A new Mexican drama on Netflix, We Were Kings, has a theme that we’ve seen many times: People who live in a poor part of a major city have big plans to provide for their families and ambitions that they hope will take them out of their home neighborhoods. But in this series, a tragedy destroys those dreams.
Opening Shot: Music blasts from a car as three men wait for another car to pull up. A grafitti-style graphic says “Iztapalapa”, a borough of Mexico City.
The Gist: Javo (Joshua Okamoto) is one of the guys in the car, he hacks into the car’s computer to unlock it so his associates can steal it for Javo’s uncle, a mechanic named Taigur (Roberto Sosa). Taigur pays the other two guys but not Javo, because he insists that Javo stay out of trouble, a promise made to Javo’s father before he died.
We then see one of Javo’s closest friends, Santos (Manuel Villegas), in a training exercise for the Nazarene Police. One of the people guiding Santos through the academy is Mike (Elias Toscano), who also happens to be Javo’s brother. The three of them have known each other since they were all kids.
On the eve of the quinceañera for Mark and Javo’s very pregnant sister Heidi (Kat Rigoni), there are rumors that Javo is seeing a new girlfriend, someone he won’t reveal. It turns out that the person he’s seeing is Nora (Gabriela Ruíz), Santos’ mother and his godmother. They fell into a casual thing one night when they were both drunk, but Javo claims he’s in love with her and wants to provide for their future. He almost tells Santos about it as the quinceañera is being set up, but decides at the last minute to not ruin things, especially after Santos warns him to stay away from his mother.
At some point during the night, though, a drunk Santos finds out exactly what’s going on. When he confronts Javo, a tragedy ensues.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Perhaps it’s because of the setting, but we were thinking of The Chi while watching We Were Kings.
Our Take: The first episode of We Were Kings basically sets up the relationship between Javo, Mike and Santos, showing just how close the three of them are to each other. We don’t know their entire history, but we do know that Santos is like a brother to the other two, and their families are so close they almost seem related by blood.
We also see how everyone is being taken in different directions in order to provide for their families. Mike and Santos are cops, but Javo is going in the other direction, citing to Santos that the two ways to make money in Iztapalapa are crime and politics, and he’s not a fan of politics. But the tragedy that happens at the end of the episode will splinter this group even more
We hope to see more of the trio’s backstory in subsequent episodes, because we’re still just sorting out everyone’s relationships with each other when that tragedy happens. A bit more background will be helpful to show just how close the three friends are and how their fortunes were a bit more intertwined when they were younger.
The series has a lot of complicating details, not the least of which is Heidi being a teenage mom-to-be. Their mother seems to be eager to find out who the father is, and we wonder if that will be explored, as well as more details about Javo and Nora’s unlikely relationship.
Sex and Skin: There’s a bathroom sex scene that’s mostly clothed, but the motions are there.
Parting Shot: The person who survived the tragedy is being given alibis by relatives who responded to the noise that was made.
Sleeper Star: Gabriela Ruíz’s Nora is a bit of a tragic figure here; sure, she’s attracted to Javo, but she also seems to believe him when he says he’ll provide for her. Is she that desperate to trust someone half her age who likes to steal cars to make money?
Most Pilot-y Line: After taking off the party dress that makes her “look like a piñata, she changes into a hand-painted t-shirt and does a very uninspired dance with her friends. Everyone seems to love it, but it isn’t even TikTok-worthy.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We Were Kings has a tendency to get melodramatic, but if it succeeds in telling us the story of the three friends whose lives are ripped apart by the tragedy in the first episode, it should make for a good show.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.