Metástasis
April 3, 2015 10:19 PM   Subscribe

After he is diagnosed with cancer, Walter Blanco teams up with José Miguel Rosas to sell crystal meth. Metastasis: Breaking Bad, Colombia. posted by SpacemanStix (20 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
It honestly sounds like they are a little too similar for me to enjoy watching. I think I would have preferred if they did an adaption that spun it off into it's own thing but maybe that will come down the line. I will watch the first episode though just to experience it.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:29 PM on April 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


por que?
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:42 PM on April 3, 2015


ahem.

I STILL believe what I said in the MetaTalk post that Metástatis star Diego Trujillo looks like an older version of Our Matt (1) when Diego is clean shaven and (2) is wearing those Matt-Style glasses, no matter how much flak I took for it.

The 'telenovela' schedule of a multiple episodes per week finished the series in under a year, and (SPOILER), here is the last 15 minutes, which is VERY similar to Breaking Bad's.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:39 PM on April 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


IF Diego is Matt THEN Meta bad
posted by ouke at 11:48 PM on April 3, 2015


I don't care how similar this show is to the original. There's only thing I need to know right now: is this show available to watch online anywhere? Because I will watch the hell out of it.
posted by KGMoney at 11:51 PM on April 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


This was awesome to watch on Telemundo. I want this on Netflix or YouTube. It's not as long and I can't tell you what's been cut out, but I enjoyed the bits that I saw -- and I'm not a Spanish speaker.
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 1:00 AM on April 4, 2015


I watched the entire run when it aired, and it was every bit as gripping as the American version, even though I already knew the story. My brother's wife - a Colombian native - referred to the actor who does the Saul Goodman role as "Colombia's Robin Williams", and I found him even sleazier than Odenkirk, he's a guilty pleasure to watch. Good stuff.
posted by dbiedny at 4:54 AM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


Jo!
posted by Renoroc at 6:45 AM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


I watched it on Hulu but because Hulu refuses to show me the same content on my phone as on my laptop, I can't tell if it's still there.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:46 AM on April 4, 2015


So Hank sucks at speaking Spanish, and that's part of his character as a meathead cop-type that wants to roll with the big shots. How will they show that if he's speaking Spanish?
posted by oceanjesse at 7:16 AM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


It looks like Hulu has a few clips, at least for me in the US, and I'm surprised, but the episodes aren't widely available from other peer-to-peer type sources. And English subtitles are even harder to find.

Until there's more, here's a 6 minute "extended trailer" with English subs.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:38 AM on April 4, 2015


That was cool. Many of those shots are almost exact replicas of the original, although it sounds like some of the dialogue might have been tweaked in places. The reason a project like this appeals to me, and I could watch it again even after having seen the original a couple of times, is that a fundamental strength of the series rides on the strength of the characters. If redone with strong characters, I would enjoy hearing the same story again.
posted by SpacemanStix at 8:10 AM on April 4, 2015


I haven't seen the show, but I thought this On the Media interview (transcript) with Diego Trujillo was interesting.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This isn’t your first remake, right? You were in the Spanish-language version of “Grey’s Anatomy.” That’s “A Corazon Abierto” and even “Desperate Housewives,” “Amas de Casa Desesperadas.” Why remakes, instead of dubbing?

DIEGO TRUJILLO: In the case of “Desperate Housewives,” the remake was not really an adaptation. It was just a remake. So that’s why it didn’t work. When you adapt something, you have to consider the social and economical circumstances of Latin America. And that way of living in “Desperate Housewives,” put that in here, in Latin America, that’s high class way of living. So you don’t really believe that the gardener can fall in love with one of the housewives. Gardeners here won’t have access. I hope this doesn’t sound like discriminating. It’s just there are very particular differences here, and, and people don’t feel they’re watching something real....

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So “Desperate Housewives” didn't work that well but you were also in “A Corazon Abierto”/”Grey’s Anatomy.” Your character didn't exist in the original series, so I guess that was a pretty broad adaptation.

DIEGO TRUJILLO: Yeah, that’s the case of an adaptation in which really they – things changed completely, so it works. We don’t have public hospitals with all that technology. Our public hospitals here, they really struggle to keep on going.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm-hmm.

DIEGO TRUJILLO: And, of course, they had to kind of expand a little bit more all the romantic things, make it look more like a soap opera. And that’s why it worked.
posted by jaguar at 9:28 AM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


The 'telenovela' schedule of a multiple episodes per week finished the series in under a year

I wish there were more (non soap) American dramas that used that format. I get pretty sick of the episode, episode, two week hiatus for some sports event, episode, episode, month long holiday break, episode, episode, episode, no episode this week for no apparent reason...routine in American TV. Thank you Netflix, just hook it to my veins!
posted by Drinky Die at 4:19 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Si puto, la ciencia!
posted by the jam at 8:47 PM on April 4, 2015


oceanjesse, that's easy - they transpose the Spanish to English, so his broken English is the gag.
posted by dbiedny at 7:04 AM on April 6, 2015


oceanjesse, that's easy - they transpose the Spanish to English, so his broken English is the gag.

One episode that I didn't see that I'm curious about is the one where Jesse goes work in Mexico and is hindered by not knowing Spanish. Is it still Mexico? Does he still have trouble communicating?
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:06 AM on April 6, 2015


I honestly don't remember.
posted by dbiedny at 7:07 AM on April 6, 2015


I'm about 40 episodes into this show. It's on Netflix, here in Colombia. I expected it to be cheesy, but I'm loving it.

It's absolutely a shot-for-shot remake of the original. There is even less variation than I would have expected. On the bright side, copying Breaking Bad's cinematography puts Metástasis at a higher level than most Colombian TV.

Even for being so similar, though, it's somehow very different. A lot of that comes down to really brilliant casting. The actors for Henry (Hank), Cielo (Skyler), Saúl Bueno (Saul), Mario (Mike), and Gustavo don't look anything at all like their American-version counterparts, and have very different energies. They're not just mimicking the original performances, and they bring a different perspective on the characters, which helps keep the show fresh.

It's all of the little local touches, though, the Colombianisms, that make it really interesting to me. Like, I've never seen an RV in this country, so Walt and Jóse (he hates being called José) cook out of an old school bus, which are ubiquitous. When Jóse is in a heroin stupor and Walt needs to break in, he has to bash the lock out with a rock, rather than break a window on the back door and reach in, because Colombian apartments come with serious security doors, and back doors aren't a thing. When Jóse buys his house back from his rich bastard parents, they want to be paid in US dollars. Seeing what changed in the adaptation, how, and why, has been very instructive for me as someone who has recently moved to Colombia.

Language is fun, too. The Colombian and Mexican characters make fun of each other's Spanish. Also, apparently Colombian ideas about what Mexican druglords are like vary greatly from those in the States (Colombia's version of Tuco, in the loud shirt). The show is like a master course in Colombian profanity - I've been using it to improve my real-world listening ability, to great effect.

I don't think it's available with English subtitles anywhere, but if you can speak/read enough Spanish to get by with Spanish subs, it's totally worth it for a glimpse into an alternate TV universe.
posted by zjacreman at 3:40 PM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


They should do a Finnish version: instead of becoming a meth cook, Valteri Valkoinen tries pot.
posted by Crane Shot at 7:28 AM on April 23, 2015


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