Berlin Station 2.6, first impressions [spoilers!] #richardarmitage

Continued from here. These posts contain spoilers. PLEASE do not read them if you are not watching concurrently with the U.S. broadcast but still want a fresh look at them when the show is available in your region.

****

[Leftover note — because I just saw the “closer look” or whatever about “Do the Alt-Right Thing,” which I had somehow missed before, and Ashley Judd says with a straight face that the operation is a “site of resistance.” Just think about that for a second. Please, Ms. Judd. Interfering in a foreign election is not a “site of resistance” unless you’re a terrorist. Demonstrate in the U.S., help shield an undocumented immigrant, gum up the paperwork somewhere — there are plenty of sites of resistance, it’s true, but they don’t include politically questionable operations in foreign countries. Om, no.]

So: advance notice: Daniel is in a whole three scenes of this episode, one of which is not credible, and one of which is disappointing.

This is from the disappointing scene. But Richard Armitage is beautiful.

My advance suspicion about this episode: lots of Scandinavia. Too much Scandinavia. Not that I have anything against it — although I’ve never been to Norway, for some reason, which is odd, because I have Norwegian friends. Anyway, having been to Sweden and Denmark, I have a lot of admiration for Scandinavia. It was just that knew that the Scandinavian story line wasn’t going to involve Daniel. It was only mitigated by my inadvertent stumbling over the synopsis spoiler for this episode, which mentioned that Daniel would be dealing with the psychological effects of last week. Whew.

Well, that was stupid of me. There were like six beautiful shots of Scandinavia and that was it. Richard Armitage, if Berlin Station is not cancelled after this wretched season, I’m begging you to get yourself written out. Please put me out of my misery and save me the $48 it now costs to see this legally. The script of this show pretty well put it into the territory of “shows I do not watch.”

Wow, was this episode slow. And bro-ie. Half of it was a cynical roadtrip with the two characters I liked least. Oh, and tell me again about the whole feminist aspect of this how.

TL;DR — Upside: Norway is beautiful.

Downsides: scripting of Daniel’s character is not credible given his character arc. Really stupid Norwegian jokes. Brad Winters’ brother can’t act. That’s not how you gut a fish or demonstrate its quality. Fish references in general. That metaphor is way too obvious to be in the least ingenious or amusing.

***

Episode opens with a series of shots of Berlin political symbols (Brandenburg Gate, etc.) and a voiceover about the election and Gerhardt.

This is the Reichstag.

The news has a report on Gerhardt and Lena is watching it from her hotel room.

Gerhardt is speaking about Otto Ganz.

Hector bursts in and tells Lena she has to go. Lena refuses unless he tells her why he’s helping her. He admits that she’s his bargaining chip, but points out that he is the only person who can keep her alive and out of jail.

Meanwhile, Frost and Kirsch touch down in Oslo.

This week’s version of Switzerland two weeks ago.

They are following the trail of the PfD funds, which Hanes gave Frost and Frost shared with Kirsch at the end of the previous episode. Kirsch has requested “Oslo station clearance,” so Nick Fischer (from several weeks ago) knows Kirsch is in the country, so they split up before he can notice.

In Berlin, Yates, wearing the most modest dress we’ve ever seen on her, enters Hanes’ office and gets fired — she’s on the next morning’s flight to Dulles in Washington. She begs for Kirsch’s job before returning to her office.

Back in Oslo, sure enough, Brad Winters’ brother, oops, I mean Nick Fischer, does meet Robert in the airport and wants to take him to lunch. Cue “trouble music” — you’re supposed to get a feeling that Kirsch is being watched.

Hector and Lena start their adventures. For some reason Hector has rented a Trabi to avoid notice. (And despite what Hector says about this, there’s nothing inconspicuous about driving one nowadays.)

Here’s a Trabi.

Trabis — the mass manufactured vehicle of the East German state — are really interesting cars, but I don’t have the patience to get into it tonight.

