There are potent and provocative ideas that lie frustratingly dormant throughout this series, which seems to be just happy to play a competent but only occasionally compelling Michael Mann riff.
The sad truth though is that the second season falls in line with the marketers' approach, changing the nature of the storytelling and turning it in a deeply troubling direction.
The performances by Moura, Pascal and everyone else are still some of the best seen on television right now with Moura taking the cake again in the last three episodes.
By streamlining the narrative into a compelling manhunt that makes far better use of actors like Pascal and Holbrook, while still giving Moura room to shine, Narcos has definitely improved in season 2.
Fans of season one will likely feel that season two is a suitably impressive step forward.But... it struggles with the difficulties of telling straightforward historical true stories within the confines of episodic television.
While Narcos isn't much for visual splendor -- it's filmed as a cut above your average basic cable-TV-true-crime documentary -- it has Moura's wonderful performance as its central image, one that will be what people remember about Narcos.