Deutschland86 Season 2 Episode 8 Review: Vula
Lisa Babick
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Did you ever want to reach into your television screen and slap someone silly? Or maybe just choke them to death?
That's exactly what I wanted to do to Tina's interrogator on Deutschland86 Season 2 Episode 8 because what she had to endure was absolutely outrageous.
But then again, I'm a liberal, and she's in an East German prison in the 80s -- so there's a steep ideological difference of opinion here.
The most offensive of all his tactics was when he used her children against her to try to make her feel guilty for wanting to get out of crazyville into someplace normal.
If they were so concerned about her children, those girls wouldn't be sitting in an East German orphanage with headmistresses telling them their mother abandoned them and other blatant lies.
WTF is wrong with those people?
Despite all their attempts, Tina has balls of steel. It's difficult, but she's keeping it together for the most part, not even giving in when they took one of her teeth in order to get her to talk.
At least that's what I think they did to her.
Barbaric practices just so they could find out who was betraying their country.
You'd think that maybe if people felt so strongly about leaving, the East Germans would just let them go.
If some people are not willing to support the cause, why should the country support them?
But that's not the way the East Germans think, and the more I watch this show, the more my opinion has changed from one of tolerance of another country's ideology (see my Deutschland86 Season 1 Episode 1 review) to the thought that some countries are clearly out of their minds and need to be reformed.
What's surprising is that despite the horrific tactics they used against Tina, the condition of the prison seemed a little more tolerable than what we see in American prisons.
They didn't even handcuff her as they moved her from place to place, just made her sit on her hands.
Still, her not being given any information on her daughters is excruciating and it's taking everything she has to not cave in to their demands.
She knows that if she comes clean about the people involved, she'd have to give up Ingrid and her brother. She's not ready to do that just yet.
Someone is going to come to her rescue. She's not going to be stuck there forever, that's for sure.
Tobias -- surprisingly -- tried to make a deal on behalf of the West Germans to release 13 East Germans in exchange for Martin and on his list was all of the Fischers.
Unfortunately, he had to present the list to Annett and she wasn't having any of it. She'd do the trade, but not for any of the Fischers.
Annett feels betrayed by Thomas, and I'm starting to think it's not because he rejected communism but that he left her and didn't include her in all his secret plans.
She might even be bitter that he wrote about it all in his book, but I think it has more to do with him leaving her.
When did money become more important to this country than human life?
Tina
He gave her life. She loved Martin, but Thomas was so much more fun, and he was there for her when Martin was doing his spy thing.
And then there's the real possibility that Thomas is the father of Max, and that right there might be the real reason she's being such a bitch.
I don't understand Tobias. Whose side is he on? East Germany? West Germany? Or whoever fits with his beliefs of the day?
The same can be said for Mrs. Netz who is apparently Brigitte's boss.
Wasn't Netz taking pictures with a spy pen at one point? Is she a double agent, too?
It seems that no one can be trusted on either side of the Wall.
Martin just wants his son and is jumping through every hoop to make it happen, even agreeing to kidnap Lenora to prove his worth to the BND.
Of course, it wasn't going to happen (even though he tried really hard), but luckily Brigitte saved him from BND banishment.
I want to believe she really does love him, but I also believe she has an ulterior motive that I have yet to figure out.
Maybe she just sees him as her ticket out of the spy game, but she had him pegged the moment she met him.
Looking back, she had to have known who he was and endeared herself to him just so she could use him as an asset.
The minute she gets whatever she's after is the minute that relationship is history. Martin will never see her again.
Thomas wasn't the only one Tobias was trying to help out. He made an effort to visit Alex at the hospice and even kept him from being arrested at the pharmaceutical company.
Alex desperately wants his hospice patients to be part of Amend's AZT trials.
While I do appreciate the AIDS storyline, it's starting to get lost in all the other drama happening in the series.
I understand the irony of the pharmaceutical company willing to test drugs on unknowing East Germans but refusing to use volunteer subjects to test AZT, but it feels like we're being cheated out of something that could be much more developed.
The AIDS storyline is connected but almost as an afterthought which is how I feel about Rose's Apartheid story as well.
It's true that a lot of important things happened in the 80s but trying to fit in everything in only 10 episodes is ambitious, but we'll see how it all fits together as the season winds down.
Only two episodes left to see how it all turns out!
Over to you!
What did you think of "Vula"?
Hit the comments and share your thoughts!
If you need to catch up, you can watch Deutschland86 online right here via TV Fanatic!
