, providing an ending with much more closure.

TV and motion pictures have often been criticized for glorifying crime.  But Narcos on Netflix could be an example of just the opposite in its ultimate effect.

Score another accolade for Netflix and its live streaming.   Between Making a Murderer (a documentary) and Narcos, these new television series are having a real impact on our world.

See also my reviews of Narcos and  Making a Murderer.

Narcos on Netflix: Outstanding

We streamed Narcos on Netflix the past few evenings.  Like House of Cards, Peaky Blinders, and Bloodline on Netflix, and The Man in the High Castle on Amazon, Narcos is a powerful, top-notch kind of streaming television, every bit as good as and sometimes even a little better than the best we've seen on cable television.   As I pointed out in McLuhan in an Age of Social Media, we're undergoing a new revolution in television indeed, not just in the process of streaming, but in the narratives that are being streamed.

Wagner Moura's portrayal of Colombian drug king Pablo Escobar - at his height, the seventh richest person in the world - is so strong and sensitive that you almost find yourself rooting for him - that is, until he brutally murders yet another rival or political figure who gets in his way, and anyone that he rightly or wrongly perceives as disloyal.   Escobar was also responsible for the kidnapping - and the death that ensued as a Colombian military unit attempted to free her - of journalist Diana Turbay, and he had no problem bringing down and to their death a whole plane of people in an unsuccessful attempt to do away with a Colombian Presidential candidate who opposed him.

But, as if often the case with these sociopaths, for whom the life of just about anyone other than his immediate family is a commodity to be bartered and expended with if necessary in pursuit of his business, Escobar at least in this narrative on Netflix commands at very least our keen interest, and for that reason alone a part of us in not unhappy when he escapes against all odds over and over again.

Even as those who pursue him in the narrative become less human as their frustrations mount.   By the end of the first season, DEA agent Steve Murphy and Colombian President Gaviria, each compassionate in their own ways for most of this story, have become ruthless to the point of almost nothing else mattering except the killing of Escobar.

Superbly acted, beautifully photographed in verdant Colombia, the best news about Narcos is that it will be back for a second season - maybe a little later than expected, as recently reported - but it will be much welcome viewing whenever it's back.

See also Narcos 2: In League with The Godfather Saga