Maraşlı: Episode 9 Review

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Plot Summary

The intelligence agents pick up Celal and tell him that if Mahur is gone then they don't have any use for him anymore. He screams at them that the person responsible for his daughter’s shooting is in the Türel house and they can’t cut him out. 

Mahur returns from the airport and surprizes Maraşlı at home. They embrace and she asks him if he meant what he said, and he tells her that he’s fallen in love with her. Her father calls and tries to persuade Mahur to return home but she’s defiant and tells him she won’t. Celal tries to convince her that she needs to go home.

Mahur ultimately goes home for a family meeting where Aziz tells them that he didn’t kill Ömer, he truly was in an accident, but he had framed Ömer by planting drugs causing him to go to jail for 15 years. He asks for their forgiveness and explains it was for love. He had loved their mother so much he was willing to have an innocent man go to jail. 

Savaş takes Ilhan to a meeting in a warehouse where he’s introduced to their partners in the drug smuggling business, a father and son duo, but Ilhan is less than thrilled to meet them. He decides to turn them in to the police, proving he isn’t the smartest of the Türel siblings, but they had anticipated that Ilhan might do something like that and removed all traces of drugs from the warehouse. Savaş tells them he will take care of the situation but the son decides to take Ilhan out and tries to kill him. Ilhan is saved by Celal, who takes the son hostage and uses him as leverage, and finds out where a huge shipment of drugs is being held.

Aziz has a heart attack and is rushed to the hospital, he pulls through and when Celal goes to see him he makes Celal swear he will not be romantically involved with Mahur. Celal promises and breaks the tenuous bond that had formed between himself and Mahur. 

At the end, Savaş is at his father Ömer’s grave and vows revenge and is joined by someone. It turns out that it’s Necati and he and Savaş embrace and he calls him ‘abi’ (brother). 

 

Episode Analysis

The Plot and the Players

A slower outing for Maraşlı this week with more of a focus on the interpersonal relationships between Mahur and Celal and Mahur and her father. The main plot movement was the introduction to the drug runners and the reveal of Necati as the person in the Türel house working with Savaş.

Mahur doesn’t get on the plane. She surprizes him at home and they have a stilted reunion. He’s glad that she’s back but it’s hard to tell if it’s because he loves her or that because she is his contact with her family, he’s glad she back because it means he stays on the investigation. He has stated that he loves her, but it was also the plan from the beginning for him to get close to her. This has been a tool the writers have used throughout the series, as the audience, we are never sure if we can trust what we think we know. So even though he has said that he loves her and says some poetic things about her on his recordings, can we trust that those are his true feelings. It seems that he likes her, despite their different personalities, and he appreciates how good she is with Zeliş, but one wonders if we can trust that he has fallen in love with her. He is a very traditional man and having been in the military he’s very disciplined, and his only goal here is to get revenge on anyone who had anything to do with Zeliş shooting. Given that the original plan was to woo her, it’s understandable that we are skeptical of his true intentions and feelings. 

We can see that Celal is struggling in this episode. Zeliş isn’t any better and is still refusing to interact with him. He doesn’t like to have to deceive Mahur and it seems as if he is used to being in charge and having to go along with the intelligence agent's agenda and timing is starting to wear on him. We see his frustration when he pulls over and screams out his rage in the car. This was a very interesting character reveal this week, Celal is the epitome of calm and cool when in physical danger but we can see the cracks in the facade when he is under emotional stress. Zeliş injuries coupled with being so close to getting to the people who hurt her are fraying his edges and he is chafing at being under the control of the intelligence agents. 

Ilhan needs to watch more television, he should have been a lot more careful about informing on the drug smugglers. It’s hard to imagine that he thought it could be that easy to get rid of his Savaş problem. He does confide in Celal about the loss of the company and the drug smuggling so now Celal has another way into the Türel circle as he offers to help Ilhan. 

Necati being the one in the family to be working with Savaş was not a huge surprise, although after finding out that he was the one to kill Ömer there was doubt. From the fragman, it does seem that he is also Ömer’s son which means he killed his father. When did he find out who his real father was? How long have he and Savaş been in contact? They seemed very close when they met up at the cemetery so one assumes that they have been in contact for years. Was Necati the one who stopped Savaş from killing Maraşlı, and if so, why? Is Necati the big boss or is there someone else pulling all of their strings?

Aziz is desperately trying to keep his family together but he isn’t even aware of how close they are to imploding. Ilhan still hasn’t told him about the situation that the family company is in. It’s challenging to have much sympathy for Aziz as he put an innocent man in prison, stole the woman he loved, and then lied about the man for years. 

 

My theories and analysis

Full disclosure, this romance isn’t working in my opinion. It seems too soon in the story for them to have really strong feelings about one another. The fact that Celal has chosen to try and gain access to the Türel family through her, by whatever means necessary, means that the love declaration, while possibly sincere, is suspect. He will do anything to avenge Zeliş including lying to and deceiving Mahur. The writers have backed away from the romance, for now, whether that’s a permanent thing or a way to build up the star-crossed lovers angle remains to be seen, but Celal has access to the Türel’s through Ilhan now so he won’t need to be as close to Mahur. The romance seems untenable given his mission, the fact that he must continue to lie to her, and even because of who Celal is as a man. It would be hard to believe that he could be her lover knowing that it’s based on lies, his conscience and moral code would prevent this from happening. 

Burak Deniz and Alina Boz, don’t have any heat together to make a physical attraction obvious, which leaves us to rely on what they say, which due to the nature of their story, is distinctly unreliable. If the writers are going with Celal and Mahur in love as a plot, I hope that they give Alina Boz more to do than just be the love interest/object of affection. From the beginning of the story, she has been the damsel in need of rescuing, and now that she isn’t in immediate danger I would hope that the writers could come up with something more for her to do. I still have a fond wish that she is somehow involved in the conspiracy, for while I don’t wish for her to be a villain necessarily, it would be a more interesting role for her than impossible love/damsel in distress. My biggest fear is that she will be killed off as yet another motivating factor for Celal. 

Having Necati be the family betrayer was predictable, we have been saying from the beginning that he is probably Ömer’s son. The great twist is that he was the one to kill Omer, or at least we think so right now. Sadyk in a fit of panic goes to dig up Ömer’s body from the back garden and there is no body. Could Ömer still be alive and be the big boss behind Savaş and Necati? 

I’m loving Serhat Kiliç as Necati and he and Savaş together are going to be awesome. I thought that the dynamic of the two half-brothers was very interesting as it was obvious that Savaş is the subservient one in their relationship, but I do hope the plot is more inventive than the ‘I’m taking revenge for the killing my father’ plot that is so common in Turkish (and other) television series. I am a little disappointed that this is the motivating factor for the story, to be honest, and I wonder why it has taken so long for the brothers to take revenge for Ömer? Were there certain things that needed to fall into place for them to be able to set their plan in motion?

Last Updated: Mar 12, 2021 23:08 pm (UTC) Filed Under:
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Krisha (@krisha_writes) is a Dizilah.com « guest » contributor.