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What have you done with nice Pablo Escobar, and who is this nasty psychopath you put in his place?

If you took a break after watching the first five episodes of the new Netflix series “Narcos,” as I did, and then watched the final five, that might well have been your reaction. The series, produced by the Brazilian director José Padilha, is about the rise and fall of the Medellín cocaine cartel and specifically Escobar, who is played by Wagner Moura. It’s a calculated effort by Netflix to continue its push into the international market, set virtually entirely in Colombia but told through the eyes and narration of an American Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

The first five installments were intriguing because Mr. Moura’s Escobar, a benign-looking fellow who didn’t say much and was generally mild-mannered when he did, was markedly at odds with the growing and increasingly violent criminal enterprise he was running. In the second five, though — for those still watching, everything from here on is a spoiler — the character caught up with the criminality: Escobar turned hostile, paranoid and savage, even beating one of his lieutenants to death.

But, oddly, as the character became more in sync with his activities, the series became less satisfying, because it never really came up with an explanation for his behavior. It’s a frequent fault of shows and movies that deal with master criminals. They’re often reduced to being people who can never get enough, whether it’s power or money or sex or all of the above. But the “why” of what’s driving them is too often addressed with merely a snarl and a cold stare, which isn’t an explanation at all. Escobar, in this telling of his story, could have had it all, since he owned the police, had compromised the politicians and had the power to force cooperation on his competitors. But instead he destroyed all that potential, turned on his loyal underlings and self-destructed. The series never made sense out of his behavior, except to vaguely imply a sort of Hitler complex. This version of Escobar was too smart to have made all the dumb choices he made.

Here are five observations from the final five episodes.

Episode 6, “Explosivos”

This was the first time I was eager for an annotated version of the series that would flag the fiction that is mixed in with the fact. Avianca Flight 203, of course, really was blown up and the country’s future president, César Gaviria, is said to have narrowly avoided being on it. But if the authorities, either Colombian or American, had credible evidence that a bomb was aboard, would they really have saved Gaviria yet knowingly sent more than 100 other people to their deaths? Perhaps that question is answered in some of the numerous articles, books and documentaries treating this period, but I don’t expect to get to those any time soon.

Episode 7, “You Will Cry Tears of Blood”

The first five episodes had flashes of humor, and there was momentary humor here, too. It came when a C.I.A. official, in a meeting with Gaviria, asserted that “America doesn’t intercept civilian phone calls; that’s absurd.” Ha ha! On a related note, scenes showing the primitive technology being used at the time to try to locate Escobar and other wanted men — the inexact eavesdropping, the clunky aerial photography — often left me thinking, “With today’s high-tech spying capabilities, these people couldn’t have stayed hidden for 10 minutes.” Then I’d remember how long it took to find Osama bin Laden, so maybe not.

Episode 8, “La Gran Mentira”

The character of Valeria (Stephanie Sigman), the TV journalist who is having an affair with Escobar, has seemed a little untenable from the start, but she became almost laughable here. “The problem, Pablo,” she told him after learning he had struck a deal with the government, “is that now that you have admitted to trafficking in narcotics, my image as a journalist cannot be associated with yours.” Squishy ethics for a lawless time. Is the journalist-with-broken-moral-compass character becoming a cliché? Makers of Top 10 lists, please get on the case.

Episode 9, “La Catedral”

There weren’t many women in this series, understandably so, cocaine trafficking and drug enforcement being male-dominated vocations. Requiring gratuitous nudity of their already minor roles seems like adding insult to injury. Judy (Cristina Umana), wife of an Escobar lieutenant named Kiko (Christian Tappan), had only one function in this series: to exchange a few lines with her husband that would later serve to inflame Escobar’s paranoia. Did she really need to do it nude in a bathtub?

Episode 10: “Despegue”

The series ended with a whimper when most anyone who knows Escobar’s full story — he was shot and killed by Colombian security forces in December 1993 — no doubt expected it to end with a bang. Perhaps that’s so there can be a sequel, though it seems unlikely that another 10 episodes could be squeezed out of the 16 months between when we last see him in this episode, escaping from his personally designed prison, and his death. Perhaps a movie? Another possible sequel might be wrung from the rival Cali cartel, which received only occasional attention in these 10 episodes. But “Narcos” has built itself a trap. The only character fleshed out to any degree was Escobar, who as of the end of Episode 10 may not have enough time left on Earth to support another round.