After I had watched Dark with English dubbed, I decided there was a better experience to be had and learned how to set the original German with English subtitles, as I said in my previous post. Then I went to the Internet and read several blog posts about the series. I printed 18 pages from Wikipedia, including a list of characters, who they are, and plot outlines of all 18 episodes.

I began watching again, stopping frequently to check these notes to figure out, for example, how the 1986 cop, Egan Tiedemann, fit in with the others: Claudia’s father, in uniform in 1953, FYI. That lasted until I got to episode 2 when I gave in and accepted confusion. In fact, on this second run-through even in a foreign language, I began to sort things out myself. But the best advice of all is just let it wash over you. Watch it twice if you want to but accept the fact that it’s like the ebb and flow of the ocean or the inevitable cycle of repeating events depicted in the story. Incomprehensible. But fun.

I feel a certain pride because I have observed my 24-year-old grandson watching Black Mirror and other such esoteria that way.

There are a few narrative problems with the series that you will have to accept as well.

When I was a child, there was a popular country/western son which proclaimed, “I’m my own grandpa”. It detailed the convoluted mating/marriage history of the singer’s hillbilly family, not so unlike present-day convolutions of divorced and recombined contemporary families. By carefully tracing his lineage, the singer comes to this conclusion. (I myself had a great grandmother who was also my great aunt.) This relates to Charlotte Doppler’s burning question. She finally meets her father as she searches through the artifacts in her adoptive grandfather’s clock shop. Who is her mother, she demands. He assures her that her mother loves her, implying that the mother is alive. She is and actually feels very close to Charlotte, but you get a prize if you figure out who this is before the big reveal.

Then there is Jonas Kahnwald’s discovery, which puts quits to his love affair with Martha Nielson, despite the fact that they are a ‘perfect fit for each other no matter what anyone says’. But the good news is that his discovery also explains the otherwise inexplicable suicide of his father Michael.

Then there is the puzzle of how Alexander got to be a Tiedemann, when we know that Claudia is the only Tiedemann offspring and her only child is a daughter.

Of course there is the burning question of where the disappearing children and adult go and sometimes return from radically changed or altogether dead.

This brings us to the whole question of time.

Okay, so let’s suspend our disbelief and accept time machines. But FOUR different time machines! Even in 1952, someone is trying to build a transporting chair, which has deleterious effects on its test subjects, even leaving out the bad taste wallpaper on the prison bunker. Then there’s the cave, which was always problematic, but became even more so after an incident at the nuclear power plant. If you find yourself in 1921, don’t even go there. The passage isn’t ready. Then there’s the brass thingee in a wooden box, which Charlotte’s grandfather built, before he first saw it. I know. Cold compresses help. Finally, there is the GOD PARTICLE, which looks more like a hairball your cat spat up if it were possessed.

And all of the people desperately trying to traverse time have the same goal to save the one they love by, incidentally, saving the world from the apocalypse. Some of these people describe others as the White Devil or evil incarnate, and the describee returns the favour.

And who the hell is Adam? We know his disfigured visage has resulted from time travel. But how did his soul get that way? What unforgettable event warped him? Did he actually cause it himself? And how does he relate to our innocent hero, Jonas? Jonas, who’s lost his father and his girl and who’s mother was never much of a prize.

And what of Ulrich, that rascally adulterer, who hasn’t turned out to be any better at finding lost boys than Egon? Gets a little impatient with his over-worked wife and look at the karmic pit he digs for himself.

As for Mikkel, his lost son – there’s a problem getting him back to 2019 and his over-worked mother. If he returns, others will never have been.

As my Aunt Mae taught me – first rule of seers and prestidigistators: don’t try to change events that you see are going to unfold. Such a change will have repercussions, you cannot foresee.

The only way the future can be changed is by changing the inner being.

Will season 3 wise up to this?