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Scene from "How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)" (with Damian Hardung, Leonie Wesselow, Lena Urzendowsky, Ruben Brinkman): Breaking Bad in West Germany
Photo: Bernd Spauke / Netflix
Of course it had to be that way. Moritz (Maximilian Mundt) has to choose. Because we can only tolerate cognitive dissonances badly: Those who vote for the FDP shouldn't hope for tax increases, those who smoke chain shouldn't want to become the oldest marathon participant in the world. And Moritz can't always be a good buddy, an unscrupulous businessman, A student, an internationally sought-after drug dealer and the dear son of a police officer. At some point the contradictions eat up life - and that's why Moritz has to decide now: fame, money, power, so »nerd today, boss tomorrow« - or is it more like a youth prison?
Anyone wondering how this is even possible with being a schoolboy, selling drugs and being a policeman has not seen the first two seasons of the award-winning German Netflix series "How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)". You can read here why this is a mistake (and what everything happens, spoilers: a lot!). In the third season, which can now be seen on the streaming platform, the series creators Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann consistently finish what they started two years ago. That alone makes the series worth watching. But of course you also really want to know whether Moritz succeeds in forcing his different identities together, or whether it breaks him.
At first it looks a lot like the latter. Since his online pill mail order company has been cooperating with a major Dutch investor, the unscrupulous business practices of drug dealers have given him stomach ache. His great love Lisa (Lena Klenke), because of whom he got into the drug business in the first place, flirts with others. His best friends and former business partners Lenny (Danilo Kamperidis) and Dan (Damian Hardung) no longer want to hear from him. The police are on his heels and his father is increasingly suspicious. And then the Abitur is getting closer and the Goethe text just doesn't want to make sense. In short: Moritz only has problems on the caustic scale.
In the third season, "HTSDO (F)", the teenage life of Generation Z is told in a terrific real and rapid manner against the backdrop of West German small town wasteland. The author Natalie Thomas and the authors Philipp Käßbohrer, Stefan Titze, Sebastian Colley and Mats Frey let the young people speak in such rough dialogs that one sometimes forgets that they were written. And laughs very often. That this works is of course also due to the great cast.
Maximilian Mundt, Danilo Kamperidis, Lena Klenke and Damian Hardung play incredibly fast and yet sensitive.
And although the egomaniac Moritz constantly lets his classmates and family run up, chats smartly into the camera and otherwise shines with unpleasant traits, Mundt succeeds in what Bryan Cranston as drug-making chemistry teacher Walter White never managed in "Breaking Bad": insecurities and injuries of the To reveal a figure without legitimizing the behavior it has created, i.e. somehow portraying a narcissist as something worthwhile.
Everyone loses a piece of innocence
In the new episodes everyone loses a piece of their innocence.
One is so worried about her career that she hurts friendships, the other has to deal with the bitter realization of being either fetishized or overlooked.
And with the seriously ill Lenny, everything is really at stake now: live or die - and if live, then how?
(And where do you get the money for the expensive pig cancer therapy?)
It goes without saying that all of this has to result in a brilliant finale.
Its tiny plausibility gaps can be forgiven »HTSDO (F)«.
Maybe you don't even have to make a decision.
Maybe you can cope with cognitive dissonances after all - and withstand contradictions, especially as you grow up.
