Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 8
Episode 8, the original first season finale! A fact my friend Jen lightly dropped in front of my face back on my first watch and which I collided with like a low-hanging tree branch, arms windmilling, “—whAT?” This does go a long way to explaining its HIGH KEY NATURE. Though actually, before I knew they were either, 1x09/2x01 felt more like a premiere to me than 1x08 felt like a finale. This is mostly do with how by this point there’s just a lot going on here, so it feels natural that a bunch of vectors would start colliding, generating all sorts of interest & excitement.
But for all its TUMULT, Babylon Berlin reminds me of real life—hang with me—in how they do relationship development. You know how it can take you a while to really meet certain people, and how your impressions of them might sorta hold at one thing for a little while, and then hop and change around as you actually finally get to know them? A) I feel like that’s the in-world experience of the characters in this show way more than a lot of shows I watch, which often have a more openly telegraphed idea of who their characters are from the start and what they want their relationships to be, so it’s more just seeing the play between how fast and far the show will move each of them along their paths. Babylon Berlin, frankly, has written characters with just a hell of a lot more real human complexity and nuance, and so, like our own lives, the characters take a while to get know each other. Y’know, maybe entire seasons, and not even that far even then! TRULY remarkable that in the whole first season, our two protagonists, the goddamn male and female leads, had like 1.5 episodes where they actually spent any time together, and then in the finale their fledgling connection takes a serious blow. They’re so judicious in how they dole this relationship out. Wonderful, make me waaiit for it.
And B) I feel like *my* relationships with these characters is also one of more non-linear, gradual growth. Looking back over my notes from my first watch, I was totally struck by how I went into this episode thinking of Edgar as simply “dapper octopus villain”, because that’s what his brief appearances up to this point had led me to judge him to be. But then I would spend so much of this episode actually with Edgar, watching the way he behaves under stress (so elucidating about people always), and you can basically watch me fall in love in real time with this character I’d already ostensibly “known” for seven episodes, which is just SO fun.
Anyway, all of this means that rewatching a show like this is a treat and a trip, because now when I’m watching The Armenian grumpily letting pint-sized Gereon Rath frogmarch him through his own establishment, I’ve got all my current affection and future-gained context for this to fucking murder me and rifle through my pockets for change!!!
You gracious, aggrieved gangster, hahahaaa oh Edgar I love you.
Notizen 1.8