‘Queen of the South’: Who’s the Real Queen Here?

Photos: USA Network

Queen of the South, which premiered last week on USA, looked like a reasonably promising new crime show about the rise of a young drug runner, Teresa Mendoza, played by Alice Braga. The pilot had a lot of action and made Teresa a compelling figure, but I wondered where the show would go after introducing its premise and characters. Well, I’ve now seen Thursday night’s second episode as well as a third hour, and I can tell you it’s a good show with a supporting player who, to my thinking, becomes even more interesting than Teresa in this early part of the series.

One of the dynamics Queen of the South sets up is the run for the Texas governorship by Don Epifanio Vargas, a drug lord seeking respectability, played by Joaquim de Almeida (24; Fast Five). In an attempt to keep his criminal past in Mexico hidden, he’s tasked his wife, Camila, played by Veronica Falcón, to run the day-to-day operation. Last week and continuing in the new episodes, Camila proves to be an interesting player herself. She’s doing an end-run around her husband, taking advantage of his campaign distraction to siphon off money from the drug enterprise in order to build her own base of power.

So far, these are the best, most interesting scenes in Queen of the South. Falcón gives a firmly controlled performance that conveys the character’s intelligence and ruthlessness. When she takes a private meeting with a financial adviser about separating her investments from her husband’s, the finance guy asks whether this is about an impending divorce. “Divorce?” Camila says with disdain. “More like war,” she responds — in other words, this fellow had better start realizing the scope of her ambition.

Related: Get the Scoop on 17 New Summer Shows

To be sure, Queen spends most of its time with star Braga; her Teresa quickly becomes a trusted drug runner who’s soon given more responsibilities, but she also remains captive in a squalid Texas camp the drug cartel maintains for its low-level workers. In the third episode, however, Camila summons Teresa for a conversation that is part interrogation (Camila correctly suspects Teresa is trying to escape.) and part advice session. “Women in this business, we cannot afford to look weak,” Camila tells Teresa. There is an implicit acknowledgment that Teresa’s work within this organization is just beginning, and that Camila is thinking of grooming her for bigger things.

It’s rare for an action show about the drug trade to put two women in such prominent positions, let alone give two female actors the time to share a scene in which they discuss business and their future ambitions.

We know that Teresa will become the queenpin of crime in this saga, because in every episode, her future self — sleek and glamorous in white power suits — assures the present-day Teresa of her destiny. But until we reach that part of the series, it is Camila, and Falcón’s performance, that commands our attention most regularly.

Queen of the South airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. on USA.