mwaceves

I loved this series. I don't speak Turkish, but I found a way to see it through all three seasons.

First, I loved the actors. All the principal actors were fantastic. The Kara family, Feride and her mother, the friends from the neighborhood, the other love interests, were all very believable. A few of the bad guys were over the top, but I guess the global audience loves seeing the bad boys being bad. Targut was kind of funny when he had his tantrums.

I thought the plot was well developed and had lots of interesting twists. I enjoyed the backstories of all the characters. I fell in love with the Kara family, especially the parents, with their love, strength, courage and poetic embrace of life.

The direction was good. The actors worked together seamlessly. All that emotion was pulled out of everyone. There were many beautiful romantic scenes. The director did not depend on cheap tricks, like showing the same events over and over, or holding onto facial expressions too long. The settings were interesting.

I binge watched season 1 subtitled in English on Netflix. The rich voices of the actors made it easier to read along and know what was going on. After season 1, I looked around YouTube for more English, but

just found a few scenes.

Then I found Resumen HD in Spanish. This became the Feride and Mahir show because they cut most of the other scenes that had other actors, keeping just enough to keep the plot together. There were things that I never did understand, like why Mahir's brother had a sudden change of opinion, but I still enjoyed watching the story to the end.

I was going to rate this a 7 but am dropping it one because Netflix did not include the last two episodes, 52 being the finale. You can see it on Youtube, but since I don't know Turkish I can look at the images and just guess at exactly how it went down. There is one character that I can't account for, and that is irritating.

This is the most time that I have ever spent on a mobster film. I don't like violence, but then this is the Mafia and there it is. People drop dead like swatted flies.

The acting is excellent. The characters are well developed and believable. The bachelor pad is fun to watch and the silly banter lifts the show up from the violence and makes it watchable. Love the actors.

There are two love stories that twist around throughout the series. Now I know which one worked out, but I can only guess at what happened to the other one.

The plot is complicated. At first I really enjoyed it, but for me it went on too long. The whole show could have been ended around episode 30 or 35. It seemed that they had a lot of capers that had nothing to do with the main plot. Of course I'm saying that because I couldn't see the last two episodes...

I really didn't think I would like this at first---It looked like it would be a mix of Beauty and the Beast with Ninja Turtles. Some of the acting was way over the top, so I thought this might be for a younger audience.

Once I gave it a chance I got completely pulled in to the story. The plot is very complicated, with several plots interwoven. Some are crime stories, some are love stories, and some are about fate, fraternity, loyalty, and betrayal. Also abuse and mental illness. There are medical experiments and a quest for eternal life.

I loved most of the acting. The backstories and character development made me sympathetic for all but the most evil bad guys. Subat and Yagmur especially change a lot as they mature in this story.

No spoiler--but the ending is extraordinary.

Like most of these Turkish shows there is no sex shown but there is a lot of violence.

At times it was obvious that the subtitles had mistakes--especially mixing masculine and feminine pronouns. It made me wonder what else I was missing.