Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 13 [S2, Ep 5]

Well turns out it was just Episode 12, you basically can’t GET me to stop chattering about this one in new and perhaps trialsome ways, as I continue to love & enjoy level-headed crime boss Edgar unreservedly even when he is imprisoning my beloved heroine in a fish freezer for like 24 Weimar hours.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What can I say, it’s 1929 Berlin, we’re all complex here. We all hold rather contradictory opinions in our head simultaneously, we all do things we maybe wish we hadn’t done, later. I for one have had occasion to perhaps regret that I fell in love with Armenian refugee turned King of Shadow Berlin, Edgar Last-name-still-unknown. Man not knowing full names really makes it hard to get the rhythm right sometimes. This is like the Les Mis situation all over again..

What was I saying. Oh, no I’ll keep loving Edgar, I cannot be told! Listen if he was perfectly good, how could he be my problematic fave, hm? Q.E.D.

Alright as ever, potential spoilers for the whole series below, if you’re watching for the first time head this ways.

Notizen 13

we’re still in the ‘Bisher bei’ but it turns out I desperately need to know the German for doll, which is…‘puppe’, ah like ‘poppet’!

see, this is how it’s done: if you gotta chloroform a girl and leave her loosely shackled in a room while she comes back to, you can at least rest her head on an embroidered crimson velvet throw pillow, so like, she’s endangered, but at least she gets to be glam about it. “what sort of day vampires did I get kidnapped by?” you think when you wake up on velvet someone’s just tossed on floor for you because they are so replete with luxury fabrics.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

pineapple-split replied to your post “Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 12 [S2, Ep 4]”

That’s SO TRUE about this show giving time for emotional falllout! I don’t think of it anymore because most TV has lowered my expectations. When you think of it, that’s kind of wild that BB with it’s insane s2 timeline is still out here accurately dealing with that, like? I never felt Charlotte’s grief over her mother was rushed, or Gereon’s constant emotional collapse, or even Bruno’s humanizing moments. They’ve just integrated this stuff into the story so seamlessly.

UH-HUH. What I think is so remarkable about Babylon Berlin is that nowhere along these rattling plots they have running everywhere did the characters get simplified. That should have been the first thing to go, focus on the action and paint the characters with broader strokes so we don’t have to keep checking in with their complicated souls and continuing to develop them. But Babylon Berlin did not do that, they kept the plots and the people, they damned the torpedos and said “Full EVERYTHING ahead!” It does mean that the latter half of the second season can make you feel like you’re being dragged through a river, but hell, whatever, I can swim, bruises will heal, and sometimes one gets tired of lakes.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin | Episodes 9-12, Second Pass

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 12 [S2, Ep 4]

Many of my notes this time around were things it turns out I already found note-worthy the first time, more so than my previous rewatches thus far. The next episode should give me an idea whether this is just going to be the new state of affairs for the latter half of the second season, or a one-time thing. I also took significantly less screenshots than I have been recently, which makes me wonder if will indeed just prove to be an outlier episode.

But for now, if there’s any point in here where you think it’s curious I didn’t comment on something, odds are I probably did over here!

Anyway spoilz ahead as usual (my first-watch notes if you’re watching along for the first time).

Notizen 12

ugh Moritz and the bugs, delightful

I’m so sorry I NEED to let this go I’m being so tedious!! but! Moritz just works so well as a physical reminder of Anno who will always be between Helga and Gereon!!!! of course there are so many beautiful loving blended families, I’m not trying to knock step-families in general at all, but in this particular situation, well Moritz scorns Gereon and is always talking about how his fantastic, better father is going to return to take his rightful place and that’s just really Gereon’s Top Neurosis right there isn’t it!! perfectly encapsulates this monkey’s paw situation, where maybe he’ll get Helga but they will never know peace, always living with a reminder of what he did and what he is not, staring out of the eyes of his brother’s son. this is a WAY stronger narrative than the other possible hey guess what Moritz really is Gereon’s son because it’s all real fucked up and complicated and they’re just never…going to tell him (..?)…. and he represents…idk weirdness? weirdness and confusion and lies? the first version is just MORE EFFECTIVE STORYTELLING, it is I’m sorry okay I’m done I promise I promise.

oh, ohhhhh no did Moritz go home and tell Bruno what he found in the factory? fucking…..

is Papa Jänicke using an apple peeler-corer-slicer. also to whom do I submit my humble request that this show not hurt me again 😢

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

scatterbraineileen replied to your post “Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 11 [S2, Ep 3]”

I just started reading this post. 😉 Just wanted to add this before I continue: “Seht zu, dass ihr Land gewinnt.” means “Get out of here!”

