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Cast: Sofía Vergara, Alberto Guerra, Juliana Aiden Martinez, Martin Rodriguez, and Vanessa Ferlito
Creator: Carlo Bernard and Ingrid Escajeda
Director: Andres Baiz
Streaming On: Netflix
Language: English and Spanish (with subtitles)
Runtime: 6 episodes, around 1 hour each.
Griselda Review: What’s It About:
Narcos became one of the most impressive early Netflix hits, and that success allowed the creators to come up with several seasons of the show and a number of spin-offs. Griselda, the new miniseries from Netflix, serves as one of those spin-offs bringing the story of Griselda Blanco to the screen and giving the role to Sofía Vergara in a role that certainly feels out of her comfort zone, and yet, the actress is wholly committed to it. Griselda is an intense and entertaining miniseries from the streaming giant.
Griselda Review: Script Analysis:
Griselda works as one of those biopic stories that focuses on the rise and fall of a specific individual. However, this time is not the story of Pablo Escobar or Walter White, but the story of Griselda Blanco, a mother, and businesswoman who saw the drug traffic as her way out of poverty and to build something she could call her own. The initial premise is not very original, and we have seen characters go through similar roads in many other films and TV series, but thankfully, Griselda has Sofía Vergara to make things more interesting.
The story divides itself into six episodes of around one hour each, and there you can see that the creators know that this story is lean and mean; there is really not much else to tell than what is on the screen, a classic story of flying too close to the sun. Nevertheless, the writers try to give balance to the depiction of Griselda; she is a criminal but also a mother; she is both a victim and perpetrator at the same time, and it is this that makes her compelling because you know she is doing all things wrong, but at the same time it is hard not to like her.
The series tries to balance the scenes dealing with crime and the others where Griselda is more of an average person, a lovely mother, and a woman trying her best to give her family the best life they can live. The balance is interrupted by the quality of the scenes on both sides of the spectrum; there is definitely not one side of the story that feels completely flawless; they have all their ups and downs. This makes the show consistent in a weird way, but it would be nice if the consistency came from a general presence of great-quality scenes.
Vergara brings the entire thing together, as some of the secondary characters that the show tries to push as interesting never really win that label. Characters like Rivi and June receive a lot of screen time, but they never feel like they could actually work independently; they are supporting characters, of course, but their lives feel like they stop when they are not on the screen. The attention given to Griselda’s kids also feels a bit wasted, and we only care for them because Griselda cares.
Griselda Review: Star Performance:
Griselda is the Sofía Vergara show and is totally committed to her role. The actress has been chiefly associated with comedy for the last decade, but here, she shows that she has so much more to offer by going hard on her dramatic abilities and pulling it off throughout all six episodes. You could say she is going outside her comfort zone and delivering something that feels more like a challenge, but she makes it look easy.
Vergara has this charisma about her that is pretty hard to tone down, but this only enhances her performance because even under the makeup, it makes itself felt, and then it all makes sense; this is why other minor characters follow her or confront her because she has this leadership qualities that cannot be understated.
Griselda Review: Direction & Music:
Andres Baiz sits in the director’s chair and brings his experience. The director has worked on Narcos, of course, but also for The Sandman, also from Netflix, and he can make a fine television season. His style doesn’t go too much out there, which makes the episodes look a bit generic when it comes to the cinematic language that is being applied here, but he instead chose to make the characters the main driving force of the episodes on a thematic and visual level.
Music is also essential for the show, and Carlos Rafael Rivera takes the position and does a fine job. River has become a staple of Netflix productions in recent years, and his work does exactly what it must, elevating the feelings each scene tries to convey. There is also the use of diegetic music that brings a sense of realism and place to many of the scenes, and they might even make you do some research so you can listen to those songs outside the show.
Griselda Review: Last Words:
Griselda doesn’t really manage to reach the heights of the first two seasons of Narcos, but it is still a good piece of entertainment. Sofía Vergara steals the show and proves she can do much more than just make us laugh. The entire team should be proud of the result, even if the formula seems stale, because there are too many examples of this type of story. Maybe we just need a rest from this story structure and come to it some years later.
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