Tonight marks the series finale of Metástasis, the Colombian remake of Breaking Bad that follows the adventures of “Walter Blanco.” You may have read that sentence and thought “Hang on. Didn’t this show just premiere, like, three months ago? How the hell is it ending already?”
Excellent questions. And here’s your answer: Univision aired the program like a traditional telenovela, five nights a week, all summer long. Bingo. Over 60 episodes in just over three months. That’s crazy efficient.
Of course, it’s a hell of a lot easier to crank out five dozen episodes on a tight schedule when you already have the stencils, so there’s definitely that. And if you dig through some of the show’s YouTube clips you’ll see that they kept it almost exactly the same, save about a 200% decrease in production values and some culturally-appropriate name changes (the aforementioned Walter Blanco, shady attorney “Saul Bueno,” etc.) Still, this is kind of nuts, and kind of cool. I hope they do it with more beloved American prestige series. “¿Dónde está Wallace, String?! HUH?! ¿Dónde está el chico?!” and so on and so forth.
Anyway, spoilers, but here’s an idea of how faithful they were to the original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbeYwK3d99w
