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Ulmen, Yardim: Unexpectedly touching
Photo: André Kowalski / Joyn
You can't deny it and you don't want to deny it: Of course it's about bodily fluids again.
At least sweat flows while watching when »Jerks« with the fifth season now swings into the final stretch of self-inflicted, painfully escalating everyday suffering.
Mishap chain reaction machine
When Fahri Yardim and Christian Ulmen play bold, battered versions of themselves, with a crude script and lots of improvisation, it's still the most beautiful shambles in German series.
Even if we now know the irrational patterns of their impulse-driven self-demolition.
Even if, according to the announcement, the last ten episodes are less shocking than in the naturally more surprising early seasons.
Have you simply become tougher as the series has progressed, or have the »Jerks« at least become a bit age-appetizing?
Presumably, and that's also reassuring, there had to come a point at which the tasty thunder farts could no longer be topped.
Anyone who has had artificial anus bursts in the swimming pool, confused period blood with raspberry ice cream and served human flesh to their unsuspecting dinner party guests inevitably makes anal-stimulating AfD politicians seem almost harmless.
But luckily, only almost.
If necessary, the mishap chain reaction machine can be shifted up a gear without an emergency stop button.
And the accident of Ulmen's broken arm truthfully explained that he had to masturbate with the nasty bus driver and had an unfortunate fall when he saw that his daughter was watching him.
Waiting for the downfall
As contemporary markers, unmistakable 2020 themes appear as backdrops or catalysts: climate activists, queer lifestyles and sensitivity to toxic behavior.
Unlike many insultingly sluggish jokes of lazy comedy, these topics are not laughed at here, not mockingly looked down on: Ulmen and Yardim are the jokers themselves because they bug the climate activists because they are having an affair with Sarah-Lee Heinrich from the Green Youth hope to confuse queerness with a lifestyle decision and vainly see themselves as cancel victims because of a role cancellation because the ex-girlfriend made negative comments about a past relationship in a podcast.
"It's like Luke!" Yardim barks.
When watching, one waits, when experienced »Jerks«, like on a roller coaster ride for the downfall: with comfortable disgust.
You can guess some of the course of the plot, others - such as the intimate masturbation with the bus driver - you don't see coming with the worst will.
Who are we ashamed of now?
Unexpectedly touching and therefore special is a flashback episode to the year 1986, which tells how Christian and Fahri found each other: They became friends as children after Fahri and Christian wet their pants at a performance of "Vogelhochzeit" in front of the assembled parents helped him out of his embarrassing mess.
With this look back at a time when shame could get you even worse because you didn't yet know that it would fade away again, the genesis of this duo and their painfully pain-free life becomes surprisingly tangible: born from deep insecurities, at the same time harshly illuminated and looked at tenderly.
So if »Jerks« comes to an end, who are we ashamed of now?
The fifth season »Jerks« starts on February 2nd on JoynPLUS+ and will later be shown on ProSieben in FreeTV.
