#Weimar Watchnotes

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 1 & 2 Notes

As foretold, I have started watching BABYLON BERLIN, Germany’s most expensive television show ever, in which a pocket-sized shellshocked Catholic Dale Cooper investigates a blackmail & pornography ring in Weimar Republic Berlin, hallefuckinlujah. Other featured characters include: a flapper girl burning the candle at both ends with like five freelance gigs variously aiding and breaking the law, and a Russian woman who performs slow baroque songs about dying in full suited drag, with moustache, while everyone in the dance club loses their minds. I’m losing my mind! This is my interwar period DREAMS.

N.b. If you join me in watching this (do it!), make sure you inform Netflix straight away that you would like the original German audio, as mine was about to give me English dubs and nein, danke. Oh also I say nein in my notes just, all the time. Very apologies.

NOTES:

Episode 1

typoooography

this is a pretty good conceit, hypnosis on the clearly PTSD-wracked protagonist — you can’t do anything in the decade after the First World War that isn’t terribly haunted by it, so make it present from the start

GOD that WWI imagery tho….hi

is it common for Christian churches to have menorahs, asking for a heathen

I just screamed quietly to myself. these credits!! it’s 2013 again in my whole soul!!

shit this tree burning along the train track! imagery!

I legit gasped aloud when the hijackers shot them after all, wow who am I I’ve never seen anything before

“Oh lord” I also say aloud at his little silver case of whatever ill-advised opiate they’ve probably given him

lol religious porn, yay

the director is still wearing this classy patterned scarf—an auteur

just push a wall of the set down to announce yourself, wonderful

oo what does bluebottle mean, I don’t think I’ve run into that slang before!

yeah I’m already v fond of our gaunt tortured little inspector, obv-i-ous-ly

ahh the murmuration of starlings takes us to the next scene, lovely

oh hi girl, love your bob and your smudged makeup

I assume they’re sisters, but the rest of the relationships in this flat are harder to figure

wow this dude has no empathy for the war-torn does he.

Lotte why did you pick this color of hat, it does not match anything in your life

yikes, I do not want that job

nice, nice, a plot-way to have someone describe to us our sharp trembly boy. a dogged, God-fearing Catholic sort apparently, good good.

all these skinny kids in shabby interwar looks are gonna KILL me

his name is Gereon Rath, wow yeah

a mystery!

“Suggestive Therapy” hoo boy

this man is just trying to do his border job

fuuuuck yeah, hacking in to power lines, transmitting Morse code

[points at screen] Russians

whAT THE SHIT! frozen blocks of octopus being prepared while a weird LIVE THEREMIN GROUP performs in the corner? hi new favorite terrible restaurant!!!

now they’re literally doing In The Hall of the Mountain King in the distance, I’m so——yes

omg is Sandor in the octopus

what on earth this is so jaunty and weird! goood

why, why do I have a memory of open elevators like this, I must have seen these very recently??

also I really like this stagey architectural fun being how they meet, these two who are clearly our two leads, living their independent lives until this point

just unemotionally divvying up pics of porn and murder, bless

Lotte: “I hope you’re with vice.” Gereon: “And I hope you’re with the homicide squad.” MEET CUTE, MEET CUTE

I hope “Moritz” is eventually revealed to be a dog

this bar feels tame for Weimar tbqh

wow it’s hard to pull off a grown man secretly sharing a magic trick with a little girl and have it not be creepy, but this isn’t! I mean not quite up to the magical Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru in The Fall levels, but what is

wow hey Gereon’s a regular dancin’ Donald O’Connor! a delightful surprise!

this hat omg

Episode 2

honestly, this show looks good. this show is not ostentatiously expensive it’s just high quality. here’s just some of the teams that must be excellent to pull off good looking period shows: production design, location scouts, producers, carpenters, props dressing, costumes, hair and makeup, lighting, CINEMATOGRAPHY. early Davies Doctor Who, for instance, couldn’t afford all this and also its (still not expensive, clearly) CGI, which is why it looks like it does. but this show spent a ton of money because it wanted to look like HBO. Germany what’s up! you guys trying to get in the game? I love it.

okay let me try to comb out this plot in my head: dramatic bitch possible crime boss in the octopus restaurant and dubious mental health doctor wanted the pornographer to destroy a certain video, which he did not destroy, because he was trying to sell it and make a profit. Gereon Rath also knows about and wants this video, and came to Berlin from Cologne to get it, keeping this on the DL from the local police force. the current location of the video: UNKNOWN. everyone’s reasons for all this: UNKNOWN. well except pornographer, who was just trying to make a buck. anyway, odds that the video is political in nature: HIGH.

also haven’t mentioned yet: love you Tom Tykwer, even though your name is spelled impossibly

how long until I just have to look up how teeny tiny this actor is

the answer is right now, and he’s too European to be on celebheights.com! I do not believe 5’8” Google, nein, that’s how tall Tom Hardy is and even though this guy weighs but a whisper, is he really that far over 5’7”?

the film is kompromat isn’t it

oh no my crumbly biscuit can’t handle this!

Dutch angle! woozy tipping ones

don’t go on the FLOOR of a MEN’S BATHROOM my gal!

note to self to ask Dr. Jen about the way his PTSD is manifesting. update Jen says: tremors extremely common, tremors so extreme that they almost resemble a seizure not so much, but could be exacerbated by whatever drugs they have him on, which are likely to be giving him withdrawal symptoms too if he doesn’t take them for a while. update update: differing frequency of severe shaking in traumatized German solders versus their British counterparts, holy very fuck

“Am I wrong here or is it you?” incredible line, god who speaks German is this incredible in German too

oh tight his name is actually old and weird! Thank u for this. Sincerely, Non-German Audiences

I love that she’s very glamorous and he looks like a Charles Dickens street urchin

hey that went fine with the boss’ boss actually. and yes we were right about the political blackmail.

my version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is singing out “Spanish Fluuu!” in time with European characters after 1918

ohhh alright, it’s Catholics sticking together, here’s the bond

wait is this Alexey’s room? lol

Rabbit boy. Rabbit boy!

I’d have left Kaiser as Kaiser, instead of going with “Emperor” for the translation. pretty sure that still scans even in American, yeah?

yeah, now Alexey is definitely not going to be needing that room again. was the landlady counting on this??

oh now here we go

holding out your hand to someone to dance, earnestly: “It has to be you.” GR9 LINE

“Ah, Saint Gereon From Cologne!” everyone loves my weird grim medieval boy with the shivers

…does he give the pharmacist confiscated porn in exchange for medication. yay I love Berlin

hah, punchline set-up from the previous episode!

aw that would have been a fantastic moment for a reveal that the blond twink is gay, but maybe next time

oh the dramatic octopus man is here!

!! the person who sold out Alexey is a female drag performer yes?!! same silhouette!

god I love Weimar Berlin

Josephine Baker homages!

this is full tilt incredible. everyone a) knows this song, b) knows a coordinated DANCE

definitely we need to return to the world where acrobatic male dancing is what gets the ladies

wait…omg is this the Russian revolutionary with the theremin, did she sell out her own boy???

aw, Charlotte…sorry this is how you’re making money girl

shoot unless you enjoy it, because you’re a dom??

dang the second episode is really going for it!

NEAT FROZEN DANCE MOMENT

aw man dude but now you’re gonna get like, so many diseases

TO BE CONT’D!

***

Weimar Watchnotes

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 16 Notes

WELL. Well well well well well! Brethren! A fucking RIIIIDE this one is!! Jen had assured me this was a great finale, and picked it as the one* she wanted to watch with me, à la how she picked Episode 9 of The Young Pope that one time. (*specifically not Episode 15, which she described as “Excruciating,” not inaccurately)

Which means! Deluxe notes! As they feature live [previously recorded] commentary from both of us as we watched this together over the phone. Then I watched it again and wrote down, to the best of my memory, all my thoughts from the first go-round I hadn’t managed to scribble down, added in some of those Classic @memory-for-trifles #observs Alex had sent over, and like, descriptive moments, many screencaps, etc etc, I think you’ll figure it out.

Up front: I AM 65% LESS SAD and 100% MORE SURPRISED!!! Like every ten minutes Jen would just start laughing and go “you’d think this would be enough for the finale, but there’s more coming!” and I’d be like “Whaaaaat!” and then THERE WOULD BE.

~Join us~

Episode 16

oh no the war flashbacks! this is the last ‘Bisher bei’ I wanted! (and by that I mean exactly what I wanted [creepy hands])

this one picks up right were we left Gereon last time, in fact overlaps a bit with it, meaning I had to watch him scream in anguish again while the fucking beautiful swans fly over the surface of the lake, and made known to Jen just how much I resented when they used this technique in Season 3 of Hannibal and also now!!!! Jen was just making pitying noises.

but GEREONS NEVER SAY DIE, and thank god he’s not given up yet!! he spies some marker post with an L on it (L for Lotte!!!) and by jove I think that’s the tool we need! that and a jump several decades forward in first aid knowledge.

Me, fervently: “Yes. Yes. Just develop CPR thirty years early it’s fine.” Jen: “Wait so when was CPR developed?” Me: “NINETEEN SIXTY.” Jen: “Haha oh no!” Me: “THAT’S WHY I’VE BEEN SO SAD.”

the anachronism I need, the anachronism I ask for. don’t give up Gereon! you fling yourself at men twice your size, you can do this! drowning victims are saved all the time, this is like the only thing CPR actually works for. don’t give up!!

Me: “Oh honey your beat is off.” Jen: “Well ‘Staying Alive’ hadn’t been invented yet either.” Me: [loses it] Jen: “‘Zu Asche, Zu Staub’ isn’t gonna quite do it!” Me, wheezing: “Jen.”

Me: [I have no idea what I said, probably just EXCLAIMING and sagging back into the couch] Jen, more helpful: “When I first watched this I literally yelled ‘OH THANK GOD.’”

he just briefly ducks his little face into the back of her head, pulling her into his arms by the lakeshore, oh my gaawwwd

yes this is the weirdo you secretly love, Gereon, the girl mesmerized by seeing the moon during the day

And Gereon just goes: “Of course.” ❤️❤️❤️

Jen, in the voice you usually only hear when people are looking at a puppy do something cute: “Natürlich!” Me: “Naaaturally!” 

anyway if u cannot tell, we ship it so hard, fräuleins

Jen: “Oh good it’s So-and-so and So-and-so, and Gräf the Photographer!” Me: “Gräf and The Other Ones!”

Gereon’s eyebrows have just not gone back down from this A frame since Charlotte died in his arms and then came back to life also in his arms. Stefan would be beside himself, a whole new Rath Eyebrows expression! also: oh my fucking god @ the dialogue

thank god Gräf’s here to take her back to Berlin, a person I just trust implicitly

“He’s a better driver than me.” oh my gooddfjalkdfjskf, please. since when are Germans self-deprecating, or did we just find the only one. Lotte’s just like *chuckle* — you’re made for each other.

Gereon’s now wearing a little Weimar backpack hiking through the woods and consulting a map, this fucking boy scout right now yes. meanwhile The Other Ones are just comedically bickering in the background. Me: “God these two really are the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the outfit.”

dang though they both have very striking eyes

at this point Jen and I got minorly distracted discussing the cut of men’s suits from this time period, and how the baggy fit and high button placement on waistcoats and jackets combines to make Volker Bruch look even littler than he is. discuss.

Jen: “He’s truly embracing his boy scout look right now. This is the most scout thing he does in the entire show, feel for this train through the tracks!” Me: “Or his most Aragorn.” Jen: “What do your Rath eyes see!” Me: !!!!! 😂

and then like sixty seconds later he gets swarmed by a swift-flying flock of crows and I yelled “Crebain from Dunland!!”

both Lotte and Helga waking up in a fright whispering “Gereon!” at the same moment is easily the hokiest thing this show has EVER done, wow a choice.

Jen: “Yeah I don’t remember them dipping into the supernatural much before this.” Me, with my producer voice on: “This could have been done much more subtly.”

