Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

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

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin (2017-), Episode 5

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[wellntruly]

standuptragicomedy replied to your post “Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 7”

okay 1) how did i not notice that was Edgar holy shit you’re RIGHT, 2) WAY TO PRE-EMPT MY NOTE FOR THE SECOND ROUND OF THIS EP ABOUT ANNO TAKING OVER EVERY SINGLE THING IN GEREON’S LIFE (I’ve put way too much thought into Anno and Gereon’s relationship because as an only child I compulsively overanalyze any and all sibling relationships), and 3) I have never heard anything even close to “am i right or am i right” in Russian and that is…tragic.

1) @memory-for-trifles was the first to suspect, First of Her Name!! They met because Edgar was getting treatment in his neuro clinic can u believe

2) TURNABOUTS FAIR PLAY FOR BEATING ME TO THE HEADACHE JOKE BRO. (No but for reals I am so jazzed to jinx :))

3) Okay okay okay okay, SO (!), first of all thank you for the news re: If Russian Would Do This, AND today I asked my French-speaking coworker friend, who was born in the U.S. to French and Belgian parents, grew up here speaking French with them but kinda only them & his European family, then did live abroad in the Netherlands and France for a year as an adult, but as a result his French is perfectly fluent but kinda…isolated? Like he’s got no argot, basically. So take the Bernard take with a grain of salt, BUT I asked him if “Am I right or am I right?” is a construction he’d naturally generate in French, and he was like “Huh!” and after some pondering ended up describing it as something he could say, sure, but yeah it would feel like a calque of the English, basically. OR, maybe more accurately, a calque of the German??

So!– Germans! Darlings! “Hab ich recht oder hab ich recht?” — is this yours? Does this feel OF your language? Because English does this exactly the same and I’m feeling like it’s a FAMILY MOMENT. @vonmoors @kikidiesunddas

[vonmoors]

I am screaming at the discovery that Edgar is in the video. Like… What a glow up? Was he on Queer Eye??? (I’d watch that.)
(Bold of me to assume he would not be part of the Queer Eye crew. “Gereon, get your life together! Start with clothing that actually fits you!”)
On a serious note: This adds so much to his character. The theory that he witnessed the armenian genocide makes a lot of sense and it would make him a lot more tragic. It would also explain why he is so weirdly mild when it comes to physical violence. Like, yes, he lets his men kill people and tortures their minds, but he is not one to be physically violent himself. He is an interesting fella, easily my favorite character on the show.

Anno is like old-testament god, honestly. All-seeing and all-knowing, looming over Gereon like a threat.

On the “Hab ich recht oder hab ich recht?”-topic: I don’t know? It does feel very german in a way and I’ve actually watched a video today that mentioned that english came from Plattdeutsch, a german dialect, so the languages are very connected? But I do not know if it is true, I shall do more research when I got time. ANYWAY: The languages are very connected either way and I love it.

[wellntruly]

This is an extremely good point we really did not properly highlight the glow up

Honestly what a compelling before/after advertisement. You TOO Can Get Your Life Together and Become Berlin’s Best (Dressed) Mobster, Try: THERAPY

Anyway so glad we agree on how much we love EDGAR, Armenian refugee, mental health proponent, local business-owner, and stylishly threatening mild-mannered ruler of a highly creative city-wide crime syndicate.

Cain said “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and Anno Rath said “Y e s~~”

And yaaaayyy, we probably got it from you! The joke about English is that it’s basically three languages stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat, one of those most certainly being Low German (from the Saxons, along with French from the Normans and Latin from the nerds)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

standuptragicomedy replied to your post “Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 7”

okay 1) how did i not notice that was Edgar holy shit you’re RIGHT, 2) WAY TO PRE-EMPT MY NOTE FOR THE SECOND ROUND OF THIS EP ABOUT ANNO TAKING OVER EVERY SINGLE THING IN GEREON’S LIFE (I’ve put way too much thought into Anno and Gereon’s relationship because as an only child I compulsively overanalyze any and all sibling relationships), and 3) I have never heard anything even close to “am i right or am i right” in Russian and that is…tragic.

