The finale of Narcos Season 2 was the best episode of the series. The finale of Narcos Season Three…isn’t.

…yeah. I reviewed the disappointing finale of Narcos’ aimless third season for Decider.

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

The penultimate episode of Narcos Season Three left me questioning whether the whole exercise has a point. I reviewed it for Decider.

The star of “Convivir,” Narcos Season 3 Episode 8, is the camera. Once again, standout director Fernando Coimbra lets imagery convey emotion and comment on the plot, in what is otherwise a very straightforwardly shot series. And in this tense, cruel hour of TV, that willingness to show rather than tell matters more than ever.

I liked episode eight of Narcos Season Three quite a bit too. I reviewed it for Decider.

All told, it’s super-engaging genre television. But thanks to director Fernando Coimbra, it’s well made genre television as well. Coimbra lends a certain glow to the nighttime lighting of the city and the base where Peña and Serrano plan the raid. He cleverly mirrors church-door entrances by Pacho and Peña. And he echoes it again when he shows Miguel breaking down from exhaustion and fear in a doorway in his largely destroyed safehouse, emphasizing the fact that unlike the other two men, he’s not moving forward. (It’s actor Francisco Denis’s strongest moment in the role, too.)

Bottom line? This is more like it.

I reviewed episode 7 of Narcos Season 3 — the first one I really liked — for Decider.

There are problems on the (nominally) good-guy side of the story, too. Feistl and Van Ness are fun enough to watch, with their Mutt-and-Jeff height difference and the contrast between Van Ness’s uptight demeanor and his awesome collection of ‘90s band t-shirts. (Wu-Tang is for the DEA as well as for the children, apparently!) But poor Javi Peña spends so much time running around by himself — literally running around, in this episode, thanks to his foot chase with Franklin Jurado in the streets of Curaçao — that he might as well be starring in a completely separate show. Without a foil like his former partner Chris Murphy or regular in-person contact with any of the other current main characters (Feistl, Van Ness, Jorge, the Rodriguezes, whoever), his adventures feel disconnected and weightless. His dull narration (the episode’s big concluding speech begins with “Things don’t always go according to plan” — no shit!) does him no favors either.

I reviewed the sixth episode of Narcos Season Three, which pours on the bloodshed but feels oddly empty despite the spectacle, for Decider.

“It was a mistake, not stopping it sooner,” says Christina Jurado of her life near the beating financial heart of the world’s largest drug cartel. “Have you ever done anything like that?” “I have,” responds Javi Peña, presumably thinking of his role in starting the Los Pepes death squads, but perhaps also rueing ruined romantic entanglements, or just his general penchant for being a pain in everyone’s ass.

This exchange (between Donna from Halt and Catch Fire and the Red Viper from Game of Thrones, as if my dreams were doing the casting) sums up “MRO,” the fifth episode of Narcos Season 3. A whole lot of people are reaching the point where they’re in over their heads, and should have stopped swimming away from the shore a long time ago. Some, like Christina — whom Javi is pressuring to persuade her cartel financier husband to turn on his bosses — realize it. Others don’t.

I reviewed episode five of Narcos Season Three for Decider.

SPOILER ALERT

There’s a case to be made that the ease with which Peña and company knock Gilberto Rodriguez off the playing board shows just how fatally cocky the Gentlemen of Cali had gotten following the fall of Escobar and the establishment of their sweetheart deal with the government. The show makes this case itself with the musical montage that leads up to the raid: A portrait of Gilberto’s life as the happily married husband to three different wives, all of whom know each other and are perfectly content with the arrangement, cleverly soundtracked by the camp swagger of LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali” (a song Gilberto himself probably wouldn’t be caught dead listening to, which is why the music cue works). In his own way, the elder Rodriguez is an interesting figure, and Damián Alcázar is entertaining and convincing in the role; he looks like a well-tanned chief executive of a medical supply sales company or something, which is exactly the vibe of affluent anonymity the character wanted to cultivate for himself.

But the quick-and-easy downfall of the season’s central antagonist points to the void left in this show by Escobar’s death. While Gilberto’s fortune, power, and influence may have been larger than that of Pablo Escobar, Pablo Escobar was larger than life — a supervillain in Robin Hood drag who sincerely fancied himself a man of the people (and looked the part) even as he sent countless thousands of Colombians to early graves. And actor Wagner Moura was the face of the whole show in the role, radiating stoned malevolence from his dark eyes despite his cool-uncle mustache and doughy physique. Perhaps the show will make a play to build Pacho Herrera, the most unique and compelling of the four Cali godfathers, into someone worthy of slipping into Pablo’s sweatshirts. With at least six episodes to go, they’ll need it.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Narcos Season Three — gripping and obviously pivotal but narratively problematic — for Decider.

You gotta hand this much to Narcos: It can begin by introducing an all-powerful Mexican druglord nicknamed “The Lord of the Skies” and that won’t even be, like, the fifth most important thing that happens in the episode. “Follow the Money,” the unimaginatively titled third installment of Narcos’ third season, has its problems — for example, a montage about money laundering with a music cue, the Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” (“Cash rules everything around me”? You don’t fuckin’ say!), every bit as lazy as the episode’s name. But never let it be said that the thing isn’t jam-packed with stuff. My notes on any given hour of Narcos run longer than my notes on an ep of Twin Peaks, that’s how dense this thing has gotten.

I reviewed the third episode of Narcos Season Three for Decider.

Without a doubt, the New York City massacre perpetrated by Cali kingpin Chepe Santacruz-Londoño in the hair-salon headquarters of some young Dominican rivals is the dominant image of “The Cali KGB,” the second episode of Narcos Season Three. Appearances and voiceovers to the contrary, Narcos rarely goes for the Coppola/Scorsese gusto when it comes to memorable execution scenarios. But Chepe’s behavior here — accelerating the countdown issued by his enemy in an attempt to be intimidating, blowing everyone away with an UZI concealed under his barber’s gown, and, in a bit straight from The Godfather Part II, awkwardly struggling to extinguish the fire in the fabric ignited by the heat of the gun barrel — is a gangster set piece par excellence.

I reviewed the second episode of Narcos Season Three for Decider. The shootout was a fun outburst of violent spectacle, but elsewhere the show is trying to have its cake and eat it too with regards to its characters’ hypocrisy about justified violence.

In the past, Narcos has rewarded patience. Its no-nonsense approach to Escobar and his enemies — best summed up as “a crook made a billion dollars and went berserk, so the Colombian and American governments went berserk too until they finally murdered him” — avoided easy moralism, and the slow-and-steady filmmaking suited that approach. As what amounts to a pilot for Narcos Vol. 2: The New Bosses, “The Kingpin Strategy” is hit or miss, but I’m willing to keep an open mind. As both Peña and the cartel could tell you, you’ve gotta learn from the past.

Gentlemen, start your binges! I’ve been reviewing the new season of Narcos on Netflix for the past week or so; here’s my take on the premiere, which utilizes a few tricks to make up for the absence of the show’s two previous leads, with mixed success.