(what you do is you have Helga awaken, a small gasp is fine, after we see Gereon fall, but she doesn’t say anything. I don’t think she even looks at his side of the bed, just looks into the dark. then we cut to Charlotte’s bed in the hospital, but her eyes are already open, staring with medium intensity into the middle distance—with an inhale, she closes them. vaguely like a prayer. and there ya go: linked his fate to both women’s lives, but they’re different images now, and it’s much better. still OBVIOUS, but not as lame. (under no circumstance can someone say “Gereon!” as they wake up! oh my god.))

one of the Stephano & Trinculos has this fetching little scarf on and just inexplicably tested the direction of the wind with a finger, god they really are suddenly a thing right here at the end

man I love when Tom Twombly uses eerie wordless vocals in this score, in case I forget he made Perfume

Me, giggling: “Remembering Svetlana telling Gereon how she used to ~play among the gold~” Jen: [also giggling]

Jen: “It’s his special lock-picking kit!” Me: “…Brute force?” Jen: “It’s his special lock-breaking kit!”

for a few seconds I think Wolter’s men are being taken out by slingshots, because that’s just what a Lord of the Rings space I’ve put myself in at this point, but luckily Jen was here to remind that silencers exist, and so does: EDGAR & THE GANG. arriving up out of the misty field like a pack of Peakies Blinder!

Me: “Yeesss it’s YOUR ENEMY’S ENEMY!!! I LOVE WHEN THAT HAPPENS.” Jen: “THE BEST PLOT TROPE.” (at this point I finally refrain from going on and mentioning the Balrog scaring off the mine goblins, but not here!!!)

haha, Gereon silently flipping on the light in the train car like your dad in the living room while you try to sneak in the front door late at night

Me: “What’s great about this is that like 50% Bruno thinks this is Gereon’s ghost, still hell-bent on fucking him over.”

Me: “I mean like, look at him.”

the first time around I missed much of Wolter’s villain speech here where he tries to psychologically dismantle Gereon, because Jen and I were vociferously heckling him the whole time in between shouting encouragement at our boy. don’t listen to him!!

and holy shit the gold! the ““gold””!

Jen, laughing for a few seconds before she can even get the words out: “You know how like, there would be that thing where it’s like ‘our gold is corn because that’s what’s valuable to us’—‘our gold is coal because that’s what’s truly valuable in the cold winters of Russia’.” Me: “Haaahahahaha omg.”

Bruno: “This is all garbage! Coal! Vile coal!” Jen, a practicalist: “Well coal does have some intrinsic value..”

Me: “Nothing’s coming up Wolter today, he’s had three major setbacks in quick succession!”

and then he gets SHOT

gooddd I love this thing like a mythological Trial, where now Gereon too will climb out of the train and face Edgar and see what he decides

Me, rapid praying: “Naw keep him alive keep him alive you like this one—[Edgar shakes his head ‘no kill’] YEESSSSS, always gotta keep yourself interesting to the villains!!!! Absolutely that’s how you get through this with a villain like that!”

Me: “Whaaat!” Jen: “They were testing the wind!” Me: “AW YEAH, HE’S BEEN IN THE WAR. Aahh!!” Jen: “It’s so good!”

this all happened so quickly that I didn’t even freak out that they just killed a bunch of people until I learned the gas is just an anesthetic, which was a confusing emotional moment

but no time for that! as memory-for-trifles put it: “Bruno appears to be stealing both the train and our dogged inspector”

this is quite beautiful

the green screen on this second train fight…is not. but as Jen pointed out, who are they, the Bond franchise? no they’re German television! it’s fine, you guys are spending money on SO many other things

also I was mostly excited at the prospect that this sequence is an allusion to The General, noted BUSTER KEATON FILM

yeah you gotta be careful about that unhooking trick, with trains

Jen: “Seriously this finale has everything: Gas explosions! Shoot outs! Train robberies! Ahistorical CPR!” Me: “Nuns!”

also, moment to acknowledge truly TREMENDOUS antagonist Bruno Wolter, who could not have had a more rewarding enemy-build arch with Gereon Rath. he was such a good foil!! they had this history, which was also strained but in a different way, and it was always so fun watching Bruno be a dick, then he became a murdering dick but we still remembered the “You’re my favorite policeman!” dick.... just really good. I’ll miss this dynamic.

speaking of demises, we do not directly see Benda’s body, but we see a covered stretcher, and I think it does not look good for two resurrections for us :(( Bendaaaa! I loved him. he was so great. when does the noir crime show get TWO quiet diligent investigators who get to work together and support each other! too rare and special 2 last. also like hell are they gonna let Gereon keep his supportive surrogate father figure, that would be too good for him :(

Old Timey News Radio Narrator: “What led to the [train] accident is still completely unknown.” lol, “completely”

love this dude checking to make sure EVERY brick is coal

Me: “Aw it’s Silver Soviet!” Jen: “With his shiny, shiny villain coat.”

Jen: “There are so many good scars in this show.”

Lotte! so alive and sprightly! with her wonderful little goldenrod sweater gah

Jen: “Oh noo!” Me: “No man is worth it, Charlotte!” Jen, laughing: “Not even Gereon?” Me: “We love him but he is a MESS.”

anyway it’s actually not until the second watch that I’m realizing she’s bringing this little sweet scrappy bundle of wildflowers and when she sees Helga waiting she has this full store-bought bouquet, looll priceless. I probably didn’t register this at first because I have no idea why any of them are bringing Gereon flowers in the first place. oH NO BUT MAYBE THEY’RE IN HONOR OF BENDA? :( help

in GROSS news, looks like Scar Cheek, with his terrible American caricature face and SMARMY SLIMY ATTITUDE, is taking over Benda’s role as Councillor. he’s such a Nazi I want to vom. and somehow he thinks Gereon is going to ferret out dissidents in the police force for him, despite how he must know Inspector Rath stood with Benda on the ideologically opposite side as him?

anyway things went SO well for the last internal mole (ahhhhh*cry*)

Jen and I agreed that we think (hope) Gereon is lying at the hearing about May Day because he’s making a net good calculation: he’ll only get this new internal affairs role if the police think he’s on their side, and then from that position he can take out more bad cops. this is a rather high view of Gereon’s moralistic thought process here and it may or may not play out.

I love this office set AND her sweaters

Me: “Oh god no not the Weimar snapping.” Jen: “The snapping I’m good with, it’s the low whooping…”

(in retrospect on rewatch, ABsolutely delightful that Gereon’s about to give Lotte her official placement and before he can even get it out she’s like we HAVE to go after Countess Sorokina, who’s with me! he’s just shaking his head with a tiny smile like you’re unbelievable and that’s why I love you we’re giving you this job for reals)

Me: “Is it her badge! Is it gonna be one of those cool—yes!!”

she turns around when she sees it, god I’m tearing up! Jen: “And he’s so happy for her!”

Me: “Oh her FACE. And did Gereon just smile!”

Jen: “It’s the first time he’s smiled in 16 years.” Me, laughing: “Sixteen years?! Since before the war?” Jen, laughing: “Yes.”

ah hell yeah, let’s go to this FLAT again

the true gender: Sword

Jen, an Art History double major: “Next slide please.” Me: [completely losing it about all of this] Jen: “As you can see from this symbolic child’s train in the foreground…” Me, laughing: “Jen this is FOR YOU, oh my god…” Jen: “They literally figure it out through ART ANALYSIS!” Me: “I can’t believe there’s a fucking—” Both: “TRAIN MADE OF GOLD!!!”

[screaming]

Me: “Sveta’s in PARIS now!” Jen: “I love her new look.” Me: “The Countess Noir!”

INCROYABLE

p.s. I figured out what the opening piano notes of her new song remind me of: this like, steampunk thing I fucking love from The Weather on an old episode of Night Vale

Jen: “Ah still on those opioids!” Me: “Nooooo :(“

all her songs are so goth, god she’s wonderful

“I foresee that the angels won’t return you to me” and who should STROLL IN

Me: “Oh my god is that ALEXEI!!” Jen: “He loves her.” Me: “YAASS” Me: “Alexei Kardakov is literally that meme joke where it’s like ‘bold of you to assume I can die.’”

he just lit a cigarette off a candle, god bless. I love this unkillable revolutionary/violinist

just moaning in renewed sorrow at Charlotte sitting with the Jänickes as they wish her congratulations on her official detective job and then they all smile sadly at each other!!!! Jen: “It is my most treasured wish that the Jänickes adopt her and become her little found family.”

Jen, Alex is in: “I fully had to pause and feel my emotions with Charlotte and the parents Stefan. ‘Congrats on your position’ I am CRYING, I hope they adopt her and Toni for season 3”

Also Alex: “Charlotte dances to forget; Gereon shoots drugs intravenously to forget, a more classic way of forgetting.” lol sob

dance awaayy the heeaartache, Lotte

this Paris crowd’s pretty diverse 👍

EYY one of those prop straight razors with a reservoir for fake blood like we used in our college production of Sweeney Todd

I looooove when all the dancers freeze, and Charlotte still moving…

god this whole montage with this song feels like such a FINALE!

Jen: “Oh just wait, there’s even more to go!” Me: “WHAT.”

Me: “Please tell me Gereon Rath isn’t just sadly walking home alone in the rain at night.” Jen: “Of course he is. Almost getting hit by cars…” Me: “Oh no! Oh no who are they! Why!” Jen: “Well he just sold out a bunch of people.” Me: “Oh noooo! Nooooooo!”

I STILL cannot believe the Socialist Lady Doctor orders him to be FUCKING EXECUTED right here and there, and HOW are you gonna get out of this one Gereon, when who should DEUS EX ROCK UP heralded by another flight of bullets but FUCKING EDGAR, AGAIN. I’m screaming!!!!!

Edgar like [Dougie Jones voice]: “Hellooooo-oo-oooo!” Edgar like: “Yes once again, your favorite enemy has arrived to kill your other, lesser enemies, no need to thank me, come with me now.” Edgar like: “Ho hoh Gereon, we can’t keep meeting like this.” Me like: “I FUCKING LOVE HIM.”

at this point I was just keeping up this running commentary like Jen but why, why does Edgar keep bringing Gereon to Dr. Schmidt to like, forcibly treat him? what is this for! what is going on! oh my goooddd, oh god Gereon.

Dr. Schmidt: “I will now take you back to the source of your fear….” [Gereon kneeling in a cathedral] Me, whispering: “Catholicism.”

truly incredible that this is how we began the series, and now how we’re ending this season. I do get why Netflix made it into one long super-season, because it’s structured that way

and god even THE HORSE, aaaaughh! SIGNS & SYMBOLS

it’s a week before Armistice Day, and the enemy is pushing them back. and we see the terrible complicated guilty thing that we all suspected from way back when we first learned about this, which is that Gereon DIDN’T risk his life to try to rescue his brother from No Man’s land when their regiment was retreating. he saw him call his name, injured out in the dirt beyond the barbed wire, and he ran.

Dr. Schmidt knows this, because HE’S ANNO RATH.

WHAAAAAAAAAT

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTT

!!!!!!!!!!!1!!????????

Gereon is DESTROYED, he’s weeping he’s shaking he’s all crumbled, Anno is HUGGING HIM like ‘there there’, I feel like I’m being tumbled in a dryer of emotions

this is, undoubtedly, batshit insane, but also, well yeah it sure explains the Dr. Schmidt thing. insanely. FUCK I’M REELING

Me, squeakingly because I’ve been screaming for this entire sequence: “Jen these hands!!” Jen: “El Greco hands!” Me, almost inaudible: “Art history.”

and then we talked at length about what the FUCK this now means. we came to no conclusions! we have if anything, more questions!! a mere sampling:

- What are Anno’s motives! Why do THIS over here with Edgar in Berlin and not go home! - Is this him thinking he’s helping or him trying to get revenge! - Can it be both! - Does he know about Helga! - What is going to happen with Helga and Nyssen! - Why would she get with Nyssen! If that is what is going to happen! - And how soon can we get Gereon with Charlotte!

See you next time, on BABYLON BERLIN.

***

Weimar Watchnotes “Season 1” - Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6 | Episodes 7 & 8 “Season 2” - Episode 9 | Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 12 | Episode 13 | Episode 14 | Episode 15

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 15 Notes

NOT SINCE EPISODE 10—— 

have I been so…..

heart-rent.

Struuudels :(

[waving mutedly] Let’s go then:

Episode 15

I mean, structurally, that this season is clearly going to end where the show began, with a train heist by the Russland border, is tidy af

I still love these credits so much, god

wow get yours, kids! she’s still got her stockings on, hot~

Charlotte how did you figure out Gereon’s hotel! ah who am I kidding, she’s the best detective

memory-for-trifles, correct: “Boy Charlotte and Gereon’s eyes have enough bags to spend a month on vacation”

well looks like after Bruno hadn’t been holding her hostage or something, Gereon never came up with a solid alternate idea of where Lotte was and instead just got REALLY AGITATED. you were worried about her bud! we’re gonna have to teach you about emotions

god I love that she gets the usual male hero thing of just going “I’ll explain later, get in the car”

hahaha, Lotte just going “You met SVETLANA SOROKINA?” and Gereon’s hilarious little “Ja, but I…I didn’t take it seriously. [correcting] About the gold.” damn straight you better have taken meeting Sveta seriously.

is it intentional or luck that Volker Bruch and Liv Lisa Fries are never more entertaining than when they’re scene partners. god I love watching these two together. and the show is so withholding about it!

the Benda children are so cute and this room is so FABULOUS. look at all the animals in the wallpaper!

