Dead to Me
S4 E2 - Dead To Me
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After opening Producer credits we gaze up at the exterior of a public bathroom, a sign says “Damen” which is not a city in Germany. Toni inside looks angrily at her long red braids in a mirror and begins to snip them off. The outdoor loo looks incredibly authentic - such a find! She exits past another entrance appropriately labeled “Herren.” Shortly shorn, Toni pulls on her orange wool cap and sees a man nearby feeding pigeons with blood pooled at his feet. It’s a very dead "envelope guy" from E1! The pigeons drink up and the 2nd credits roll once more. (1)
As the show did last week, we open to a black screen featuring a small circle expanding over Esther Kasabian's face. The circle thing is the producers nod to 1930’s era movies I guess.
Esther and kids enter a mausoleum with Edgar’s headshot painted on the headstone. “Come join us” but Walter is reluctant and spurns Esther’s hand yearning comfort. This solemn opening sequence gives me a chance to applaud the music/sound design overall. The show is very good at setting up an emotional tone for scenes and if it’s doing it job appropriately, we never notice but it lands nonetheless. We view the tombstone of Edgar Kasabian and I feel guilty cause I can’t recall why he’s dead. (2) Esther and the kids lay a wreath. Riding home depressed, Esther wants the kids to cheer up by singing a traditional German children’s funeral song. It is the most awfully cheerless tune I can imagine and I am lucky there are no razor blades in reach. Who knew there was a traditional German children’s funeral song genre? I’ll have to check YouTube.
So now we know for sure that Gereon and his SA buddies spent the night at the Hoosegow Bar & Grill confirming my now too-obvious hunch. Stennes is escorted out of the common cell and led down a hallway. Thinking he’s released it’s all he can do not to smirk as I realize “smirk” is his default resting facial expression. His frenemy Gottfried isn’t tired of dressing him down yet so they go another round. Hopes dashed, Stennes is hauled off to another cell, this one empty, but not anymore! Wendt wants to know what’s up with the SA scamps while Stennes counters something ominous about Gottfried’s "past perversions" so gauntlets are thrown after which Stennes apparently has plenty of time by himself to tone up his smirk muscles.
Leaving the Hoosegow B&G, Wendt enters another beautiful gold and tan vintage Mercedes automobile the producers borrow from museum collections. The ones with black running boards never fail to spark my imagination with bullet dodging gangsters hanging on wearing cool trench coats. The SA gang made bail and are scurrying out the back door to the street conveniently in front of Wendt’s car so he can check out Gereon in his dress Browns once again. In the car with him is Hermann Blank, a newspaper editor who, true to form, asks what Stennes said. "He warmed up some old stories."
After a long tiring night of SA mayhem, Gereon climbs the stairs with the mail and newspapers to his apartment and Moritz is there greeting him over a hot stove making breakfast. Moritz rustles to page 6 - “Death at midnight. Are National Socialists behind the Department Store Gang?” and I’m thinking nah. “It wasn’t us!” Moritz agrees. Gereon changes the subject flipping the paper over where it screams the headline “Germany, Wake Up!” The article is about a protest march in the streets and I wish I could read it. The scene ends with Moritz asking if he can take a hot bath before he leaves. “Sure, knock yourself out!” What a guy! I feel guilty for some reason and not only because I take hot water for granted in the year 2022.
So now I have to circle back and confess that the death of Toni’s boyfriend Benni, was just too awful to recap. It was as cruel and brutal a murder as I’ve seen. Benni was caught between a bullet in his face or falling to death as a cop I think is Kuschke (all 3 look terribly similar with those fun hats on) crushes Benni’s fingers and watches him bounce off the pavement below. Toni feels considerably worse about this than I do. At Station 14 we see Kuschke carp to two other cops about Toni's missing file because she saw him persuading Benni to his death. The three agree to spread out and cover the whole city in 3 different directions to find and deal with her.
