Sen Çal Kapimi Episode 23 Review

So, episode 23…. I have mentioned before just how much I love Ayse Üner Kutlu and her poetic writing? I think I have and nothing makes me appreciate it more than when it’s missing. This week’s episode wasn’t bad, actually there were parts that were great, but it felt off, the characters weren’t quite right, and it’s obviously because of a brief change in writing teams. I understand that the original team needed a break, they deserve it, but I did miss them.

There were some great Eda and Serkan scenes, and a lot of plot development, but there was also much too much Balca for my liking. The delusional person who is after one of the lovers in the main couple is a standard dizi plot filler, doesn’t mean I have to like it or the way the character is portrayed. This woman, who has only been around for a few days is madly in love with Serkan and is unable to see the crazy attraction and love that Serkan and Eda have for one another? It’s a bit too far fetched for me to take, I get the reason for it but I wish the writers could have made this part of the story at least a little more plausible. 

What I loved

Serkan and Eda

All the Serkan and Eda scenes were amazing. While I don’t love that Eda is still being stubborn about reconciling with Serkan, the way the Hande Erçel reacted in the scenes where Serkan was actively trying to seduce Eda was stellar. She wouldn’t give him the words to tell him how much she misses him, desires him, and loves him, but her body language and facial expressions told the whole story. Very well done. I also loved her messing with him, taking away his coffee, telling him to not go to Balca when they were working at Serkan’s house, trying to convince him that Balca was after him and telling him he’s naive when he refused to see it. All these flirty and funny little moments are what saved the episode. 

I also loved and appreciated that the writers displayed all the ways that the characters love each other in this one episode. We got playful banter and bickering, full-on seduction and heart-felt declarations of love in various scenes. The beginning at Serkan’s house was jealousy on display from Eda. This is where Serkan got into trouble, he is teasing Eda about being jealous of Balca, which she is 100%, but he should know her well enough not to push her too hard or she will bolt, which is exactly what happened. If he really wanted her to stay to watch the movie he should not have been pushing her buttons, Sirius was right to judge him for making a stupid move.

The chair pulling scene was smoking hot and beautifully laid out and paced. His words matched her reactions in an amazing back and forth. This is where Hande deserves all the kudos, she subtly delivered all the facial movements and discrete body language to illustrate just how much Serkan’s proximity, growly voice and words were affecting her. This is a side of Serkan we have not seen before and it’s obvious he is pulling out all the stops in order to win her back. 

The last of these intimate scenes between them was the ice skating. She has conceded that she’s lost the bet (but she really hasn’t), and therefore he gets to take her to Paris for dinner. They are skating around in a little circle, under the lights and the gently falling snow and he tells her that he has always wanted to go to Paris with the woman he loves and that’s her. Here instead of trying to seduce her, he’s trying to woo her, the subtle change in the tone of this scene is masterful. He even tells her how much he loves her in French and I’m surprised that the ice didn’t just melt under Eda. I have loved all these aspects of Serkan shown in episode 23, Kerem Bürsin is able to convey all the ways Serkan loves her, and all the ways he demonstrates that to her. The two characters and the two actors have great chemistry together and are able to convincingly portray two people who are each other’s soulmates. They make each other laugh, they tease and bicker, they long for one another, they imagine each other in their future, they have a desire for each other, they have all the components of an epic romance.

Eda’s grandmother has finally come, it’s been 23 episodes of build-up for this character so I’m really hoping they have something interesting planned for her. I am dying to find out why Eda and Ayfer are so angry at her and have completely distanced themselves from her. This is a pretty extreme thing to have done so I can only imagine that the cause of it must have been serious. I am expecting Babanne to be our next ‘villain’ of the story, and hopefully, she will be a little more interesting in that regard than our previous villains.

What I liked

Melo and Eda going to open up the house together and Eda pretending to scream and scare her. This is the comedy I like to see in this show. Also Melo being the world’s worst spy, Fifi would be so disappointed if she had seen that.

It seems like we are getting Piril's backstory, she goes to tell her father that she is getting married but she meets him in an empty parking lot and he arrives with multiple bodyguards. It seems like he might be shady or maybe this is a misdirect.