“Bitte, kinder.” — I heard this one and knew it! “Please, children.”

ah Greta also used ‘bitte’ for ‘come in’. this is gonna be like how I hear all the ‘gut’s and ‘und’s and lightly puzzle over the different ways the translator chooses to render them

look at Benda’s wonderful modernist stained glass window. his wonderful modernist tie.

Gereon’s tie matches!

yes Wolter killed our Stefan, yes don’t you let anyone forget it Gereon!!!!

\o/ fuck I love my Weimar girl

oh no Benda & Rath have reached their first conflict! but in the way most rewarding to me personally: because Gereon is just so dang upset that Stefan’s killer isn’t being punished, that instead Benda’s saying “hold please.” wail

DIFFERENT WAAAAAIIILLLL, my favorite thing. holy shit. my favorite thing. okay one of my favorite things. a favorite thing!!! Benda says they aren’t allowed to go after the train of gold in their present intra-Polizei circumstance, Gereon’s like “sir!”, and Benda says, Benda says, all deliberate—“You still don’t get it. Today, State Secretary Wendt will release the train on behalf of the President, at exactly 3:00pm.” Benda looks at his watch.

Benda does this with his eyebrows.

Gereon’s mouth twitches minutely. I scream. and he and Charlotte make their swift tacitly approved exit.

Charlotte: “What will we do now?” Gereon: [that open thing with his jaw] me: [cheering]

memory-for-trifles: “YOU AND ME ARE GONNA ROB A TRAIN, BABE! Like a lawful-adjacent Bonnie ünd Clyde”

haaaahahahaha, ain’t that just The Babes

anyway this seems like it will be a long enough car ride for you tell him what the fuck happened to you at Edgar’s for the past 24 hours, Lotte

no Greta noo

I forgot that Silver and Scarcheek are dastardly buds

yay Gräf’s coming too!

a bomb?

so someone else is gonna get blown up, I’m almost sure of it. bomb plots rarely go as planned.

you’re right Greta, this won’t bring Fritz back! also Fritz probably isn’t dead. but even if he was! revenge gets you nothing but more trouble

she’s trying to call Charlotte, aw gee

holy SHIT did Wolter just run them off the road into this lake or whathaveyou!!!? HE FUCKING DID

wake up darlings oh no! head injuries! but you must swim!

do you enjoy your work Bruno. do you. feel satisfied in your line of business. murdering all the cutest detectives in Berlin.

I’m so sorry but I’m laughing so hard, omg I LOVE them just SCREAMING bloody murder as they try to yank Charlotte’s arm free and the glass is cracking around them and above water it’s like, quiet. still. and down here CHAOS. I mean they have to survive they’re the leads, please I’m kinda panicking and that’s probably a lot of why the laughter.

that they can communicate with one another so well wordlessly, underwater, in an excruciatingly high stress situation, is yet another mark of what perf partners they are

yes yes yeseyyesyysyey the breathe from my lungs thing. obviously nowhere near Cuddling Together For Warmth, but as far as good good tropey intimate survival things go, pretty quality!

also could not have ASKED for a more fantastically left field circumstance for the first time these two would lock lips: while half-drowning in a lake

#diving #2.3

oh my god CHARLOTTE. no! no! no Gereon keep moving pull her out do CPR, mouth to mouth, your passionate desperate grief is so powerful darling but not now there’s still a chance!!!

or god does he know about CPR in 1929????

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

oh no

oh my god Charlotte really died. Gereon is screaming on the surface of the lake.

my heart is breaking? will this show kill everyone I love 😭😭

I’m reeling, I can’t....

I can’t stay here paused I have to keep going

oh alright the last thing I need right now is the child Moritz, being somehow maybe his worst yet

well at least I’m learning some timeline deets: Anno went missing before Moritz was even born

wow Helga! are you about to call out Nyssen for being a fucking ARMS DEALER here with their company’s little bandaid-over-the-coffin “widows fund”

she is!!!

oh my god I’m still so sad. I can’t believe Charlotte’s dead. how can Lotte be dead she’s so alive

I am almost distracted by Benda and Greta’s bomb, but not quite! because no matter what happens Charlotte won’t be there any more

god he’s such a kind boss, sharing his fancy wine with her, chatting about false invoices he’s investigating

(Charlotte once investigated a false invoice 😩)

normally the offer to jail whatever boy hurt her would be so flippin sweet Councillor Benda but that’s the wrong thing to say!

oh GOD they’ve come back

memory-for-trifles: “Oh no, the children!!” -I yelled out loud, alone 🙄

oh fuck, the Nazis have arrived. damn that was quick. here they are.

she’ll see Fritz among them though right

his tiny little daughter….show you can’t

yeah there he FUCKING IS. Fritz. man my instincts about him being a Nazi sure were correct. if that bomb goes off there is NOT A CIRCLE IN HELL….

Greta RUN back to the Benda house, do it now girl!

no Benda bend…lower, look, nO

did I lose Charlotte and Benda (and Benda’s daughter) all in one episode.....

I can hardly think

oh that’s what shock is

I’m full on in the throes of grief apparently because I was sitting here lost staring unseeing into the middle distance and said to myself “I’m in disbelief,” and then burst into little sobs!

NO MY BABIES

L O V E S 💔💔

I’m actually so into it when a lot of characters die is the thing, c.f. the whole reason I finally watched Rogue One, but it’s specific I’m realizing it’s specifically at the END that I like it. I like when characters die at the end of something because it’s so concluded. This Story Is Complete. knowing that there’s going to be a third season is what is destroying me, because that means a Babylon Berlin without Charlotte and Benda, the way I had to do a third of this without Stefan. :( if it was just 16 episodes out flat, just one more for a harrowing Mount Doom-style last push where probably by the end Gereon succumbs to a fugue state in sheer exhaustion and despair and then the final frame is just like boom black and “BABYLON BERLIN” thrown up on the screen, then I would still be upSET and mourning and grief stricken, but really really good with it.

but if they’re all gone and I’m expected to continue on? how can we! you ask so much of my poor heart

[Colin Farrell at the end if In Bruges voice] I really thought they wouldn’t die. I really thought..they wouldn’t die.

***

Weimar Watchnotes “Season 1” - Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6 | Episodes 7 & 8 “Season 2” - Episode 9 | Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 12 | Episode 13 | Episode 14

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 13 Notes

I was hoping the German for “notes” would be “notten” or something because I could use that and it’d have like, inferential clarity, but it’s not that at all.

Anyway a lot of exciting things happened in this episode! By exciting I mean sometimes my babes get hurt and I am very alarmed! BE SAFE, STRUDELS.

Episode 13

Charlotte! at least your drugged little head is resting on a velvet pillow I guess? or like, a velvet jacket? a velvet pillow

who has this shackle set up just in their parlor!!!! Yikes!™

(and not the time but seriously gal, great trousers always 👍)

[points] HORSE. PORN HORSE ROOM HORSE.

oh so okay that’s why the shackles

she just KNEES him in the nuts and tries to run, my girl!! zag on ‘em!

hahahaha, Edgar just said “Yap”, like a meld of ja and yep, you chill ass motherfucker

ahhhh, they think she knows about the gooooold. which is a total cognate with English, “gold”, gold gold gold

I’m actually unclear how Shadow Berlin knows about the gold gold gold.... OH wait did Kardakov tell them? jaaaaa, Kardakov told Edgar and Svetlana told Nyssen, so now both Gangland and Reichland are after it. but eventually Sveta will probably burn them all to the ground while flames dance around her and she’ll be all [Dark Galadriel voice]: “IT’S MEEIN.”

I’m laughing, this is how Crime Dad Edgar responds to the development that his employee brought him this know-nothing:

memory-for-trifles: “Crime Dad isn’t mad, he’s just disappointed.”

she’s so good at escaping!! Lotte I’m cheering!! you scrappy babe!

gasp, I wondered when that Russian Revolutionary’s folder was gonna come back into play! oooo this show’s so good at seeding PROPS

holy moly, they’re pressing charges against the warmongers. Godspeed you, my rule-followers. can’t wait to see how this goes over for you nerds, out here aiming to punish the generals trying to re-arm while the whole of Germany is all “more like Treaty of VerSUCKS”

ohh, and the trains of phosphene gas too, the ones with the secret Gold Car! man all the plots just coming TOGETHER

“A modern German shadow army is being built here on a large scale.” I love the way Benda speaks, in translation at least.

honestly can someone explain to me why the child Moritz is so obsessed with these police crates he glimpsed in the Wolter basement, like WHY

this gun boy can TAKE A FLYING LEAP, seeerrriously he irks me so greeaatly

lol I forgot about the two older members of Gereon’s team. the only ones he has left :(

“Ja wohl” — Alex

…is Wolter going to shoot Mor-Mor

why is everyone always disrespecting my teensy German pencil drawing

also big yups to how Inspector Rath has apparently just casually deputized forensics photographer Gräf as one of his unofficial assistants. and like, of course this scans as the most minimum of bars today, but for 1929, rather remarkable that he’s just shifting Gräf into an increasingly high responsibility/high profile role given that Gereon does know Gräf’s out wearing dresses to queer bars at night. incidentally, is there consensus on Gräf’s pronouns? are they trans, nonbinary, a gay man who just likes dressing up? I was not being mindful of this in my notes on Episode 11 and I wish I’d asked sooner!

I just chuckled “Yeess” aloud at Benda sitting this general DOWN. kick his ass boss!

I mean I guess Bruno recruiting the child Moritz for his Third Reich army makes more sense, kid IS an entire Nazi

Scar Face wat the fuck

ohhh, it’s gonna be his porn history isn’t it. that’s how they’re gonna try to get out of this. good old fashioned blackmail.

oh Boy. he did it. General told Benda he isn’t a real German. I froze.

history has it’s eeeeyyes on yooouuu

naturally Gereon and Benda are taking the same time for a needed BREAK, just quietly like “ja?” “ja” to each other, god these two

oh or maybe just (“just”) the actual-pants leader of Germany is against them? so maybe not the blackmail..

I wonder if Gereon’s going to assume Charlotte ran off with the notebook i.e. betrayed him again, or rightly that she’s been kidnapped by the well-dressed octopus man also menacing him. they’re both fairly extreme leaps, and if I know Büster Keaton he’ll be flinging himself off at least one of them.

okay that fish freaked me out before I figured out what it was

just silently guts this pike or whatever and leaves, ha ha, oh my god

as I keep telling friends and strangers: they spent a lot of money on this show, and it looks good.

“the so-called Three Penny Opera”

god they have an ENTIRE coup planned out here. imagine if this had worked!

“Gentlemen, this is a decisive turning point in German history.” fun

“Agitation Inn” these Reds tho

Greta I am sorry for you, but I will not mourn Fritz

memory-for-trifles: “I nothing Fritz”  <-

HAH AH YEESSS, Gereon just popping up all furious into Bruno’s doorway demanding “Where is she.” \o/

a knock down drag out fight!! Volker Bruch is obviously excellently dancerly at the choreography, mwa darling

noo Bruno’s got too many pounds and inches on him, he’s bearing him to the ground, Gereon!

Emmi you save Mr Rath, you do it please!

her presence was enough, we can breathe easy, Gereon hoarsely

oh Lotte, oh darling oh honey, I want to bundle you up in the fluffiest warm blankets and feed you hot tea and let you sleep in my bed for 15 hours. then I’ll make you mashed potatoes and let you come up with terrible names for all my future pets & children.

clutching Stefan’s notebook to her heart like a talisman!! 💔I can’t taaaake it

how GOOD of a television thing is this notebook though, the meaningfulest object! this is a Hero Prop in the highest form---super plot relevant, super emotionally resonant, key and powerful and great

Bruno and Gereon are now furiously driving in a car together, this is incredible

Bruno just burst out laughing that Inspector Rath just fucking tried to KICK HIS ASS, did a pretty damn good job too, while Gereon shoots daggers at him

oh god or maybe Bruno was laughing remembering Gereon’s face when he must have suggested they try Miss Ritter’s secondary place of business, and Gereon asked what place of business and Bruno told him just what

p.s. as soon as I heard the DULCET STRAINS of Sveta singing ‘Zu Asche, Zu Staub’ I started swaying in my chair, out of both my Pavlovian response to this song and how rocked I was with anticipation at again seeing NIKOROS née SVETLANA, PERFORM

“Big Mustache Energy” - memory-for-trifles

Gereon is so Dazed by all this, wonderful

NYSSEN’S ABSOLUTE WORSHIPFUL INFATUATION WITH HER IS SO GOOD THO

oh no Gereon’s learning how Bruno knows about all this, I’m like white-knuckling through this 

related, are you flexing your fist wondering if you can clock him again without spraining something there babe. I’d be.

