Last Friday Netflix released season one of the miniseries "Narcos," a fictionalized look at the life of the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.

The series was a bold entry into the companies' content creation, and yet one resplendent with contradictions and some problematic choices. In a bid to show authenticity, the company opted for allowing the show to include Spanish dialogue for a large part of its running time -- though the choice to use the talented Brazilian Wagner Moura and his heavy accent, instead of a Colombian, certainly takes away from any "authenticity" -- while sticking to major events from Escobar's life.

The more problematic situation with the series however is the presentation of its narrative. Escobar is the central figure, but Netflix seems to understand that Escobar's standing in popular culture is a troubling one. The choice to run a parallel narrative (in which the heroic DEA tracks down the Kingpin) highlights how the company feels about walking on the eggshells of a story centered around Escobar.

Netflix is scared to take on the legend and strip him of his mythology.

Netflix seems afraid of looking at Escobar as a tragic villain, a man who was once the proverbial heroic Robin Hood, who got drunk on his power and became the problem instead of the solution. Diluting the narrative with the good vs. bad of the DEA agents trying to take down the Cartel strips the show of its complex humanity, making it a story that has become overly familiar in the past. Given how Escobar's life ended, this plays beautifully into the good guys win narrative.

They might as well have just picked some generic drug lord if they were planning to go that route. It is essentially the same narrative that Oliver Stone took in "Savages," the one taken by Denis Villeneuve in "Sicario," or even, to some degree, the one Andrea Di Stefano assumes in "Escobar: Paradise Lost."

Every single one of these recent films has a rather straightforward narrative. A white guy or girl goes up against the big bad Latino mafia, either by direct infiltration in "Paradise Lost" and "Sicario," or going to battle in "Savages." The white people are almost always on the side of the good, battling for justice or revenge for some wrong that the drug lords have done to them. Or, as is the case with "Paradise Lost," they are thrown into a terrible predicament by the mafia.

This structural approach is quite easy to understand. Having a white person as the main hero, who "enters" into the world of the drug lord, keeps the audience at ease about being complicit in this world. Audiences in general are not comfortable with being a part of the world of the villains, by having to follow the "bad guy" as the protagonist. It makes for a rather challenging viewing experience that major studios are not comfortable with. It is, to a certain degree, dumbing down, but it is a formula that works, and thus it remains alive.

This remains the case in "Narcos," furthered by the fact that Steve Murphy, the DEA agent played by Boyd Holbrook, to this point is the stereotypical good guy; he simply has nothing wrong with him except that he is out for good. It contrasts with Escobar's more complex character, but at the same time highlights a major narrative imbalance in richness and depth.

Again, this approach is understandable. America still relies heavily on the narrative of white people as the main heroes, and putting Escobar as the central figure threatens to marginalize a plethora of audiences for a number of reasons. First off, those who do not speak Spanish will be turned off by having to read subtitles. Secondly, asking audiences to identify with Escobar, who was in fact a historical figure, is a problem within itself because of what his mythological status represents.

Cartels are certainly not organizations to venerate, but there are underlying reasons to explore why they become the way they become, and Escobar is certainly the most fascinating investigation into this subject. Colombian television channel Caracol did a series "Escobar, Patron del Mal" with the eponymous character as the protagonist. That show, on some level, managed to explore the turn rather well, but its bloated length (113 episodes!) ensured that the narrative lost its way and turned into one repetitive violent showpiece after another. It can be done, and one expected Netflix to pull it off.

That is likely where most of the disappointment comes from. For despite his noticeable accent (to fluent Spanish speakers that is), Moura is a great actor, and there are a lot of things to enjoy in the show, especially the lush photography.

But that trepidation, that sense of playing it overly safe, seems to be rather uncharacteristic for a company lauded for its inventiveness and ability to constantly go where other media and content creators seem afraid to go. Netflix could have created the breakthrough exploration of this historical figure in all of its challenging complexity. Instead it made a series that could have been about any generic kingpin, using Escobar's name as a cash grab to sell it.