‘Money Heist’ Makes the World Go ‘Round

Money Heist is a Spanish crime series on Netflix that focuses on a group of criminals, led by a mastermind called the Professor. These criminals have one important goal, to rob the Royal Mint of Spain. The Professor has spent years creating the perfect plan to rob the Mint, and the majority of the show consists of the robbers inside of the Mint. They may have gone too long with the Royal Mint, the robbers spend an entire two seasons inside. It’s ridiculous that they managed to make two seasons of a show take place inside the Royal Mint of Spain in the first place, but what’s even crazier is the amount of filler in this show.

If an episode feels like it’s about to wrap up, Money Heist (originally called “La Casa de Papel”, its Spanish title) will make sure to throw 15 minutes of characters flirting and pointing guns at each other to spice up the episode. The show emphasizes the romance plots more than the actual robbery for hundreds of millions of dollars that is going on the whole time. The romances are definitely the main emphasis of the show; it overshadows everything else. This was my main complaint. They would be at a key moment in the heist, and suddenly the show would go into a 10-minute flashback of two of the characters having sex in a bathroom.

For the first two seasons, this show kept me extremely entertained, I was always dying to know what happened in the next episode. There’s good character development, good plot twists, and the stakes are so high you have to find out what happens next. I didn’t expect a show called “Money Heist” to have such compelling characters. They all use nicknames that are the names of capital cities all around the world. You never find out most of the characters’ real names, they always call them by city names like “Berlin” or “Tokyo”. It’s all so over the top with constant yelling and gun pointing, when there aren’t two characters confessing their true feelings.

The third season of the show is largely similar to that of the first two, but it has a higher production value. This is because that the show was so popular worldwide that they filmed the third and fourth season with a much higher budget. But I got bored at some point into the third season. The show didn’t do enough to diversify and became boring and predictable to me.

Money Heist is the most popular soap opera in the world. It constantly takes family drama and romance and uses it to overshadow the massive heist that all of the characters committed. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, I find it hilarious and often found myself laughing at something that was not at all intended to be funny, because it’s just so corny. You’ll understand what I mean when you see nine hardened criminals break out into a song-and-dance number.