What I’m Watching: Narcos

Narcos: Season 1, Episode 9 “La Catedral” (B+)

Pablo in prison feels a whole lot like Pablo in exile – he’s free to do what he wants and living in absurd luxury, but he can’t stand the fact that he can’t live his life as normal. While he still gets a certain level of respect from those around him, including the guards, the paranoia he admits he has still gets the best of him. Quadrupling the war tax was probably a poor idea, but one of his henchmen’s girls did him in by casually complaining about the tax in front of his family, a miserable and irreversible mistake to be sure. Watching Pablo get knocked down during a soccer game was a subtle but powerful moment, speaking even louder than beating a man to death with his bare hands after giving the appearance of letting him go free. It’s so interesting to see the difference in how the Colombian government and the DEA deal with Pablo’s newfound situation, with Carrillo begrudgingly leaving the country after being reassigned and Gaviria carefully weighing the value of Pablo taking advantage of his prison life while the country actually has peace, while Steve and Javier installed cameras in the smuggling truck and then leaked them to the press when Gaviria refused to do anything about them. Steve is our narrator, and we’ve seen him in a few hairy situations, but I think the most fearsome scene so far was when he pulled a gun on a man who he rear-ended because he wasn’t looking, terrifying his wife and making it apparent that this narco lifestyle is getting to him too.