TELENOVELA WATCH: 'El Señor de los Cielos' Season 3, Plus, 'Dueños del Paraíso, 'La Esquina del Diablo' and 'Quiero Amarte'

Left to Right: Carmen Aub, Carmen Villalobos, Rafael Amaya, Fernanda Castillo and Sergio Mur at a private screening of the El Señor de los Cielos third season premiere.  Photo Credit: Telemundo

EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 3
One episode in and the latest edition of Telemundo’s repugnant narco-novela EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS (weeknights at 10 p.m. ET) is already circling the drain. The same shameless storytelling device that carried the second series is already back in full force: the incessant victimization of the poor little mass-murdering title drug lord with him getting beaten by prison guards, poisoned, and the delivery of a surprise head in a box. This is all set up to excuse the predictable atrocities he will later commit as justified revenge-taking. Rinse, repeat.

Rafael Amaya’s performance has long become monotonous - he mostly just poses menacingly and glares, grimacing through his lines as if it pains him to speak them. He concludes the first episode with a hilariously awful ugly-face fake cry that would make Blanca Soto proud.

Carmen Villalobos’s cop character is an afterthought at this point with the fans of the show just impatiently waiting for her to get murdered, but for them to be satisfied, it has to be at the hands of Amaya’s character and only after she is tortured.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'El Señor de los Cielos' Finale Airs Tonight; 'Señora Acero' Premieres Tuesday; 'Cosita Linda,' 'Quiero Amarte,' 'El Chivo' Debut This Week

Tonight is the finale of the second series of Telemundo's narco fantasy EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS at 10 p.m. ET. A success for the network, it seems likely there will be a third series, so it also seems likely tonight's finale will be as unsatisfying as last year's finale.

I did not care much for the first series of EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS and found this second series substantially worse. Indeed, I think EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 2 is the worst telenovela I've seen this year. Sure, Telemundo's EN OTRA PIEL features worse acting, writing and production values, but EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 2 is morally reprehensible in its deification of its drug lord protagonist.

I've mentioned in a previous article the crude tactics these narco-novelas use to manipulate viewer sympathies for their drug lord protagonists through the constant imperiling of their family members, but EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 2 takes this device to shameless extremes. Over the course of this season, the protagonist drug lord has had his young children threatened with a knife to their throats, his mother shot, lost a baby through a miscarriage, his son shot, his daughter kidnapped and finally his ex-wife shot. He is ever the wronged party, ever the victim, so his violent acts are always justified. Even a final hit gone wrong resulting in an unintended loss is presented so the scenes can ultimately be about his pain.

The persistent victimhood of the drug lord is accompanied with incessant lionization of his virility. Has any fictional character since the also vile James Bond needed such overkill to bolster his supposed sexual desirability? The female cast is virtually reduced to the role of harem. The only detractor is the cop played by Carmen Villalobos, whose role in this second series was reduced to little more than standing miffed with her hands on her hips and looking stupid, bested again and again by the intellectually superior drug lord.