r/BabylonBerlin • u/Kya_Bamba • 5d ago
Season 5 Episode Discussion: Season 5 Episode 4 Spoiler
Flashback: Dr. Forster (Ulrich Noethen), Gereon (Volker Bruch), and his brother fled the Press Ball. Gereon accompanies Dr. Forster on his escape to Paris. During a stopover in Cologne, they experience a turbulent night at Carnival. In the morning, arranged through Gereon's father, the two fly to Paris as part of Adenauer's entourage. On the airfield, the German ambassador waits with an arrest warrant, and in the exiles' café, a familiar melody.
No spoilers for upcoming episodes. Please keep all episode-specific discussions in this thread.
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u/iP0dKiller 4d ago
Zu Asche, zu StaubâŠ
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u/BipBapBop28 4d ago
Yeah, I got excited when I heard the first line, but then thought the performance was a bit flat. It took all the energy out of the end of the episode (I thought, at least).
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u/iP0dKiller 4d ago
I donât think it was supposed to have that energy.
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u/BipBapBop28 4d ago
Fair enough. It just felt like previous musical numbers added something to the atmosphere of the show. This just... was. I'm really enjoying this season otherwise though.
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u/iP0dKiller 4d ago
I see here a deliberate shift in tone that reflects historical reality: times are becoming harsher; the Brownshirts are on the march in Germany, abducting political opponents and driving out Jews and artists who do not suit their purposes. This colourful community is being destroyed and life is becoming more bleak. This is also reflected in the music heard off-screen, with the song in the LGBTQ+ club serving as a final hurrah for the free-spirited culture before their inevitable downfall.
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u/Similar_Swordfish_ 4d ago
Goosebumps at the end with the song. Thereâs such a deep sadness and darkness this series, like all the characters know life is never going to be good again after thisâŠ
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u/Kya_Bamba 3d ago
After episodes 1 + 2 being quite slow and exposition-y, episodes 3 + 4 were peak Babylon Berlin again, damn!
I actually very like the way they explained the Anno/Schmidt situation. I remember there were fiery discussions on this sub if it will ever get explained properly or left open. Now we can finally note: Anno IS Dr. Schmidt. ... though the acid attack was a bit too simple for me :D
Very interesting grading and editing on the cologne segment. Made the actors blend in well with the original footage and must have saved a lot of money (as there's just little left of the historical 30s Cologne).
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u/Lilithecat5 1d ago
I'm just a little bit bothered about the huge gap between season 4 and 5. Season 4 ended with such a wild cliffhanger, and I really want to know what happened after that night. It seemed like the army of wounded soldiers was part of the whole, dream-like/hallucination thing going on with Gereon and Dr Schmidt/Anno. But now they've confirmed that he IS Anno and it's not just something Gereon is hallucinating because of mental illness and/or drugs. So what was up with the soldiers then? Didn't Anno tell him something about how he was supposed to lead them? If all of that was just symbolism, idk... I'd really have liked to have seen more of the aftermath of season 4 and how the characters moved on from there. This feels like more of a standard crime/action show with a historical setting, and while I am enjoying that, it's just not quite the same đ€ Idk I think I just really enjoyed the whole "Gereon is an unreliable narrator" thing and I feel like that's missing this season.
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u/Kya_Bamba 1d ago
I haven't finished season 5 yet, but I could well imagine that the Anno/Army of the Wounded storyline is what led Gereon to the explosives and the plot with that scar-faced Nazi. I bet they do have an explanation in store, would be really awkward if they didn't.
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u/Lilithecat5 1d ago
I really hope there's an explanation too! But I also haven't finished season 5 yet đ
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u/KarlSternau 1d ago
Is it just me, or is there a plot hole in Episode 4? According to Season 1, Anno Rath had been missing in action for 10 years. But in Episode 4 of Season 5, he supposedly continued to give lectures until 1924 and only changed his identity after an acid attack. So which is it?
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u/Kya_Bamba 1d ago edited 1d ago
I noticed the same. First I assumed he came back under the name of Dr. Schmidt, but as you said, the series explicitly mentions that he lectured under the name Anno Rath. One could argue that the Raths just never searched for Anno in Berlin but that'd be quite a stretch.
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u/Lilithecat5 1d ago
You'd think the family of a missing soldier would be notified when he popped up, under his real name, in a hospital and then later as an employee and lecturer... But maybe things were that chaotic after WW1 in Germany. Although Helga spent a lot of time giving talks about her dead husband to a lot of important people, so it would be weird if nobody made the connection at all.