Ayfer is now an influencer and does an unboxing of the gift that Chef Alexander has given her for her birthday. She is so awkward at doing this which is the best thing that this character has done in ages. Unfortunately, she is still firmly anti-Bolat and is still pressing to get all of them out of her and Eda’s lives forever. Ayfer needs to wake up to the fact that Eda is still completely in love with Serkan and get over it. I think it was very telling that when all the kizlar were hugging her for her birthday she said ‘we will always be like this, right?’. She doesn’t want things to change and she doesn’t want to lose Eda to the Bolats. She needs to realize that she won’t lose a niece, she will gain a nephew, and a best friend and a Seyfi.

Ferit confessed his love to Ceren, which seemed a bit out of left field, but it seems like he is a man of action when it comes to love. She is hesitant, understandably, but is interested in a relationship I think. I like these two together and for me they are the most interesting of all the secondary romances.

Aydan and Seyfi are turning into the Turkish Lucy and Ethel. Their goal this week was to soften Ayfer up but they are not having much success.

What I disliked

I am not loving the characterization of Eda in these last few episodes. She has understandable trust issues when it comes to Serkan but that should not be carrying over into their professional relationship. Why is she even involved with picking a new landscape design firm to work with them, isn’t she leaving? The inconsistency and unprofessionalism are hard to take here. She demands he blindly trusts her about her choice for a landscape company when she is not experienced at this at all and if she’s wrong would mean the loss of the biggest job Art Life has ever bid on. This does not make any sense for Serkan to acquiesce to her demands, he needs to look over all the aspects of the tender, and her asking him to blindly trust her is out of line. I know that the writers are portraying this as her testing him and that’s okay for their personal relationship but not at the office. Eda is taking too much onto herself and it was very lucky that she double-checked the landscape company after Balca messed with the report to try and sabotage Eda. Serkan doing whatever he can to prove to her that he has changed, that he trusts her and she can trust him should be done within the bounds of their personal lives. 

There also needs to be some movement in Eda and Serkan’s relationship, they need to have a serious talk at the very least. It’s been 9 episodes since they broke up and 4 since Eda learned the secret that Serkan was keeping from her. There has been movement and if we watched it without sound or subtitles we might think that they were already back together, but they are not and have been in this holding pattern for a little too long now. We know they are going to eventually get back together, so there needs to be some progress in that direction, mostly on Eda’s part.  Serkan has done everything he can think of to prove to her that he’s sorry for lying, that he’s changed in the ways that she needs him to, that he loves her more than anything and he’s fully committed to her.  Now it’s Eda’s turn to do some soul searching and decide if it’s enough if he’s proven himself to her and if she loves him enough to forgive everything. I would love for them to provide a united front to combat Babanne.

The Balca character is so thinly sketched out as to be a caricature of an obsessed and deluded woman rather than an actual character. There is nothing in the plot that could possibly lead any rational person into thinking they have a chance with Serkan. I understand that this is a plot device but at least make some effort to make it reasonable. In other diziler, characters such as this are an old lover or friend, they have some history that would give some weight to the idea that there could be a romantic possibility. There is nothing here, other than a vague horoscope. This lack of sensible plot here takes the audience out of the story and creates absolutely no tension in the relationship between Eda and Serkan. The writers have to give Eda and Serkan a betting scenario to make this in the least bit interesting. My theory is that Serkan acknowledges that Balca does have designs on him, at least to himself, but in refusing to ‘see’ it, he doesn’t have to deal with it. This is avoidance behaviour and I can see Serkan having done this in the past with other women being interested in him, play dumb until they give up.

What needs to happen next

• If the fragman is to be believed, Eda and Serkan need to provide a united front against babanne and her machinations including bringing in a new suitor for Eda
• Ayfer needs to come around to being okay with Eda and Serkan’s relationship, because Eda has promised her that she would distance herself from the Bolats this is a real roadblock in Serkan and Eda’s reconciliation 
• I hope they have something juicy planned for Piril’s dad’s character, mafia maybe or a connection to another character?
• Balca needs to go sooner rather than later, she isn’t interesting on her own and without her being a threat to Eda and Serkan she doesn’t serve any purpose especially now that babanne has arrived

Ayse and her team are back for episode 24 and I can hardly wait to see what they do with the grandmother character and the reason they give us for the riff in her relationship with her daughter and granddaughter. These last few episodes written by another team of writers were fine, but lacking the symbolism and poetry we are used to from Ayse and her team.  We are almost out of the separation phase of the story and hopefully solidly into the reconciliation phase by the end of the next episode.

* All quotes are Oscar Wilde.