I don’t know why Gereon should be intrigued by seeing the Nikoros poster, unless maybe there was a copy in with Kardakov’s things?

lol Svetlana just telling the inspecetor a bunch of stuff! I can’t get over how her play is always being unsettlingly disclosing. but not fully disclosing---her secret trick.

fyi btw that Alex has also described Sveta with the phrase “exiled drag countess”, which is how I pitched this show to my high school English teacher today

anyway where’s ALEXEY. at this point I’m just waiting for Alexey Kardakov to throw back an art nouveau curtain or whatever and go “Surprise bitch! I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.” I’ll be cheering.

hahaha, Elisabeth! what are you doing!

ah, scruffy old journalist got doxxed

what’s so fun about Babylon Berlin is that it is simultaneously a history show, a police show, a spy show, and a political machinations show

remember when I wanted Gereon to go rogue against the Polizei? now he’s going rogue against THE ENTIRE STATE. only the journalists can protect him, so, not a great position..

aaahhh they keep inhaling and then looking at each other and not saying anything! OH NO DOVES

lord, Gereon--- did he almost get run over by a car. he almost got run over by a damn car. it wasn’t a moment of drama it just, happened, like in the normal flow of his day. we didn’t even see anyone react to it, we just kept watching him from above like “there he goes, our boy.”

so what do we think, is Charlotte gonna tell Edgar everything she learned in the journal? or is she gonna *selectively* tell him things, Svetlana style? or is she gonna wallop him with a frozen fish and third-times-the-charm make her escape?

this we do know: the poor thing is so cold! :( she has ice on her cheeks and eyelashes :( WARM HER UP, SOMEONE

***

Weimar Watchnotes “Season 1” - Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6 | Episodes 7 & 8 “Season 2” - Episode 9 | Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 12

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 12 Notes

It has been two weeks since I was last able to keep watching Babylon Berlin (a Lenten period), and in that time, to further pain me, Netflix rolled out THIS new black & white icon:

Danke, Netflix.

Incidentally, I don’t believe I’ve reported yet some of the structural deets Jen shared with me about this show! Did U Kno that what appears on American Netflix as the first season is actually two season’s worth of Babylon Berlin? So when I commented in Episode Nine about the pilot-esque elements, I was watching the season 2 premiere so no wonder! I had thought it seemed unusual that there would be 16 episodes in one season, because as Alex quipped: “the European television exchange rate is so low.”

Anyway there will be a few more choice Alex comments scattered through here, ALSO Jen send me your own notes already. Sincerely, your Babylon Bebuddy ♥

Episode 12

oh it is GUT to be back, wow, missed you so much show, u are my world.

you know it’s intricately plotted television when the “Bisher bei” takes a solid minute thirty

(I just looked up what that directly translates to in English and at least according to Google Translate it’s “So far with,” and I love that so much I burst into laughter!)

of COURSE the child Moritz is collected a disturbing jar of giant squirming beetles.

anyway can’t believe he’s gonna be the one to find Stefan’s body :(

oh shoot, first this couple schtupping in the abandoned(?) factory

first DUMPING HIS BEETLES ON THEM??!

Jen tried to get me to cut the child Moritz some slack when I took an instant and seemingly uncharitable dislike to him, but I refused!! And I’ve never been wrong in my life!!! MORITZ CAN GO SUCK EGGS.

(I am wrong frequently)

oh Stefan :(( oh darling

noooo I won’t be able to take his parents finding out!

he made them the “doorbell” liiiight 😭

god he knows something tragic has happened as soon as he looks at Charlotte, help me

nooooo!

h o l y  f u c k.  bullets fired from the same rare gun. and Gereon knows what that means (his faaaace), that it would have come from the gun Bruno took off the drug addict who shot at him. I FRcking knew it was you Bruno I WILL PUSH YOU IN FRONT OF A MOVING TRAIN

I know why they did but they really didn’t *need* to show us the flashback, your show is memorable and the little recap at the beginning would have been enough, when combined with Volker Bruch’s performance right here

and Bruno knows that he knooows! and probably by inference that he killed the prieeest

god I’m still not over that Saint Gereon killed a fucking crime priest. T minus how many days until I write a weirdo magical real-igious AU of this show.

okay, but Rath’s “new residence” is also straight up Bruno Wolter’s house, this “it all leads to you! just you no one else” connection is Dubious

that’s fair though he was the last to see Saint Josef alive, just it was later than they think because I don’t think Gereon actually saw him at the bar? the bar many other people were also at..

Dude in charge: “Chief Inspector, fate doesn’t usually tend to put the perpetrator straight in front of us. Least of all at police headquarters!”

Gereon:

*snrk* BABE.

god what kind of MONSTER kills STEFAN JÄNICKE. I’m livid.

@memory-for-trifles: *gasp* How dare you. Gereon Rath has never been a slob a single day in his life.

yes of course retreat to Benda’s office together, you two are like each other’s calm sanctuary in this police force. (also memory-for-trifles: They can share one quiet and tidy office if my dumb tiny son can manage to stay in Berlin for more than a month without going to prison 🙄)

Benda, pouring them drinks: “Alright—Stefan Jänicke was a mole.” Me, on my ass: “WHAT!!”

oh for YOU, okay yes I did actually know that. “mole” might be not the right word here, you mean that at your behest he was keeping an eye on Bruno and other people pushing the rearmament.

oh and also the assassination plot that has just been surfacing

prayer hands that no one (Rath) barges into Gräf’s darkroom in the next couple hours

oh Lotte! :(

was she hiding in Gereon’s office? she was. god I love them

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone whose words of comfort are more inspired than Gereon Rath’s. that bit with that woman, telling her she was beautiful too? and now this, telling Charlotte that actually it’s she who is here because of Stefan. just not what you’d expect either time! and yet just the right kind of comforting!

desperate grief kisses pls

or THIS, this is almost better for me, a weirdo: lean your foreheads on each other’s and waver a little and then pull apart and look at each other kind of startled and high key and beautiful and still so sad and then don’t say anything and go your separate ways!!!!!!

Gereon right now like wow DAMN I did very much want to kiss her....okay, deal with this later, presently: how do I most rigorously expose Bruno Wolter for killing my other earnest pretty young detective

love that Lotte just knows Gereon knows who killed their Stefan

!! aah bringing her in on the secret mole plot and now it’s them against the whole Polizei, this show is GIFT, to ME, your local Tarra Wellntruly!!!

Team Pipsqueaks gonna take down Wolter for their fallen brethren!! GIVE HIM HELL, DARLINGS

oh I sincerely enjoy Gereon very presently watching the murder happen, like it is really playing before his eyes like he’s, oh I don’t know, I haven’t mentioned this before or anything, Weimar Will Graham

also Stefan’s jaunty tilt to his sweet little cap is dredging what’s left of my heart in sorrows

this spy (albeit internal spy) plot is one of the greatest things that could happen to me in this show, I hope you know. secrecy! tensions! danger! being a spy means being alone.

god. he knows Stefan trusted him, and now knows how much: that he was going to come to him when he couldn’t reach Benda. Stefan would have trusted him with this.

Stefan Jänicke is such a good ghost honestly, because he’s so lovely and also left behind a mystery. what’s at the nexus between a basic fridging and like, Adelmo in The Name of the Rose?

Fritz is so awful, Greta I hate him this isn’t cute, he’s not respecting you! and he doesn’t care if this has negative repercussions for you, no, nein, don’t let him do you on Herr Benda’s desk in his little stick-it-to-the-man fantasy!

anyone remember that part in the second season of Twin Peaks where Donna started smoking in front of one of the boys and he was like “when did you start smoking?” and she was like “it calms my nerves”, and he was like “when did you start having nerves?” and she said “since I started smoking”

Helga this dress is kind of great, this color!

all the German words for airplane and flew and flying are adorable

she says “Come to me” and he smiles a little and gets up and goes, hells ja

shakey little fevered nods and then kisses is always A+

but this isn’t going to work, we all know yes? Helga is, as evidenced by her ADORABLE dancy imaginings, a fundamentally ~bright side~ person who just kinda wants to leave everything behind---the past, the war, her very tangled and still aching history with both Rath brothers---but Gereon is mired so deep in his old traumas, and I don’t see how he can even get out of them with a key figure of them! I think the coming to Berlin will prove to have been the fracturing of something, and anything he and Helga may try to build here won’t hold.

Ruuuudi! Rudi’s having a threesome with a gal and guy in front of his bohemian wall hanging! and he’s like hey absolutely come sleep here it’s no problem, we are all very good natured and sexy! Willkommen!

Lotte going to movies to cry and nap is so good, I love her, I love my sad chirpy tired Berliner girl

I thought Gereon had a bruise near his eye and was like “when did you get punched!” but it turns out it’s just his face, and all of this is telling

lord she just asked him! just asked Bruno if he killed him!

fuck you, Mr. Lies

this is well shot, I’m so on edge watching him sneak around the Wolter house

Gereon looking away because he doesn’t think he’s supposed to know she drinks, babe

god. he did it, he killed him.

aw this Gereon & Emmi moment, cute

side-bar but I like how consistently Gereon is liked by women. and not like “ohh heeyy”, but they just seem comfortable around him. I mean for me it would totally be about how he feels different from the established Men World of the time, even just in how he does not fuck with the patriarchy around him still re-living the war. Alex said it felt like a commentary that when the Wolter’s threw their party, Gereon initially went to the women’s party downstairs, and it diiiid.

fuck. see speaking of MEN.

he’d do it too, and he’d tell them aaaall about his shell shock

“What an asshole!” you shot that sweet boy shut up!!!!

wow he told her about his own deception vis a vis this gun, big give Gereon! seems you must trust Charlotte again, or have just decided you’ll need to.

I mean the good news is that all you have to actually convince Lotte to do is translate Stefan’s journal, because just reading what’s in it should reveal how a) godawful, b) definitely liable to have murdered him, is Bruno

“We can’t trust anybody anymore.” LORD love a spy trope

[softly] don’t do this Stefan flashback to me, pls sir have pity

gotta say, watching Charlotte completely not getting over the death of Stefan Jänicke and tearing up in random public places about it is a lot of representation for me rn

nooo! holy shit we really can’t trust anyone! Loootte!! she just wanted a Nap, she don’t NEED this!

***

Weimar Watchnotes “Season 1” - Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6 | Episodes 7 & 8 “Season 2” - Episode 9 | Episode 10 | Episode 11

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 10 Notes

I regret so much about how my fool affections set me up in this one. To lose a favorite right in the episode where I’d so grown to love...not since An***w D******er have I been so!!! so dunked. God. I’m mourn.

But also, this one opened with my favorite thing that can ever happen in a television program: a TANZ SEQUENCE

Episode 10

…..please tell me this is real. PLEASE O PLEASE O PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS REAL that they just DANCETHEATRE with each other in the mornings because they’re ABSURD PRECIOUS TINY LOVABLES.

this is the greatest thing I’ve ever fucking seen. I need fifty gifs. I need air.

well I officially love Helga now because it seems that her daydreaming is “I and my loved ones just bust out some winning choreography for no reason but the joy of it” and that is #relatable

ugh the kid sure is a bummer tho

remember when I hoped Moritz was a pet dog

Moritz seems to oddly prioritize his missing father over the uncle that’s always been in his life given that he at most he would have known Anno for like, 8 months. as an infant.

appreciate the opening zoom on a glass of absinthe, always

nice fringe Lotte

it took me a moment to realize what was throwing me off so hard here was that this dude is singing in ENGLISH. no English allowed in Deutschland.

I mean in point of fact, Lotte is incredibly well-situated to be an undercover detective. incredibly.

“That you Soviets are eager to help build up the illegal Riechswehr is a matter in itself---” lol yeah, that’s uh not gonna work out for you! #historyspoilers

“astonishing” is a cognate in German! and appropriate when talking about breaking the Treaty of Versaille! so glad I mentioned that, now it is eeeverywhere

Lotte!! EXCELLENT COY COVER. I laughed. and I love you.

hahahaaawww, Gereon grinning at Lotte snoozed at her desk, hair a mess. long night, fräulein?

true ~allure~ is drinking down an entire cup of coffee without taking a breath while the person across from you stares at you in fear and awe

The Queen of Berlin

aw sweetheart. your mom died. that’s why you haven’t gone home….

