Season 2 of the American crime drama TV series “Narcos” has started streaming on Netflix on September 2 and a good number of fans have already completed watching the 10 episodes of the show.
Most critics are saying that Season 2 of “Narcos” was a suitably impressive step forward and is a marked improvement compared to the first season, reports Vox.
As previously hyped before its official release date, “Narcos” Season 2 shall focus on Columbian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and the law enforcement officers who worked to bring him down.
Season 2 builds to a suitably grand climax but it gets overbearing at times that some critics found themselves very frustrated with the TV series occasionally.
Brazilian actor Wagner Moura’s rendition of Pablo Escobar is quite good but his performance seems to be constantly positioning his character for his doomed foreshadowing.
The storytelling is okay but it struggles along the way with telling straightforward historical true stories within the confines of episodic television, typical to almost all of Netflix dramas and all American TV dramas for that matter.
A sealed fate from the very beginning
Because it was based on the true story of Pablo Escobar, every fan of “Narcos” already knew that the character shall meet his demise in Season 2.
Those who are familiar with the drug war in Columbia knew right from the start that Pablo Escobar already has a sealed fate.
Escobar was an unforgettable force in Season 1 because of the great performance of Wagner Moura. In fact, the Brazilian actor was even nominated for a Golden Globe award early this year.
While Moura is a very important anchor in “Narcos,” showrunners Eric Newman and Jose Padilha made the hard call to move the story forward without the show’s main actor. They explained that the TV series is titled “Narcos” for a reason because had the show been all about the Columbian drug lord, they should have titled it as “Pablo Escobar,” notes IndieWire.
In an interview during the TCA press tour, Wagner Moura said that he knew that Pablo was going to die at some point. He explained that in the first season, the TV series covered 15 years of the drug kingpin’s life which made it a very epic season in that sense. But from the day that Pablo escaped from La Catedral prison to the day he dies in Medellin, it was only less than one year and that was Season 2.
The show is about the war on drugs
Jose Padilha explained that “Narcos” is not just about the story of Pablo Escobar because it is the story of the narcotics trade and the war on drugs. It is the bigger and more important story on the TV series.
Eric Newman explained that Pablo Escobar is a small chapter in the many different players and situations in the last 30 years that have defined the cocaine business. He added that the succession in the drug business is once the big guy is gone, somebody takes over and the trade continues.
Padilha also enthused that the story is America being a gigantic consumer of drugs, so there is a drug mob. There is the man for drugs not only America, Brazil, Europe and so on, but chiefly America, money-wise, as the biggest market. America makes the biggest call in what is called the anti-drug policy.
Moura said that he will miss playing the role of Escobar in a silly way but he says that he also felt really relieved, because he was living for two years with a character who wasn’t exactly him, both physically and morally.
The Brazilian actor said that he had to change his body to do Pablo Escobar. He gained 40 pounds, which was not his body. He said the energy was not nice to deal with everyday.
“Narcos” does a reasonably good job of highlighting Escobar’s increasing isolation towards the end of Season 2, and the pattern continued.