We left Toni last season having joined the Street Urchin Gang due to a gripe with Lotte I’ve yet to review. (3) The Urchin Gang are apparently orphaned, abandoned or runaway children and teens who have learned to petty thieve, scavenge, find shelter and safety in numbers. She reports the death of Benni and the next-senior urchin cops a fearsome attitude and some tough love to a sniveling junior urchin along with a smack in the face. Next-senior gropes Toni searching for loot from the Department Store and I can’t help but recall some jewelry stashed in her coat pocket. Toni has had quite enough but is kicked out of the Street Urchin Gang by it’s new “pasha” for real and things just don’t seem to be looking good for her.
A brief scene at the Tietz Department Store scene of the crime as a shopper picks up what is likely one of the Department Store Gang’s coat they so considerately hung back up. We’ll see what was left in the pockets I’m sure.
Outside on the street with several more pristine museum pieces parked at the curb, a young girl wearing fanciful butterfly wings hands out fliers for a dance marathon at the Moki Efti with a 1,000 mark prize (inflation adjusted $4,647 US!) so we’ll look forward to that. Lotte walks along passing many people holding non-subtitled signs likely appealing for any type of employment. She takes a flyer from Butterfly Girl (Doris!), they agree to split the take in order to lower their odds and Lotte now has a week to get in marathon dancing shape!
At detective headquarters Buddha flags down Gereon for more than just a “Happy New Year.” The Police President wants to see Gereon urgently. The paternoster line is long so Buddha suggests the stairs on Doctors orders.
Meanwhile Lotte has her attention riveted to the Station 14 Officer’s statement from last night’s fiasco. “Concerning a Jane Doe at the crime scene. Hagedorn: ‘Well, the redhead. . .’” and we sense gears and levers working in her head as she continues writing. . . “Kuschke: ‘No, she’s not part of it.’” I’m unclear at the moment what exactly she’s doing here - taking notes or altering the officers official statements? Hmmm.
The boys at the office are on lunch duty but a messenger with a box is insistent. The box is opened to reveal the coat found earlier at the Tietz and Lotte whips her head to see it so fast her hair stays in place. She sprints to examine the coat and commanders it to “take to Pathology” but we all know that’s not gonna happen. It’s clear by now that whatever suspicions Lotte had seeing her sister run off after viewing poor Benni the day before has coalesced into certainty that Toni was involved with the poor lad’s death and now is in danger.
She scurries to stash the coat in a drawer but is unknowingly observed by “Berlin’s biggest grouch” Chief Detective Bohm as he exits once again from that mysterious room attached to his office. I’m thinking it’s unlikely he has his own toilet and I’d rather not speculate on what activity he’s up to alone in a closet. Anyway, Bohm files away Lotte’s subterfuge for future rumination but then his curiosity gets the best of him when he takes the coat out and pulls out a chain of a gold watch from a pocket. Hmmm. There’s more - a paper note he doesn’t share with us, but at a noise Stage Left he replaces the note, keeps the watch, shoves the coat back in the drawer then scurries off as some of the boys return from lunch duty.
As all this happens we continue to mount 4 flights of stairs with Buddha and Gereon as they talk shop about the envelope guy. They have a name - “Friedhelm Oelschlager, a civil official”, and now Gereon has a new case with Friedhelm's wife waiting downstairs in Pathology. I love that Buddha smoothly lulled Gereon into a lot of pointless stair climbing as now Gereon has to backtrack downstairs to Pathology. Heh. “Thanks for the escort, off to Vice . . .”
Lotte carries an empty box to a coat rack in a hallway and steals a coat to fill the box back up. Bad Karma for Lotte but it’s her sister after all.
One of the interesting things about modern day as opposed to say, 20 years ago, is that it’s now rare to see cigarette smoking in contemporary films and cable series. Thankfully “Babylon Berlin” is here to restore the historical record that in 1931 a lot of people smoked quite a lot, all the time, constantly, everywhere they possibly could. Ah memories! However I would argue that it’s past cliche to intro a character this way, yet here we have Friedhelm’s wife taking a deep drag when called by Gereon into the Pathology office. She’s wearing what is likely an expensive fox stole, appears dazed and not 5 seconds after mashing her 1st cigarette out with her shoe she draws out a 2nd for Gereon to light in front of her husband's draped corpse. “I’m ready.”
