‘Narcos’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 9: The Fall of the House of Rodriguez

If you need to sum up the problem with Narcos Season 3, you could do a lot worse than to show this shot of what victory for Agent Peña and his allies looks like.

Yeah, that’s right: It’s Rodriguez Brothers, cozying up behind bars. This is what all of Peña, Feistl, Van Ness, and Salcedo’s efforts have amounted to: the Cali Godfathers, hanging out together in a jail in which they have full rein, their momentary internecine enmities forgotten. What was it all for? You’d have to ask Narcos‘ writers for the answer.

“Todos Los Hombres del Presidente,” the penultimate episode of Narcos‘ third season, revolves primarily around the desperate attempt by the DEA and their few honest Colombian comrades to take down Miguel Rodriguez, the top dog in the Cali outfit now that his more conciliatory brother Gilberto is behind bars.

And as an action thriller arrayed along these lines, it’s a success. Composer Pedro Bromfman’s intimdiating score is the perfect complement to a race against time in which Agent Feistl rushes to save his informant, Jorge Salcedo, from Miguel’s vengeful clutches, while his partner Agent Van Ness weilds a friggin’ Uzi to fend off an attack on Salcedo’s wife and kids by Miguel’s bloodthirsty son David. If you’re a genre potboiler, how are you gonna top these kind of stakes?

You get some decent material out of it, all told. The opening scene is nothing more or less than a series of zooms into Miguel’s tense face, the billowing white curtains of his window flowing behind him, as he eavesdrops on his partners declaring their intention not to surrender in the wake of his elder brother Gilberto’s capture. It’s a lovely way to convey how his fate is, metaphorically, blowing in the wind.

Once Miguel tells his remaining “brothers” Chepe and Pacho that he will not go gentle into that good night — handing them the keys to New York City and vengeance against the North Valley cartel respectively — there’s an unexpectedly funny exchange in which the perpetually straight-faced Pacho demands that his boss answer one simple question: “What the fuck have you done with the real Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela?” Miguel has emerged from beneath his big bro’s shadow, born again hard, and his pals are loving it.

His outward victories end there, however. After a ruse involving the traitorous Colombian Minister of Defense seemingly cribbed directly from Tyrion Lannister’s maneuvering in Game of Thrones Season Two, Agent Peña figures out that the powerful official is on Cali’s payroll, and uses that information to force Miguel out of hiding. Unfortunately for his informant, Jorge Salcedo, Miguel’s paranoid son David is about five minutes ahead of the game, and unearths Jorge’s treachery just as Feistl and his forces prepare to make an arrest. Meanwhile, David moves into position outside Jorge’s house, ready to gun down his wife and children.

It would be churlish to deny the power of the ensuing sequence: Feistl and company blasting their way into Miguel’s highrise to take him down before he can execute Jorge; Van Ness singlehandedly fending off David and saving the Salcedos’ lives; General Serrano, the incorruptible Colombian tapped by the DEA for assistance, plowing his vehicle into Miguel’s getaway car and making the arrest himself.

It’s all rapidly downhill from there. Miguel gets perp-walked in front of Colombian national TV. Pacho tells his injured kid brother Alvaro that after he settles his accounts with the North Valley Salazar family, he’s going to surrender. Chepe goes ahead and does so, going so far as to invite the arresting officers to his final meal as a free man before he accepts the cuffs.

But on our heroes’ side, Peña discovers that Colombian President Samper is on the take from the Cali cartel, a fact his American superiors have known all along and kept hidden, because…I dunno, it’s not super-clear. Because that’s just what the bureaucracy and brass do on this show? Narcos is playing fast and loose with the drug war’s real timeline at this point, making political and personal motivations murkier than usual. I’m hoping they’ll clear it all up in the final hour.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, the Observer, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Narcos Season 3 Episode 9 ("Todos Los Hombres del Presidente") on Netflix