1) @memory-for-trifles was the first to suspect, First of Her Name!! They met because Edgar was getting treatment in his neuro clinic can u believe

2) TURNABOUTS FAIR PLAY FOR BEATING ME TO THE HEADACHE JOKE BRO. (No but for reals I am so jazzed to jinx :))

3) Okay okay okay okay, SO (!), first of all thank you for the news re: If Russian Would Do This, AND today I asked my French-speaking coworker friend, who was born in the U.S. to French and Belgian parents, grew up here speaking French with them but kinda only them & his European family, then did live abroad in the Netherlands and France for a year as an adult, but as a result his French is perfectly fluent but kinda…isolated? Like he’s got no argot, basically. So take the Bernard take with a grain of salt, BUT I asked him if “Am I right or am I right?” is a construction he’d naturally generate in French, and he was like “Huh!” and after some pondering ended up describing it as something he could say, sure, but yeah it would feel like a calque of the English, basically. OR, maybe more accurately, a calque of the German??

So!– Germans! Darlings! “Hab ich recht oder hab ich recht?” — is this yours? Does this feel OF your language? Because English does this exactly the same and I’m feeling like it’s a FAMILY MOMENT. @vonmoors @kikidiesunddas

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 7

**first-watch notes here (no future ep spoilers, which I Cannot say for below)**

Episode 7 is about UNEARTHING, dig dig dig. Dr. Schmidt with a headlamp in society’s graveyard pulling his patients back into the air from where they were buried alive, Charlotte burrowing down into a mystery and brushing into the network of tunnels Benda’s been quietly building these however many months, Gereon knocked to his knees in the mud of memory digging up his ghosts, only the pounding shells keep throwing dirt over him until it seems he’s the one being buried, until at last the episode just decides to go for it and end with a fox pawing up a dead arm from a forested battlefield, which I’d managed to forget about so was able to lose it anew!

Anyway let’s dig into these notes:

Notizen 1.7

German word I just learned PLEASE prepare yourself: eine. it means “a”

I know we’re supposed to be marveling at how exacting an employer Irmgard is, but mostly I’m just getting bowled over by each new closeup shot of a perfectly sourced piece of period tableware.

I wish everyone introduced themselves with as much concise information as Schwarz from pathology who urgently needs to speak to the Councillor

oh HELL YEAH it’s time for Dr. Schmidt’s shell shock lecture, pulling out my pen & notebook tucking my hair behind my ear shuffling my papers!!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 6

[wellntruly]

**rewatch notes, big series spoilers ahead, like in the first paragraph**

Episode 6, the most Catholic Angst episode of the series! From this you can probably surmise that I would have liked more of this overall—you’d be correct! I’m not saying I’d want Babylon Berlin to be like the Young Pope of interwar shows, because only The Young Pope can be the Young Pope of anything (GOD I LOVED THE YOUNG POPE). But like, I could always use a bit more emotional oxygen and cinematography spent on Faith & Doubt warring in the breast of a God-fearing man, y’know? You called him “Saint Gereon” in text, I have desires now. Show me what flavor of ironic agony Saint Gereon Rath is! There’s an abandoned lostness in him, but in what direction, how did it begin. Does he feel cast out, that he abandoned God when he abandoned his brother, and has slipped so far against the Commandments now that never will the house of the Lord be open to him again, covetous Cain condemned to this hellish Babylon? Or does he feel God abandoned him and all his brothers in His grace when He brought them to the war to fall like doves in the mud, and that sense of being alone on a blasted plain with no hope of love or salvation is what put him into the state to save his own life over Anno’s, and continue to fall as far as he might, his faith now only shaping him with the empty spaces where it once was? Does he walk into church like Siegfried Sassoon walking down a street of complacent civilians, filled with the blank isolation and anger of the disillusioned at those who continue to dumbly believe in what he sees as a great hollow lie? Or does he walk into church iced with fear God will rend him top to toe for what he has done, the great disappointment of his earthly and heavenly Fathers both? Both?? Show me! Show me any of this, I’ll take any of it!

In the first episode König says Gereon of Cologne believes in God. Tell me if that’s still true or not!! It was true in 1917, we’re shown that: that beautiful set-up of Gereon praying in the cathedral of the city whose soldier-saint he was named for, before he goes to give his body to the war. Lifting his eyes up, already in his uniform, his hair combed neatly. In Episode 6 he doesn’t tell the priest how long it has been since his last confession, but the shape of his wordlessness speaks to how very many years it is. Whether through guilt or doubt, he hasn’t been going to mass. He is far from the Lord. He crosses himself with muscle memory, gesture called up from deep within him like statues being raised from beneath the water.

