[Warning: Spoilers ahead]
I can’t remember the last time I stayed up all night binging an entire season of a TV show. Certainly not these couple of years as work and other priorities has taken over my life, and sometimes I barely have time to even watch a 40-minutes drama on my laptop, which is why I find myself pleasantly surprised at the time indicated on my laptop when the credit rolls on the last episode of Money Heist. It was four in the morning.
Was it worth staying up all night? You bet.
Money Heist, or if you prefer its elegantly titled Spanish name La Casa de Papel (literally translated to “The House of Paper”), is essentially a heist drama. For those who haven’t caught up with the show or haven’t seen an episode of the show (Seriously, what are you waiting for? Get to it already before we spoil it for you), here’s a short summary:
A master criminal who calls himself The Professor (Alvaro Morte) has a plan to pull a heist in the Royal Mint of Spain. He recruited a team of eight master criminals with certain abilities. To avoid blowing each other’s cover, they named themselves after international cities like Tokyo, Rio and Denver (Smart, right?). Their plan: To print money for as long as they can. But of course, things rarely go as planned and drama ensued.
And… that’s the gist of the story.
Three seasons and one and a half heist later, season four finds the group working relentlessly to get the gold out of the vault in the Bank of Spain and melt each of the gold bars into small grains so they can transport them out easily. On the other side of the bank, Nairobi is in trouble. In the last episode of season three, we see her getting shot by the police before the credit rolls. And speaking of trouble, Lisbon is in one too. She was caught by the police after failing to climb up the tree.
In terms of narrative, though the premise of the heist is somewhat similar to the first two seasons, it remains gripping as ever. I would even go out of the way and call it a page-turner because, at the end of every episode, you can almost guarantee there’s a cliffhanger to prompt you to click “Next Episode” (thanks for ruining my sleep schedule). Just when you thought things are about to blow out of proportions, The Professor appears and turns things around to outsmart everyone. Seriously, is he even human? How did he manage to be 10 steps ahead of the police every time?
To say that season four of Money Heist is groundbreaking would be an overstatement. Sure, it’s still as entertaining, but somewhere along the line ennui is sitting in. What started as a two-part story has been stretched to satiate its fans. I just hope that they will wrap up the story in the next season before they run out of new twists and ideas. All in all, if you want an addictive show to binge during quarantine, by all means, go ahead. But make sure to start from the beginning or risk spoiling the fun. And soon, you’ll find yourself humming to the tunes of Italian folk song “Bella Ciao“.
Read more: Netflix Shows to Watch Instead of Going Out
