To Catch A Smuggler, season 7
release year: 2023
genre: TV documentary show (8 episodes)
viewing setting: home streaming 1/1-6/24
synopsis: Homeland Security officers at different U.S. airports and border crossings go about their jobs daily, inspecting people, vehicles, luggage, and shipped goods for anything bad.
impressions: Point of order: Hulu's online menu has each season at one less than Wikipedia's episode list; since Wikipedia has a 5-episode season one shown, I'm going with them. Therefore...I call this 6-episode 2023 season the seventh season. Some highlights: a controlled sale and chase in rainy San Diego (episode 1)...a foreign lady with 15 bags full of brand-new clothes and accessories andjewelry (episode 1)...a boat containing $2,000,000 of cocaine, a csh-checking operation in the Philadelphia airport, guys caught sleeping in a boatful of drug parcels (all episode 2)...a "meth burst" in Orange County, with three successful busts (episode 3)...multiple international idiots who said they didn't have food when they knew they did (episode 3)...a look into the food grinder process for confiscated food items (episode 3)...$45,000 worth of rare books confiscated from a shipment (episode 4)...one bust leading to another for a total of $2.3M worth of drugs (episode 4)...a random guy carrying $68,000 worth of cash to Africa (episode 4)...a truckload of stacked sheet rock packed with 876 kg of dope valued at $1.57M (episode 5)...an illegal gold-mining bust in Bogota (episode 6)...a really defiant young American whose attitude ends up sinking him (episode 7)...a piece of heavy equipment packed with $4.2M worth of crystal meth (episode 7)...a human trafficking sting, the apprehension of a passenger with a warrant for terroristic threats (both episode 8.)
acting: n/a but a number of the officers show up in multiple episodes, and you start to feel like you get to know them (and their approach and tactics) after a while.
final word: Highly entertaining look at the work done to protect the U.S. at its borers and airportsd.
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