So yeah, it could be like the dorky idiom. Haha.

Oh jesus no “get out of here!” is sooooo much better than that grade school pun, lol translator what are you doing!? Even if they wanted it to sound slangy, just go with something like “hoof it!” “scram!” Even a John Mulaney “scatter!”

God or be super hilarious and choose “beat it”

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 11 [S2, Ep 3]

Hey you guys ever seen Wings (1927)

Fantastik.

Anyway series-wide spoilers and also ~dream analysis~ ahead, warning for…..both

Notizen 11

well Silver you should be sweating, because you’re going about this all wrong! a flashlight? nothing looks more suspicious than seeing a flashlight beam playing around in an otherwise dark building at night, just turn on a light buddy, it’s your own embassy. have a cover story ready and you’re fine. gosh does no one know how to sneak in this show!

okay you also can’t just take the whole files, as soon as someone looks for them you’re sunk. take PHOTOS and have your trusted chemist develop them. and you call yourself a shady diplomat…smh

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

standuptragicomedy replied to your post “Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 10 [S2, Ep 2]”

yeah once I realized Rath Sr. was named Englebert I just accepted that this family is just…Like That about names. (Tbh I can’t even judge, if you google my birth name one of the first results that comes up is a record from a Polish Jewish cemetery.)

I had to google Englebert to confirm it was a first name, it is SO PONDEROUS. I’ve been expanding on it with @memory-for-trifles and we’ve decided that while the faster you say Engelbert Rath the more he sounds like a Star Wars character played by a beloved character actor in a walk-on role, the sloowwer you say it the more he sounds like, quoting Alex, the man who dies at the beginning of a Dickens novel whose inheritance is the plot catalyst.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

akahypotheticals replied to your post “Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 10 [S2, Ep 2]”

wendt gave me mad rudolf diels vibes - the resemblance is Strong

ohhHHHH, wait I actually knew about him at one time, the scary “dashing” dueling-scarred Gestapo man who dated the daughter of the American ambassador in the early 30s! yikes whoa okay, damn, Diels…

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 10 [S2, Ep 2]

This time around I ended up pausing for a spell before Episode 10, by chance and also not by chance!! If you know why, welcome back to misery, if you don’t then I bet you’ll want to go over here for first-round post options. 

In addition to a thing with great repercussions in matters of the plot AND the heart (my OWN, yours, theirs, 💔), this episode also features a performance by, I know now, legend Bryan Ferry, of Roxy Music/Velvet Goldmine/decades of musical showmanship, and maybe half of this show’s soundtrack under the Orchestra with his name. And now here Ferry appears onstage at Moka Efti, the man himself! Which of course raises an ontological curiosity reminiscent of when Audrey Horne turns on the jukebox in the Double R Diner and it plays Angelo Badalamenti: Does Ferry exist in the world of the show, as in these characters are just listening to timewarped Bryan Ferry songs in 1929? Or does various extant music in Babylon’s Berlin just have a tendency to transform into Bryan Ferry on its way to us today, like a Weimar twist on the ‘Best of Queen’ joke in Good Omens? Discuss.

Notizen 10

this was the second episode of the season. this show does such a good job with second episodes!!!! the first second episode ended with the big Nikoros performance, and the second second episode opens with a whole choreographed dance fantasy. if the third second episode doesn’t hinge midway on the filming of full staged musical number courtesy of the movie industry plot I will be let down. DANCE SEQUENCES.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[vonmoors]

More quick Babylon sketches! It’s Lotte and my queen Svetlana. As one can see, I still refuse to use reference pictures.