Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t yet watched Narcos, the Netflix original series about infamous Colombian druglord Pablo Escobar, you should stop reading and watch it.
Have you ever seen Murder by Numbers? It’s the 2002 Sandra Bullock vehicle starring a young (and already dreamy) Ryan Gosling and a young (and already creepy) Michael Pitt.
I only ask because — like the stereotypical upper-middle class, college-educated, culturally digestive and totally in-your-face-about-it suburbanite that I know I am — I couldn’t help but think about The Wire as I binge-watched Wagner Moura’s turn as the ruthless, dictatorial Colombian druglord Pablo Escobar in the Netflix original series Narcos.
In Murder by Numbers, The Gos and Jimmy Darmody play two high school kids who form an unlikely partnership because they’re both fascinated with death and think that together they make the perfect killer. Much in the way that in The Wire, Avon Barksdale can’t succeed without Stringer Bell. and Stringer Bell can’t succeed without Avon Barksdale. They’re left and right, yin and yang, lamb and tuna fish… Steve Urkel and Stefan Urquelle.
As I mowed through Narcos at a clip that would make Usain Bolt look like he was running in place, I couldn’t help but notice that Moura’s Escobar was equal parts Stringer and Avon.
Setting Up Partnerships
In the way of Stringer, the Netflix version of real-life Escobar took cooperative measures to solve an individual problem. Season three of The Wire opens with Avon doing a bid and Stringer running the day-to-day on the outside. With their drug operation facing a supply problem, Stringer takes it upon himself to organize Prop Joe and a bunch of the other major players in Baltimore to form an alliance to pool information and get his hands on better product.
That scene is mirrored in the second episode of Narcos when Escobar meets with Jose Gacha, Los Hermanos Ochoa, and other big time players in the game to form the Medellin Cartel after Marta Ochoa’s abduction.
The difference (of course) being that “Death to Kidnappers” rolls off the tongue better than “The New Day Co-Op” … and that Escobar’s meeting included high-end Colombian prostitutes.
Big Ambitions
Stringer and the Narcos Escobar both rose to power via criminal enterprises, and shared an ambition to legitimize their business and influence for personal gain to have a positive effect on the communities around them. Stringer saw past the drug game, urging Avon to look to move their business at least toward the general vicinity of the up-and-up, investing in real estate and hoping to create a white-collar business empire.
In that same vein, Moura’s Escobar had political ambition. The drug business fell in his lap when the man with the supply came looking for a smuggler with vision who wanted to make a LOT of money. Once he experienced success, Escobar shifted his ambition to politics, aiming to earn a seat in the Congress of Colombia.
Keep Your Enemies Close
When Stringer and Escobar saw their dreams of legitimacy crushed by people already raising their pinkies and slurping soup off a silver spoon, they both got very, very pissed off. Stringer wanted to assassinate Sen. Clay Davis when his development bribes were wasted, and Pablo… well… he didn’t react too kindly to being tossed out of Colombia’s Congress.
When Marlo Stanfield made a name for himself as a major player in the Baltimore drug game, Stringer sought him out, aiming to nullify a potential threat with a partnership that would clearly expire somewhere down the line. The idea was that Stringer could effectively neutralize a potential competitor by alleviating some of that competitor’s risk, so that he could focus on the political and criminal wars he was already fighting.
Escobar and the Cali Cartel had the same idea amid Medellin’s violent campaign against extradition to the United States.
A Motivator Of Men
The similarities between Stringer and Escobar don’t stop there; they both knew how to motivate the people under their command (Stinger with his iconic 40-degree days speech and Escobar with “Plata o plomo?“) and both had intimate relationships with women as a means of getting information. But those things only make Escobar 50 percent of the most successful druglord in the world. The flip side of the Escobar coin had Avon Barksdale’s mugshot on it. The greatest evidence of this is that in Narcos, when Escobar is most like Avon, Escobar’s cousin and second-in-command, Gustavo, assumes the role of Stringer.
Power Over Sense
When they’re making so much money that they don’t know what to do with it, Gustavo urges Escobar to tread lightly and assume a low profile. Escobar decides he’d rather bury money all over Colombia. He even hides a million dollars in his mother’s couch.
Similarly, Avon scoffed at Stringer when the No. 2 asks how much money they really need during that tense conversation on the roof overlooking Baltimore Harbor.
Escobar and Barksdale also shared an astute, borderline petty attention to detail. When Barksdale finds out that Marlo pushed their boys off some of Baltimore’s best corners, he wants Marlo to pay in blood, even as Stringer explains that they’re taking money off the top either way.
In Narcos, Escobar slays a gaggle of men in the Cali Cartel in spite of their prior agreement and ongoing negotiations.
Escobar and Barksdale shared a common vanity; they didn’t just crave money or comfort or an escape from the limited means they were born into, they craved the power that came with it. Allowing someone else to have some of the money their enterprises earned would have been to — in some small way — admit that they weren’t worthy of the power they’d seized through their criminal organizations.
In the end, it’s this ruthlessness, and a combination of an underestimation of their competition and an overconfidence in the loyalty of their own partners, that brought the kingpins down.
However, the scariest part about imagining Pablo Escobar as a combination of Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale is, of course, that Pablo Escobar actually existed.
