Trailer for the third season of "Manaich"/here 11
1. The last scene of "Manaich", and in particular: the look on Izzy Bacher's face, when he is told of the end of the saga, is the most beautiful moment in its third season, the one that actually marks the most significant Israeli series of the last few years - the one that will mix concepts like obsession, Infatuation and revenge and turn them into an example of the daily struggle between good and evil, will give birth again to Shalom Esaig and Amos Tamm as valued actors, and will correspond incessantly with the reality around them.
From here on - spoilers
At this moment Izzy realizes that the race is over, the dogged chase is over, and that his former best friend is gone too.
This ends a sad story for him, during which he lost his wife, father and close friends in the name of professional integrity.
He did manage to build a new world out of it, but he builds it more bitter than ever.
The struggle of Izzy Bacher, Don Quixote in the uniform of the National Guard, is the heart of "Menayech". He embodies within himself the struggle between justice and arrogance, between honesty and cynicism, and between stubbornness and throwing. In doing so, he was able to project meanings not only on the internal plot, but on The entire State of Israel. Izzy's battle is the battle of Israeli society: will we be willing to insist on what is right, or will we flow with the rot. This is Shalom Assig's life's work. There has not been a truer detective than him in these years.
Therefore, this whip, which reminds how amazing the series is This was at its peak, illustrating how much this hero was actually missing in the saga's signature season. The emotional tension between Izzy and Barak - which is what turned "Manaich" from a good police series into a work of depth - faded and was replaced by a sense of the depths of the conspiracy, and a focus on the other two sides of the triangle. Izzy didn't really get to come full circle. Not with his ex-wife, not with Commissioner Dodo Eini and in fact not even in front of Barak.
Roy Idan and his partners may have sewn up all the edges of the saga with impressive professionalism, but they abandoned its original hero.
At least he survived, but he couldn't stop the rot.
Shalom Assig, "Manaich" season 3/here 11
2. Which naturally leads to Barak Harel, the main villain and main protagonist of the third season.
The world that Barak built collapsed in front of his eyes, and Amos Tamm, which was revealed to us mainly through the facial expressions of Amos Tamm, whose restrained acting made the character particularly frightening.
But at the end of the road, despondent and pale, even before his story is over, he is already left with nothing, hated by all his friends and partners, whom he sells to save his own ass.
In fact, his only friend in the world is his lawyer, Atalia ben Moshe, she is also unscrupulous and, like him, an expert in bending the law and justice systems.
Barak foresees all this collapse, without being able to change anything.
He loses his charisma, his control over people, and also their trust in him.
This crash is not obvious: the logic that accompanied "Manaich" throughout its first seasons stated that the bad guys win, that there is always another wheel to turn, that there is always a way to avoid punishment.
In this sense, the last season has a sense of repentance: in the end, you can't deceive all the people all the time, you can't lie and steal and kill without paying a price.
The struggle is Sisyphean, but in the end judgment day comes.
The question is whether redemption also comes with it.
Barak, like Izzy, does not really get to close the circle in the form of a monologue of openness and taking responsibility.
Not in front of Izzy, not in front of his uncle (another major character who has faded away), and not even in front of his daughter.
When she tells him in the last conversation that he is not a bad person, he is silent.
Even in this moment, so final, he is unable to admit the truth.
There is some comfort in the fact that he did confirm to Izzy that Hanan was back in the sights, but it doesn't really make up for it, as the gun that fires in the third act will attest.
Amos Tamm, "Manaich" season 3/here 11
3. The last side of the triangle is Tal Ben Harosh, which before it gets its own spin-off - as revealed in Walla!
Culture - she received extremely extreme plot twists, including a relationship with a driving offender, joining a criminal organization, and a nasty stalking of Barak's daughter.
She is positioned almost perfectly between the two characters, and demonstrates what would happen if Izzy were to get completely lost in his own obsession, and turn from hero to villain - and try to get back to himself.
