‘Griselda’ Netflix Series Review - Drugs, Booze, and Woes

Griselda Blanco, a notorious Colombian drug lord, is seen as a sympathetic, tragic figure in the Andrés Baiz-directed Netflix drama Griselda. The titular character, played by Sofía Vergara, is hungry for power but is also filled with compassion. She is responsible for carrying out serious crimes, though those crimes result from rightfully taking back what belongs to her. Even when Griselda's orders take a child's life, we are led to believe that that action was carried out under the heavy influence of drugs. Once she becomes sober in the morning, she regrets her decisions. Will this series spark outrage among people for its sweet depiction of a criminal? I remember seeing angry posts on Twitter when Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story came out on Netflix. Will Griselda face a similar backlash?

What Griselda does is that it immediately puts you on the main character's side. We root for her from the beginning and continue to do so till the end. How does the show actually manage to do that? It gives us easy-to-hate villains in the form of annoying men who constantly undermine Griselda as well as her achievements. These men - Griselda's rivals - make "villain faces." They are irritating, contemptible, and unidimensional. Their job is to arouse disgust from us. The show takes the lazy, easy way of making us cheer for the main character. We are also provided with Griselda's extreme subjective reactions. We see the world through her gaze. Her failures leave you sad. Her success brings you happiness. When she loses control of herself, we feel as if the walls are closing in on her. Everybody looks suspicious, but on the other hand, we also see that Griselda is boiling with madness. In her delirious rage, she forces a man to bark like a dog and orders another man to have sex with a woman. It all feels a bit too much.

Vergara's performance, too, can often seem too much. The actor displays every emotion with quotation marks. Everything can be clearly seen on her face. But Vergara's external emotions also go inwards, which is why this is not just a "surface-level performance." In Todd Haynes' May December, Elizabeth says that actors love playing negative characters because of the drama their gray areas generate. It's evident that Vergara is enjoying playing this criminal. She gives everything she's got to this material. But the series doesn't have that juicy drama, that gray area required to make Griselda excellent.

The dramatic action is okay, and serviceable. The "rise and fall narrative" is competently rendered. However, the drama is confined to a limited space. The series is so absorbed with Griselda that it makes others look insignificant. Her boys come across as sentimental props. Not a meaningful word comes from them. One tries to understand her mother, while another stirs up trouble. We are meant to grasp that Griselda's life of crime is badly affecting her family, which is why one of her sons becomes corrupt. But this shift in behavior feels jarring. It sticks out as a moral lesson. Carmen (Paulina Dávila), Griselda's friend, initially preaches good values to Griselda and then later starts helping her in her business. Again, this change in behavior is not properly developed. It's rushed. What makes Carmen say yes? Does she merely succumb to Griselda's insistence? Does she get lured in by the wealth? If yes, how did she get rid of her virtuousness?

Since the main character is a female, the series turns itself into a tale of women's empowerment. If Griselda wants to make it big in the world of drug lords and criminals, Detective June (Juliana Aidén Martinez) wants to be successful in the police department. Both women are sexualized, and undermined by people around them. Yet, they persist in their goals and prove themselves capable. We see Griselda's car getting cleaned and washed before she decides to take back her territory using violence. Like her vehicle, she "cleans up herself" and presents a "new, shiny side" of herself.

Griselda opens with this quote from Pablo Escobar: The only man I feared was a woman named Griselda Blanco. The series presents Griselda as an ambitious ruler, a loving mother, and a scorned woman. Vergara brings a sexual energy, a deranged madness, to this role. She is always entertaining and watchable. The same compliment can be extended to the whole show, though it would have been much, much better if the writers had given other characters more definition, and more dimensions. A six-episode series should have a more colorful canvas.

Final Score- [6.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times