Change Your Image
Halopalo
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
The Rookie (2018)
S3 goes downhill
The first two seasons were great and the time just flew by when watching them. They balanced nicely between action, drama and humor and the characters were interesting and appealing. The third season is quite disappointing in comparison. Issues of racism are brought up in a very preachy way and the viewer is constantly underestimated. Every point is underlined so that the viewer will now surely understand what to think. I agree with the commenters who saw the racist police as a caricature. I also don't really like the hint of romance between Chen and Bradford, who are presented more through big brother-little sister chemistry.
Blank (2018)
Blank: good at reflecting numbness or is it just plain boring?
Series about 19 year old Ella, who develops a crush to her new co-worker Simon in the garden shop she works at, while being in a relationship with her boyfriend Mats. Ella shares a flat with her more energetic friend Susanne, who is confident on the surface, but actually obsessed and insecure about her appearance and thinking about getting a nose job. The relationship with Mats seems to be more of a habit to Ella instead of a romantic and passionate relationship. Also Mats is clueless about the fact (or effectively ignoring it), that Ella is not into their sex life at all. She is drifting through her life without any passion or vision what to do next.
Honestly, I was surprised when it ended, because nothing really came out of it. I felt the whole first season was just a prolonged introduction to characters and I was expecting them to develop the plot more as well as explore the characters and their relationships more. But it just kind of started and then it already ended. Hardly anything happened.
The main character is an introvert, who doesn't know what she wants from her life and I can understand it affecting the story and how it's told to a point. I mean if the series name reflects blandness and numbness of the main character, then I guess the show really showcased that. But as a viewer I was also left quite emotionless and numb about the whole thing.
I guess the point would still be to make viewers care about the character and be somewhat interested in her even though she is struggling with expressing herself. But that didn't unfortunately happen. Instead I just became more bored as the story continued. I felt the story was just stuck. Blaah. Susanne's insecurities with her nose seemed more interesting to be honest. Too bad it was told from Ella's point of view, instead of giving Susanne herself a chance to talk about it more. Can plastic surgery be a road to your true self or was she just fooling herself when thinking it would be liberating to change herself to whatever she wants to?
Halka (2019)
Interesting and suspenseful set up, solid and convincing cast, seems like a top notch show,
(Mild spoilers from the very beginning of the show to describe the set up.)
In 1993, a 11-Month-old baby boy of Eren and Hümeyra Karabulut was kidnapped. The kidnappers asked money for the boy, which Eren Karabulut agreed to pay. He was asked to come to a warehouse to deliver the ransom and make the exchange, but instead he was faced with a trap and murdered. When the police arrived to the murder scene, they found the ransom gone and a baby placed near the body.
But the baby left behind was not the son of Eren and Hümeyra. Still, when Hümeyra comes to the police station to pick up the boy, she says nothing about the child being replaced and instead decides to raise him as her own son naming him Kaan.
25 years later Kaan Karabulut has ended up in prison and he is send a film of the murder of Eren Karabulut. The film doesn't reveal, that Kaan isn't actually the biological son of Eren and Hümeyra, but it shows that the two killers were ordered to commit the murder on the behalf of Ilhan Tepeli, a leader of a crime family. It seems, that "The Ring/Halka", who send the film, wants Kaan to go after the killers. One of the killers has died of cancer, but the other one, Iskender Akay, is still alive. He has now parted his ways from the Tepeli crime family and is running his own business.
Cemal Sandikci and Bahar Berkes are police officers looking into the Tepeli crime family and trying to find out, who send the film and would therefor benefit from Kaan going after the killers and taking a revenge on them. To find out, who are behind this so called "Ring", that has gone after Tepeli and Akay crime families, Sandikci decides to enlist Kaan to go undercover to the Tepeli crime organization.
Meanwhile the mysterious Ring sends Ilhan Tepeli's son Cihangir a film as well. This film shows the murder but also reveals that, Cihangir is the real biological son of Eren and Hümeyra Karabulut. Cihangir finds out, that the person he has called his father, is actually responsible for the murder of his biological father and decides to keep the information as a secret. Therefor, when Kaan makes a contact, Cihangir takes Kaan under his wings and is also self eager to get to know him and find out, what exactly happened 25 years ago.
This show seems to be full of interesting characters and the set up really draws you in. It's intriguing to see, how the story develops, as it's a bit uncertain, how calculated for example Hümeyra was, when deciding to keep the replaced baby. For now it seems, that they have a beautiful and close relationship with Kaan and I hope it really stays like that. But obviously there's a change that Hümeyra has planned to use Kaan as a way to revenge the culprits, who took her biological son away from her. She is definitely very smart, patient and has a hint of calculative nature in her. I can imagine her being very able to play a long term mind game, if necessary.
