There are some thrillers that don’t do enough to introduce their characters, which leads viewers to have a hard time caring about what happens to them.
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what → be → them
In Inside The Circle, a new Mexican thriller on Netflix, a group of longtime friends are split apart by a scandal.
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group → split → scandal
But do we care that they’re friends?
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they → care → ?
To the strains of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” we see and hear about a group of friends who met in grade school and are still tight over 30 years later.
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who → see → school
The four friends — Jaime (Osvaldo Benavides), Tomás (Michel Brown), Amelia (Zuria Vega) and Mario (Raúl Briones) — are about to get together to celebrate Jamie’s birthday.
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friends → get → birthday
The story that has been gripping Mexico involves the death of actress Pamela Dosantos, whose brutalized body was found in a random field.
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body → grip → field
The night before, Tomás, a reporter for El Mundo, posted a video that he received of the last footage of Dosantos alive.
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he → post → Dosantos
What he didn’t realize, until the storm of reaction he sees the next morning, is that in that footage, she’s walking into the house of the powerful defense secretary, General Escolta Salazar (Gerardo Lizalde).
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she → realize → secretary
While the friend group rallies around Tomás, each of them also wonders what comes next.
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what → rally → them
Jamie is negotiating a government contract for his father’s company that depends on Salazar staying in power.
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Salazar → negotiate → power
Amelia is a congressperson in Salazar’s party, and she is fielding questions from the press about it.
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she → field → it
Mario, a high school teacher, doesn’t have a direct tie to Salazar, but wants his teenage daughter Viridiana (Mariané Cartas) to follow the case.
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Viridiana → have → case
Viridiana gets her friend Nico (Diego Sandoval), who has hacker friends who are tracking the responses to the video, involved.
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who → get → video
Tomás, meanwhile, has to track down the source of the video to confirm it’s not an AI fake, but is also physically threatened by Salazar, who sends men after him that night.
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who → have → him
What Shows Will It Remind You Of?
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It → remind → You
Written by Fanie Soto and based on the novel by Jorge Zepeda Patterson, Inside The Circle is a political thriller along the lines of The Diplomat.
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Circle → write → Diplomat
The intrigue of Inside The Circle is that this friend group, who call themselves “The Blue Crew” for reasons that aren’t worth explaining, is going to splinter in the aftermath of the release of this video.
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that → call → video
But the issue we had with the series, especially during its first episode, is that we’re quickly introduced to this friend group via a flurry of flashbacks that don’t exactly establish just how close they are.
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they → have → flashbacks
So when we see them as thirtysomethings in the present day, it’s tough for us to discern not only who each of them is, but what their role is in the group.
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role → see → group
At this point, the dynamic among them can be anything, because nothing was really established by those flashbacks.
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nothing → establish → flashbacks
Without more knowledge of those dynamics, all we’re left with is a thriller that has little intrigue.
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that → leave → intrigue
The last ten minutes of the first episode essentially consist of Tomás getting chased around Mexico City by Salazar’s thugs, somehow managing to display escapability skills that no journalist we know would have.
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we → consist → that
Do we care how each of these friends will react to Tomás’ circumstances?
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each → care → circumstances
Not as much as we would if we had a better sense of how close this group was before the video tears them apart.
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video → have → them
We’ll cite Mariané Cartas as Viridiana here because she’s playing a typically rebellious teen, but it also seems like she and Nico are going to find out some things about the murder and Salazar that are going to get them in trouble.
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that → cite → trouble
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode, but there will likely be some as the series goes along.
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series → go → episode
After being chased, Tomás returns to his apartment to see that it’s been trashed.
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it → chase → apartment
He calls out to his daughter Jimena (Natalia Coronado), who was returning home for a visit.
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who → call → visit
Viewers of Inside The Circle don’t get enough inside information about the main characters and how they relate to each other to get into the mystery that will eventually threaten them and their longtime friendships.
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that → get → them
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie.
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he → write → himself
His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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writing → appear → Times
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