User Reviews

In "Camelot" the season opener of Narcos: Mexico, we're introduced to a cartel of marijuana growers in the Mexican countryside being harassed by the Mexican government. Because of this a former cop and his grower brother devise a plan to take over the drug trade in nearby Guadalajara and gain some protection. The two head there, bust a few heads, make a new ally, and set up shop with their new super-strain of weed.

Meanwhile a Mexican-American DEA agent gets transferred to Guadalajara and tries to figure out how to make a difference.

This is a nice little introduction of the new season's characters. We're moving fast but I'm sure the creators want to lay down the groundwork so we can lick this season into gear. After all, we only get 10 episodes a season.

But everything that makes Narcos great is here: good acting, great shooting locations, solid directing, and that weird combination of dramatic recreation and VHS quality old footage. Excited to see what this season has in store for us.

Narcos clearly has its structure well honed by this point, but it would be an insult to how well it is produced to say it sticks to a formula. Each season brings new ideas and perspectives and this one (well, technically the first season of a new show) is no different. It excels in presetening each character in a quirky and memorable way. Kiki is as strong a protagonist as Peña was, perhaps even more interesting. We know he jusitfiably considers himself a better operator than his superiors do, and he's a bit of a rule breaker. Meanwhile on the drug side we have lots of interesting personalities. Gallardo seems to be the main villain of this season, with a calmer, more collected personality than anyone around him. He is just as evil though, maybe even more so than the others. Unlike Pablo Escobar who did his worst in fits of rage, he is cold and calculating. What Kiki and Gallardo have in common is that they have huge ambitions but are restrained by their bosses and their insustries' shambling organisation. The various drug kingpins despise one another, and each drug enforcement agency seems to be competing with each other instead of working together. Both make the protagonists' aims hard to achieve. That parallel is interesting.

Dialogue is pretty good generally, though it can slip into being unrealistically expository, with characters explaining things in ways you wouldn't expect them to. The acting, though, is fantastic. And that "Narcos" vibe, that we've come to expect from the series? It's still there, in the visuals, music and narration. Everything is set for an awesome new series, but this first episode already does an astonishing amount of work. 8.5/10

This may not be the quality of the first two seasons of Narcos, but I am glad to have this franchise back on my TV set.

Michael Pena doesn't seem quite right for this role and they will need to find a way to make the supporting cast stand out, but I am curious to see how things go from here forward.