Netflix repeatedly is putting out great content. Narcos is a show just released August 28th. The first night I saw four episodes back to back and only stopped because it was end of my shift. The season consists of ten episodes and is retold through the eyes of one of the DEA agents sent to Colombia to track the Medellin Cartel. Murphy starts out working the streets in Florida, but gets re-assigned to Colombia after a drug bust goes bad and his partner is killed. His partner Pena has been in Colombia much longer and is fluent in Spanish, Murphy initially is at a disadvantage, but picks up quickly that the way to get respect from these tough guys is to be a tough guy also.
Most of the camera time is spent on the "bad" guy, Pablo Escobar. He is a conflicting figure because on the one hand, you see him as a family man. He truly loves his boy, constantly holding him tenderly, being goofy playing soccer with the boy, letting his mother be a presence in his life, and seemingly loving his wife and daughter, providing all the comforts one could ask for. But, on the other hand, he manipulates, doesn't skip a beat jumping on other women, and killing people if he even thinks they might be thinking of crossing him.
The story of cocaine starts out in Peru, and according to the show, makes its way to Colombia via a survivor from Peru with the apt name, Cucaracha. He survives a death squad and brings his expertise to a young Pablo Escobar, who at the time, was starting out moving Marijuana and electronics. Cocaine opened the floodgates of money to pour in from Miami. The show shows him making so much money, at a certain point, he just starts burying it. The voiceover mentions that in 1989, Escobar was making $60 million a day.
His problems start, when he decides he wants to be a politician. He has aspirations to be the president of his country, but the rich people that control things, do not accept him and even call him out as a "narco traficante." He, of course, goes to war, essentially with his country, it seems like. At one point, he even manages to take down a commercial jet, which is when other drug traffickers start thinking he has gone too far.
Luis Guzman was the only recognizable face I saw in the whole cast, and he plays a really scary drug dealer, not hesitating at all to kill, even those on his side. At one point, kills a dog that fails to sniff the drugs on a boat, as Escobar is joking that the drugs are infused in with the fiberglass of the boat, not in the boat, but on the boat.
It was violent, but I thought a very good story. There was no conclusion, the season ended with Escobar running into the woods, from the prison he had built to house him. I am not sure if it will come back for another season, but I enjoyed this show.
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