Lena (Emilia Schühe) tells Hector (Rhys Ifans) she wants to kill Gerhardt before the evening, in Berlin Station 2.6. Honestly, between this outfit and the Trabi you almost think the German crew were having a joke on the American crew.

Hector takes Lena to the apartment of his transgender friend from the racetrack a few weeks ago, who doesn’t really want to take Lena in but does, as well as a satchel Hector gives him. This person is, of course, the opposite of anything a neo-Nazi would hold dear.

Cut to scene one with Armitage, showering:

I saw this and thought, beautiful! and then, that shot must have been a pain in the ass.

Daniel, as it turns out, is messed up and having flashbacks to Otto Ganz’s death. If they had left it here, I would have found it credible. This was the best of the three scenes with Armitage in them this time around.

Esther Krug shows up and he lets her in before covering up.

Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) puts on his shirt. OK, this was a pretty moment as well.

She needs his help in locating Hector and Lena, because of all of the PfD loyalists in the BfV. She’s searched Otto’s office but not found anything. Also, she notices that Daniel should clean out his Otto Ganz pictures, but he says he can’t. She wants to know about their final conversation. The paraphrase he gives is so abstract that I almost wonder if dialogue was cut from the previous episode, but anyway, it’s about legacy. Krug says she’s trying to protect her country but things look “pretty shitty” now.

Daniel (Richard Armitage) tells Esther (Mina Tander) that the German election will always be on his conscience, in Berlin Station 2.6. And what the hell is up with the lighting — you have to edit all the caps to see the expressions on their faces.

Daniel insists Lena doesn’t know anything and can’t help. (He’s said this so many times now that I’m starting to wonder if that’s going to be the source of a plot twist coming at us, too.) She tells him to get some sleep. It looks for a second like they’ll kiss, but no.

Cut to Valerie in bed with Emmerich.

Emmerich (Heino Ferch) apologizes to Valerie (Michelle Forbes) for being so tense, in Berlin Station 2.6. Is that code for something?

They’re pillowtalking about what’s up with Gerhardt — Emmerich is worried till he gets a call from her, asking him to appear on a BBC talk show for her. This is reassuring except maybe she’s waiting until after the election to torch him. They talk over the prospects of whether they can still catch her; Emmerich says it’s too risky for him to continue and he can’t be in the bed of an American spy. As he leaves, he makes regretful noises, and Valerie says, ‘well if you change your mind you know where I am’ or something like that.

Yates is still in the office (is this the previous evening?) and she calls in April to do a meeting Kirsch was supposed to do with Hector. April is supposed to talk Hector into giving up Lena without assurances as to his ability to leave Berlin. April is thrilled at the increased responsibility.

Back to Norway. I guess someone thought all of this stuff was funny. If you wonder why midwesterners despise liberal California elites, crap like this is the reason. Message to the Berlin Station producers: almost no one in Norway eats lutefisk anymore, not even at Christmas. All the people who ate lutefisk immigrated in the nineteenth century to the Upper Midwest, where their descendants eat it it church basements about three times a year. Midwesterners think lutefisk jokes are funny if we tell them to each other; we don’t like to hear them from outsiders; Norwegians just look at you blankly.

Robert enjoys some lutefisk, in Berlin Station 2.6.

Honestly, he went for lutefisk but turned out the brunost (brown sweet cheese, often made with goat’s milk), which was pretty stupid because while I agree lutefisk is at best an acquired taste, brunost is excellent. But it doesn’t matter because it’s just the pretext for a racist joke about the whiteness of Norwegians. Honestly — could they have written a stupider scene?

(don’t answer that question yet)

Although I don’t think of it as a dessert. More of a breakfast thing or something to eat on crispbread.

Kirsch tells his lame cover story; Fischer wants Kirsch to go on a tour with “Lars” (who was already following Kirsch earlier on), but Kirsch turns him down. Fischer refers to how Frost tailed him in Berlin; Kirsch says “sadly we’ve had a bit of a falling out.” Of course, Fischer knows this is a lie.

