We’ve been binge-watching Money Heist recently and completed all 5 seasons on Netflix. I’m not a TV person and I really do not recommend having a TV at all; so this season was really a bit of a blip in my personal history.
The appeal of a PR-savy bank robbers who knows how to manipulate the authorities, appreciate their internal politics, was there for me. Especially when intellect is combined with courage to take extremely risky but calculated bets. Despite the wildly ridiculous premise, the insane blunders that they made during times of distress and how the luck element really played a part in things ‘working out’, it was really good entertainment.
The feature of this drama series is really how people get drawn into the characters portrayed in the show and the kind of empathy that was established in the viewers of the robbers ‘plight’. What made it possible to root for the bad guys is the point that they appeared to value life a lot more than the ‘good guys’ (authorities, military, police, etc.). In what was portrayed as ‘the system’, it was something that utilised all resources and means to establish order and control as opposed to valuing lives and society. Public service and order continually used to justify the apparent evil means.
All in all, that’s still a pretty cheap anti-establishment narrative that of course has its enduring appeal particularly in the western world where individualism reigns culturally.