What kind of show can have you cheering on the thieves? Clearly a good one. The writers of Money Heist knew we need to love the characters to cheer them on. Many shows struggle with developing characters that have a real depth to them. The best show I can recall doing this in the past was Lost. So many shows have failed to capture that type of magic. But Money Heist is not one of them. This show has you cheering on people whose names we don’t even know for most or all of the show.

1. Toyoko: She is the narrator of the show and rather hotheaded.
2. Rio: The baby of the group and Toyoko’s love interest.
3. Denver: Moscow’s son, and rather emphatic with the hostages.
4. Moscow: The grizzled old man with all the wisdom.
5. Berlin: The absolute batshit crazy leader.
6. Nairobi: She is smart and goes toe to toe with Berlin.
7. Oslo: I believe Helsinki’s cousin and only speaks Siberian.
8. Helsinki: The muscle and he has some great one liners.

The premise of the show is rather simple. A heist. What makes this more interesting is we get to see the preparation that goes into the plan. The mastermind of the heist is referred to as the Professor. He recruits eight criminals to perform the perfect heist. The plan: break into the Royal Mint of Spain and print money before making their getaway. Through the course of the first two parts, the viewer is given insight into how meticulous the plan was. Plans, back up plans, and back up plans for those plans are prepared.

The show does a great job using flashbacks to show these plans, and the relationships that formed between the group in the five months of planning for the heist. One of the Professor’s first rules is no relationships, but that doesn’t last long. Toyoko and Rio get together, and during the heist, Berlin falls for one of the hostages, and so does Denver. The more interesting of the pairings is Denver and Monica (the hostage), because she returns the feelings. It’s brought up whether it’s Stockholm syndrome and it’s hard to tell. Monica was originally with Arturo (who I despise) and found out she was pregnant. Arturo was already married with kids, and stated the child wouldn’t be his, causing the rift between the two. She’s then caught trying to sneak a cell phone out, and Berlin ordered Denver to kill her. Denver wasn’t able to pull the trigger and disguised the failure by shooting her in the leg to create a murder scene. He then hid her in a bank vault and helped take care of her leg and kept her safe. He couldn’t bring himself to hurt her except to protect her from Berlin, and constantly provided comfort and company to her. Denver strikes me as being more juvenile and the relationship between the two felt strange, but also could be predicted based on how the show kept them together quite often.

A second interesting pairing was the Professor and the Inspector who was in charge of hostage negotiations. The interactions between the two during negotiations were hilarious, with the Professor asking what she was wearing and other random questions that kept the Inspector on her toes. Meanwhile, the Professor purposely ran into the Inspector in the real world, without her knowing who he was, and it led to them falling in love. This made the Professor’s plans go haywire when she found out who he was. This really allowed all the plans to be seen, and what happens when the mastermind disappears. Being able to see the plans, and what happens when those plans are actually put into action with real pressure provided the perfect way to capture the viewers interest.

Random thoughts:

1. I really, really hate Arturo.
2. Berlin may be crazy, but he made things much funnier.
3. Why was the Ambassador never called about his daughter?
4. God, security at the Royal Mint really sucked.
5. The fact that the negotiators are just sending in food and medicine constantly is just really funny to me.
6. Everyone knows when there’s a rule to not have relationships, they always happen. It’s like the Professor has never seen a movie.
7. Where did the Professor get all the money to do this?
8. The police called Rio the weakest link, but I feel like it would have been Nairobi because of her son who was taken away.
9. Are the hostage negotiators also the inspectors of the case? I feel like those would be two different people.
10. So, the Professor planned for exactly 67 hostages? What would have happened if someone was sick, or brought someone to work with them?
11. Bella Ciao is now always playing in my head.
12. We hardly knew Oslo, and yet he died. Just rude.
13. How dare they kill Moscow? He was just a teddy bear.

All the twists and turns in the heist helped make it such a fun show to watch and I highly recommend it.

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