Echo 3: Season 1
Based on: Israeli TV series When Heroes Fly (2018) by Omri Givon, in turn based on novel of the same name by Amir Gutfreund
Created by: Mark Boal
Executive Producers: Mark Boal, Jason Horwitch, Peter Traugott, Mark Sourian, Pablo Trapero, Omri Givon, Eitan Mansuri, Jonathan Doweck, Avi Nir, Alon Shtruzman, Karni Ziv
I really wasn't sure what I'd make of this show going in, but wow, it was so good!!
In basic, it's the story of an American scientist who is kidnapped in Columbia. When legal extraction methods fail, her special forces-trained husband and brother team up to get her out with brute force. Not a whole lot of that synopsis really appeals to me, but the writing captured me in the way it humanized the people and presented realistic politics--and consequences.
The beginning felt just a bit slow because things were just getting started. It begins with Prince and Amber getting married and, notably, Amber getting cold feet. One of the first scenes involves Bambi going to talk with Amber, his sister, encouraging her to go through with the marriage, as Prince is waiting for her at the altar. It's one of the many ways that the show slows the story down to really give us a look at whose these characters are and how real and human they are.
Within the next few episodes, Amber travels to Columbia to research plants, and a group of local guerrillas kidnaps her just to hold her for ransom and earn a quick buck. The government responds quickly and prepares to pay the ransom, but things go awry when the guerrillas discover a military-grade tracker that Prince had planted in Amber's bag without her knowledge. The guerrillas assume this technology means she's CIA, and no amount of negotiating is able to convince them to let her go.
The series gets murky and grimly human at this point. We spend a full episode watching both Prince and Bambi seemingly give up just like the local government, appearing to squander their time on frivolity while Amber suffers in captivity deep within the Columbian jungle. Only one episode is used on Amber's own point of view and for this I'm thankful, because it's incredibly bleak and disheartening. We see her adjust to life as a prisoner and make friends with another foreigner in the camp. They begin to get along together and commiserate, and her friend gives her secret details on a potential route of escape. Weeks, if not months, go by in this one episode, and Amber slowly makes a plan. Towards the end of the ep, we watch her execute the plan, and our hearts rise in a moment of hope as she makes it out of the camp itself and treks out, deep into the jungle. When she's ultimately captured again, my heart sunk for her situation. Then, to rub salt in the wound, the prison guards execute her friend as punishment. Understandably, Amber's mental stability begins to crumble.
The last few episodes of the series explores the deeply troubled levels to which all three of them fall as they're forced to increasingly desperate measures. After one or two failed attempts at leveraging political figures into extracting Amber, Prince and Bambi finally resort to their most desperate option: commissioning mercenaries to full-on invade Amber's prison camp and forcibly extract her. They go in the dead of night, and it's effectively a massacre, though they take measures to protect as many civilian lives as possible. Their operation, though brutal, is a success, and this penultimate episode's ending shot of a mentally-broken Amber riding in their all-terrain jeep, watching the prison camp disappear into the distance behind them, caused me to break into tears. After a full nine episodes of arduous labor and failed attempts, it felt incredibly earned.
Although out of danger from the guerrillas, the trio's journey was not over--not within Columbia, and not within themselves. While their combined skills and resources continues to allow them to narrowly escape the Columbian authorities, the season finale sets up another, more daunting obstacle. Amber's months of horror in the camp have broken her, and she can't grasp the idea of marriage or normal life anymore. The final moments of the season--while we watch them make a narrow but successful escape out of Columbia--put into question the foundation of the relationship between the three of them.
All these factors made for a masterful season. Every episode felt more like 10 minutes than their actual hour, as the writing and acting plumbed the depths of all characters involved, depicting their emotional evolution alongside the brutal events going on around them. Another crucial character who I neglected to include above was the prominent journalist Violeta who plays a key role in all these events, as well as in tying all of Prince and Bambi's outrageous actions to the greater political situation in Columbia. Violeta spearheads initial recovery efforts for Amber, broadcasts Bambi and Prince's plight to international viewers, and it's through her eyes that we recognize the greater political implications of their violent actions.
While this season may have told the deeply personal story of Prince and Bambi's desperate attempts to recover their wife and sister, the implications of their success necessitate a season 2. Yet untold are the flowering rumblings of international war that their invasion caused. And, equally vital to the trio's physical success of rescuing Amber is their relational journey of piecing back together the person who broke during her months of torture.
The show hasn't been renewed yet, but I think that the story is far from over, and a second season is vital to continue a very important story that lies ahead.
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