Money Heist; A Wasted Story (Season 1 & 2)
Money Heist also is known as ‘La Casa De Papel’ is a Spanish Netflix Original first streamed in December 2017. It was a limited series split up into two parts and didn’t have a promising future on the network. As a surprise, it was well-received by some critics and many viewers.
Money Heist’s plot has a great potential to be a good movie or a mini TV series but expanding it to several seasons added a lot of low-level small stories to the main plot. Almost half of the time of each episode spends on unessential conflicts between characters. Conflicts that don’t help to develop any impact on the events. That’s why after every conflict, both sides get along with each other again.
For example, in the second season, Berlin who should be the most stable person in charge behaves like a psychopath and orders to kill Monica – one of the hostages – but Denver refuses to obey and hides Monica. After a while, Berlin finds out that Monica is alive but he doesn’t feel the necessity of her execution anymore.
Another example is when Nairobi pulls down Berlin and gains the leadership of the group but in the next episode, suddenly she cries and gives the power back to Berlin because she thinks hostages don’t respect her enough.
The series is full of these premature stories and turning points in characters that hurt the integration of the main story. These flaws also bring this question up: “Why the professor who can predict all the events and as the smartest person in the group, selected a bunch of pathetic moody unstable kids for a complicated bank robbery and put a desperate narcissist as their leader.
We have seen many robbery movies with similar plots and similar elements such as the relationship between robbers and hostages. Money Heist is using the same cliché with some extra features for the mastermind behind the robbery. Professor predicts every step of police reactions to the heist and most viewers are amazed and surprised by his intelligence but it goes too far when the director gets obsessed with surprises.
Actually what professor predicts is only one of the options on the police’s table. For example, Professor predicts that police will not enter the mint because Alison Parker, the daughter of the British ambassador is among hostages. In the beginning, Raquel and the colonel agreed on that but later they raid the mint ignoring the risk that prevented them before from the attack. But again Professor predicted this too and is ready to respond.
Another example: When Tokyo gets arrested – and it was not a part of the plan – even when Professor is detained by Raquel’s ex-husband, 4 Serbians attack the car transferring Tokyo to jail and release her. Surprised? Yes. Professor predicted that too and planned the rescue. He did that even without knowing the reason police sends Tokyo to jail when they need to interrogate her on the spot and keeping her for further information. Another stupid action by police just to prove that Professor knows everything.
In most robbery movies, tries to create empathy towards robbers and by showing them as individuals who try to have better lives or solving their unsolvable problems, persuades viewers to take sides with robbers. Money Heist goes farther and shows robbers as kind and gentle people who never want to hurt anybody and even have more ethical values than hostages and cops.
It also tries to give a higher value motivation to the heist by presenting Professor as a resistant leader against corrupt capitalism. But this motivation only appears in some vague dialogues by Professor about European Union and liquidation or using the Bella Ciao song to create an epic atmosphere in some episodes especially when Berlin goes on a suicidal mission.