What does it mean to Gereon that he doesn’t go to church anymore? The only time we’ll see him attend a mass, even take any traditional posture of prayer, is just this one hesitating high-strung interlude, before he flees again. He believes in God, König said. What form does Gereon worship in now? One of my very favorite character types is the tormented Catholic who believes himself lost to God and just sets about eating up sin, somehow paradoxically appearing in holier and holier light in the eyes of the story, like he’s martyring himself on the lancing points of his broken belief. (See: Sebastian Flyte, all.)

Anyway that’s a Saint Gereon I could do, you know.

And you have the raw material for it in Volker Bruch, you really really do.

So like, well Babylon Berlin, wanna give something like that to me? I’d love it, aaany of this. You can go for it. In the meantime I’ll read more into the text and choices than is probably there in the OVERFLOW OF FEELINGS I have about this type of story—I’ve got enough to spare.

Notizen 1.6

Weiterlesen

[vonmoors]

I love your thoughts on religion so much because Gereon is just so surrounded by it, it is in his name, his upbringing, his morals… He kind of is the lost son, trailing off the paths religion deems as being right.

Also: I looked up “märkische Diaspora” and it is referring to how catholics are a minority in Berlin. “Märkisch” is referring to the area around Berlin (used to be the Mark Brandenburg) and a diaspora is “a scattered population whose origin lies in a separate geographic locale” (thanks Wikipedia!), that locale being in case of german catholics the south or Westfalen, where Gereon is from. Berlin, as well as most of northern germany, is protestant, so the comment by Irmgard is addressing how the mass was less passionate that the ones Gereon is used to, because they are a minority in Berlin and therefore have to keep things down a bit. (At least that is how I take it, but protestants tend to look down on catholics and their very very strict faith and rules, so it does make a lot of sense for Berlin catholics to keep it down.)

And: I also wonder how Stefan got into that posh sailing club! But maybe his parents work for people who know the owners, I do not know. If he got in without paying full price, the snarky comment of the girl would be even worse.

[wellntruly]

God something in me just crackles like a fire at the concept of a boy literally named Gereon as this strung out lapsed Catholic who twitches away from church doors.

And aahh you’re a research marvel, the Märkische Diaspora is referring to HER community, not his! Oh my god this is hilarious, this incredibly poised serious woman just like “well we keep it light here in the city.”

Stefan Jänicke the Scholarship Kid feels…o so plausible

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

standuptragicomedy replied to your post “I finally went back and collected into one searchable doc all the…”

listen, Gereon’s face journey in reaction to his interaction with Gräf in the gay bar is a bi awakening if ever I saw one. (relatedly, in my next round of recaps I’m going to post the TERRIBLE TERRIBLE PUN I made up for Gräf’s full name and everyone will immediately hate me)

a) well can’t wait for THAT. (and unlikely, who doesn’t love puns! NO ONE COOL)

b) I will pause in dreaming up my latest Bi Gereon Rath Fully Explores the Pleasures Berlin Has To Offer scenario, and go on a spree about how something I think is handled really beautifully in this show is how gently Gereon is being allowed to open himself up to different kinds of male relationships. So far I wouldn’t say any of them are really erotic, but that they all seem to be so radically new to him is—well rather devastating, but also shows how important it is that this is gradual. My heart bloomed at Gereon’s rigid surprise giving way to bright laughing looseness with Drag Gräf in the bar, but it wasn’t because I saw it as a bi awakening, not quite so far, but more a step, a so important step, one that has more to do with Gereon And Masculinity—as it goes!—than Gereon And Sexuality (much combined as those may be).

And this has SOO much to do with what a LOVELY job everyone has done with Gräf. It would have been terribly easy to make him the gay colleague with an unrequited crush on his straight coworker, and mine everything out of that misalignment. Nuh-uh, not on Babylon Berlin! Here it’s about opening yourself up to connection & community. Gräf isn’t not interested, I mean he has eyes, but the primary tenor of his interactions with Gereon is just being welcoming and trusting. Gräf flirts with Gereon in the crowd at the Holländer but he doesn’t hit on him, and that’s a fine but very distinct line. You get the impression that Gereon would neeever have had a man just flirt with him before, just playfully without any real weight behind it, and honestly I think he’d run for the hills if it was done with anything less than this friendly warmth.

I kind of feel like Gereon has this flowchart when he meets a man where the first box is like “Would he throw me in a trench? Yes - No”, and suddenly on the already pretty limited “No” side a forensic photographer smilingly bopped him with a big red feather and there appeared this whole new Type of Man Gereon could interact with, that he could maybe be a New Type of Gereon with, and it was like a sunrise broke over him.

