Yes! 000! That HAIR! I too was so hypnotized that I often lost the plot thread because I was so deep into an existential contemplation of that ‘do. What was it attempting to SAY about the character? Clearly a choice, so a viewer must dig deep to find its meaning. Was it a cry for (lesbian) help? A response to her marginalization within the family business due to her being the sole female but yet the most ballsy in the outfit? In the course of the time span of the story, as drugs were being moved across continents, would the hair grow, become unruly, reflect the increasing chaos the character was dealing with, or would it stay unflappable (even in Mogadishu!) bulletproof, speedboat-wind proof, after-sex-bedhead-proof— a few episodes in, I became so deeply entranced and protective of the hair that I found myself rooting for the character; if she was killed or harmed by any of the baddies, we would lose that hair, and the thought of that ‘do being defeated by something as mundane as international drugs transshipment created a level of dramatic tension so extreme that the entire series seemed lifted on the strands of that head-helmet. A special award should be created for Dramatic Achievement by a Head of Hair just to acknowledge this cinematic/narrative feat!
But Jan, I think you’re not giving the rest of the series enough credit. Yes, the hair’s the thing (to quote the Bard) but I was equally riveted by the moral questions the no -hair aspects of the show posed, namely, if you don’t “technically” know you are specifically shipping drugs, and your business agreement is to simply get something moved from Point A to Point B and you have contracted to do exactly that, then isn’t the most important thing to be reliable, and isn’t the “don’t ask/don’t tell” something of a moral shield? I like the complexity of the arrangement, that a nominally legit shipping company that moves a wide variety of goods around the world, is squeezed between two criminal enterprises, and though they certainly have a damn good guess of their part in a criminal enterprise, being simply the clueless-by-choice middleman let’s them pretend they’re not part of the global drugs problem. The series for me was a slow-burn unmasking of corporate greed and deniability; that if you don’t know for a 100% certainty what you’re moving (even tho you do) are you committing wrong? Where does legal wrong stop and moral wrong begin? And to successfully parse and navigate this moral-criminal minefield, is helmet hair the ultimate decider?
Yes! 000! That HAIR! I too was so hypnotized that I often lost the plot thread because I was so deep into an existential contemplation of that ‘do. What was it attempting to SAY about the character? Clearly a choice, so a viewer must dig deep to find its meaning. Was it a cry for (lesbian) help? A response to her marginalization within the family business due to her being the sole female but yet the most ballsy in the outfit? In the course of the time span of the story, as drugs were being moved across continents, would the hair grow, become unruly, reflect the increasing chaos the character was dealing with, or would it stay unflappable (even in Mogadishu!) bulletproof, speedboat-wind proof, after-sex-bedhead-proof— a few episodes in, I became so deeply entranced and protective of the hair that I found myself rooting for the character; if she was killed or harmed by any of the baddies, we would lose that hair, and the thought of that ‘do being defeated by something as mundane as international drugs transshipment created a level of dramatic tension so extreme that the entire series seemed lifted on the strands of that head-helmet. A special award should be created for Dramatic Achievement by a Head of Hair just to acknowledge this cinematic/narrative feat!
But Jan, I think you’re not giving the rest of the series enough credit. Yes, the hair’s the thing (to quote the Bard) but I was equally riveted by the moral questions the no -hair aspects of the show posed, namely, if you don’t “technically” know you are specifically shipping drugs, and your business agreement is to simply get something moved from Point A to Point B and you have contracted to do exactly that, then isn’t the most important thing to be reliable, and isn’t the “don’t ask/don’t tell” something of a moral shield? I like the complexity of the arrangement, that a nominally legit shipping company that moves a wide variety of goods around the world, is squeezed between two criminal enterprises, and though they certainly have a damn good guess of their part in a criminal enterprise, being simply the clueless-by-choice middleman let’s them pretend they’re not part of the global drugs problem. The series for me was a slow-burn unmasking of corporate greed and deniability; that if you don’t know for a 100% certainty what you’re moving (even tho you do) are you committing wrong? Where does legal wrong stop and moral wrong begin? And to successfully parse and navigate this moral-criminal minefield, is helmet hair the ultimate decider?