I like immensely this usual-gender reversal of her trying to press on with The Work, exhausted and badass and martyr-y, as he tries to care for her and get her to rest

Nyssen’s Weimar bellbottoms are gonna be the death of me. in a pained way.

bro-in-law is The Wuuuuursst

like seeing Greta in progressively finer clothes

oh shit you guys, I had mislabeled Fritz—he’s a Commie, not a Nazi! listen he is a very blond and politically fervent young German man in 1929, I made an easy mistake.

well looks like Inspector Rath has found another shady arena he’ll casually walk into in his quest for JUSTICE

aw poor pups

huh. Jen does Stefan look like Eben sometimes? the eyes & nose?

appreciate how very visibly they’re cutting up this footage to not actually show any dogs actually attacking any dogs. no dogs were harmed!

looolololol, Gereon holding his arm open silently and Stefan just *swhoop*, popped right in there like *hat* *brows*

Gereon: “You’re arrested for illegal firearms. And 15 cases of murder.”

awww, is Lotte going to Stefan’s place? he will tooootally take her in. he will Understand, also, and she doesn’t even know that yet.

this is too cute I can’t. their little dinner table. his dad has two spoons in his bowl.

[hyperventilating] deaf interrupting and shushing is all hand-on-hand, of course, aaakdfakfjs

honeeeeyyy oh no! doll, dear, stay the night

Stefan is just helplessly in love with her now, helplessly

honestly, sleeping in a quiet little Berlin apartment while a quiet little Berlin boy studiously sits at his desk and attends to things like alarms and curtains for you is kinda Rest Dreams

hah, Gereon’s gonna be like “where is Charlotte?” and Stefan will be all “[blush] [stammer] asleep in my bed :))” and Gereon will be like “[eloquent slightly open mouth and tilted brow] …well at least she’s sleeping somewhere.”

or fucking shit maybe instead EDGAR will just ROCK UP outside the bureau with his broad fur lapels and a face like “can’t believe it but Hello Again. Rath.”

not even gonna try to predict what he’s gonna hear over this RADIO he has to procure

at one point in this post I almost wrote something like “no one in this show is a cinnamon roll” but I was wrong because Stefan Jänicke and These Binoculars

wait hold on, BRUNO? FUCKIN hell

the reason why you can’t reach Herr Brenda is because he’s off being one half of the world’s most tidy & studious police team slash double act

this is fun, turns out I’m very much enjoying the politics plot

goddamnit, Bruno…you can’t make up your badness debt, but gosh you do keep trying

what, is this some kind of shorthand? does Stefan know shorthand in addition to reading lips? what can’t this boy do!

“Always refreshing, is Böhm.” thank u translator for keeping the Germanic grammar of this

I miss the boarding house, this was a nice setting for scenes

enjoying the one-two punch of people trying to convince Gereon to turn on his corrupt department. and like, he knows they’re right, that’s why they tell him.

Lady Doctor: “I know that, and you know that.” lol what did I tell you

these dancing fools are seriously so cute

the little bartender gal smiling to see her weird pal with a partner!

is Bruno literally gonna have the gold delivered to his own house, wtf my dude, right under Gereon’s nose! he’s gonna find out and be furious!

um. I’m all of a sudden….worried about Stefan making his way through the city right now. stay uh, stay safe darling.

everything is lit in yellow and I’m WORRIED

it’s so scary oh no oh my god Stefan be safe!

noooo-o-o-o they’re surrounding him :(( !

the yellow though! why!

noooooooooooo. oh my god I’m genuinely so sad, oww, ah my heart. darling…this cruel world

also that murd erer was shaped kind of like Bruno Wolter and I will--SCREME

oh I just thought of his parents and real started crying oh no

I’ve come back 10 minutes later to tell you that I’m still sad and upset!

Hurtfullest Side-Detective Death of My 2018: Babylon Berlin vs. Killing Eve, rate in :(’s

***

Weimar Watchnotes “Season 1” - Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6 | Episodes 7 & 8 “Season 2” - Episode 9

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 5 & 6 Notes

You know a TV show has written themselves a great pairing when the episode where they have the most time together so far is just LIT UP by it, and then when they spend the next episode apart, even with other highs, you feel a certain loss. Bring my skinny dancing fools together again. I love them.

Episode 5

oh my god this child is going to accidentally shoot his parents

I think I’ve figured out who Sveta looks like in drag: Robert Louis Stevenson

betrayed!

man that Kardakov is remarkably resilient, the man Will Not Be Killed

my GOD I hadn’t noticed the detailing on her sleeves….she’s like a goth tuxedo’ed matador

wait what did I tell you!!!! CANNOT BE KILLED

ah the virulently green hat is back

yeah sweeping up the confetti from the night before, love it

yup I was correct about how the closet works!

ohhhh poor Greta

Jänicke’s first name is Stefan! picking up more every episode

what does this horse mean to you, G-Rath

wait hold the heck on, is Helga just his sister?!!

no they’re definitely romantic, and she definitely answered the phone “Rath”, so maybe they’re married in Cologne but for some reason he’s a) pretending he’s single here, and b) has to convince her that no one would care about them being together in Berlin? OR they’re not openly together in Cologne either but she just lives at his house and so answered the phone like “Rath residence.” OORR she’s like, his parents’ black maid. oh boy hey maybe that.

well conveniently, I believe you’ve got an officer with a gunshot wound to stage this, c.f. the opening scene

landlord, explanatory: “They’re artists.” Charlotte: [chuckles in understanding]

“Miss Detective?” I love it

bold move, Miss Detective

seriously This Place

you’re having quite the productive first day on the job, Lotte

aw Dietrich! aw

meanwhile, Gereon is having one of those days on the job. y’know, being frustrated at many turns and at one point physically thrown onto the platform from a moving train

yeesss I’ve missed the terrible octopus and theremin restaurant

okay who are the Sorokins and why do the revolutionaries have their gold! I’ve googled “Sorokin” and have only determined that it is a common Russian surname. not helpful rn!

chuckle. Gereon wants so badly to be mad at her for being the loose cannon who won’t follow the rules to his straight-laced detective, but he can’t stay mad, because she’s the loose cannon who won’t follow the rules and he’s the straight-laced detective.

the attention to period detail, the colors, I’m swooning. this is my new desktop background.

straight-laced detective will never find out where the secret pansexual Weimar club is, but luckily loose cannon who won’t follow the rules is here to be his Virgil and also gleefully eat the rest of his mashed potatoes

fucking help me

lol this nerd wants to go out at 9pm

you lot are so slimy, you’re duplicitous, you’re what’s wrong with policing. (very apprech how they’re balancing Gereon & Charlotte with this, #nuance)

oh Stefan, now what plot have you embroiled yourself in

yeeesss omg this place is so gay

GASP, omg it’s the photograph developer!!! in drag!! he’s like hi Inspector and Gereon’s just like hello! oh! uh?

guess what “powder our noses” was indeed a euphemism for do some cocaine. Charlotte is buzzing

Charlotte: “I’ll have what he’s having.” Bartender: “Lemonade for the lady.” Charlotte: “[snort] What?” RATH

this queen is so furious that Kardokov has chosen fruitless (pun intended) revolution over being a blistering violinist

Gereon has been sweating since they arrived, but he is opting to not say anything, not ask anything, and it’s really a fine show for Catholic boy

“I swore I would keep it to myself, but, discretion is not my passion.” incred.

just tells them the headquarters of the Red Fortress and WINKS

aw now he gets to show that he can dance! you sober delight

this is so great, ugh go dancing together at the cozy queer bar every night

the remarkable uptick in how often Charlotte snort-laughs around Gereon is taking my whole heart

Charlotte: hey btw am I gonna get paid for partying and also breaking this case open? Gereon: wow what a flex. I’m into it. Gereon: oh but yeah no I don’t know I’ll check? Charlotte: k thx!

THEY CUTE U GUYS

Episode 6

wait Kardakov weren’t you shot?

oHHH, yeah his book caught the bullet! the bullet Charlotte found, from the gun Gereon said was mostly just for the aesthetic (so probably limited on real stopping power)

lol like you’d be standing fine on that ankle

alert: Gereon Rath in his jimjams

Gereon: “You’re championing the subj—” Journalist tenant: “Subjunctive! Would come, could, would. German grammar, fantastic isn’t it?” ’TIS

oh my GOD, Elisabeth! what a SURPRISE! wow so it really is complicated with the gal at home isn’t it? also:

whatever you’re asking with this face....ja

bahahaha, oh christ, Stefan my LAD, this LOOK

oh he’s an artiste!

speaking of looks Charlotte looks smashing as always, love these weird old felt-looking bathing suits

Greta, laughing: “Who is he?” Charlotte: “A nitwit.”

“Why does Jänicke bring proles to the club?” INCRED SENTENCE. seriously this bitch ass country club.

and meanwhile these two young men just standing in the water idly discussing mass executions

Gereon is at church somehow looking tinier and more graven than ever

ho shit, the councillor is actually Jewish! but he’s married to a Catholic woman! and plays the organ at mass!

!!!!!!! she’s his brother’s wife. how did I not guess that option!!! okay yeah so they’re not remotely openly together, so he is single, but also kinda spoken for, oh it all makes sense

his dead brother, omg I’d forgotten about the Boromir

but, well she’s a widow though yeah? or do Catholics still have a no-go on coveting your brother’s wife and all that, even if the bro’s deceased?

whooa is this a dream sequence

ohh it’s a wake. wow I never thought about how wakes seem like dreams…

well this is a full castle

lol what the fuck

I confess I’m barely following this plot, I’m still distracted by this Robin Hood hunting hat. but like, they’re all becoming Nazis right? that’s gotta be the thrust?

Do The Right Thing, Bud

weelll a phone call of someone just whistling is exceedingly creepy & threatening

yeah, uh, incidentally, weren’t you lot forbidden from forming a viable military base after World War I? like, big time disarmaments? didn’t we call this, hm, The Treaty of Versailles?

dang what a power play Bruno, displaying one of Gereon’s little glass vials to this poor drug addict, knowing Gereon will know it, but deliberately not acknowledging him in this moment! yikes! so many layers of yikes!

[irl scream] “I thought it was just the thing for you shaking chickens” and pointedly slips it into Gereon’s front breast pocket!!

this whole thing has me on edge! aah! “You’re my favorite policeman, you’re the best policeman” stop!

babe

oh my god BABE, I’m so sorry your unfortunate confidant is so insufferable

is this gonna be how Alexey finally snuffs it, opening up a train car of pesticides

lol Charlotte, “Kiss me”, your timing!

hahaha, crime boss just eyebrowing at Kardakov slumped next to him wheezing

mm absinthe spoons, nice touch

whoa it’s sugar cubes in the wrappers! huh I’d thought chewing gum

god I can’t believe I have to finally address now how Charlotte really did sell Gereon out to Bruno about his ~shell shock~. but I mean admittedly, she was in a tight spot. and she’s hoping to get something huge & life-changing out of this. and how long did Inspector Rath really think he was gonna keep this a secret, from the other inspectors. wow girl looks like I’ve already forgiven you.

of course he’s gonna make it, nothing kills Alexey Kardakov

***

Weimar Watchnotes Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 9 Notes

Well at this point these liveblogs are definitely as long or longer than my Young Pope notes, so they’re getting their own single posts! Also I went ahead and included All of my screenshots because it was too good a happening not to bookend this with little Gereon trilogies that basically seem to mark out the two poles he’s swinging between. (Even the one in the middle really feels like the midpoint, his steadiest fulcrum of [*level dark-circled stare*])

I’ve also reached the point, in my TV show love affair, where I’ve started telling even offline people about it. I just have to tell everyone that I’m in love! It’s a love that’s gotta speak its name! Ich bin ein Babylon Berlin.

Episode 9

oh my hun

btw these are the only 3 angles men should be shot from

wait, Kardakov finally got a death that stuck? aw man, he had such a good run of it. Godspeed you, Alexey.

just, hell yeah for good production values. and Tykwer on this eery little bell score…ja

ah, they only identified Kardakov with a telegram���bet it’s not my guy!!

there’s a new detective here possibly skinnier than Gereon and with an incredible carnival-striped scarf and the biggest hat of the group—a challenger

Not Kardakov !