Meanwhile, Frost is following the money. I guess it led to a fishing fleet, at the office of which someone is demonstrating the quality of the catch in this weird way:

Maybe this is some special Norwegian thing, but in my world you look at the eyes and the gills, and when the fish is gutted you can look at the flesh from inside. Weird. This is a salmon. But honestly — this is also not how tuna is graded for sale either — you stick a long pipette into the fish. I also think she tells him lutefisk is their third bestseller — but lutefisk is not a fish species, it’s a method of preparing a stockfish. But perhaps I misheard her. ADR on these episodes continues to be miserable. Then he wants to try her fish? At a loading dock?

Anyway, a sort of twitchy woman takes him into her office and he sneaks into her desk and takes cell phone photos of a bunch of ledgers while she’s outside for a minute. We see the names Larsen and Andersen over and over again.

Back in Berlin, April meets up with Hector at a café on the canal. She wants to know where Lena is and tries to guilt Hector into giving her up. Hector isn’t budging. If I were feeling more patient about this episode, I’d point out that KeKe Palmer is doing a fantastic job of playing eager beaver April. This scene is the classic clash of the overzealous newbie and the jaded veteran. At this point, April is still arguing that if they can get Lena, they can change the result of the election. I wish: but German bureaucracy doesn’t move that quickly and people still have rights in Germany. If they took Lena in, they would put her in Untersuchungshaft (custody for interrogation — usually called provisional detention in English), announce what she’d been alleged to be charged with, and then the press would go silent. The results of the interrogation would not immediately be public, as they seem to be in the U.S.

Back to Oslo — Frost meets up with Kirsch, who seems nauseated (message to scriptwriters — it’s hard to get sick from lutefisk when it’s properly prepared, but if you did, nausea would be the least of the symptoms). Frost shows Kirsch the photos. Frost has matched the amounts to transfers to PfD accounts. And yet again, another script low. “Kinda fishy,” Frost remarks. FFS. And yet again, we get a description of a villain as religious: Bjorn Larsen “goes to the Lutheran Church.” Again, total cluelessness — Norway may be 71 percent Lutheran, but fewer than 3 percent of Norwegians go to church any given week. (If you remember, we had this with Emmerich, who also “goes to church.” Well, at least the attendance figures for Germany are more like 10 or 12 percent). Anyway. Grrr. Anyway, all this gratuitous idiocy to make the point that Bjorn Larsen doesn’t eat all that fish.

Frost (Richard Jenkins) tells Kirsch he’s not excited by scenery, in Berlin Station 2.6. Too bad. I’d have loved to have seen Richard Armitage’s Viking profile framed against this scenery.

A minute or so of beautiful shots of the Norwegian landscape, and a ferry the men board — only for Frost to say, “I wish I was one of those people who could be satisfied by a view.” Perhaps another peak of cynicism in this script, after just showing us all this scenery. Frost is bored with Provence. Kirsch is unsympathetic as Frost is retired and comfortable. He still looks kind of queasy. he also criticizes Frost for working for Hanes, which Frost denies doing (?) as the fact that they are chasing the lead proves they are not working for Hanes. (OK??? That just makes no sense.) Kirsch admits to “really liking” Yates.

Rather swift cut to Valerie in a pool. She gets out and sees Emmerich on the BBC, who says that he’s just learned from someone he’s met, who doesn’t share any of his views, that “sometimes we must double down to achieve the desired results.” She looks thoughtful.

Hector arrives back at his friend’s apartment; Lena has assaulted the friend and left, along with Hector’s brown satchel.

Cut to second Armitage scene — this is the one that pissed me off. It seems that Daniel has decided to check out the neo-Nazi bar.

Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) uses his lock-picks, in Berlin Station 2.6. It is implausible that this site would be unwatched within 24 hours of Ganz’s escapades. Just not believable. And you can’t hide that you’re in a building like this. The door has to stay up.

He goes in and decides to toss Ganz’s office, but doesn’t find anything.

Richard Armitage’s old canonical distress signal. Not employed very well. Sorry, Armitage, I can tell you were indicating here.