It's also interesting to find out what's the relationship with Cihangir and the Tepelis. It's pretty clear Cihangir hasn't had it easy, as his girlfriend seems to think, his parents have made his life a nightmare. Cihangir also is clearly struggling mentally, as he suffers from insomnia and confusing hallucinations.
Although Cihangir and Kaan seem to bond pretty quickly, it's not certain if it stays like that and what is the bond actually even about. Cihangir might even think Kaan is his brother at first, or he might just want to keep Kaan close and observe him and collect information. But who knows what happens between them, when they find out the truth, whatever the truth is. Kaan is a big mystery himself. Is Kaan Tepeli's real son or someone else's and is this someone coming and mixing the situation even further at some point? Why were the boys swapped? Why did Tepeli keep Cihangir even after the killing of Eren and getting the ransom? Is he a mere tool to keep Hümeyra in check or did the Tepelis actually grow fond of him? Who are behind the Ring? How much Hümeyra knows about the killing of her husband and why didn't she reveal that she knows Kaan isn't her son?
There also seems to be groundwork for two interesting slow burn ships. The wild prankster Kaan and the serious Bahar, who are both basically acting as double agents (Kaan for the police and the Tepelis, and Bahar for Sandikci, who runs the team investigating the Ring while also reporting to the big boss behind Sandikci's back). Also Cihangir seems to hit it of with Iskender Akay's rebellious and bad ass daughter Müjde and they have an interesting tension and chemistry between them. Yeah, it's very exciting to get to know, what happens next. Can't wait!
The 100 (2014)
Season 2 was it's peak. Now it just feels meaningless and repetitive because of the bad writing
(A science-fiction series about teenagers sent on Earth to examine if it's finally livable again after a nuclear apocalypse that happened almost 100 years ago and forced the survivors to live in space stations.)
In the beginning of season 1, the 100 was basically a cheesy teen show, but then at some point the tone changed, and season 2 was what it could have been as its best: a show that explores what is morally right and wrong when you are desperate to survive. How far can you go and still be deserving of surviving? But instead of enhancing and deepening the morality aspect, they decided in season 3 to go for a shock value road. Traumatic things just happen to characters but they are never really explored. They build up tension, there's a shocking moment and then the story line is done, ignored. Viewers don't get a satisfying emotional payoff for the suspense.
It's like the writers are fixated serving "unexpected" shock value moments after another. I write "unexpected", because in reality they are just repeating story lines from a slightly different ankle. Unexpected deaths become expected deaths. Especially if you are a love interest for one of the main characters.
The writers don't seem to care that much, what these traumatic moments and hardships would actually do to a person and how that should affect the writing of these characters in the long run. It's forgotten or it's explained away with an off screen development. Or you can just write that chip in the character's head made the character do it, so does it even matter what they did previously?
Things just happen because they happen. Because it's "shocking", because "you don't see it coming", because it's "surprising". And whatever the characters do, they just write them to parrot: it's us against them, I had to do it, you had to do it, my people, our people, for our people.
No deeper push or a meaning is needed for a genocide. No deeper meaning is needed for wanting someone close to you suddenly to die, no deeper meaning is needed to torture someone etc. Even child abuse is presented simply as a way to protect that child, because the child is "my people, us against them, I torture my child, so no one else can use her etc.". And then it's ignored. Everything is fine again. It's very cheap writing. Characters become soulless plot devices who never stop to think, feel or reflect what's happening and what are they doing. They just do whatever they have to while repeating those same old lines like brain-dead robots.
There is no reason to trust any character development you think you see on screen, because the writers seem to get fed up easily with previously written arcs. Characters and relationships are basically rewritten in every season. It's also odd that relationships mostly form off screen, as a surprise. It's like the writers think it would be boring for viewers to see relationships developing on screen.
But anyways, by season 5 you don't even recognize the characters anymore. Maybe it's fun for the writers and the actors, as they get to do something new and play a different character every season, but this leads viewers to feel detached. There is no continuation or coherence in the storytelling. The characters don't learn anything. They repeat the same things or are continuously unable to see the other side, even though they have self experienced that other side! And when viewers become more and more detached because of this poor and lazy writing, it leads to a realization that you don't even care who survives anymore. Which is pretty bad if you are watching a survival show.
The choice to mix up relationships, dynamics and even personalities and writing the characters to betray someone just because suddenly "my people" is different than previously, makes all their bonds seem meaningless. One moment they are friends and the next moment they torture each other, betray each other, leave each other to die etc. Then they just write a fast and easy fix to start a new plot with new dynamics. It's very hard to sell these relationships as something true and deep because they keep ruining them again and again like nothing.
