Why ‘Narcos’ Deserves Re-Watching — But Not Re-Bingeing

Lately, Netflix’s all-at-once release model has been both a blessing and a curse to its original programming. A highly anticipated third season of the Kevin Spacey-starring House of Cards made an exciting, unexpected arrival back in February then quickly faded into the streaming ether. Similarly, the third, more dramatic season of Orange Is the New Black somehow took forever to binge through and, despite its early June release, is just now receiving a full critical analysis.

Has the race to binge run its course? Or is marathon viewing finally in the eye of the beholder of the remote? Perhaps Netflix original programming has simply and subtly shifted its format to be less binge-friendly. Or maybe we’re finally exhausted from consuming hours and hours of television. Technicalities aside, our habit for watching as much TV as humanly possible in a given sitting may be hurting us, especially as critics, from enjoying dramatic series, particularly in the recent case of Netflix’s drug epic Narcos, which, whether you enjoyed it or not, deserves re-watching.

The crime drama centers around one DEA agent’s tireless, decade-long quest to hunt down Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar. In Goodfellas fashion, Agent Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook) narrates the rise to prominence and the hard, violent fall of the Medellín Cartel, headed by one of history’s most notorious and fascinating criminals in Escobar (portrayed by Wagner Moura). Reminiscent of The Wire, the ten-episode first season is packed with classic cat-and-mouse tropes: a clever Escobar continuously outsmarting domestic and international law enforcement and quite literally getting away with murder. Though the real Steve Murphy and his partner Javier Peña (portrayed in the series by Game of Thrones‘ Pedro Pascal) have confirmed that showrunners Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, Dour Miro, and Paul Eckstein attempted to stay as true to the history books as possible — reiterated by their interweaving of archived news footage — the creators have also made a point to add an enticing, hard-boiled crime feel to their reimagining of Escobar’s legend.

Which is why I can’t understand why so many critics have such a problem with it.

First it was deemed superficial, then poorly cast, and, last but certainly not least, too much like Entourage circa Season Four when Vinny Chase spectacularly fails to make a Hollywood-caliber biopic of Escobar’s life. Despite the differing arguments, the overarching issue seems to lie in the ability of empathizing with Escobar, even as a dramatized character. I would argue, however, that as television continues to explore the various renditions of the contemporary anti-hero set forth by the Tony Sopranos and Walter Whites of the tube, it’s necessary to invite variations on that complex formula, especially when reimagining history.

Throughout my recaps of the series, I too, struggled with seeing Escobar as a Robin Hood for Colombia’s poverty-stricken population. Though he donated millions of dollars to his region’s poorest citizens, Escobar’s good intentions were a conscious political strategy — a prop in his initial campaign for congress in an effort to push government officials to turn a blind eye to his massive drug operation. Through Moura’s portrayal of the cartel leader, Escobar is reimagined as a man of the people and a valiant seeker of equality. But he’s also seen as a glutton, an adulterer, a mass murderer, and, toward the end of the season, a paranoid madman.

Whether or not you’re on board with Netflix’s latest attempt to demythologize Escobar’s criminal legend, it seems like, in a whirring race to binge through screeners and get the snarkiest review up the fastest, series like Narcos suffer from the all-at-once-ness that comes along with the streaming age. When it comes to Netflix Original programming specifically, reviewers — myself included — force ourselves to speedily watch and form tweet-friendly opinions as fast as creatively possible, precisely because we can’t determine when our readers will start or finish watching the series in question. It’s become a race to have an immediate, concrete take, and frankly, it’s not really working as the streaming landscape continues to evolve its original content to become more niche (see also Netflix’s Bloodline and Sense8).

As a result of this mad streaming dash, Narcos is being somewhat overlooked as an impressively ambitious, wholly captivating crime noir, equipped with classic, velvety voiceover and a provocative original soundtrack that breathes new life into Escobar’s ominous legend. Like any great crime series, director José Padilha utilized Colombia — both its landscape and its history as a tortured but proud nation — as a tough, tantalizing character all its own, adding to the magical realism the series touts over and over throughout its first ten episodes.

To be fair, while I disagree with certain reviews, I can understand certain critics’ qualms with Narcos’ superficial elements. There are more than a few scenes that play out in the following fashion: a character enters a frame and says something profound to a brooding Escobar, to which Escobar responds with an equally profound retort, and the��segment ending with a singular, hard-hitting line before another character enters to continue the oh-so-profound conversation. In this instance, sure, it’s easy to sum up the metaphor-heavy dialogue as superficial, but Narcos keeps this consistent theme of magical realism — or at least fabricated truth — throughout all ten hours of the series, essentially gluing the episodes together no matter how theatrical certain scenes may feel. This ongoing motif adds to the series’ notion of grey areas that plague the past and present war on drugs: good versus bad doesn’t necessarily matter, and whatever we’ve learned in history class might not be one-hundred percent unbiased.

While bingeing through the latter half of the series, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop in an effort to figure out why so many brilliant, respectable TV writers hated this series. For me, however, it didn’t. In fact, since I’ve been re-watching episodes after work, I’m bummed by the plethora of information I missed the first time around. Yes, the series is even denser than I initially thought. Though I haven’t yet finished Narcos for a second time, I would argue that the series plays out like a visual novel: a non-linear period piece with a slew of characters and often-complicated historical context. For all its messiness, however, Narcos — like a novel — is not meant to be sped through. Needless to say, I urge you not to binge this one, even though bad bingeing habits may encourage you to do so.

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Photos: Everett Collection