NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
Lupin on Netflix is an oddity: It’s a French production, loosely based on/inspired by a 100+ year old intellectual property about a gentleman thief1. It’s best to watch in the original French with subtitles, because it has some seriously distracting dubbing utilizing what may be the most generic American accents known to man, making all these French folks—including the sizable and expressive Omar Sy—sound like a bunch of accountants sitting around a food court in Omaha2. And it somehow manages to make Paris feel like just another big city, which may actually be the show’s greatest triumph.
Sy plays Assane Diop, a brilliant thief working in modern-day Paris who borrows liberally from the fictional exploits of Arsène Lupin, a character created by Maurice Leblanc in the early 1900s3. Assane also aspires to be a gentleman thief, and often takes ploys and tricks directly from the Lupin books, which were a big part of his childhood4. Assane is a brilliant thief, and he always gets the better of his enemies, whether they are brutal criminals, the city police, or anyone else. It’s one of those shows where Assane often seems to be defeated, on the cusp of prison or losing his family or his life, but then reveals that he’s been in charge all along, creating a brilliant illusion that fooled everyone, including the viewer.
It’s a fun show, and Omar Sy has enough charm for three men. But it’s in its third season now, and an over-reliance on its central conceit—that Diop is so smart he’s always one step ahead—has robbed the show of most of its potential tension and fun. Because no matter how much trouble Diop finds himself in, no matter how dire things seem, you don’t take it seriously, because you assume there’s a twist, because there’s always a twist. And when there’s always a twist, there’s no twist at all5.
Dreading the THREE DAYS EARLIER Title Card
In the third season, for example, Diop aims to steal an invaluable black pearl that was involved in one of his only failures, a botched job from his early days as a gentleman thief6. He brazenly sends a message announcing his plans to steal the pearl, which triggers a full police response and a series of seemingly robust security measures. When he shows up to steal the pearl, a crowd of supporters who see him as a Robin Hood of sorts are there cheering him on, but everything goes wrong: Just as he’s about to slip away, he’s caught and publicly arrested.
But! There’s a twist: All of this has been Diop’s plan all along. The cops who showed up to help plan security were actually his partners, and they drive Diop—and the pearl—away under the noses of the real cops! Ha ha, Lupin you marvelous bastard, you’ve done it again! They let Diop out a few blocks away, and he makes a bold attempt to escape on the rooftops—but slips, loses his balance, and falls several stories to the ground below7. A crowd gathers around his bloody body, and he’s declared dead.
But! There’s a twist! HA HA, LUPIN YOU MARVELOUS BASTARD, YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN, AGAIN! All of this is also part of the plan, because Diop wants to be free of the police and the threat of jail, so he wants to be dead. You get the idea: Every time you think oh no, Assane is in trouble! it turns out that no, Assane has never been in trouble8. A title card will pop up declaring it to be THREE DAYS EARLIER or something, showing you a previous scene from a new perspective or a previous scene that now extends beyond its earlier stopping point, and you’ll be informed that everything has been trickery: You were fooled, because Diop always has a plan!
Again: This is fun, but its overuse in the show surgically removes any surprise. Assane Diop could be blown up in a nuclear explosion and you’ll just sit there, slightly bored, waiting to be filled in on the epic chain of twists that explain how it was all part. of. the. plan9.
Boom! Mind blown.
The problem is pretty obvious: All characters in a fiction have to have believable flaws that put them or at least their goals in danger. You can have incredibly smart characters who always come out on top, but there have to be moments when they are plausibly in danger of losing something—their life, whatever grift they’re spinning up, their beloved, something. If the audience doesn’t believe they can ever lose, what’s the point?10
Because the whole reason we love a long con or a complex heist or a deep love story is the tension, the worry, the fear that a character we’ve come to care about might lose and be defeated. It’s essential that we believe that fear, that we have real worry that this time they might not pull it off, after all. Of course, many characters have serial adventures that see them regularly in dire straits we’re supposed to believe could be fatal to them in some sense of the word, and we know it won’t be. We know James Bond won’t die no matter how long his odds of survival are, so it’s okay that we know Assane Diop will always come out on top—eventually.
It’s the way he comes out on top—so in control he might as well be writing the story. By constantly having Diop be the smartest man in any room, always one step ahead, there’s no mystery. James Bond will win in the end, but you never know quite how he’s going to win11. Will he be saved by someone else? Will the villain make a crucial mistake? When your character is the Puppet Master of all Puppet Masters, you know exactly how it’s going down: They started planning everything six years before the story began, and every single event has been taken into account. It’s terribly boring.
I did briefly aspire to be a gentleman thief when I was younger. Aside from having the dexterity of an elephant on acid12, I also found the “gentleman” requirements to be onerous. Plus, I look very dumb in a monocle.
NEXT WEEK: No Hard Feelings and fearing your premise.
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Is “loosely based on/inspired by a 100+ year old intellectual property about a gentleman thief” the logline for my memoir? YES.
I keep expecting them to start discussing the TPS reports.
Diop was born in Senegal, and the show does occasionally refer to racism in modern France, which is startling in a show that otherwise pretends a 6’3” Black man can fade into the background among a crowd of extremely white Parisians.
If only my parents had read me books about successful, wealthy thieves instead of books about talking animals, I’d be rich in actual money today instead of what I am: Rich in cats.
Sort of like me and pants: If you never wear pants, you can’t expect people to be shocked when you show up without pants. And yet, for some reason, you losers always are.
"Gentleman thief” is definitely one of those phrases that just sounds sillier the more you repeat it.
This is exactly how my career as a gentleman thief would end. Except there would probably be more crying.
Just like every time you think I’ve run out of pantsless jokes, I have more pantsless jokes.
As we all now know, you can survive any nuclear blast by climbing inside a high-quality refrigerator.
This is why I fail at almost everything I attempt: To gain your sympathy. The plan is coming together, you fools!
One of these days I want a scene where James Bond is caught dead to rights with an oversize martini in one hand and a lighter in the other, and he pours all the booze in his mouth, ignites the flames, and murders like a dozen people by creating a flamethrower with his mouth. Tell me that’s not brilliant, I dare you.
When I played Little League baseball as a kid, my position was Left Out, and everyone on the team groaned every time I went up to bat.
I think part of what makes the Mission: Impossible film series work so well (setting aside the most recent entry for a minute here) is how they completely sidestep this "It was his plan all along!" trope. NOTHING in the Mission: Impossible films goes to plan. It's a constant hire-wire act of Ethan Hunt desperately holding things together. People like to poke fun at the meme of Tom Cruise Always Running. But in the M:I films, he's usually running because Benny is incompetent, the gadgets break down, the dame has betrayed them, and the cocky upstart unplugged Ethan's oxygen hose just to be a dick! I think you can chart how good each film is based on just how annoyed Ethan Hunt is.