Kingpin

The seemingly legitimate Stanford educated Miguel Cadena (Yancey Arias) must take over the family business. Several relatives fit him for the control of the family business. What is the family business? The Cadena’s run a drug cartel in Mexico.

Marlene McDillon (Sheryl Lee) is Miguel’s US born wife who tries to help Miguel, but is both disliked by the rest of the family, and has troubles of her own. She works as a lawyer in Mexico. Chato Cadena (Bobby Cannavale) is Miguel’s very aggressive, very macho brother who seems to be on Miguel’s side of the fight.

Meanwhile, Delia Flores (Angela Alvarado Rosa) is a DEA agent working to take down the Cadena drug Cartel.

The series was NBC’s response to such harder-hitting, gritter shows as appear on pay-per-view and basic cable like The Sopranos . While the series was just six episodes long, the intention was to create a series if the audience numbers were there. The audience that followed the antics of the Cadena’s was not large enough for NBC.