What I’m Watching: Narcos

Narcos: Season 2, Episode 6 “Los Pepes” (B+)

I was having a conversation with a good friend about the second season of this show (he’s a couple of episodes ahead of me) and he remarked that it’s not quite as strong as the first year since Pablo and his family keep just running from empty house to empty house. While that may be true, I think it speaks volumes about what’s going on, since Pablo was so determined not to crawl around like a rat, yet he really can’t poke his head up without putting the people he cares about – and his livelihood – in danger. The biggest change in this particular hour was that, after finding out who his enemies were, he took steps to deal a particularly personal and devastating blow, bombing a family wedding, and found himself the subject of an unprecedented attack in response that placed his own family in immediate and terrifying danger. His mother going out to church may have been the reason they found him, but having bullets fly in with him firing back hit way too close to home, wherever that may be. Gilberto vowing to find and kill the secretaries and anyone who ever shook Pablo’s hand shows the deep desire for vengeance that is driving everyone to kill above all else, and that’s very worrisome for Colombia. Javier is starting to realize what he’s done as Steve is putting the pieces together, and it’s informative and disconcerting to hear how the American authorities in place in Colombia feel about how things are going.