Caray, Caray!

lejos

I've been keeping up on the recaps- so thank you!- but haven't been able to watch between stuff going on and my inability to stay up. Getting old.

But I really don't get Mine. Sure, Cihan is fine and all, but she knows Sadakat! She knows that she dodged a bullet by not having to live with the Albora. A LITERAL bullet! She needs to go back to Istanbul, STAT.

But the same kinds goes for Pakize. She's old enough to know that getting stuck with this family- and especially Sakin- is a terrible, terrible idea. Even Kadir is too close. She should go with Mine to Istanbul and find someone not connected at all with this town.

I did like the comment (Maggie?) about that jail cell looking like a dorm. Except it's nicer and has much better food thank most dorms. Maybe they should just give the guys a whole bunch of pillows and let them sort out their problems with an old-fashioned pillow fight. It's save the jail on their bandaid budget.

Cihan should have saved his henchman budget to go after his mother. That would solve everyone's problems.

K
 

lejos rant

I’ve never had a TN follow me around all day like this one does. I’m fascinated by it, but I also find it disturbing. As is usual, in this one the characters are types, not fully developed 3-D human beings. Also, unlike so many TNs I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem like the writers phoned it in, but rather it has a careful purposefulness to it. This is the story that the writers and director wanted to tell and they wanted to tell it in this way. It’s a good example of its genre. I try to bear that in mind but I just can’t help myself.

What bothers me is that Cihan is represented as the only hero here. Yes, he’s doing his very best to handle a lot of volatile people and to try to prevent their doing any more damage, or actually killing one another. He has a huge load on him and is doing very well with it. Kudos to him.

However I’m thinking about Ayla. I’ve suffered the losses she has. My husband didn’t get killed in an “accident”, but it was only a number of weeks between him noticing something was wrong and him dead from a brain tumor. He had been so robust.

I’ve also lost an entire life that I loved, like Ayla lost her life in Canada. (If you’re curious, read this, if not, go onto the next paragraph.) I lived for a number of years in Germany. I was perdidamente enamorada de Europa and intended to live there the rest of my life. I also had a wonderful man who I was thinking of marrying. But suddenly there was a recession and Germany pulled the work permits for foreign workers. My fellow wanted to return to Melbourne; I was not enthused, but wanted to give it a try to see if I could settle there with him. We talked to the Australian consulate in Munich – they said it should be fine. As a farewell to Europe we spent the next 2 months touring around in our VW van. I spent almost all my money, but I did have plane fare. I had secured a job in Melbourne and I wouldn’t need a car because they had public transportation. When we arrived at the embassy in Bonn we found out Australia had closed too because of the recession. The upshot was me flying back to Los Angeles and my fellow flying to Melbourne. I had lost it all: the place I loved living, the friends, the good times, the whole future I had planned, and the fellow was far far away. I was absolutely desolate, and broke. Too, I had no car.

These two crushing losses happened many decades apart. Alya has gone through both at once. Her strength and composure are nothing short of astonishing. And on top of that, her mother-in-law tried to kill her (and still would like to) and is trying to steal her son from her and turn him into a hardened tribal chief. Oh, and her professional life has been sabotaged. Another thing: She is basically a hostage.

Her role seems to be intended as damsel in distress, with a modern twist that she’s a professional woman. I think she is easily as heroic as Cihan. But here he is on Wednesday I think it was telling her not to talk about Canada anymore. Shut up about it is his point, apparently because his nerves are raggedy. If hers are raggedy (and they are) then she’s seen as weak and complaining, but she never orders anyone about or tells them to shut up. Then there was the awful scene on Friday where she asks him how does he do it? How does he carry all this weight? Dondi characterized that as her whining. Me, I saw it as being like the scenes in old movies where the wispy girl cuddles up to the heavily muscled man in awe. You’re so manly! Barf. I think the writers wanted to showcase that Cihan is heroic (yes, we already know!), but it would have been much more in character for her to compliment him on his cool-headedness. She wouldn’t ask how he does it because she’s doing it herself.