For some reason the writers don't even want to let their own main characters, who are supposedly best friends, directly talk to each other. It's so odd it becomes extremely funny when characters have their most "meaningful" discussions through middle hands. They use for example the other one's child or the other one's significant other as messengers. Or even a dead person who talks through a third person! Whatever it takes to avoid an actual conversation.
So it's a very plot driven show. Which is kind of ironic, because there are also many plot holes in it. And because the writers have such an urge to invent something new all the time (it's predictable, repetitive nonsense mostly) and reinvent the characters, all the twists and turns and shock moments feel very forced. So in the end even a plot driven viewer needs to ignore quite a lot of stuff to enjoy it. When the pace is quick enough, I guess ignoring is possible. But when there's time to reflect what actually was shown, you probably start to feel like someone thinks you are a very stupid viewer to write something like this and thinking it's good enough.
For a viewer who enjoys watching the development of the characters, it becomes a very frustrating show. If you like to understand the characters, get to know how they think and feel, and how situations effect them, this is definitely not a show for you.
Fazilet Hanim ve Kizlari (2017)
Dark family secrets, wrong first impressions, the difference between caring and empowering love vs. naive, superficial and controlling love
SPOILER FREE PART:
This show is very dramatic and modernized version of Pride & Prejudice -type of a story, where incorrect first impressions, prejudices and hasty judgments lead people to do wrong decisions, which in turn can have shocking and disturbing consequences on their lives and relationships. It's about a poor and opportunistic single mom of two daughters eager to get a better future for her family through some pretty conniving actions. Their lives are intertwined with a rich an powerful family with secrets and cunning ways of their own.
The show is about faulty preconceptions, sacrifice, family bond, greed, opportunism and hypocrisy. It's about superficial and naive first love, and realizing the difference when you fall in love with an actual person instead of loving the fantasy you have created in your head about someone. It's dark, it's romantic, it's hugely emotional and devastating. It's super dramatic and style of the show is to emphasize dramatic scenes and moments even more with attention music, slow motion effect, flashes and other visual effects. I wasn't self used to so strong highlighting effects to be honest, so it took me by surprise a bit, but then I got used to it pretty fast and ended up enjoying them.
While the show can be emotionally suspenseful and pretty dark at times, even the most cunning and shameless characters can surprise the viewer and bring out lighter sides and even comedic elements. Nothing is so black and white. The characters are complex and able to evoke conflicting emotions with all their infuriating and fascinating messiness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SETUP: includes SPOILERS from the beginning of the show
Fazilet Camkiran, a single mom, is fed up living in poverty and wishes a better life for herself and her daughters Hazan & Ece. Fazilet is gutsy and smart but she is also very fixated on money and is often quite cunning when trying to secure her idea of a better life. She is blinded about the misery she causes with her actions and doesn't really care what her daughters want. As far as Fazilet is concerned: a mother knows best. But Fazilet is also fiercely protective about her daughters and anyone who messes with them has a tough opponent to fight against. She is easily one of the most interesting, frustrating, entertaining and complex characters of the show.
Fazilet's best ticket to success is her youngest daughter Ece and her possible modeling career, as Fazilet thinks beauty is a women's best asset. Meanwhile older daughter Hazan brings shame to Fazilet with her tomboyish looks. Feeling ashamed is mutual between the mom and the daughter though. While Ece is more willing to please her mom, Hazan is openly displeased with her mom's money hungry ways and superficial values and calls her out frequently.
Sinan is a spoiled, selfish and superficial womanizer and a youngest son from the powerful Egemen family. He is in charge of finding a new face for their cosmetic campaign through a modeling contest. Fazilet decides that this is the big chance for her daughter and enlists Ece to take part in the competition. They miss the audition, but after overhearing damaging information about Sinan, Fazilet threatens to bring the integrity of the whole competition in question, unless her daughter gets a change to audition as well.
Sinan agrees to a new meeting later that evening, but as a revenge and being also very keen on reckless power plays for his own amusement, Sinan tells his older brother Yagiz lies about Fazilet and Ece. He tells Yagis that Fazilet was pimping her own daughter as a way to win the competition and now the similarly opportunistic daughter is waiting for Sinan in a hotel room, willing to do what ever it takes to change her life in one night and get the modeling job.
Meanwhile Ece decides not to go to the meeting, because of her jealous boyfriend. Instead, the sisters decide that Hazan will go to the meeting to let Sinan know that Ece can't participate. Hazan, who has secretly been in love with Sinan from a distance for several years, dresses up for the meeting. But instead of meeting her crush Sinan, she meets the furious older brother Yagiz, who was provoked by Sinan to give the greedy family a lesson.