He sees a picture of a Nazi symbol on Ganz’s desk, breaks it, and of course slices up his hand.

Daniel’s hand after its encounter with the Nazi symbolism. Heavy metaphor much?

And then he turns as he sees that Hector has entered the office.

Looking very Proctor-like here.

This is my issue — apparently we’re supposed to think that within 24 hours of his failed mission, Daniel is now suicidal? Forgive me if I find that totally implausible. If they had left it at place where it was the past scene — that Daniel kept repeating events in his mind, wished he could have changed things, feels like he has the outcome of the German election on his conscience — okay, that would have all made sense. Even though, and this is key for me, we have seen almost no genuine human feeling that lasts more than fifteen minutes from Daniel in the fifteen previous hours of television. And allegedly his father was an abuser so he’s used to being treated badly. But this pushes it way too far, too fast. His responsibility in this situation was minor. Compare the situation in Grozny from the flashbacks in season 1. No negative consequences from that apparently, although that was directly his fault (or so we were supposed to believe). The previous depictions of the character, and the character trajectory more generally, don’t yield this result.

Hector disinfects Daniel’s hand with the same vodka he drinks a shot of afterwards, in Berlin Station 2.6. They discuss briefly whether revenge is satisfying and Hector refers to the Iosava plotline last season.

However — I also don’t get why this scene is even here as it barely advances the plot. The point seems to be that Hector thought he could find Lena there. I could see it if there was some kind of motif going on throughout of “the jaded spy, Hector, initiates Daniel into the art of dealing with trauma,” but there isn’t enough supporting narrative to support this either. Hector gets a call from an illegal gun dealer where Lena has magically washed up with Hector’s satchel. She wants to buy a weapon. Hector tells Daniel things could be much worse and he should pull himself together.

This scene is cut through with the scene back at the CIA. Valerie wants to talk to Yates (who is still there?) about Emmerich. Cut away to Hector and Daniel. Cut back, to April observing Valerie and Yates having a very public fight and Yates throwing Valerie out of the embassy.

Back in remote Norway, the ferry lets our friends off in a bucolic setting: Bjorn’s house.

Kirsch and Frost trying to find Larsen, in Berlin Station 2.6.

Bjorn isn’t home, so they go the neighborhood pub to meet a real Norwegian.

Seriously?

The real Norwegian, who’s the bartender, shows them a picture of Bjorn Larsen with a huge grouper and Nick Fischer (you can’t tell this from the lighting, so everyone in the scene agrees that yeah, that is Nick Fischer). More annoying fish puns in the script.

In Berlin, Hector walks into the gun dealer’s and Lena realizes, just as we have, that every illegal arms dealer she’s met in Berlin works for the CIA. She’s bent on killing Gerhardt although the weapon she’s firing is not suited to the task. She is darn well going to avenge her father. (I’ve been reading a lot of Greek tragedy lately and I’m wondering if this is going to end in an Antigone plot line eventually.) Hector says, no, we’re not doing this, etc., etc.

Back in Norway, Frost and Kirsch have now put together what you and I realized about five minutes into the episode — if Larsen’s money is coming from Fischer (the US embassy) and Hanes gave them the information about this ,then: they have been entrapped by Hanes! OH MY GOD! And they can’t say anything about it because exposing it would make the US look even worse on the world stage.

I honestly can’t believe that Frost isn’t acting here, when he indicates his shock. He must have known this. Or Richard Jenkins is a horrible actor.

So first of all this is just dumb. I tell my FIRST SEMESTER STUDENTS: Cui bono? Who benefits if you believe what this source is telling you??? It’s inconceivable to me that two career CIA employees would not realize that they should ask why Hanes wanted this tracked down, much faster than Frost and Kirsch have here. But even worse: here we are back to: the ambassador to Germany is funding the German alt-right. Please. That’s seemed like a stupid plot line for nigh unto a month now.