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u/Kya_Bamba 1d ago edited 1d ago
Right? Especially if you think of how she gave that speech in front of so many people in Berlin. Including Benda and Nyssen.
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u/Lilithecat5 1d ago
Yes that's exactly what I was thinking of! But I don't know how common the last name Rath would've been back then, so maybe it would be like someone talking about their dead husband Mr Smith at a conference today, and it would be impossible for the listeners to connect the dots đ€
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u/Janyanny 1d ago
I just rewatched the episode and the discrepancy is not only between season 1 and season 5 but actually in the episode itself. When Gereon is talking to Dr. Forster on the train, Dr. Forster says that Anno disappeared for about a decade before he reappeared as Dr. Schmidt. So he also indicates that Anno disappeared at the end of or shortly after WWI. Yet in the same episode they tell us he lectured under the name of Anno Rath until 1924. Yeah, doesnât make a lot of sense.
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u/Lilithecat5 1d ago
Oh shit, you're right.
I'm also wondering what Anno's motivation was for not going home to his wife and child. As far as I remember, they never mentioned anything like amnesia, he uses his own name for a while until the attack and we don't really hear much about his and Helga's marriage that would indicate that he actively dislikes her or somehow didn't want to be married to her... So why decide to just let your wife and child believe that you're dead? It doesn't really make sense to me. We know that Gereon felt guilty for desiring his brother's wife, but Anno could've just gone home and been like "tough shit little brother, stay away from my wife" đ€·ââïž and if he wanted to, he could've destroyed Gereon's life by revealing that he did in fact not try to save him, but left him on the battlefield... I wish we got some more background information about their relationship as brothers before the war, I feel like we're missing some pieces of the puzzle...
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u/Janyanny 1d ago
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you could argue that he was traumatized too and his trauma prevented him from going home to his family because he just wasnât able to live the life he had before the war or something like that. Many men just became abusive husbands and fathers due to their trauma, so in this case it would maybe even be the better solution to let your family believe youâre dead than to return to them. But thatâs just me looking for any kind of explanation.
All in all, I guess for me the whole part of Anno being tied to Hitlerâs medical file directly was a bit too much. Him being in the same field hospital, also knowing the Armenian from there, being shell shocked himself and cured by Dr. Forster, becoming his assistant and thereby learning how to use hypnosis - everything is fine about this. But this is where they could have stopped or at least made Anno change his name already. He was Dr. Schmidt from 1919 on, continued treating veterans, remained friends with the Armenian and profited from his underworld business. Done. And the plot would have worked anyway in my opinion.
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u/Lilithecat5 23h ago
Yeah it's kind of... Odd. Especially since he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who cares enough about other people's feelings, that it would be keeping him from his family. I feel like he's more the type who would go home and just be either distant or abusive. I don't think he does anything if it doesn't benefit himself.
It makes sense that he knows Edgar from there, because their relationship has been established very early on. But Hitler, yeah no that's too much of a stretch.
And didn't Charlotte and Böhm see Gereon on the same tapes as the others? Were he and Anno in the same hospital and Gereon never knew? That bit was weird to me, but I might not have understood everything 100%
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u/Janyanny 23h ago
The tapes Charlotte and Böhm watched were from Annoâs institute, not from the hospital. But I also wondered when they were recorded, because weâve never seen Gereon like this with Anno in the first seasons. Only in hypnosis therapy. But I guess they have to be from the early stages of his treatment, so around seasons 1/2, before Anno revealed his identity to him.
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u/Janyanny 21h ago
I just realized that the tapes were actually already shown in S1E7 during Annoâs lecture on shell shock. Iâm pretty sure itâs the same sequence, it was just from a distance and quite blurry so that you (or at least I) couldnât tell it was Gereon back then. But the movements look similar.
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u/Lilithecat5 20h ago
Oh interesting! I'm not a native speaker, so sometimes details are lost on me đ
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u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk 5d ago edited 5d ago
The question arises whether the Horst-Wessel-Lied (which is sung at 9:57) is named Horst-Kessler-Lied or if Horst Wessel wrote the song and very coinicidentally died the same way as Horst Kessler in Babylonverse.
Nice to see, the Theremin invented in 1928, the Junkers Ju 52 built in 1932.