So, you know, sure not not a queer awakening, but lightly darling, lightly.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

I finally went back and collected into one searchable doc all the Babylon Berlin Chats I’ve had with Alex @memory-for-trifles over these couple months, so that I can easily share with you the gems during this conveniently gem-droppable rewatch. Anyway playing catch up because I’d missed these from the first five episodes:

memory-for-trifles: GOOD, definitely pour your pharmacy grade heroin or whatever directly into your beer, GREAT CALL
wellntruly: the Gregory House portions of my brain do enjoy watching Gereon Rath recklessly take medications
memory-for-trifles: I think of all people Gregory House would also appreciate some sedatives with a beer chaser

memory-for-trifles: Birthmark guy’s outfit looks like Weimar Tom Baker cosplay

memory-for-trifles: Of course he stands up when a lady leaves the table. Of course.
wellntruly: Who could notice.
memory-for-trifles: 😂😂😂 Mean! I love it!

memory-for-trifles: Don’t care for pistol kid

memory-for-trifles: Oh honey, these gays are just gonna eat you up
wellntruly: If graven twink Gereon Rath makes it out of this series without having an (1) gay encounter you can color me Surprised

memory-for-trifles: I am intrigued by the idea that dressing up as her alter ego [Nikoros] lets her kill him? Like she could’ve done that a hundred times while he was asleep the night before
[GREAT META HERE ALEX]

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 6

**rewatch notes, big series spoilers ahead, like in the first paragraph**

Episode 6, the most Catholic Angst episode of the series! From this you can probably surmise that I would have liked more of this overall—you’d be correct! I’m not saying I’d want Babylon Berlin to be like the Young Pope of interwar shows, because only The Young Pope can be the Young Pope of anything (GOD I LOVED THE YOUNG POPE). But like, I could always use a bit more emotional oxygen and cinematography spent on Faith & Doubt warring in the breast of a God-fearing man, y’know? You called him “Saint Gereon” in text, I have desires now. Show me what flavor of ironic agony Saint Gereon Rath is! There’s an abandoned lostness in him, but in what direction, how did it begin. Does he feel cast out, that he abandoned God when he abandoned his brother, and has slipped so far against the Commandments now that never will the house of the Lord be open to him again, covetous Cain condemned to this hellish Babylon? Or does he feel God abandoned him and all his brothers in His grace when He brought them to the war to fall like doves in the mud, and that sense of being alone on a blasted plain with no hope of love or salvation is what put him into the state to save his own life over Anno’s, and continue to fall as far as he might, his faith now only shaping him with the empty spaces where it once was? Does he walk into church like Siegfried Sassoon walking down a street of complacent civilians, filled with the blank isolation and anger of the disillusioned at those who continue to dumbly believe in what he sees as a great hollow lie? Or does he walk into church iced with fear God will rend him top to toe for what he has done, the great disappointment of his earthly and heavenly Fathers both? Both?? Show me! Show me any of this, I’ll take any of it!

In the first episode König says Gereon of Cologne believes in God. Tell me if that’s still true or not!! It was true in 1917, we’re shown that: that beautiful set-up of Gereon praying in the cathedral of the city whose soldier-saint he was named for, before he goes to give his body to the war. Lifting his eyes up, already in his uniform, his hair combed neatly. In Episode 6 he doesn’t tell the priest how long it has been since his last confession, but the shape of his wordlessness speaks to how very many years it is. Whether through guilt or doubt, he hasn’t been going to mass. He is far from the Lord. He crosses himself with muscle memory, gesture called up from deep within him like statues being raised from beneath the water.

What does it mean to Gereon that he doesn’t go to church anymore? The only time we’ll see him attend a mass, even take any traditional posture of prayer, is just this one hesitating high-strung interlude, before he flees again. He believes in God, König said. What form does Gereon worship in now? One of my very favorite character types is the tormented Catholic who believes himself lost to God and just sets about eating up sin, somehow paradoxically appearing in holier and holier light in the eyes of the story, like he’s martyring himself on the lancing points of his broken belief. (See: Sebastian Flyte, all.)

Anyway that’s a Saint Gereon I could do, you know.

And you have the raw material for it in Volker Bruch, you really really do.

So like, well Babylon Berlin, wanna give something like that to me? I’d love it, aaany of this. You can go for it. In the meantime I’ll read more into the text and choices than is probably there in the OVERFLOW OF FEELINGS I have about this type of story—I’ve got enough to spare.