They want to let Yates know but — the deus ex machina of the current moment — there’s no cell signal. They go back to Bjorn’s house, and a light is on and the door is open. They go in, and Bjorn is hanging from his neck, dead, dead, dead. Robert says we gotta get out of here! Frost leaves but Kirsch is distracted by the sight on analog landline and calls the operator (this interested me — there isn’t really an operator in Germany, so I was surprised to find there’s one in Norway, but who knows), who doesn’t understand English. This is a bit surprising, as Norwegian schoolchildren learn English and all of English-language TV in Norway is subtitled rather than dubbed, but maybe she went to high school in North Korea and missed the English lessons. While he’s calling the operator, “Lars” appears from the shadows and roughs him up with some heavy fishing equipment. They both call Fischer, who says, “I didn’t want to hurt you.” Only then does Frost come back in and beat up Lars. It turns out that they’ve missed the last ferry, so they decide to escape in, like, a canoe.

Okaaaaay.

Back in Berlin, Valerie shows up at Emmerich’s and tells him she has refused to go back to Washington. He invites her in and they embrace. April, meanwhile, undaunted, is talking to her NSA listening station friend — who finds a way to bug Hector’s phone. He will send it a text and when the text opens, April will be able to listen to everything going on in Hector’s immediate environment.

Daniel is beside himself — he did everything wrong and now Germany will suffer — in Berlin Station 2.6.

Third and final Armitage scene. Daniel shows up at Krug’s apartment; he’s upset and out of control, reproaching himself. I felt that this scene was wildly overacted — which in turn made me suspicious. This kind of behavior wasn’t in the Miller character palette, and it’s a bit extreme even for Armitage.

Esther listens to him for a while and then decides to shut him up with a kiss.

Given that this episode is short and ends abruptly, they could have extended this a bit. I’d have enjoyed seeing this sex scene.

Back in darkest Norway (where the sun never sets this time of year, although it’s morning, apparently), Frost and Kirsch are on their canoe trip.

Kirsch has a line here about how anything is possible in a post-facts world. I felt like it was a veiled statement about the script. Why should any script be even marginally plausible? This one wasn’t.

They say that they have Hanes where they want him (? they’re in the middle of a huge lake or fjord or something), but also that they have to find out who is funding Hanes. They glimpse an A-frame cabin in the distance — it turns out the guy has much less facial hair than the other Norwegian, AND a satellite phone.

Cut back to Berlin, where Yates enters the embassy one last time and leaves — I kid you not — a Casablanca DVD on Kirsch’s desk. Gawd. Spies in LUV.

Cut back to remotest Norway, where Frost and Steven are learning that Yates’ phone has been cut off and no one answers the CIA station phones. (Also not really plausible; I’m pretty sure the CIA has 24 hour answering.) They drive back to Oslo and Frost is waiting for Fischer on his sofa when he rises the next morning. Fischer admits to Frost that Hanes brought him into the operation, but he doesn’t know where the money was coming from.

A last moment for Yates and Valerie in Berlin, apparently.

In Berlin, near the Oberbaumbrücke, Yates and Valerie have one of those sisterly moments where they compliment each other and Valerie tells Yates that without her, the bridge would have blown up. Also Yates is happy Valerie is doubling down on Emmerich — although the dialogue is written to imply that it’s just as much because Valerie is now a woman scorned, as it is because of her suspicions. Valerie agrees to look out for April.

Because we haven’t been in enough weird Berlin scene clubs this season, April’s in one next. It’s really not clear why she’s there — if you were waiting for a bug to go on, would you go someplace where you couldn’t hear it? — but anyway, it goes on, and April hears Lena telling Hector she’s going to “do it.” I think both April and we know this is about another attack on Gerhardt. Lena asks Hector what he would do, but after demurring, he says, he would want to do it in a way that would make a statement. Lena says again, “help me, help me do it.” And Hector, with a calculating look on his face, says, “someone has to.”

So, “scenes from next week” thus are pretty obvious — there’s going to be another push to stop Lena and Hector, and of course, Hanes or whatever.

***

Continues here.

~ by Servetus on November 13, 2017.