La Casa de Papel (Netflix version) - Série 2

The second season somewhat cooled down my enthusiasm from the first season. As the finale of the heist approached, the screenwriter had to, whether he wanted to or not, start explaining and also tighten all the attractions, so where in the first season it was about playing with the viewer's expectations, here we are already witnesses to twists, acrobatic performances, and behavior that has very little to do with rationality. Some actions can only be accepted with a giant dose of perspective - see the crazy motorcycle escapade in Tokyo. It is simply over the top, and I also started to mind the ideology influenced by radical left-wing movements Podemos and Syriza. If in the first season, the criminals played a game with the journalists to fight against the system, it could be accepted as a fake game, but in the second season, even the mastermind of the operation believes in it and manages to convince those around him. What the creators of the series did with the character of the commissioner is a slap in the face. There is still a group of attractive and brilliantly played characters, for whom it is worth staying with the gangsters until the end of the heist, and here too you can find many delightful scenes and some psychologically interesting moments, but it won't pull it up to more than three stars and an overall impression of 60%. What the creators served me in the second season warns me against attempting to continue watching further seasons... (01/11/2020)

Although the second season still maintains a very promising pace and rhythm primarily in the first half, the ending doesn't quite manage to build-up properly. And instead of a heavyweight conclusion to a promising European heist series, the finale feels slowed down, with an overdose of emotion and a lack of momentum and realism. It’s nothing new that Money Heist is purely an entertaining screenwriting game of cat and mouse rather than a raw crime drama. Unfortunately, however, as time went on, it got to the point where I was just waiting for the protagonists to have a siesta at five with a sangria tasting and passionately dance flamenco together, after which they would properly dissect their relationships from A to Z from the heart. It's got a mostly fine vibe, a hugely likeable mix of (anti)heroes, but over time the series morphs from action crime drama into a gritty romance to the sound of a browning machine gun, and unfortunately that doesn't suit it very well. Still four stars, but just barely. (18/06/2024)