Three episodes in I discovered I could change the audio settings so everything was in english and I didn’t have to read subtitles from 8 different languages.
I watched it. I kind of liked it, was kind of confused, and not in the least surprised that it’s already cancelled.
The Anachronistic Clue in the message “May your coffee kick in before reality does” is extremely subtle though unmistakable. The verbal idiom “kick in” meaning to start working was already current in 1899, I think. It originally referred to steam engines, which would jerk or “kick” when the motor began turning over or engaged the gears. Yet the sentence reads as late 20th- or early-21st century style. It must be because the phrase “kick in” was only used for literal mechanical engines, and its figurative use presumably began years later. The mention of “reality” as something not taken for granted is a viewpoint that only arose in the 20th century with Dada and modernist literature. It’s the remarkable subtlety of the anachronism that impresses me. The elements that make it up are not anachronistic, only the sentence as a whole, and then only as an impression.
I gave this a try based on seeing this thread come back from the dead. I didn’t know about it, and I did like Dark.
The show is pure, distilled atmosphere at the cost of everything else. And that is enough to hold my interest, I think I’ll finish the season. It just looks good and interesting and creepy in a fascinating way.
But man is the writing hokey and lazy at times, right out of the gate. I actually did LOL at one of the first things you see in the show: a newspaper with a front page “breaking news” sized headline: “NO ADDITIONAL NEWS ABOUT A THING THAT HAPPENED FOUR MONTHS AGO”.
Interesting. I’m kind of fascinated by idioms in relation to usage in translated languages or anachronistic usage. I often hear idioms used in ‘period’ shows or movies that seem too modern for the time setting. Usually I just chalk it up (idiom!) to a simple mistake on the writers’ part. Sometimes, though, if I look it up I discover that the idiom is actually correct for the time period. I can’t think of another example where I’ve heard of an intentional ‘anachronistic clue’ in idiom form, though.
I wondered if it might simply be a mistake in translation of the subtitles or overdubs, since ‘Dark’, the previous show from the creators of ‘1899’, was in German, dubbed / subtitled in English. But I looked it up, and apparently the scripts were originally written completely in English, then parts of it were later translated to whatever language each character happened to speak. I still think the anachronistic use of ‘kick in’ could be a simple mistake (if it even is an anachronism, as you point out), but if intentional, bravo on the part of the writers.
Thanks! You know, I watched the show 2 years ago, but I’ve been mulling over that sentence ever since and had to say something.
For the 19th-century mind, reality was assumed to be so solidly established that it needed no mention. Then not only Dada and modernism but, most of all, quantum physics called “reality” into question, in a way that the 19th-century worldview never could have done. In subtle ways, the sentence would read as bizarre to a 19th-century person, even if it were hard to articulate exactly why.