Month: February 2020

In the UK: Available on Netflix

There is a theory that only the even-numbered Star Trek movies are the good ones. I’m proposing a similar theory for Narcos and its spin-off Narcos – Mexico: only the odd-numbered seasons are the good ones.

I won’t recap all the reasons why this is true for Narcos and Narcos – Mexico, since I touched on most of them when I was reviewing the first couple of episodes of Narcos – Mexico. But now we have the second season, which seems to be the clinching evidence that proves the case.

Mexican stand-off

But not completely. This second season’s biggest failings are that it’s about three episodes too long, it’s a bit self-indulgent and for the first half, at least, it’s actually surprisingly dull and forgets (once again) all the things that made the show’s odd-numbered seasons so good.

To be fair, I can’t imagine there’s a lot of archive footage of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in the heyday of his drug-dealing years. But all the same, this is a relatively flat, vanilla retelling/imagining of the DEA’s continuing investigations into his activities in the late 80s.

It picks up from where the first season left off: Scoot McNairy’s DEA agent organising the agency’s attempts to bring to justice the man who killed one of their own in the first season – that man, of course, was Gallardo.

Trouble is, despite the show’s promises in the first season, he’s just not very good at it. Minor spoilers after the trailer and the jump.