User Reviews

Another really solid episode of Narcos: Mexico a show that feels like it is near its finale with the developments that happened even though we have quite a few hours to go.

The problem continues to be the runtime though. They could have easily chopped 10-12 minutes off this episode and not lost a thing.

The DEA characters are pretty insufferable. They are trying to enforce US laws in a neighboring country and have no regard for anything except their own careers. Michael Pena isn't my favorite actor anyway, and the character he's playing is arrogant to the point of madness here.

He's willing to alienate the Mexican cops he has to work with in order to score points for himself. Calderoni calls him a Pocho: spoiled fruit in the vernacular, referring to a Mexican who has become more American than his identity that he tries to use can carry. I just don't like the Kiki character at all. The assault on the house where Rafa is hiding is called off and Kiki wants to go ahead anyway, which could get Calderoni fired or worse.

It's easy to see where his attitude is going to lead.

In "Rafa, Rafa, Rafa!" a stunt played by Rafa and his new girlfriend of a fake kidnapping leads to a chain of events that forces Miguel to smuggle arms and cocaine across the border to get his partner out of trouble. Miguel is briefly tortured as revenge for standing up to Nava. The DEA closes in on Rafa's location, only for the raid to be called off at the last possible moment.

This episode was a bit scattered and difficult to follow. The whole smuggling operation was almost nonsensical to me at times. I couldn't figure out a lot of the characters' motives. Why was Miguel tortured? Who was that white guy with guerillas? Maybe I don't know enough about Central American history...

The way the story was spread about to us was played for action and suspense but not for good storytelling. This was the worst episode of the season thus far.

This is the first episode that felt a little shaky. I still enjoyed it by and large. I think it just feels a bit like filler, with the focus (as the title suggests) being on Rafa and his misadventures. The way that he causes trouble for himself and his fellow criminals is too predictable. Then again as this series is based on a true story I wouldn't want to penalise too heavily. But Kiki's mission is largely not the most interesting either as we know he can't catch Rafa this early in the season. So it becomes a wait to see how Rafa evades capture, to see whether he actually will. It turns out Kiki can't capture Rafa because of orders from above, which is a pretty cool twist that hammers home the dire state of the corruption. This Rafa subplot actually does reveal in Gallardo a side we haven't seen yet, the side of his character that puts friends over good business decisions. It proves that he is really just a human, and humans make mistakes. Is this foreshadowing bigger slipups to come? 7.7/10