Angry at the world for finding out we missed several good Tatorts over the Christmas holidays, including two of my favorite cities, Kiel and Leipzig. Also realized that I had missed several key moments of the Hessen Tatort with the circus right at the beginning which would have made the episode a LITTLE more comprehensible.
Polizei Ruf is no longer the unwanted stepchild of Sunday night viewing for me: I was happy to see the Rostock officers again (have got to figure out the English word for these kommissars). We even remembered their backstory without prompting: I recalled that the woman (WHAT is her name?) has some kind of DDR flight childhood trauma and R. remembered that Sascha's wife is having an affair with his colleague.
This wasn't a great thriller. There seemed to be too few scenes and all the characters habited them: the neighborhood of Sascha and -- I'll call her Lena -- these neighborhoods seemed incredibly similar. Do they live in the same neighborhood? The police station. The hospital. There was no private sphere where one character was and no one else was, except a CHEAP hotel, where Sascha's wife (a Mr. Burns look-a-like) bonked the colleague, and then celebrated with champagne in bed afterwards, eliciting the comment from R.: Schleimig.
Of course, betraying the police officer husband is not allowed, so there were juxtaposed shots of the wife going at it while her son cries in panic over a sudden asthma attack. Rabenmutter, get thee back to thy child. It was way beyond all subtlety and just annoying.
Also, we saw for the first time that Sascha wears a very brightly inked compass rose on his back with 'Vivian' tattoed underneath. How can you betray someone who has your NAME inked on their BACK?
Side note: Vivian seemed like such a different type from both Sascha and her lover: could not see any chemistry between them at all.
Things I liked: These commissioners are real German types: no effort made to style them or pretty them up. I love that about German TV. Lena is fit, but wears awful clothes, no make-up, and her hair in an unflattering hairstyle. Sascha is rumpled, disheveled, and has a pot belly seemingly just stuck on to his body, as his limbs seems quite normal. I like the police colleagues crazy hair -- long curls put into a sumo wrestlers knot --, but it didn't fit to his character, which seemed uptight and permanently on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I don't think he altered his expression once during the whole episode.
I have to go... let's just say the magic wand of coincidence also generously spread its stardust all along this episode as well. It was obvious who the murderer was after 45 minutes and