Season 4: ★★★★
Season 5: ★★½
“There’s only one way to be safe in this business — be powerful enough that no one can touch you.”
I only just realized that I had not reviewed the fourth series of Queen of the South at the time of its broadcast. I’m not 100% sure why that slipped my mind; it may have been a reaction to the rather underwhelming nature of the third season. In some ways, the show did get back on track – it did, at least, stop trying to fake badly Arizona, largely relocating to New Orleans. This brought with it a new slate of rivals and enemies for Teresa Mendoza (Braga). This was a necessity, the show having sent the main antagonist from the early series, Camila Vargas, into exile at the end of season three.
The main replacement was likely Cecil Lafayette, a corrupt local judge who seemed to have his finger in every pie, as well as cooking up a few more of his own. He wants an ever-increasing slice of Teresa’s endeavours, as he comes to realize how large her empire is. There’s also Marcel Dumas, a well-established gang leader in New Orleans, who initially wants to co-operate with her. Their relationship becomes increasingly fractious over the first half of the series, and Judge Lafayette sees the opportunity to pit them against each other, while apparently acting as a mediator.
Meanwhile, inside Teresa’s organization, we see the first inklings of dissension in the ranks. Boaz, who had been running her operations South of the border in Sinalioa, is beginning to show dissatisfaction with Teresa’s approach. But there are new opportunities too. I guess, perhaps to replace Vargas, we get Oksana Volkova (Cherny), who is the public face of the Russian mob in New York, operating on behalf of her extremely reclusive boss, Kostya. She offers a potential pipeline into the lucrative East coast market, from Miami up the coast through Atlanta to the Big Apple, for Teresa and her product. However, there’s opposition to her expansion, in the form of an existing Cuban mob, under El Gordo.
After the weakness of season three, this was a strong return to form. It got back to the basics, of Teresa Mendoza seeking to expand her empire and consolidate her power, despite opposition from existing players. The violence which almost inevitably flows from such a struggle was present in copious quantities, with at least one shocking and unexpected death (well, we only expected it about two seconds before it happened!). In Judge Lafayette, well portrayed by David Andrews, there was a solid villain, whose cunning, along with his local connections and allies, proved a tough nut for Teresa and her cartel to go up against.
Probably my only complaint was our heroine not quite getting as deeply involved in the action as previously. Outside of an assault on the base of some mercenaries sent to kill her, there hardly seemed to be any significant firearms use for Teresa. Perhaps that was an indication that she was beginning to seek an exit strategy, moving into more legitimate businesses, and away from those where killing is a standard technique of operations. The news that the fifth series would be the show’s swansong, seemed to support this theory.
To start at the end of it, however, the grade for this season loses a full star simply on the basis of its chosen ending. While skirting around spoilers, we utterly called almost every aspect, down to the specific beach-side location of the final scenes, as early as end of the previous episode. Maybe we’ve just seen too many telenovelas in which this particular plot twist has been done to death. There was a real lack of any sense of karmic balance, considering the number of dead bodies Teresa had left in her wake. We also kept hoping, right up until the final credits rolled, that we would get closure for Camila Vargas. If the actress playing her, Veronica Falcón, just wanted to leave the series after #3, the character deserved a far better send-off. Meanwhile, Teresa Mendosa barely appeared in the final episode, which instead focused on long-time sidekick, Pote (Madera).
Up until that point, however, the season had not been terrible. It was fairly broad in scope, mostly hopping between New Orleans and New York, though with a side-trip to “Berlin” [quotes used advisedly, since unlike the Maltese excursion in series three, I’m fairly sure the production did not go to Germany, instead throwing in a couple of bits of stock footage and faking the rest]. As expected, Teresa was seeking to diversify into legal business, in particular property development. Though she quickly found out that “legitimate” did not necessarily mean those involved could be trusted. Still, no problem there, that methods from her usual field of work can’t solve.
Particularly effective was her ongoing dealings with the Russian mob. I will admit, I did wonder for a while whether their supposed leader even existed, since Oksana was the only person who ever seemed to talk to Kostya. There were a number of tense moments, as Teresa tries to convince the Russian to turn on her boss, because the Mexican offers a better long-term future. While Oksana was not up to the level of Camila Vargas, she did offer a good foil. She possessed an impenetrable air, reminding me of the famous Churchill quote about Russia being “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” You just never knew what she was planning.
And so, it all ends – not with a bang, but in a considerably more peaceful way than I expected. I think that. perhaps, after so long, writers tend to fall in love with their characters a bit too much. I’ve lost count of the number of shows, from Buffy through Dexter to Game of Thrones, which have had trouble creating a satisfactory ending, and we can now add Queen to that list. Its departure does still leave a gap on television. In terms of truly bad-ass heroines, prepared to go to any ends to reach their goals, Teresa Mendoza is without parallel. Now, let’s get a US remake of Rosario Tijeras…
Star: Alice Braga, Hemky Madera, Peter Gadiot, Vera Cherny