The Great Heist (El Robo Del Siglo) – Episode 2 Recap & Review

The Crew

Call To Action

Episode 2 of The Great Heist begins with Lawyer reminiscing on the heist gone wrong in the past. Eventually, he lets Chayo in. They discuss the night everything went wrong and the upcoming heist. Lawyer is afraid and unsure whether this is the right move for them.

As they keep talking, eventually Lawyer caves and agrees to work with him – on one condition. Lawyer is going to be calling the shots and he decides on everything. In doing so, he phones home and tells Romy he’s going to go ahead and get the transplant.

Ulises is back and this time brings his “bunker man” Yidi. With him sneaking in and disrupting the security, he’s also got two other men on the inside too. All he needs is a time and date. However, once they’ve agreed then there’s no going back.

Assembling The Team

Lawyer and Chayo recruit a mechanic and someone who can help them with the alarms. That means Maguiver (real name Arlei Torres) and Estivan (Richard Reina) are in on the case too. However, in order to melt the doors they need to recruit an old friend, someone they refer to as “Dragon” (real name Gabriel Herrerra).

The real kicker here though comes from how they’re going to get the money out. As they all discuss the best way of going about this, they decide to bribe the cops and use a car.

Meanwhile, Dona K returns to the scrapyard and finds Dragon with his associate Goliath. They need a thermal lance but the only way to do this is to import it in from Panama.

Chayo returns home and finds himself confronted by Carmen. She knows about the jewlery shop and quizzes him over what happened. Chayo reveals the robbery but notably misses out the details of him orchestrating it. He goes on to tell her that once he’s sorted this situation out, they’ll open a small business together.

The next day, Chayo and Lawyer head into the police station and talk to Lieutenant Jorge about the Bank. They talk plainly, admitting that they’re going to break in during a shift change with a Dodge. If he wants in, they’ll give him 3% of the cut…making that 300 million pesos.

A Big Roadblock

With the entire gang joined together, Chayo gives a rousing speech about how they’re all family. If there’s a snitch among them though, they’ll be killed. If they work together as a family though, in 48 hours time they’ll become one of the richest families in the world.

Only…there’s a problem. Yidi has no man on in the inside now thanks to one of his own coming down with stomach problems. Yidi’s betrayal doesn’t go down well with Mrs K, who throws boiling water in his face and tells him to get it together.

With the plan falling apart, Chayo tries to come up with an alternate idea. That idea comes in the form of breaking the air conditioning.

With 36 hours to go until the heist, the Bank’s air conditioning units break. Intentionally of course, and it causes Yidi to approach the big boss Zabala and spin a story about the workers unionizing, It’s enough to convince him to bring a team in to fix it.

October 14th 1994

The day of the heist has arrived. While Dragon says a prayer, all of our family gather to join him. They’re all dressed in maintenance gear and hoping for the best going forward. Only, Estivan kooks to disrupt everything by heading in with a gun.

Chayo forces him to hand it over and repeats that Maguiver, Sardino and himself are the only ones supposed to carry weapons. Begrudgingly, Estivan agrees.

With 10 minutes to go, Lawyer watches from the hotel window. Radioing through, he gives the order to let the truck go forward and enter after receiving a knowing glance from the lieutenant.

While he distracts the guards, the truck sneaks in undetected, thanks in part to Yidi feigning ignorance and showing his colleague the signed note. Aguilar however senses something afoul and the truck comes to a stand-still. It’s incredibly tense and just as everything looks to come tumbling down, Aguilar finally lets them in.

They immediately manage to stop the guard there, knocking him down and eventually breaking into the control room. Only, Sardina makes a mistake and Aguilar manages to set off the alarms, which is where the episode ends.

The Episode Review

The scene with the gates was incredibly tense and easily the highlight of the episode. Despite the simplicity of the heist idea, the actual tension has been handled well and this can be felt right the way through the 40 minutes.

The simple cut-aways with expository text for each of the characters may be cliched but it definitely helps. There’s a lot of people in on this heist and it’ll be interesting to see how the show handles that going forward.  

For now though, the heist is well and truly underway and with the alarms now triggered, quite what that means for our characters going forward remains to be seen.