“There are no elks in Berlin.” - Brenda with the title of my first album

haaahhahaa, wonderful, now they all want to be picked to be on Detective Rath’s dodgeball team

I’m charmed that it’s not until Episode 9, midway through, that Gereon gets assigned the lead on a case and has to figure out how to assume this role and contend with his new Responsibilities, and all that shiz that in a lot shows is what happens in the pilot. [Ed. note: and I didn’t even know this was the original S2 premiere. amazing!]

aaaaahh yay the first person he picks for his team is our darling Stefan Jänicke! they’re having a lunch meeting about it, which is heartening as they both look like they’ve seen more murders than hot meals

and they’re talking about OUR GIRL. love that they both know she’s this case’s actual lead detective. also love that the reason why she’s not Rath’s assistant is now not at all because she’s a she, and not even because the reason why she knows the most about the case is because she just breaks into places, but because Gereon knows she told Bruno about his ~episodes~ after promising she would keep it a secret. can’t trust her. even though they know she’s the best. lol omg: she’s the male lead.

Lotte and Greta are sharing a public bath. in2 it.

I mean damn. “the camera just went off I am not a J. Crew shift dress model”

lol, Greta all what happened to all your boys? Lotte: WHATEVER.

well I’m real disliking whatever the fuck is going on with these men and Charlotte’s little red haired sister

oh nooo. Mutti.

aw Stefan, he’s gonna be so odd and even sweeter to Charlotte after seeing this sad den of assholes she lives in

I am completely captivated by the female underarm hair situation in this show. Greta has accurately unshaven pits (but she’s also blonde, which we probably need to weigh here), and Lotte sorta does? she’s definitely not clean-shaven, and this would be the place where that would happen if she were shaving anything, but she’s also definitely not au naturel. it’s like they’re okay with their heroine being shadowed, but not much more. haahhh oh fuck it’s like the lady version of the artificial perpetual 5 o’clock shadow fuckery they give dudes! DELIGHTFUL.

I literally just laughed brightly and broke out into a “WoooOOOOO!” of trope joy at Lotte opening the door to their bath sopping wet with just a towel barely held in front of her to find GRIM SAINT GEREON

omfgggakf;kfd who just opens with:

ABsolutely hilarious. Constable Odo is here with a question that could not wait, no, this does not concern your human body---the paper.

I love this scene so much. Lotte getting so passionate about how on the LinkedIn posting she forged it said she could grow into new responsibilities with this company and that hasn’t been materializing, to the point that she starts heatedly gesturing at him about it with her towel, just heedlessly tits to the wind until he finally fucking notices and snaps his eyes back to her face exactly like you’d expect and she’s just like ‘fuck. no fuck you!!’

aw, babes, they’re gonna work it out! look at this deeply satisfying personal dialogue that we should all model our conflict resolution after:

Gereon: “You abused my trust and spied on me!” Lotte: [sincerely processes this and visually accepts the accusation] Lotte, an offering: “The evidence is in a safe place.” Gereon: “Where.” Lotte: “I give you the correct wagon number, you give me another chance.” Gereon:  “Why should I?” Lotte, serious: “I apologize. And if you want, I’ll explain the circumstances too.” Gereon: [sincerely processes this] Gereon, relenting, eyes humorously intense: “You get dressed first.”

she’s slowly burying him in 3-ring binders while he rolls his eyes to the heavens, I am dying. you can barely see his little face anymore.

wait, the priest with the hand tattoo? he was working with Edgar, did Edgar have him killed? because the cement…Gereon had stepped in cement when he was running away from his doctor… it would have been nearby..

loving this tension, loving that he walks out and right past a now-ominous group of priests!

ohhhh SHIT he killed him! aajagahgha, oh my Weimar Will Graham! trembling and panicking and drugged into forgetting what bloody things you’ve done! OH NO HONEY.

this translation of “gangland” to refer to the criminal society’s shadow structure running through the city is super great

his presh little team. literally little. God the three of them together probably don’t even clear 350 pounds.

oh maann, something emosh is about to happen!

Helga should only wear blue, her eyes….

I mean it looks like everything she owns is blue, so good on ya

ugh, Bruno’s trying to get me to think he has a good side again. stop it.

Charlotte's TROUSERS, always

oh daaaaaaang, writers you seeded this perfect false round peg for this damning round hole aaaalll the way back in episode one! I’m impressed.

god. not being able to afford to have their mother buried. why is society like this.

haha, the matriarch’s taking back her company! Birthmark Boyf is OUT.

holy fuck I did not think that table moment was a dream sequence at first, I was trippin

alright, let’s do some math. well 1917 is just a damn curious birthdate regardless, as no matter who his father is he was conceived during the war, which while certainly not impossible does take a bit of work when you’re like, in the trenches.

I mean trust Bruno to just outright be all “You never told me you had a son” so Gereon can freak out

there’s a lot of strained emotions going on here! did Gereon really break off something in himself that has loosened his tie to her? surely not, they’ve been together for so long…

aaah sneaking touches! romantical!!! maybe he’s just so ANXIOUS about getting to hold her again, that also make sense

lol there’s so many creepy hunting trophies in here. Bruno gotta Wolter.

hoooooOOOLD on, Svetlana is a countess! she’s COUNTESS SOROKINA. it’s *HER* gold!!!!!!! how the fuck had I missed this

why are all the interiors in this episode so taxidermy-centric

“Only on Sundays. He’s a priest after all.” reader I laughed.

god, all the police front like they would shut these places down but in fact are on fine and even collaborative terms with like, trans bar owners and gay nightclub personnel

oh fuck this is some good kissing, some good happy kissing, damn now I gotta ship you too! I have a heightened amount of ships in this show, for me.

***

Weimar Watchnotes Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6 | Episodes 7 & 8

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 11 Notes

I talked to friend of the podcast Jen Last-name-redacted this past weekend, about other things too but a *significant* amount about Babylon Berlin, which will probably all be filtering in over the next several episodes. But notably for where I am at present, she told me that she straight up didn’t watch another episode after Episode 10 for like three weeks---“I was in mourning!”---and that’s relatable.

However, Jen also told me that the eleventh episode, this one, is in considerable portion a quasi comic reprieve in the form of a silent film-esque sequence with Gereon Rath and the queer photog being tossed around in an old timey plane, and science doesn’t yet know how many concepts I would find more appealing than that, but their best guess right now is ‘not many.’

Episode 11, or, Me: “Oh my god Volker Bruch IS Buster Keaton.”

N.b. @memory-for-trifles has started watching this show (huZZAH) and came to this life-affirming realization a whole seven episodes before me, along with the very good joke: “Büster Keaton”

okay on with the NOTES

and gosh silver-haired Soviet diplomat is SWEATING

what…is this skinny boy selling on the streets. what exactly.

I am grimly gratified to learn from this OTHER skinny boy, now propositioning our own, that it was What It Looked Like

this all happened very quickly so we’re gonna work backward, starting with how Gereon just accidentally rustled like 20 rent boys from outside the train station, and this is his face abt it:

also, finally got a clear close up of that nifty police badge coin!

ooooo, aaahhh. and it’s his credentials from Cologne! wonder if you don’t get something so breathtakingly old fashioned & material in the Berlin force…

and finally, Gereon’s line to the two of them fighting over him was, translated, but if there is a God the original German will be just as unbelievable: “If you don’t want to go to jail, make like a tree and leave.” oh Gereon. we can’t take you anywhere. for so many reasons.

side-bar, but as ever, enjoying the Rath & Ritter partnership SO much. they just look so unusual around everyone else, and not just because Charlotte’s a lady type. if they keep this up eventually their enemies are gonna be like “aw man, those dogged tiny weirdos are here again, we gotta go.”

the Secret! German! Air Force! god I love this show, I love the interwar period

and I love his FACE. heads up rn that like 70% of this episode’s screenshots are just of Volker Bruch’s face.

Silver Soviet: “I don’t understand you—you work against your own country.” Inspector Rath: Inspector Rath: “I work for the police.” hahahahaha omg Agent Cooper

[groan-sigh] ah yeah, give me that disheveled hair Pajamas Gereon

this show takes place in May? since when? it is autumn, it is all Autumn Vibe

……is the dodgy doc gonna hypnotize him over the radio??? THIS SHOW IS A GIFT TO ME PERSONALLY FROM SOMEONE WHO WANTS ME TO BE FUCKED-UPEDLY HAPPY

the kid from the train yard knows Edgar and somehow that’s not surprising at this point

“suggestive therapy” ...

so I’m still not at all over the weird wild choice by Gangland to threaten Gereon all through ominous involuntary ~psychotherapy~. the style that has. the influence that has. the access that has. the international implications that--

[real question DO Twitter memes have reach on this platform, bc otherwise....just assume I’m being clever]

Gereon: “I will do it. I will take the trip to Moscow.” White haired bossman: “One does not simply walk into Moscow.”

one day Gereon will actually listen to poor Mr. Gräf’s “Nein!” when he knocks on the door to his darkroom—but it is not this day

nooo don’t ask about Jänicke :((

lol Lotte

aw fuck, Fritz…. you’re gonna make Greta’s life harder and my guy Benda’s

(incidentally, NO I was not making some odd joke by always calling him Brenda, I REALLY did just think that was his name! I’m sorry Herr Benda!)

I appreciate his suspicions about Bruno, but I still dislike Moritz

y’know you’d think I would have clocked that the May Day Massacre took place in May, but nein

ohhh, auditory hallucinations of his brother calling for help, as he gazes out at the factory where Stefan was killed, noooo, noo

distracting him by asking for his help unclasping a necklace, I feel like that was probably a pretty clever care move, Helga. Dr. Jen?

I gasped. good trippy filmmaking! his ashen concrete-coated hand!

god what DO they have you on honey

alright listen I won’t dissemble: Moritz can get fucked

my drugged up digestive biscuit does not need this scary patriarchal gun kid judging him for taking a quiet moment in the middle of the night to have a psychological meltdown in the kitchen!!

he don’t need this!!!

flight 🙌suits 🙌

get a load of this Modern Airplane

this is already such a comedy, made by the fact that Gereon and Gräf are both the type to stay silent when faced with surprises/stresses. this flight is gonna be a delight.

this pilot just like, well flying’s pretty new, so sometimes you almost die—it just happens don’t worry about it

oh. he’s never seen the tops of clouds.

Ten, Twenty, and Twelve all sounded pretty intelligible to my American ears

it’s beginning to shape up like Benda and Gereon are the only law-adjacent people in Germany who are still upholding the Treaty of Versailles

nighttime on the plane. you can hear the wind whistling. it’s gonna be freezing cold back there.

ah yeah, great time then for the beautiful eerie bell song and some high altitude disquieting dreamy flashbacks!

oh my god their father was SUCH a Denethor :o

whooaaa. wait was Helga Gereon’s girlfriend first and then left him for Anno and only came back to him after his brother went missing??? or is one of these Gereon’s supposed to BE his brother in the dream sequence logic, and we’re seeing a kabuki play of her leaving Anno-Gereon for Gereon-Gereon, already pregnant... the first one tracks more with his father’s childhood speech about how some men are just better than others for instance your brother is better than you, Gereon. aw hell.

oh GOD that’s rough, ow

see this is what you get for trying to invade Russia, however small-scale, what you ALWAYS GET: snow storms

oh my god, they’re just hanging engineless in the storm, great

haaahahahaha oh noe

this was some premier plane-is-going-down acting, I enjoyed that very much

c’mon Gräf! pics or it didn’t happen!

wait he has to lean out the plane??!

“Don’t forget to hold on!” Gräf & Rath: [silent eloquent brow furrows of disbelief]

this is….the most analog espionage.. just fly directly over the air base and lean out the plane with a Polaroid, it’s fine! it’s 1929!

lol whoops now they’re being fired upon, I mean finally!

oMG!

Gereon Rath, dazzling agile, just physically HAULED a grown man’s entire body into a plane WHILE it was gaining altitude. they are now panic-cuddling in the back with the cargo.

truly this entire plane journey was both harrowing, AND humorous! though I will be returned to the ground in a major way the next episode, I am sure :(

***

Weimar Watchnotes “Season 1” - Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6 | Episodes 7 & 8 “Season 2” - Episode 9 | Episode 10

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 14 Notes

This show has so much effing plot and simultaneously my feelings for all the characters just grow continuously, WHAT a watching experience. I get a little overwhelmed in this one!! And not only because there are theatre shenanigans!!! My heart, unready.

Episode 14

Katelbach is warning Gereon not to scare off whatever gentle engineer he’s rustled up to…protect him? I’m a little unclear and VERY excited to see how whatever this is keeps shaking out.

oh my god certainly it’s this man

WAHT THE VERY FUCK HE JUST GOT SHOT DEAD RIGHT BEFORE THEM!!!?

seriously I about had a HEART attack!

oh my GOD, now fucking General Major Seegers just up and calls him “the little brother” out of nowhere?? I’m too keyed up for this!

what are you doing to us!!