At her lowest ebb, Tal, played by Liraz Hammi's rugged character, becomes the equivalent of Barak - a police officer in the service of organized crime, one who is ready to exceed any code of conduct on the way to the goal.
Although she manages to stop at the last moment, it is a very dangerous route.
Like her partners in the series, she also almost loses everything along the way.
Although she makes a fascinating decision, saves Barak and Shira for a moment, and even gains ultimate redemption in the form of pregnancy, after the baby she lost at the beginning of the previous season - hints of this were planted throughout the series until the last episode confirmed it.
And yet, it's hard to say it's a happy ending.
She also, in the end, ends this chapter on a bitter note.
4. This tangled web, in which lies the essence of the series, moved aside in the third part and gave way to another obsession - that of state attorney Kobi Honig, who is determined to prosecute the prime minister and his followers, and is ready to go to great lengths for this.
Honig is an example of the ambivalence of Menaich and Idan, who created a disgusting but well-reasoned character through her, one who, despite the cynicism, receives far-reaching justifications for her actions.
Kobi is the most senior among a series of researchers and attorneys who amuse themselves in power games.
Obsessed like Izzy, unrestrained like Barak.
Most of all: he is a Rorschach stain.
Those who choose to look at the series through political glasses will find in Kobe what they want, a sociopathic villain or a stubborn warrior of justice who uses the power in his hands to settle accounts with those who escaped punishment.
Even if nothing in the actions is blurred here, screenwriter Roy Idan deliberately avoids taking the character definitively one way or the other, as well as the entire series.
You can argue that the series is very right-wing and you can just as easily argue that it's actually left-wing, and you can also accept the fact that at its best, "Manaich" really enjoyed using a distinctly comedic tone to have fun at the expense of Israeli politics of the last decade.
Those who see it as propaganda will find that in many ways it undercuts this analysis, of course on purpose.
Liraz Hammi, "Manaich" season 3/here 11
At the same time, she can only blame herself for this interpretive attempt, after this season the pot of parody has overflowed.
The clear citations of the prime minister's affairs, Pegasus, the relationship between the state attorney and the outgoing prosecutor, and more and more - all these received more and more volume, sometimes in a tiresome way to the point of rolling eyes, at the expense of the main characters and the murky relationships between them.
Even if these moves advanced the plot, they created a fundamental alienation between the developments and the foundations of the series.
What's more: in a series that manages a huge amount of characters, many of those present in this wing of the plot were completely instrumental to the resolution of the saga, but without significant psychological depth behind them.
And not only there.
The final dish may be a sugary political-criminal thriller, but that's what Netflix is for, and from "Manaich", after the previous seasons, the expectations were higher.
More in Walla!
First publication: one of the favorite characters of "Manaich" is getting her own series
To the full article
5. As in the previous two seasons, "Manaich" ascended toward its end and presented a spectacular, exciting, impressive and interesting end to the entire saga, with the closure of all the ends, the fall of all the central screws in the evil mechanism, and also revenge by Barek on the part of Hanan's brother Selma, to remind that there are things that no plea agreement can erase, and there are angers and insults that never subside.
At last, the crime was solved.
As we said before, the bad guys definitely lost, and by a lot.
Or actually not?
Barak's murder may topple the house of cards in the prime minister's case, and open Pandora's boxes that the prosecution would have preferred to remain closed.
Who knows, maybe when all the dominoes fall the whole picture will be turned upside down.
But this is already material for season four, or for the epilogue.
And the truth is, that's what I missed the most at the end of the last episode: an epilogue.
A few words that will break the general silence or the small talk, a monologue that will sign a road full of bumps and overlook all this from afar.
It comes easy, at least.
But instead, we are left with his mournful look, as he remains speechless after the big crescendo, and what goes through his mind - stays with him and fades into the credits.
The tired detective leaves this mystery to us.
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