I’m thinking we’ve met Doc Schwarz before as he draws the sheet back from Friedhelm’s face to reveal one precisely deep fatal neck slash. Wife dully confirms “it’s him,” then Gereon shoo’s her away upstairs to Inspectorate A for further questioning while he catches up with Doc Schwarz. All Doc can get out is “He drank a lot. Ate a lot” before Lotte surprisingly barges in on her way to check out poor dead Benni in the adjacent autopsy room. She greets her old autopsy intern pal Rudi who resumes his examination of poor Benni. Doc Schwarz waxes a bit too enthusiastic over the artistry of the neck slash which is Gereon's cue to exit but not before daring a glance at Lotte thru the window which is met by a barely restrained “eat sh*t & die” look in return.
Rudi’s examination of Benni is equally distressing with many very specific signs of homeless life such as malnutrition, worms, scabies, “street scars” and as an added bonus, secondary syphilis. Rudi susses out the several severe gashes on Benni’s fingers which couldn’t have happened from the fall. However, Doc Schwarz overhears this and takes pains to squelch his young and reckless assistant’s premature speculation and invites Lotte to gtfo which she promptly does.
Gereon is waiting to ambush Lotte and she stalks past at first. “I love talking to the DS Rath I know. If you meet him, let me know!” Which is not a bad start yet Gereon falters badly with his lame rejoinder “Just ‘cause I have a certain political view I’m not a different man.” Meh. Gereon’s trying hard to sell it - “The entire foundation is corrupt and rotten. We need to make it crumble” - but neither Lotte or I am buying. The fight gets uglier but my hopes for a spring wedding were already dashed. “You’re dead to me, Mr. Rath.” <sigh>
As it so often happens, this show is at all times capable of showing us anything imaginable. With “dead to me“ still echoing in my brain comes a startling stream of noisy vomit into a sink in front of the same Mr. Rath. Dude, you OK? Gereon reprises his gaze into the mirror before him and we continue to wonder what thoughts are going thru his mind.
Whew! That bust up was heavy but at least we didn’t have to wait all episode for it and so now we have a change of scene where Wendt is whining to the Police President about last night’s hour long delay to restore order. As Wendt is head of the Political Police, he’s pissy about being left out of the “goings-on” and with perfect timing Gereon now enters as summoned. You’d think the Police President would have a cute secretary outside to keep folks from just barging in, but maybe she’s also at lunch – at least Gereon knocked. His day isn’t getting any better as the President rips him a new one about “a police officer of your rank to publicly show himself as a SA member!” The PP seems pretty hot. Ever the schemer, Wendt comes up with a compromise he presents for Gereon to keep an eye on Stennes for him but that is rejected and so he pouts out the door. Once they’re alone the atmosphere chills considerably and my hunch proves correct. We get confirmation that Gereon is indeed working undercover at the Police President’s behest as they sit and pour whiskey. Fatherly, the PP councils a bit more discretion and they close the scene with a toast. I worry if Gereon will keep that one down.
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So maybe here is a good halftime place to regroup and recap the recap. So far we’ve followed the thread of two murders, Oelschlager, and poor Benni. Both are very much in the preliminary stages of investigation with only autopsies and next of kin checked off so far. But both could take much of the season to resolve and in doing so spiral out to many new and familiar faces and plot points.
On hold is the mysterious diamond Helga wore and it’s likely criminal provenance. Plus mean-mom AnneMarie's next salvo in the In-Law family war. Adding new plot points, we can look forward to Lotte finding a dance partner for the Dance Marathon and I can’t wait for all those Efta Mofti scenes featuring lively dance choreography morphing into haggard dancers sleeping standing up while a relentlessly upbeat jazz band threatens to weave in “The Days of Gold.” There are still a handful of characters we haven’t heard from yet and I note from the month old promotional trailer there’s an entire boxing subplot with Lotte’s potential brother to explore as well! It’s gonna be a busy show which is such a treat!
