In the same way with Breaking Bad, I think the showrunners do a very good job of creating interesting characters & dramatic build up. So much so that the spots of lazy, contrived writing in order to simply move the plot along, are regularly overlooked by fans. My disappointment in the rushed & unceremonious conclusion of Nacho's story was compounded by the way it happened, diminishing Gus as a character along the way. Nacho's tragic fate was squarely the result of the writers lazily turning Gus into a mustache twirling moron of a villain at the end of the previous season, making several idiotic decisions that should have been his undoing. A trend which continued into season 6.
Gus arranging a hit on Lalo, in the midst of their feuding was questionable enough on its own, but in discovering that an unaccounted-for Nacho was down in Mexico with Lalo, instead of delaying the assassination until Nacho was in the clear, he decides to squander the valuable asset of having a double agent by putting him in the middle of the assassination attempt for no coherent reason. Gus for no discernable reason chooses to turn an asset into a huge, life-threatening liability that should have blown up in his face in any number of ways but he implausibly lucks his way through one asinine decision after the other, culminating in Nacho agreeing to sacrifice himself, nice and neatly bailing out Gus' blunders so Breaking Bad can eventually happen. The lead up to Nacho's fate was less about compelling storytelling & more about it being as you say, "necessary" for the writers to wrap it up.
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Heisenberg (6730)
2 years ago
I could not agree more.
Eloquently put.
Great post, you express everything I felt is wrong with Nacho's demise.
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