‘Griselda’ Episode 5 Recap: The Fall of the House of Blanca

And just like that, Griselda Blanco owns Miami. The instant Griselda Episode 5 (“Paradise Lost”) begins, we’re blasted three years forward in time, at a point where Griselda is untouchable. She rules the cocaine capital of America with an iron fist. The visionary hitman Rivi, now fully in her employ, has established an intelligence network that Detective June Hawkins likens to the Gestapo. The Miami PD has been compromised. Her sons Dixon (Orlando Pineda) and Uber (Jose Velazquez) are fully in on the family business, with Dixon especially taking a liking to the product as well as the high life it provides him. 

Griselda has the power to tell gringo high-rollers, like the Ochoas’ new golden boy John Roberts (Jeffrey Vincent Parise, who was terrific in the inimitable film The Love Witch btw) to go fuck themselves. She can commit sophisticated white-collar financial crimes in order to frame the cops tasked with investigating her. Even the soundtrack seems intent on celebrating her, with high-energy cocaine classics like “Talking in Your Sleep” and “Let’s Dance” blaring in her presence. She’s not just La Madrina anymore — she’s La Reina. 

Until it all collapses in the space of about 12 hours. This is perhaps the most preposterous thing Griselda has asked us to believe: During a single birthday party, she discovers crack and lesbianism, turns against her husband Dario and best friend Carmen and most loyal bodyguard Chucho and right-hand woman Estela (Aurora Cossio), destroys her reputation with the Ochoa organization by sexually humiliating Roberts and other guests at gunpoint, and orders a botched hit on Chucho that leads to the murder of his two-year-old child by Rivi. 

From having it all to losing (nearly) it all, in the timespan of, like, sitting down to watch Scrooged after dinner on Christmas Eve to sitting around in your pajamas with all the presents opened on Christmas morning. That’s wild, bro. 

Who cares? Caring about this, frankly, is a bit churlish. Griselda has made no secret about the kind of story it’s telling, and a precipitous fall for the now fully evil queen makes as much sense as the collapse of Barad-Dûr at the end of The Lord of the Rings. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but in stories like these it sure can fall in one.

But far more importantly, all this craziness gives Sofía Vergara her best chance yet to just go absolutely nuts on screen. The comparison that springs to mind for me is watching Jon Hamm in Fargo Season 5 after watching him in comedies for a decade. Who the hell is this terrifying maniac, this delusional tyrant plagued with paranoia and arrogance and the inability to let go of a grudge? For god’s sake, she takes a golden uzi and forces a man to strip nude and bark like a dog while forcing two other guests to fuck in front of everyone, and you believe it. It’s not funny, either, not campy, and don’t let anyone try and tell you otherwise. The show may not be going for realism, but that rage, that compulsion to humiliate and terrorize in order to feel in control? That’s real. Vergara makes it real. 

It’s kind of like once it starts coming out, she can’t make it stop — certainly not until she stops chain-smoking crack. Vergara portrays Griselda as a woman hurling herself from one experience to the next: having an off-camera threesome with Rafa Salazar’s manipulative party-girl wife Marta (a captivating Julieth Restrepo), gazing dumbstruck at the fireworks display she arranged for her suddenly estranged husband, nearly choking her best friend to death, hitting the pipe over and over, shooting up Dario’s beloved Cadillac, sexually assaulting her guests, berating her son Uber for trying to be a voice of reason like Dario, perseverating on the idea that she still has an informant in her organization despite a ruthless mass murder campaign against any potential rats, accusing virtually everyone who cares about her of being said rat…she’s mainlining first dopamine and then adrenaline to a dangerous degree. 

It all comes out in one line, I think. It’s a gifable moment for sure — hell, I’m about to gif it — but I think it indicates what’s going on here. This isn’t just one bad night, or one bad reaction to crack, or one bad judgement call about informants. It’s an insatiable rage created by sexism that’s been eating away at her brain like a cancer for her entire life, until she can no longer tell who truly deserves to be targeted by it. 

Her face broader and fuller and more severe than ever, a furious, exhausted Griselda roars at Rivi, who is somehow now a voice of reason compared to her: “If one more man tells me he’s protecting me, I’m going to cut his balls off!” 

She’s just had it. Enough alfuckingready. And that applies to Carmen and Estela as much as it applies to Dario and Chucho. It’s gender-neutral nut-cutting time for Griselda. 

And while it’s tough to blame her in some ways — every meeting with her higher-ups involves getting spat on in one way or the other — it’s really no way to run the bulk of the Miami economy. When you’re making decisions in off-with-their-heads mode, well, that leads you to accidentally kill a kid, drive your best friend (and money launderer) to the cops, and turn yourself into a pariah. 

The sad thing is that Griselda knows this on some level. In the morning, when she’s relatively sober, she learns that Chucho escaped the hit and actually expresses relief. She knows she made a terrible mistake ordering that assassination. She just didn’t realize how terrible it would be until the news of the innocent toddler she killed instead hits the airwaves.

Before we head to the finale, let’s enjoy the fact that the show continues to look like a digital dream. The monarchial green added to the color scheme last episode remains in place, but the blue and orange/gold remain omnipresent. The lighting is often radiant, especially in her mansion’s sumptuous interior. There’s a shot of June and Diaz standing around smoking after he gets framed that’s set against an architectural grid, to my eyes a clear and clever homage to the many such shots of Jimmy and Kim standing around smoking in Better Call Saul. For god’s sake (again), they color-coordinated the fish. That’s good television, ladies and gentlemen and friends beyond the binary. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.