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Back at the outdoor ladies loo, Toni opens her drainage safe deposit box and takes out a jeweled necklace. Grindingly miserable she sets out to find a fence to cash out the jewelry. Now glum Gereon walks a street (smoking!) and crosses paths with a young lady, they smile and I’m wondering how they know each other. (4) Now walking thru a flea market of sorts Toni plods thru the crowd and finds a guy she knows who flatters her by telling her she looks like a boy with scabies. Boy I bet he doesn’t get laid much. Toni doesn’t think so either yet presents a handful of diamond jewelry anyway. Smooth-operator (Peter) literally gulps seeing the gems but behind Toni’s back darts Sgt Naumann whose long arm of the law grips Toni’s neck while smooth-operator grabs the jewels from her palm and runs off. What an asshole. A chase ensues and just like that, my speculative 3 episode arc of Toni evading cops is seriously abbreviated and I’m honestly disappointed in Toni for getting caught. I bet the Street Urchin Gang would be too.
Meanwhile back at Station 14, Kuschke is busy lying his ass off to Detective Czerwinski about exactly how Benni fell from the roof. As this happens, Toni is hauled to the desk and Detective Henning asks if she’s the redhead from the Department Store Gang. Toni caught a real break here with Henning and Czerwinski, otherwise she’d be falling from her own roof ledge before dinner.
At the offices of the “Tempo” newspaper, we see the Editor-in-Chief, Heymann smoking in the hallway whilst wistfully gazing out the window. Lackeys appear to tell him, “they’re ready” and he glumly approaches several dozen assembled to inform them that due to a recent global economic crisis half of them are fired, effective immediately. I recognize a blond guy with round horn-rimmed glasses from previous seasons so based on that alone, of course he’s toast. “Maybe the world will look better again in a year’s time” is the only solace the chief can offer while his son-in-law points to the bad news bulletin board and chief slithers off to smoke some more. Sorry Fred Jacoby, but I hear there’s a dance marathon coming up.
Back at Detective HQ Henning asks Lotte to the interrogation room after checking Bohm’s empty office. Gulp. What about “Berlin’s biggest grouch” she asks? “You’re the right person” and indeed she is because they have rustled Toni away from the Station 14 crime cabal to relative safety. Their reunion is emotionally fraught with sullen Toni not giving an inch while Lotte literally melts with relief. Lotte smartly kicks out the guys in the room who have no idea she and Toni are sisters then offers Toni an awkward embrace. Among the thousands of things Lotte is poised to say, she chooses “You’re tall!” and the love on Lotte’s face makes my own heart ache. Lotte then offers a cigarette to the only character in the series who doesn’t smoke, or perhaps Toni declines spitefully. The emotional damn breaks as they finally argue. Lotte claims she’s looking out for Toni, explaining she swapped coats and “falsified a statement” (ah ha!) to protect her. But Toni lumps Lotte in with all the bad cops who killed Benni and the enormous rage Toni has been suppressing finally explodes on the one person trying to help her. Such is teenaged angst, right? Henning and Czerwinski finally return after hearing noisy blows exchanged. “That’s not what we had in mind” Henning says hilariously and they make Lotte apologize and shake hands. Clever Lotte has palmed the key to the room in her handshake for her sister. So we’ll add that to the list of today’s Lotte felonies.
The boys walk Lotte through the hallway to the daily Buddha meeting, hopefully in time. Lotte begs a moment for the ladies room perhaps, then scurries to a stairwell window over the courtyard to witness Toni book it out of the building’s front door. Clever lass! The Street Urchin Gang and I applaud the continuation of Toni’s 3 episode evading cops arc! I hope she’s learned her lesson.
“A new year, a new case.” So begins the New Year’s daily Buddha debrief. Buddha is not a fictional character in this series which adds to his gravitas.(5) Gereon offers a quick summary of deceased Friedhelm Oelschlager. Wife says in charge of “clubs and associations,” specifically ruling on if a business is non-profit or not. A likely lucrative and corrupt career! Seven applications were found on his person which Buddha found funny, but that’s cop humor, I guess. Gereon apparently researched Friedhelm’s recent Linked-in, Facebook and Instagram posts and noted Friedhelm was living way over his civil service salary. The applications were all in the names of heads of the city’s largest so called "Ringvereins" aka “Ring Clubs” - aka gangsters. (6) Lotte enters late and is met with gentle sarcasm from Buddha. She is still quite frazzled. Buddha wraps up Oelschlager by suggesting a few detectives give a “proper talking-to” follow up to the Ringverein leaders.