Notizen 1.6

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Babylon Berlin, Second Pass: Episode 4

[wellntruly]

There is really no reason for me to point this out besides my obvious and shameless fondness for out ’n out torturous mobster Edgar “The Armenian” Last-name-unknown. But look, ya cannot deny that at one quarter of the way through the show, all the real bad shady shit has actually been Soviet Embassy jobs. They slaughtered the Red Fortress, and tortured and killed Pointy Revolutionary Train Lad, and have generally behaved exactly like the ruthless gangsters you’d believe Edgar’s faction to be. Meanwhile, all Edgar’s crew has actually done is very stylishly intimidate people who on the whole appear to have deserved to have tattoo-bound priests materialize in their jail cell to threateningly pray with them or consume dubious octopus dishes under alarming theremin music. God even just writing it out….the man’s taste in villainy is fucking superb.. I love Edgar and you can @ me.

And I do have a reason for this one I promise, but there’s a whole section in What I Saw (that collection of Joseph Roth’s Weimar essays) just on the traffic of Berlin. It’s kind of incredible, and there’s this one tremendous bit where the collector & translator offers his own brief editorial note that goes like:

Roth, 1924: Potsdamer Platz looks like a suppurating wound.*

Hofman: *When last seen, (August 2001), it still did.

Haha, *zeing!*, Berlin city planning!

But I bring this up because I’ve realized why I think Gereon ended up on the wrong side of the Red Rover line (I’m so proud of this joke I am abso-lutely repeating it), which is that he TOOK PUBLIC TRANSIT with the REST OF THE PROLETARIAT to get to his police position for May First. Oh you sweet Cologne child, still learning how the capital’s traffic arteries work.

Anyway, this ep’s main notes contain several more extended asides, and several further Adorable Photographs of Charlotte Ritter—a-read on:

Weiterlesen

[vonmoors]

Gottf(I just read all of your notes on the episodes, first-time and rewatch and they are soooo good, oh my. I also love your enthusiasm for the german language. You might enjoy to know that, to describe someone as being excited or giddy or unsteady, germans sometimes say “Er/Sie hat Hummeln im Hintern”. Literally “He/She has bumblebees up his/her butt”.)

Your note on the “Famous older author” reminded me how much it bugs me that we do not know who it is!!! I want to know! And I can’t read Greta’s lips! (Stefan help!)
My first guess was always Bertolt Brecht, but he was too young in 1929. So I did some research on famous german authors at that time who fit in the age group Greta describes and who lived in Berlin and I found some canidates, that fit some parts of the criteria. (And learned some stuff about authors and literature at that time, so nice!)
Lion Feuchtwanger seems the most reasonable to me, but I am not too sure if he was too popular since his books dealt with Antisemitism (he was part jewish and married a jewish woman).
Gerhart Hauptmann was super famous and won the nobel price, however, I do not know if he ever lived in Berlin for a long period of time. He once wrote a play that kind of resembles the story of the “Häwelmann”, the one Greta named her son after. So cool parallel, at least.
Robert Musil hat one big hit in 1906, so I do not know if Lotte would know him? But still, an option.
Alfred Döblin! He wrote a book titled “Berlin Alexanderplatz” that has strong Babylon Berlin vibes. However, not too famous before that.
Thomas Mann came to mind but he was very very gay.
Gottfried Benn seems the most reasonable to me. Was famous for writing scary poems about the work in a mourge, lived in Berlin and had a bunch of affairs in his lifetime. (His name lenght fits the lenght of the name Great whispers as well.)

We most likely will never know and it will bug me forever, but for now I am going with Gottfried Benn to calm my nerves.

[wellntruly]

I am FLAPPING MY HANDS with JOY over this, bumblebees up their butt!!!!! Thank you for this BOISTEROUS Germanic idiom I will be dismaying Americans with forever. 

Also thank you for your patience as I relate laughably idiotic things I’ve ““learned”” about the German language, which I am super enjoying and not approaching with anything like academic rigor. When your eye starts twitching you are MORE than welcome to correct me, or just shut them and sigh because it’s just….too much effort to fix, I’m so far afield.

And you’re on the famous author case as well, WONDERFUL. Admittedly the only of these folks I know is Thomas Mann, and lol. Lol lol lol. No not Mann, as much as Greta palling around with his freewheeling kids Klaus and Erika would be fun. I will totally take your recommendation that Gottfried Benn is our best candidate, seconded and the motion passed: it was Benn.