Whose Fault Is It?
Episode 4 of Dom Season 1 begins in Copacabana 1995. Laura is with her Mother, Marisa, and notices Pedro snorting cocaine in his room. She keeps it a secret from their Mother though but does make a point of calling Pedro out for his foolishness in the street. He even promises not to take coke again. This is, of course, a completely broken promise. Instead, Lico and Pedro end in the favela together. This is the beginning of the end for these two, as Lico and Pedro work to steal anything they can. Their insatiable addiction works well to show the origins of Pedro’s life of crime. With Victor completing his delivery of coke in the 70’s, this spirals out of control in the 90’s as Victor learns about his son taking drugs. His concerns about Pedro go much deeper than Father and son though. Victor is well aware of what this drug can do, typified by flashbacks to the 70’s. Within the favela he’s infiltrated, the line between work and play blurs. He finds himself growing ever more paranoid after taking drugs and getting cosy with Ribeiro and is men. Back in the present, Lenilson is in a bad way and bleeding from the head. Pedro does his best to pay him off as the kids scraper. In doing so, Pedro is livid with Lico and kicks him out the car – and the operation. He throws his share of the money at him before driving off. Victor meanwhile, feeds back everything he’s found to the Colonel. He has a detailed report of everything he’s found out about the General. In exchange for smuggling drugs out the country, he’s been bringing guns in from Russia. Given the International scale of this, Victor wants to get Interpol involved. This is personal for him and after dedicating his whole life to stopping this plague of drugs, he doesn’t want to watch it ravage what’s left of his current family set up. Pedro and Lico continue to drift apart, with Dom refusing to listen to his brother and let him back in the gang. They have a lot of history together and he finds himself conflicted by this decision. Victor continues to keep tabs on Pedro though, with Jessika feeding back info about Pedro and his whereabouts. He’s in the Favela, with the rest of the gang as they snort drugs. Lico is there too, watching on the fringes, with his desperation soon turning to anger. The pair come to blows, with Dom unwilling to waver on his thoughts and telling Lico to leave if he knows what’s good for him. Unfortunately Lico takes too much coke. He holds his hands out, telling Pedro he loves him before doubling over and collapsing, frothing from the mouth. When he does, Pedro is overcome with grief as we see flashes of a broken mirror, blood lining the ground and Pedro himself collapsing on the street. Lico is dead.
The Episode Review
Seeing someone overdose on drugs is a harrowing, horrific experience. As a former addict whose actually seen this up close and personal, the shock and horror of this was enough for me to give up drugs. Hopefully the same thing will happen for Pedro too, who loses his best friend to cocaine after a touching farewell. Interestingly, seeing these two states of aggression and love perfectly exemplifies the swinging emotion one can have from snorting cocaine as much as these kids are. Meanwhile, Victor’s crusade to try and get to the bottom of the drugs see him stumble upon a much larger plot. With General Cruz trading drugs for weapons, Brazil’s dingy recess of drug deals and backroom politics worms its way into Dom’s story in the worst way possible. However, the show does an excellent job showcasing all of this, with the two storylines working well together. As a minor gripe, some of the timelines here do tend to jump quite quickly between the different periods but the art team have actually done quite a good job making them look distinctly different so it’s more a minor gripe than an actual deterrent. Dom has been a very good drama so far, showing the horrors of drug addiction at the same time as portraying a more straight forward crime thriller.
