In short: Bad storytelling punctuated by glamorized party scenes. This show was proposed to sell a style, that being a female-driven Miami drug lord in the 80s. Zero substance follows. Things just happen, there is no reasoning, there is no development, everything is convenient. If you are going to make storylines this shallow, let me zone out and not think instead of distracting me with bad writing both in dialogue and story.

The fascination with having the lead actor wear facial prosthetics, to look more closely like the real individual whom the story is based on, does not actually serve the story. It’s distracting. It doesn’t look real. It comes off as unnatural, and it’s completely unnecessary. Furthermore, if the producers and director would put as much effort into making sure the characters behaved like real humans do, as they do fixated on making Sofia Vergara’s face, then this would have been a much better show. As it stands, it’s very difficult to suspend my disbelief, that this is based on a true story, when these characters do not behave like real people. Griselda plays like it was written by a person who saw Scarface once, and they could write a Latin crime drama. The scenes don’t offer any sense of realism at all. It’s not possible for a human to stab a machete through a human skull. It’s not possible for a man to get shot in the chest 5 times and continue to swing a machete. That’s not how any of this works. The character dialogue is way too hammy, and makes these people feel like stereotypes of Latin people, instead of real people. The show had sections of Latin dialogue interspersed with English, which is fine. But the English subtitles are not translated correctly in some circumstances. There is a surprising censorship of the slang word “puta” which is usually translated as “****” or b****, but this word is completely skipped over in translation every time even though we can clearly hear what they’re actually saying. This is a really bizarre example of censorship for no good reason. We’re allowed to witness all this excessive violence, and hear cursing in Spanish, but we are not allowed to read the translations of the naughty words in English? Get real.