The recurring thing that surprised us the second time of watching Narcos, was how often the roles of villain and hero were switched in about every episode. At first it was not as prominent, but when you start diving into each character analysis you start to notice how these characters fluctuate, also keeping the viewers in suspense. One minute the DEA can become the villain and Pablo can become the hero, which is also what makes the story/show appealing. The show also has various other stories within the same story, which can make it a bit tricky to follow along, but once you are able to differentiate stories then you can start to label them according to event. We noticed this happening within a lot of the episodes, there would be the main story with the DEA vs. the Cartel and then an example would be Another cartel vs. Another cartel, this is where things get confusing, but by being able to use the Propp’s Narratemes we were able to follow along a lot easier.
When watching Narcos, we were surprised how close the narrative was to different police shows. Generally, cop shows want to make the law enforcement seem like the good guys. However, after watching Narcos, we realized that in these cop shows the law enforcement officer they usually focus on, often has to commit criminal acts in order to arrest the criminal. For example, in Narcos S1 E9, Murphy threatens the van driver working for Escobar so they can put cameras in the truck bringing in illegal items to the prison. This is similar to an episode in Law and Order: SVU when the head detective has to lie under oath about how a rapist, who kidnapped her, sustained the injuries she gave him. The reason she had to lie was so that the man, who was a serial rapist, would go to jail. This type of narrative is prevelant in cop shows mainly because it shows that there is no such thing as the "good" guy and the "bad" guy. As audiences, we often connect more to the character who has to sacrifice something in order to do something good. This is because in everyday life we make sacrifices, no matter how small, for the greater good. This gets dramaticized in cop shows so it's more appealing, but in some form or another these characters are designed so we actually connect with them. Which is when we were studying Narcos the DEA wasn't always seen as the good guy, we saw them as the villain sometimes. This was just to show that in life not everything is cut and dry, which then allowed us to connect more with the show, and understand the show more.