The first meeting of Yagiz and Hazan is explosive and humiliating. Hazan feels pure hatred towards seemingly arrogant, judgmental and rude Yagiz. (Yagiz actually becomes one of my favorite male characters ever written in a TV show. It's just amazing, how viewers get to see this guarded man open up and reveal all the layers in him.)
And Yagiz, used to fix whatever trouble Sinam gets himself and their family in, feels disgusted by the supposed greediness and audacity of the Camkirans. Initially Hazan and Yagiz don't want anything to do with each other. But little do they know, that they will be forced to be in contact regularly, as Fazilet has managed to get her foot into the Egemen household: Fazilet is going to be their new matron and won't hesitate to use the Egemen family connections to get what she wants.
Sharp Objects (2018)
Beautiful & painful
Camille is a journalist struggling with alcoholism and self-harm, who unwillingly must return to her hometown to write about murder of a teenage girl and a disappearance of another. She has her own dark past, which she would like to forget and difficult and distant relationships to her mom Adora and her half-sister Amma, who she doesn't even recognize anymore.
Though the story revolves around the murder mystery and how it affects the town, the main point of the series isn't really in my opinion to discover who's the culprit (they do). More important is to study these three disturbingly captivating women and their relationships, and absorb the attentively created dark atmosphere of the town and its residents. So let yourself rest on the special mood of the series and its characters, instead of just impatiently trying to find out who's the culprit and when is it revealed.
There is something emotionally very distressing in Camille, Adora and Amma, and the scenes between the mom and her two daughters are tense and loaded with anxiety. The atmosphere of the film is haunting and dreamlike, mixed with flashes of Camille's past and painful memories she would like to forget.
The pain is of course also engraved all over Camille's body. Permanent marks of her self-harm. Readable to viewers, hidden from the people connected to Camille. The hurt of Camille is so loaded at times, that the tone becomes suffocating and paralyzing. You can understand her need to scream and the wish to shake herself awake. Just something to really feel again and to lighten the heaviness of the burden her body and mind feels. You can really sense how the hurt and the pain weights on Camille, but you don't fully understand it until you get all the pieces together. But of course you will suspect and you will wait for it to really reveal itself and hit you.
This is definitely a series with a specific and special mood. So I think it benefits when the episodes are watched fairly continuously without long breaks between them. It is also definitely a show, that benefits from re-watching, as it is thoughtfully planned with all its details affecting the experience.
Ordeal by Innocence (2018)
A great miniseries!
A really engaging show. Dark, haunting and suspenseful atmosphere. Visually beautiful. Solid, great performances from the whole cast and a nice, surprising twist. Overall a very satisfying and enjoyable show.
Erkenci Kus (2018)
Amazing show at first, later on becomes horrible and looses it's magic
Part. 1
I wasn't familiar with Turkish dramas and comedies, but I stumbled on this series and was hooked from the start. It's heartwarming and joyful, but it is also very emotional, heartbreaking and full of dramatic moments between the main couple. It's one of the best romantic comedies I have seen. The chemistry between the main couple is outstanding. It's full of funny and wonderful characters with their own individual personalities. I like the oddities of the little neighborhood/street corner and its residents and the hectic, creative surroundings of the advertising world. This show knows how to create a moving love story full of tension. It delivers many amazing romantic moments and takes advantage of the actors' charisma & chemistry. The scenery is striking and the music amazing. It's a very enjoyable, feel good, show.
-
EDIT.
Part 2. review includes MILD SPOILERS.
-
-
-
-
-
Part 2.
I had to edit my original review. It suffers a lot in later episodes, as story lines become repetitive and some of the romantic scenes seem actually forced. I started to feel they were written as fan service and not as thoughtful and meaningful parts of the story like before. Also the characters seem to make the same mistakes repeatedly, which starts to frustrate. It diminishes the progress that supposedly happened between them in previous episodes. I felt the male lead was reduced to just worship the female lead blindly. And it honestly was a disappointment, because the male lead was such a charismatic, driving force of a nature & deep, thoughtful character. It's like they suddenly decided to prop up the female lead over everyone else, whereas before it was more balanced. The magic of the story suffered a lot from it and the female lead started to seem annoying, jealous & snappish caricature of herself, while the male lead just keeps worshiping her no matter what. The show even had a break and they had enough time to rethink and fix things, but it turned out even worse. It's basically a different show now, and the characters are just annoying. Especially the female lead. They somehow managed to destroy the whole series and the magical and joyful fairy tail feeling it had.