Next up, the Department Store Gang, which is Bohm’s case and he’s also tardy. Buddha asks Lotte to start but she dithers, choosing instead to totally rat out Gereon’s SA riot escapades of the previous night. So busted! The table is stunned silent and embarrassed while Buddha is so unsettled he actually has to put down his cigar. Lotte’s kinda enjoying it but after some snark at Gereon, Buddha rallies and pushes forward. Detective Henning reports Officer Kuschke at Station 14 is said to have witnessed the boy slip off the ledge. Lotte cries BS on that, citing the unfinished autopsy report, then Henning mentions their eyewitness Toni with hopes they’ll learn more.
Bohm now arrives holding a familiar looking box and declares that he has solved the Department Store Case! Buddha raises his eyebrows up as high as they can go. Bohm then lays out his case with Perry Mason like drama and precision and corners Lotte so harshly that even Buddha rallies to her defense. Bohm climaxes his takedown with a laundry receipt found in the mislaid coat which is in Toni’s name. Game, set, & match and Lotte wishes she could melt under the table and vanish. Bohm piles on more with the news that Toni escaped singlehandedly from a locked interrogation room then summarizes his damning bullet points. 1 - Withholding incriminating evidence. 2 - Diverting criminal suspicions of a family member. 3 - Abetting a witness in custody to escape. Yikes. Buddha has heard enough and dismisses Lotte to wait in his office then concludes the meeting with an ominous “This is regrettable, but we have to do our job.”
As agonizing as this has been so far, it gets worse! Buddha has gathered all the facts he needs and then deftly unloads on Lotte. He’s personally disappointed in her which brings Lotte near tears as his pride in her is foundational for Lotte. She’s dismissed, salary ceased with no possibility of future detective employment. Stunned, Lotte returns her detective badge to Buddha's hands, clears her desk, dazed, then exits the Inspection 1 office for the last time. Her uneasy co-workers say nil, not even eye contact least of all Gereon.
I’m pretty devastated by this turn of events as I have been rooting for Lotte for three seasons now. The show plays somber music under the disbelieving blank face of Lotte walking the plaza alone. She enters her local bar with Jacky tending, and he understands instantly she needs a stiff drink as we watch her face finally collapse in tears. Butterfly Girl Doris enters and is all happy to see Lotte until she notes Lotte’s despair. I’m in despair as well and I’m thinking the writers better have one hell of a redemption arc for Lotte this season or they’re dead to me. Credits.
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So! I’m too distraught to do a proper exit paragraph so I’ll just phone this in by stating it’s been interesting! To appreciate the highs you have to plumb the lows, I suppose. At least I can take small comfort that they didn’t try to work “A Day Like Gold” into this episode. This will get the obligatory umpteen proofreads and revisions, and I promise I’ll work more on making sure all my verbs are aligned in the same tense, but I make no apology for run-on sentences! I'll put a new set of headshots up top with labels to keep the cast names straight and if you made it this far, thanks!
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Footnotes!
1) Yes, I checked and this credit sequence is the same as E1 and I can’t be the only one who wondered.
2) Edgar Kasabian was alive at the end of S3 so perhaps we'll find out what happened eventually?
3) There were two incidents in the last half of S3 that help explain. Toni blamed Lotte for changing eye doctors for their sister's surgery which failed. Then Lotte noticed Toni had money to spend frivolously on two pet birds and worked out that Toni let herself be pimped out to a pedo-guy (by possibly Peter - the street scamp she saw Toni talking to). It's also likely that Toni simply reached that teen-aged rebellion age where she bristles at Lotte telling her what to do, so she packed up and moved in with the Street Urchin Gang.
4) Thanks to reddit's /BabylonBerlin's katia_olafsdottir for the tip that Gereon met the young lady in Season 1 where Gereon showed off his fun disappearing cigarette bar-trick.
5) Be sure to check out Al's excellent blog, Babylon Berlin, aTV series, for a great backgrounder on Gennat "The Buddha" who was based off a real historical figure
https://babylon-berlin-series.blogspot.com/2020/03/chief-inspector-gennat-of-berlin-police.html
6) Yet another great backgrounder from Al on the Ring Clubs! Seriously, go read his entire blog, it's excellent
https://babylon-berlin-series.blogspot.com/2023/01/ring-clubs-in-berlin.html