I cannot believe Seeger’s continually needling him about Anno, stop you jerk!

hah but you got him babe, you keep on keeping on. don’t worry about measuring up to your brother, you are Gereon and I love you.

aw Inspector Rath sent Gräf to the queer clubs to look for Lotte, and just this easy subtle way of phrasing “the places she is known” so they can talk in police headquarters. codes! tradecraft.

Gereon is so bothered about Charlotte still being missing, he’s just like HM

I *JUMPED*. okay so definitely definitely we were correct that the Armenian Dr. Lecter would serve human in his restaurant, wild, but more pressing: get her warm she’ll lose fingers anyway with this treatment!

Gräf is so 100% a part of the team now, I love it

oh of course the pharmacist is Catholic, the one who calls him Saint Gereon

god now they’re making him inject himself with more of their mysterious barbiturate cocktails? Gereon!

I’m making myself an unsweetened hot chocolate, maybe this will calm my nerves

I mean, hold on but did Benda order this? actually? I’d have to go back to the May Day episode to check, because like, if he did order the political police to just wantonly kill communist agitators (which seems unlike his rather vigorously upright philosophical attitude), it would have to have been a standing order from well over a month ago, as Benda has been raaaather too busy with other things lately, I do know! as for other members of the Polezei, well definitely they could have. they’ve got some real crooked coppers.

noooooooOOO!!! Greta don’t DO that!

oh shit, wait this could all be a TRICK. they were far away, Fritz and the men who shot him, and his friend basically narrated the whole thing to her. is this a dirty ruse you bastards

I think she’s being callously manipulated! this is terrible!!!

holy eff this old timey syringe

aw no his anxious resigned little face

ohhh honey, just passes out immediately with a little moan!

god what do they have you on…

the Prangertag plot has to go wrong though, right? I’m not somehow forgetting a coup in 1929 upending the Weimar Republic and reinstating the Kaiser?

I mean, circumstances not withstanding, an assassin perched in the chandelier of an opera house is an excellent narrative notion

surprising no one, the child Moritz will not entertain for a second the possibility that he could have been born a girl. fucking…..tiny patriarchy totem

Helga: “Gereon, you’re back.”

*soft chuckle*

oh fabulous, fabulous fabulous: Moritz is whistling the tune Bruno habitually whistles isn’t he. IS this a reference to notable Fritz Lang Weimar film M oh please oh please? how the killer would whistle ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, isn’t it? and it becomes like his auditory calling card, and can travel.

god this clock ticking soundtrack though, multi-hyphenate musician & filmmaker Tom Twelkjrakewer you’ve done it again!

Benda I love you so much please don’t get murdered by your misled maid :(

can’t wait for Gereon Rath to singlehandedly foil John Wolter Booth’s assassination attempt while still half high

shit this lady’s feather headdress is a lük. it’s too far away to screencap properly just trust me.

parkour

oh ACTUALLY legitimately an acrobatic takeout there! he looks mildly astonished that he pulled that off, precious

side note but I really love saying “Prangertag.” I’ve been quietly repeating it to myself all episode.

yeeesssss disguise yourself as a flippin guard my dauntless love! SNEAK AROUND THE THEATRE. god I miss the theatre I miss it I miss it

I hope he just takes a flying leap at him, after the last one rewarded me in this so handsomely I’ll feel let down if Gereon Rath doesn’t straight up tackle a full-grown man in a righteous fury every episode

hahamygod if Bruno sees it’s Gereon bloody Rath fucking up his scheme he’s going to absolutely have an aneurysm

oh my fuck okay now that he’s captured please let Benda be brought to some closet and the guards are like “Councillor THIS is the malefactor!” and its disheveled Gereon in guard cosplay with another black eye, and Benda’s like “….my son what”

I ask this show for so much, and it gives 🙏

Benda: “Release the inspector immediately!” is this my kink

god yeah Gereon using theatre terminology. “stage right,” ja darling. I mean I don’t know why you oriented off the stage when you were in the house, but you’re correct so we’re good.

wow for a second I thought this was LEFSE, but it’s Edgar’s place so it must be some Armenian flatbread I’m not familiar with

just tremendous that he left Lotte a whole spread REPLETE with beaucoup pomegranates. it’s not excess, henchman, it’s my ALLUSIONS. the crime world doesn’t deserve him.

yeah I can definitely learn the German for ‘please’ easy: bitte

is it bad that I’d rather Edgar & Company have the gold than the Black Reichswerh? I mean if I have to choose….  like the generals are gonna use it to buy poison gas and Edgar’s gonna probably just get some more good coats to be sinister in and pay his physician-on-retainer

oh my GOD, they brought Toni. Edgar’s feeding her some dessert for breakfast and being nice and cute and I love it that’s MORE THREATENING AND ALARMING TO LOTTE

haha oh my god I’m freaking out! god Edgar I love you, all your psychological manipulations are SO GOOD and so enjoyable to watch while you torment the people I like

*klaxons* we just had a moment of People Stating Ranks in a Sociopolitical Maneuver, repeat: RANK TALK. in the war Benda was a Lieutenant Colonel, EK-1 he specified, which is not the NATO code I’m familiar with but Lieutenant Colonel’s are officer class 4, above majors and below colonels. I mean nowhere close to a general up at 9, but pretty fucking high on average. anyway this reminds me that I have no idea what Gereon’s rank was, wow how unlike me! it surely has to be nothing, just enlisted. if he had any officer title I’m certain Bruno would have tossed it at him like a jab at some point.

god fucking Prez Hindenburg himself just arrived, dang

wHOA whiskers, wow who else was unprepared for that

the only person glaring harder at President Whiskers than the Chief of Police is, you guessed it, our boy Gereon Rath

he said “God be with you” to Benda hoooooo dang, bad

does “original Prussian spirit” mean “letting the proto-Nazis do what they want” because I have concerns and a semester of modern German history that says it…does

god this is such a blow for justice, and also like, human history

Volker Bruch and Matthias Brandt’s disappointed frustrated brooding acting with each other is *chef’s kiss*

anyway, my guys whom I love, I know this is no comfort but sending this one general to jail would not have actually done anything to prevent your country’s path right back into hell & worse. your citizens are going to VOTE IN the Nazi party in just four years. I know, it’s terrible, I’m sorry, for all of us.

***

Weimar Watchnotes “Season 1” - Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6 | Episodes 7 & 8 “Season 2” - Episode 9 | Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 12 | Episode 13

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 7 & 8 Notes

In a non-specific but because of the specifics way, watching this show feels like when I was watching the first season of Legion, or just a constant cascade of wOW THANKS for all my things!! It looks right, it feels right, it’s about The Topics. Babylon Berlin is like, precisely what I was gonna go to grad school about. THE INTERWAR PERIOD, shattered by the First World War, and how the ghosts kept pouring through the cracks, no matter how they tried to stuff them with drink and drugs and beaded dresses. And how the art got so weird, and morbid, and gay. And how for every social, political, medical step forward, another one baaack, until all you can do is dance with it, in spite of it, through it, trying to keep your sleep-deprived head above water. 

Anyway my screenshot volume is just ballooning, too many good faces!

Episode 7

ah Greta got the job maiding! for Jewish organ player police bureaucrat and his…very particular Catholic wife

AH YEAH SOMEONE’S DOING A WEIMAR TED TALK ON “WAR NEUROSES”

listen I do know how morbid it is to have a niche interest topic in….trauma responses to the First World War. I can’t really explain this.

oh, soo appreciate this literal laugh line at the doc’s first use of the word “hypnosis”

“Rohrschach? Poppycock!” a) hilarious, b) interwar medical hecklers are amazing

I mean, the methods to get to the talk therapy stage are dubious, but they did get there and that’s probably something?

Crowd: [in hubbub, arguing it’s better if the shellshocked just fall out of society] Doc, smoking, arms contained but continuing at rising volume: “Many of them are war heroes. Systematically removed from our midst, from our everyday life, because they remind us of a disaster that is being glorified by certain circles in our country!” !!! he’s right and he should say so!

Gereon’s dodgy but so far pretty harmless kvetching pharmacist just called him “my child”

uh oh

oh god it’s the priest (? what is this hat…) with the hand tattoo, he’s with Octopus Crime Boss! I still don’t know his name, man I gotta get that

oh I hate this!!!! what are you giving the pharmacist to give Gereon instead!! no!!! god, terrifying, oh no

Wikipedia help what’s barbituric acid….oh shit, yeah it’s just a barbiturate, oh man there’s a REASON we stopped using those as sedatives! too addictive! too much a chance that you’ll go under and never come back! GEREON OH NOOOES.

admittedly you were probably on an opiate of some stripe before, so this might just be out of the frying pan into the fire, but honey I worry :(

this is how he ended up in the first scene isn’t it, the first scene that’s just coming back to me — being hypnotized and brought back to the locus of his trauma: the trenches

we’re eatin’ oranges, we’re makin’ IDs (this is a joke for Alex if she ever watches this show, hi)

nooo, behold your addict future, Ger

—wow hey, is the implication that König was hypnotized into shooting himself?

sidebar, but a pretty good way to safeguard your gold would be to deliberately fill its train car with a poison gas. just as long as it wouldn’t corrode the gold. hey chemist tumblr, what are our options? any?

“You look like someone who could help me.” Charlotte Ritter you are an inspiration, I am using this.

her eyes are so blue it’s like a special effect

so what exactly is this, Berlin police versus….some sort of Soviet diplomat division, did he say?

another sidebar, when do you say “nein” and when “neit”. I’m thinking maybe I should start joking accurately.

GOTTA look into this little police coin Detective Rath shows people. is it like the equivalent of an FBI badge? is it intentional that it reads like he’s carrying a saint medallion?

the little flush rising in her cheeks as she rides her ruse all the way back out of the train shed, Charlotte <3

I keep having to rewatch exposition scenes because I’m listening instead of reading. but, is Gereon’s Cologne accent a bit more French-ish than the Berliner ones around him?

ahh, okay so the proto-Nazis are smuggling in illegal weapons from the Soviets for their “irregular” army. and because #plots, Svetlana got her Russian revolutionary boyf to add MORE smuggled shit onto her OTHER boyf’s weaponry train, in the form of the Sorokin’s gold, which was ostensibly for Trotsky but which she always intended to just finagle away for herself it seems. I still do not know who the Sorokins are.

this is the first time I’ve agreed with the internet that this is a noir

Bruno: “Just in time my friend. Are you busy tonight? We’re having a little party.” Gereon, my only man:

hahahaha, Charlotte just like fine, Stefan’s an adequate replacement — come along blondie, we’re going crime-ing!

poor Stefan’s even more flummoxed than Gereon by their girl-shaped loose canon, just out here being charming and casually breaking into places. “we can’t do this!” “lol I’m already doing it chillax”

wow they cleaned this place up REAL good, it was a slaughterhouse

please behold Stefan’s very good Detective Rath impression, Doing This With His Eyebrows

this is so ritualistic

Gereon was acutely unprepared for this party

this surreal War Horse moment….

oh nooo, his brother?

ohhh, all his menorahs safe in the glass cabinet, someone in the background going “Ready for the storm?” and they don’t knooooww

General: “he jumped onto a table within minutes of me meeting him?” Gereon, blush grinning: “yeah that was my brother” aw and frankly, bet you could too, we’ve seen your presh acrobatic dancing!

god Anno and Gereon anyway, man who were your parents

oh god he saved him, and then the French caught him, oh nooo honey!

honeeeyy

he is so spectacularly haunted

sorry for so many screen caps this episode there have just been a LOT of good shots

oh god! oh god that fox dug up an arm in the woods! WAHR. THE PHYSICALITY OF MEMORY. [high fives my young German history prof with this severed hand]

Episode 8

Gereoooonn! me rn:

the choice of this fine, black satin blindfold though. elegant, goth, unavoidably kinky. exquisitely uneasy!!

who took you, oh my god. Bruno? did he hand you over, drugged, to dapper octopus villain? Bruno I WILL throw you into the Spree

this wallpaper, god I’m so down

Greta, don’t go on a date with the Nazi

ugh, the rich. like announcing “None of these pictures must be published!” confers you special treatment. “When am I getting out of here?” after DUE PROCESS, ho.

finally someone says the words “the Treaty of Versailles”

also the various chemical names of the gasses and whatnot are cognates in English. again: practical.

