'Griselda' Tries To Balance Mother And Monster

Motherhood is hard. Balancing work and child care, and the emotional and mental load of a household — the traditionally “feminine” work that often falls to women — can feel impossible.

As the leader of a drug cartel, those stressors are even greater because the stakes are much, much higher when your only options are to kill or be killed. At least, that’s what Netflix’s new limited series, “Griselda,” espouses.

Gender is a dominating theme in the six-episode series, which stars Sofía Vergara in a fictionalized dramatization of Griselda Blanco, the Colombian drug lord who created one of the most powerful drug cartels in history during the 1970s and ’80s in Miami. Motherhood underpins the series and attempts to add emotional complexity to Vergara’s character.

“Griselda” uses sexism and motherhood to make Griselda a more likable anti-hero for the viewer and a symbol for her devotees — the vulnerable prostitutes and immigrants she “protects” as “Godmother” by offering money and employment, and a twisted version of hope. However, as the series unfolds, it becomes clear that the viewer rooting for the female narco to show the other drug lords that she is more than a “girlfriend,” “housewife,” or “headache,” has fallen down the same depraved rabbit hole as Griselda’s acolytes.

The first episode opens with a quote from Pablo Escobar ― “The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco” ― before cutting to a scene of Griselda stumbling into her dark house, tossing her purse on the entryway table and limping quickly up the stairs. From her heavy breathing and shaking, and blood-covered hands, it becomes clear that she experienced something traumatic.

After bandaging her bleeding stomach, she calls a woman named