Before I get started, just a quick note: in talking about the characters on this show (as well as Narcos: Mexico later on,) I’m talking about them specifically as characters. Although these series are based on real events, they’re also heavily dramatized, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to know what’s true and what’s fictional. I also know that these are people who’ve done all kinds of horrible things, and whatever interest they hold for me as characters in no way condones any of the actual harm they did to real people. When I talk about Pablo, I mean the show’s version of him as portrayed by Wagner Moura (some spoilers.)
There’s no question that Pablo is very good at what he does. Cocaine isn’t his initial business – he’s a general-purpose smuggler who’s established some reliable routes and knows who to bribe to make sure doors keep getting opened for him. But when someone turns him onto cocaine and he realizes just how lucrative it will be to sell to the U.S., he goes all in. Even at his smallest stages, he’s thinking about volume, enlisting his mother to sew a jacket with numerous hidden pockets for his mule to wear, secreting away multiple kilos. Then it’s more mules, then it’s planes, then it’s ships, then they’re trafficking so much that they relegate a certain amount of coke to be intercepted by the DEA to let the agency think they’re making headway, when all the while the “busts” never even scratch the surface of their bottom line. We’re talking “hide millions of dollars in the walls and bury it in fields because there’s nowhere else to put it” levels of success here.
But as much money as Pablo’s operation makes for himself and everyone else, his flaws are also readily apparent. To me, his largest flaws, his ego and his temper, work in tandem to ultimately undermine him. Pablo is literally one of the wealthiest people in the world, he’s a powerful drug trafficker, and he gives away enough of his money that many people in Medellín regard him as a sort of Robin Hood figure, but that’s not enough for him. He wants more respect, more prestige. He gets it into his head that he can be president someday and winds up getting elected to Congress. And when his political career hits a snag because, you know, he’s a major drug trafficker, we first see his go-to move of going scorched earth.
Because, as rich and powerful as Pablo is, he’s also so fragile. He’s incensed at the “audacity” of the Chamber of Representatives to box him out for being a narco that he rains down violent retribution on those who would dare “insult” him in such a way. Throughout the series, that’s his M.O. His pride gets wounded, he absolutely snaps, and the streets run red with his outrage. It starts as a response to so-called insults and disrespect and eventually spills over into how Pablo treats his subordinates and how he reacts to the mere fact that, as a drug lord, he’s a wanted man. On the former point, he’s very reactive, lashing out against the people under him in ways he can’t take back, which earns him more enemies among his own people. And on the latter, it goes way beyond using violence to keep the police, the DEA, or the politicians at bay. This is weirdly, deeply personal for him, a “how dare you” in response to the very expected behavior of law enforcement attempting to apprehend a drug trafficker and murderer. As the series progresses, we learn that Pablo is a man who will beat people’s heads in, kidnap socialites, and bomb street corners because his feelings are hurt. And that’s a very dangerous man to go up against.
The more violently Pablo lashes out, the more the DEA and members of the Colombian police are determined to bring him to heel. They get more aggressive in their tactics, more direct in their approaches, and in response, Pablo just unleashes even more violence on the city and the people. I suppose much of this whole genre is an exploration, knowingly or unknowingly, of the hazards of fragile masculinity, but seeing Pablo’s enraged/devastated expressions on Narcos really helps to crystalize that notion for me. When men solve their problems by getting even and the only “acceptable” way to express their hurt is in blood, things go really far south really fast, and much of the damage can be collateral, people who have nothing to do with any of it becoming pawns against which powerful, fragile men can demonstrate their might. It’s interesting to see that play out, but admittedly, it also has its diminishing returns for me. Pablo might not be from the frustrating character school of Men Who Can’t Handle Being with Powerful Women (see Riley Finn on Buffy and my endless complaints about Philip on The Crown,) but he’s cut from a similar cloth, and my god, does it boggle my mind at times. How can a dude be a literal billionaire/violent drug lord and still be so insecure? Why does that happen? Bringing down Pablo is a long, tangled, morally-dubious journey for law enforcement, but much of the road toward them eventually getting there is paved by the twin flaws of Pablo’s wounded pride and impulsive rage.
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Quick new promo for Shang-Chi. Honestly, I tend to shy away from trailers after the initial teaser because they sometimes give away a lot, but Shang-Chi feels like it’s been keeping it fairly tight, at least about the stuff I’m most interested in (hehe, after the second trailer, people were freaking out over the cameos, but I was like, “Do you see Wenwu using the Ten Rings, though?!?”) It seems like each successive promo is largely a remix of clips we’ve already seen with just tiny snippets of more. We’ve seen enough that I have lots of questions, but it feels like there’s a ton that we still don’t know.
Also, when does the press stuff kick off in earnest? There’ve been a few featurette/interview videos so far, and I’ve seen some print stuff coming out, but there should be more, right? Are late-night appearances usually reserved for the week of? What about press junkets? I don’t usually go full-in for those, but I’ll be there if Leung is involved (and even if he isn’t, I’d probably watch at least a few, just to see what the other actors might say about him.) Just over three weeks away!
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