The closest thing we have to a super-spy in this story is the morally compromised and profoundly cynical CIA agent Bill Stechner. He’s not here to stop the cartels, he’s here to enforce the ever-shifting will of the US State Department. He’s good at his job and you get the feeling he’s done some really ugly shit in his life, but he’s not the hero and he’s nowhere near being a main character. Like so many fascinating personalities in this story, he’s lurking on the edges of the action and making you wonder how much of him is based on real people or stories.<\/p>\n
This isn’t a simplistic story about Escobar vs. The Cops. This story is fractal. At a high level you’ve got the cartels, the USA, and Colombia. But the “Cartels” are a conglomerate made of organizations made of families made of gangs. The USA is likewise made up of different factionsThe military, the CIA, and the DEA.<\/span> that engage in a lot of infighting. Colombia is a complex country with different economic, geographical, and political groups. Nobody’s 100% a saintAlthough Colombian president César Gaviria<\/a> comes out looking pretty good. I often wonder what Colombians think of his portrayal on the show.<\/span> and nothing is clear-cut. The fight against Escobar was a never-ending string of trolley problems<\/a> mixed with the prisoner’s dilemma<\/a> mixed with a version of the sunk cost fallacy<\/a> based on human lives instead of money.<\/p>\n I usually hate stories about a crapsack world where everyone is a different shade of reprehensible, but this one works for me. I think it’s because the show gives us a few innocents caught up in the action. We can see there is good in this world, even if very little of it comes from our main characters. <\/p>\n I have one gripe with the show. It’s a 30-second moment in the 4th episode that feels so ridiculously out of place that it’s always bugged me. It goes like this: The story needs to quickly establish that a certain drug runner is a decadent, freewheeling, devil-may-care bad boy with endless money to spend and a taste for prostitutes. So as it introduces him it slam-cuts to an overhead shot of his bedroom where he’s evidently just finished shagging enough prostitutes to form a baseball team. They all look like conventional magazine models and they’re all curled up on the bed for maximum flesh exposure. It basically looks like the Rolling Stone cover where Ricky Martin posed with some naked girls This sort of abrupt sight gag might work in a movie with a less serious tone, but in the grim and gritty, hyper-realistic world of Narcos this feels like introducing a cartoon character to a David Fincher movie. <\/p>\n My problem isn’t with the nudity, it’s with the silly presentation. Maybe I was supposed to envy this wealthy hyper-stud and his sexual conquests, but all I could think of is how miserable it would be to attempt to sleep in this big pile of people snoring, drooling, and sweating all over the place. Maybe it looks<\/i> fun, but I imagine it would get old quickly with someone’s knee in your side and an elbow in the small of your back. <\/p>\n I don’t mind the gag, it’s the framing. I’m willing to believe this guy hired a baker’s dozen prostitutes. What I don’t believe is that they all looked like Victoria’s Secret modelsThe rest of the story is really good at making prostitutes look diverse in terms of ethnicity, body type, age, and class.<\/span> or that they all posed in such a contrived way for a photographer that didn’t exist. <\/p>\n If this scene were shot like the rest of the show then it would have shown the girls post-coitus, all of them looking disheveled, tired, and mildly grossed out. They’d be pulling on clothes and lighting cigarettes while hinting at what an unpleasant client this guy is but how it’s worth the money. Maybe have a visual joke about how they’re all in line for the shower. You can have your tits. Just keep your fanservice in harmony with the tone of the show.<\/i><\/p>\n At first I thought maybe this was supposed to be some sort of dream sequence, or maybe this is how this guy sees himself. Except, it would be really strange to jump directly into his mental POV like that, since he’s a new character and his part in the story ends before the episode is over. The show has a reliable handful of POV characters and this guy isn’t one of them.<\/p>\n
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<\/span>, but with the girl density cranked up to maximum. <\/p>\n
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