I don’t uh, I don’t know if you really should let your lawyer go though while you talk to Benda. (I don’t know Benda’s title, give me time)

“I know who people like you think of as pests.” GOD. GOD. it’s finally crashing over me: poison gas. aaaahhhhghgggghh

Nein, you should not trust him! you just met him! Greta!

no little Rath, it’s vaguely purple don’t take the vaguely purple stuff! color theory, my boy! purple is a spiritual color, Saint Gereon, you’re gonna have harrowing visions!

please let Brenda continue to be a good guy, who just thinks it’s silly for the maid to wait to eat after cooking for him, and not someone who’s gonna be creepy toward her with his wife and kids away for the night, please pleas please, I like him

aw yay it was just cute!! danke

Sveta your HATS

I love that she just came to tell him she did this to him. what a BALLER.

there’s a boulder, inside a room? um

yeah he’s no longer making sense, he’s now going on about moons

oh SHIT it’s the octopus ice restaurant! theremin players on tonight?

Gereon Rath just ordered a mocha at the bar

I think the Octopus Crime Boss is named Edgar

I do like when descriptions that seemed crazy suddenly make sense, that’s a fun trope

jackpot!

question: is Gereon gonna be small enough to scramble into this safe to hide when Edgar comes back

“The inspector from Cologne..” every \o/ time \o/, me: \o/

he has octopus prints in his room. buddy….

gee Gereon, how come your mom lets you have TWO handguns?

he’s just marching him right through the middle of this restaurant! RATH

Bruno’s like what the Fuck

babe really effectively flung over this table to create a little cover

“Stop! Knock it off! NO ONE. SHOOTS. AGAIN.” I mean honestly I kinda really respect Edgar Octopus sometimes.

Edgar Octopus: “...r you kidding me Smalls”

can we also address how Edgar’s defense crew is, I believe, his maître de, his chef, and his musician. they look like the Village People of bodyguards.

Gereon….you can’t just let him go. he’s gonna destroy you. he’s gonna, if this show isn’t a quitter, attempt to murderize you in some sort of tentacle torture porn situation, like a good thematic Bond villain.

Gereon! giving all the money to the sad junkie to get his life turned around! Bruno: “[laughs] You really are something!” literally.

he’s so troubled and worn out by all the porn, oh hun

oh god, was it actually his father on the tape this whole time? ooof

Bruno just quietly and somberly “awooo”ed like a wolf over their film bonfire, and it was INCREDIBLE. Gereon is just staring at him, as the dogs in the area pick up the call. aaAH Gereon laughs breakingly and joins in! he is of course very pure toned and preciously wolfy about it.

wooo another queer, poc Weimar bar

trying to talk in English to the American girls, help

it’s suddenly striking me how hilarious it is that Schmidt the duplicitous but kinda ground-breaking but also terrible psychiatrist is ALSO their underworld physician. your surgeon literally therapy-ing at you while he stitches up your palm going: “I can see you’re very upset. I’m sorry this happened to you” --- incredible.

yeah, definitely put something MORE in the absinthe, god no wonder Gereon was knocked out so deeply

Edgar just poised like “yes that’s right darling, It’s Me”

frankly I’m furious about what’s happening to me with Edgar. I feel like this must be what other people felt about late seasons Damar in DS9.

he did not CONSENT, I’m livid I’m panicking stop!

god this is really good, this is really well done hallucinatory hunted strung out fearfulness, through the dark streets of Weimar Berlin

also, considering that maybe the reason I’m unfortunately into Edgar is that his approach to torturing people is THE PURE PSYCHOLOGICAL. never forget his total Lecter-style tongue intro, and now this! you coulda just grabbed Gereon and roughed him up, but no, how infra dig when instead you could drug him, hypnotize him out of his mind until every gutter is a yawning trench, and then set him loose in the city to run to the edge of his wits.

oh is Charlotte really there!

is she really his flapper Arwen right now, bless!

oh hun you would have fainted over immediately if you really had scrambled to your feet that quickly just now after the night of barbiturates and god knows what else you’ve had in you

don’t worry babes you’ll work it out, I believe in you (plural you, pair you). there will be some sort of tense, potentially under-fire conversation, and Charlotte will just blurt it out at his question, daringly, harried but with a raise of her chin, how she was blackmailed into selling his secret to Bruno Wolter. and Gereon’s wrath (hah, hahaha, oh that will be used again) will shift accordingly. they were both used, and then they’ll be a team again. this has been Tarra Writes Spec Fic.

***

Weimar Watchnotes Episodes 1 & 2 | Episodes 3 & 4 | Episodes 5 & 6

[wellntruly]

BABYLON BERLIN - Ep 3 & 4 Notes

I used to have a more consistent Germany tag from back when this blog was founded in my High Interwar Period, are you ready it was: #ja darling

STILL FEEL IT

Babylon Berlin watch-notes: continue!

Episode 3

well we just saw Alexey all kinds of naked and scrambling

Russian anti-revolutionary has now arrived in tall black stockings under a long coat and yet ANOTHER incredible hat. Svetlana’s hat game is maybe even stronger than her double agent game, and that’s saying something.

wait is the train car just carrying gold? just hella gold? did she just want the gold??

mmm misty

took me a moment to realize that they can speak Russian without being understood by the Germans, HOWEVER, I’d wager any of us would still catch “Trotsky”

TERMAGANT, holy heck I’d never heard this one before! god I can’t catch it was that from the German or was this a choice??

I mean the credits tho. the credits though.

god this place is horrible, poor Gereon

hahaha, oh his face as he just resigns himself to continuing on as if he’s a paying customer of Mutti the Prostie

is that…a coin on a chain? Gereon who are you

asldkfjalfj, is this snapping and low repetitive whoo-ing for the chief sincere or ironic!

I think it’s real and it’s so eerie!!!

ah yeah that old rule of thumb, gotta ~protect democracy~ by fascistly squashing all socialist demonstrations with violence

ugh all I want is a life where someone hands me a matchbook and says someone is in town and I know I have to go meet them at the hotel or bar or cafe where this came from

hey lady doctor in 1929!

“You should see a doctor, Mrs. Ritter.” “You should shut your face, Mrs. Cziczewicz.”

it’s taken me a moment to place that it’s just the one thin young blond officer as his hair hasn’t been charmingly rumpled up in curls since the start. let your hair curl my boy!

god Svetlana’s place is incredible. I need one of those three-candle candelabras and a bunch of half empty bottles stat

also Alexey definitely calls her Sveta sometimes yeah? that is SO cute

is this huge oil painting of her family, is she fallen Russian aristocracy, omg that would be great

blondie can lipread! score!

ugh where have I seen this old general man before, I was…not paying attention to him

okay blondie’s name is Jänicke, I will use your proper name now lil bud

they just did a lot of humanizing on Bruno, tenderly caring for his ailing wife, previously simply the cop who roughs up prisoners and cuts under the table deals and also is up to something sketch with some general

yeah of course Gereon’s full already, he’s clearly been subsisting off crusts for months

is Tykwer doing his best Yann Tiersen on the Good Bye Lenin score right here, or is it actually Yann Tiersen on the Good Bye Lenin score

why is his and Helga’s relationships secret! what social mores are they breaking! I CAN’T WAIT

is the boy his or just hers, I have so many questions!

Gereon’s thought process here: the guy who tied up my landlord, broke into my room because he thought I was someone else, fought me, then was grabbed by a couple dudes in a car, is now asking for help and I will certainly help him. Gereon!

“‘They fell like bees in the freezing cold,’ he said.” dang

oh nooo, Gereon’s the family Faramir! babe!

Elisabeth with the Pippin role of looking properly horrified by this Revelation

aw honey :(

!!!!! Jänicke can lipread because his parents can because they’re deaf!! also: his lil pjs and exasperated light switch & signing, adorable

oh my god, this fam is so cute, help

his cute ass parents are cajoling him into staying up and translating the radio for them. his mom’s gonna make him a sandwich. oh my god these doves.

he’s translating music and they just love him

Svetlana is still in her cell just staring at the train car of gold and smoking

good news with this being in German is that I can just turn the volume way down and not have to hear someone screaming as they’re tortured, just squint at the key dialogue and still not miss anything!

Episode 4

Gereon how did you end up on this side of the Red Rover

seriously his whole investigative approach is just like “well, guess I’m in this situation now! this is just what happens when you try to find out stuff.”

#affronted

appreciate how we’ve stumbled into a set from Les Mis?

lols omg someone tell me what German idiom they translated to “Holy smokes” because it was…so much longer than that

Bruno just physically shielded Gereon from the bullets which was terribly easy: he is the size of two twigs

this older lady, in shock, probably dying, looking up at Gereon in distracted wonder: “You’re beautiful.” Gereon, earnestly and calmingly: “You too. You’re very beautiful.” my spirit has taken flight, my love

Bruno is now assuring her that “the pretty boy will be back with a doctor”

hoooold up, he just showed another person this coin on a chain and again she agreed to help him — is this his police badge?? NEAT

“The blood is not even dry yet and you’re already covering it up.” YEAH. honestly tbh: fuck you Bruno. you have moments, but no.

German just took “dilettante” straight from the French too, wonderful

haha, birthmark boy’s blankly uncomprehending face at the prospect that someone would be smuggling things from Russia into the West. also his scarf is incredible ALSO is this an act or did Svetlana literally hijack her other boyfriend’s train.

guy 1: these highly toxic pesticide cars can only be opened in our special factory guy 2: well we got a shed…

man, lady doctor with the braid...she’s so forthright, upright

Charlotte is so appealing even in the worst environs, how

the most happening spot in Berlin right now is: this autopsy room, where everyone in Gereon’s life is showing up, variously alive and dead

wait are we still in phrenology days, because c’mon

sorry but every time they mention this I’m still just like: GEREON RATH, SPECIAL INVESTIGATOR, from COLOGNE

I mean, easy, classic, but well done with this shot

Gereon: listen no one cares about this crime but us, sooo…wanna go rogue Charlotte: always

god I love them, a wonderful pair. why are they so great together? maybe because they’re both just like, tired. but not letting anybody stop them.

damn Svetlana’s a master

well Charlotte’s back to a normal colored hat at least

that’s so interesting, I love this — she lies about her position at work, making herself sound much more integral to the force than she is, while simultaneously giving her old friend charity in a way where she doesn’t have to ask

ah yeah, here we go, the plot for female characters in a period piece made today: try to break that glass ceiling, babe! listen I loved Agent Carter, I definitely don’t hate this.

“the best socialism ever” The Best Socialism Ever

Gereon: “You speak Russian?” other tenant: [launches into a whole ass lecture about the great Russian authors]

is there just a room of dresses and makeup here that Charlotte knows about from her role in the underground sex club? probably.

ugh see here Bruno goes again, doing REAL SHITTY STUFF. REALLY SHITTY!!!

since when is Gereon “posh”, does posh just mean “angular” now

boooo, now Charlotte’s trapped into betraying Gereon AND being Bruno’s whore :(( everything sucks when you have no real social or financial capital :(((

I vote: just tell Gereon right away and then you can work together to invent fake stuff to tell Bruno! cahoots! one downside though is that learning about this will INFURIATE Gereon, which may make him difficult to manage.

***

Weimar Watchnotes Episodes 1 & 2

[wellntruly]

Babylon Berlin Beblogging S1-2 MASTERPOST

(me)

Well I live here now, so let’s get our bearings!

First Round: Wellntruly’s Weimar Watchnotes Episodes 1 & 2 Episodes 3 & 4 Episodes 5 & 6 Episodes 7 & 8 - Episode 9 Episode 10 Episode 11 Episode 12 Episode 13 Episode 14 Episode 15 Episode 16

Second Round: Everyone Once (More) In Berlin **Note that these contain series-wide spoilers; if you’re reading along while watching the show for the first time, I’d recommend sticking with the original notes above to start! And if you’ve already seen the show I would still recommend reading all of Round One through before starting on these, merely because my dumb running jokes will make more sense that way. Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6 Episode 7 Episode 8 - Episode 9 Episode 10 Episode 11 Episode 12 Episode 13 Episode 14 Episode 15 Episode 16

Just the Visuals: Screenshot Series

Babylon Berlin Blogging - All of the above, plus MORE---answers to my German questions, History, round tables with other fine folks...

Requisite fine print if you are in North America (unconfirmed for elsewhere on the globe):

1. Clutch pal Netflix has all the Babylon Berlin for you that has aired at the time of this posting, two seasons what were written as kinda one continuous swoop through a few VERY eventful weeks in 1929. 2. But total tool Netflix may try to default you to English dubs. If you also find this to be an undesirable state of affairs, you can adjust your audio/closed captioning preferences at the lower right.

Okay all that now said, join me! Everyone Once In Berlin!! \o/