After a rocky start in life, Gabe Ortiz climbed his way up to become one of the highest ranking law enforcement officers in all of Texas. Meanwhile, his younger brother Larry was becoming a notorious drug dealer, ascending the ranks of prison gang Puro Tango Blast. As host Sean Flynn notes midway through The Brothers Ortiz, the tension between these titular brothers is almost too obvious. In this new limited series from Campside Media, we follow their lives from childhood in an attempt to understand why these brothers turned out the way they did.
Despite the drama inherent in the premise of two diverging lives, perhaps the most surprising thing about The Brothers Ortiz is how mundane it is. At several important junctures, the air is let out of the balloon before it’s even half-way inflated. For example, when Gabe becomes a cop in the area where Larry is operating, Flynn proclaims: “Spoiler alert: Larry was never caught by Gabe.”
And though we learn early on in the first episode that Larry was killed in a home invasion, we’re immediately informed that the killer pleaded guilty and is now in prison. Five episodes in out of a total of eight, and the murder of a main character has barely been mentioned since.
This determination never to wring any tension out of the twists in the narrative is not in itself a bad thing. There are few more tiresome traits in a true crime podcast than a constant barrage of false cliffhangers. Throughout the series, Flynn always comes off as a responsible journalist, who cares about those people he’s reporting on, and their trust in him repeatedly pays off. That he refuses to tease us means that we can trust him too. That’s important. On a superficial level, there is a softly gruff, confessional tone to Flynn’s narration which is pleasant to listen to.
But between this persistent shying away from potentially dramatic beats, the lack of crescendo, and episodes just puttering away for half an hour then finishing, The Brothers Ortiz is a hardly a binge listen. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that; the slower-paced, novelistic storytelling approach is often quite appealing.
Nevertheless, when only a half hour drops every week, and there’s not a lot going on within that brisk duration, it does seem the sort of show that could get lost within a person’s podcast feed.
Gabe is still around to be interviewed by Flynn. Larry isn’t. This difference also has a negative effect on The Brothers Ortiz. Despite Larry’s absence as an interviewee, you get the impression that he would probably have been the most interesting brother; so much of Gabe’s story is simply about how much he loves being a cop. While his absence is obviously unavoidable, that we only ever learn about Larry through the suppositions of others is continuously frustrating. He feels flattened by the external commentary, not brought to life.
This is worsened by the fact that Flynn approaches criminality in a simplistic way. Overall, he is an astute host and reporter, but there’s a continuous undercurrent of surprise in his assertions that Larry was, in many ways, a kind man who did all he could for the people he loved despite his criminality.
Despite the titular reference to The Brothers Karamazov, the series sometimes comes across as if Flynn believed you couldn’t be a good person and have a criminal record, and learning about Larry genuinely changed his perspective.This attitude seems to run counter to the show’s whole raison d’être. Unfortunately, it does feel slightly patronising to the audience.
At the time of writing, there are three episodes left. There’s still a possibility that the show will become more urgent, insightful, and engaging as we finally get to the dramatic meat of the story. As it stands, however, The Brothers Ortiz is yet to prove an essential listen.
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Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can find her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Paste, and her Letterboxd.