"In this life, there is nothing more important than love."
Hello everyone!
BUT,
I ran into this one on television here in my country when another Turkish soap had to go on hiatus (because it's still filming and we were catching up to it with how many parts we'd aired already) and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it, despite the fact that I eventually moved to Netflix to finish it off.
See, when you have to sit through two hours plus change considering there's a whole bunch of commercials included, you'll try and find a different route.
Netflix gave me that, being so kind as to have it in its lineup, which definitely made my summer!
And so without further ado, let's check in with murder, mayhem, and money laundering, shall we?
Black Money Love, or Kara Para Ask, is up next.
I really have nothing whatsoever that deals with Turkish soap operas I don't think, so no links to be had, sadly. BUT there may be in the future, who knows?
Anyway, Black Money Love is the story of Elif, a jewellery designer from a prominent and rich family, and Ömer, a police officer from a rather poor family, whose paths cross one fateful night when her father and his fiancée are discovered together in a car, murdered with gunshot wounds to the head, and with some diamonds lying about.
Turns out, both of them were in a jewellery smuggling ring, which was what got them killed.
Now the story is definitely a whole lot more convoluted than that and it takes a while until you get all the pieces to fit together into this big puzzle, but basically, what happens is that Elif and Ömer sort of team up to find out what happened to their two respective loved ones, and through their journey together they end up falling in love.
It's not immediate, it's definitely not love at first sight, but it DOES happen through twists and turns and some gentle prodding, not to mention the fact that they have the social class gap between the pair of them (which Ömer feels a whole lot more than Elif, I'll admit, as Elif would have been just as happy in the house with his family as in her own big home).
Naturally, things do NOT go smoothly.
The way they go is this: Elif and her younger sister are kidnapped so that the mafia ring which connects everything, and which is responsible for the murders, can force Elif to launder money for them through her company, like her father did.
The head honcho behind this all? The family friend and someone who the girls call uncle, Tayyar.
Of course Elif manages to fight back, and for the most part, the first half of the show is dedicated to rescuing her sister from the mafia's clutches, though they're too late in the sense that she already falls in love with her abductor, Fatih, who just so happens to be Tayyar's illegitimate son too (his legitimate one, Mert, is ALSO in love with this girl, not that I know what there is to love because she's basically a b-).
Anyway, Ömer delivers on his promise and, with his friends Arda and Pelin, rescues the girl, who is then completely scandalized that Elif didn't tell the family she'd been kidnapped (because if she did, the family, especially the neurotic mother who babied the youngest kid and traumatized the oldest into having seizures that needed medical attention, would have totally gone to the police, publicly, which would have ended with the daughter's execution) and mad at Elif for rescuing her, but she can't admit WHY she's mad because she has a shred of decency left so she knows loving Fatih is a problem.
Fatih and she go back and forth the entire show as he's an abusive manipulator, they get married and divorced a couple of times, he's violent towards her, she goes back to him, he twists her family right around, but she goes back to him, etc. The final straw for me is towards the end when he ensures Elif gets thrown into prison, and yet her sister STILL doesn't divorce the guy.
But back to the main storyline: Ömer has realized that Tayyar is the big man behind the scenes who pulls all the strings, and who will be almost impossible to catch unless they somehow manage solid proof against him - which will be an inhuman feat since he has practically the entire judicial system in his pocket.
However, he's nothing if not persistent, especially as Elif's friend Bahar ends up killed when she tangles with Fatih, though he isn't the one to kill her - there's someone else working for Tayyar as well, someone closer to Ömer than anyone else.
His older brother, Hüseyin.
Hüseyin is probably the most tragic figure in the entire story because he gets loped into the ring because he wants to help a Russian exotic dancer whom he ends up in a relationship with even though he's married with two kids already, but to help her he has to start covering things up for Tayyar, and eventually ends up as his hitman, something not even Fatih knows fully until later on in the story when he reveals it to Ömer.
Naturally, this news devastates Ömer who is on the verge of marrying Elif, but after learning that it was his brother who killed her father and his fiancée, he leaves her at the altar, though he does deliver the news that he found the killer, as he promised.
Initially completely horrified by this outcome, Elif comes around and recognizes why Ömer did what he did, even though he was being an idiot, and the two seem to be even stronger than before when they head into what feels like the final battle with Tayyar.
This kicks into high gear when Elif is thrown into prison after being accused of murdering Hüseyin, though it's later proven that Fatih staged everything to LOOK that way, but the other man is actually still alive. Ömer manages to prove this, but not before Elif gets stabbed in prison and ends up losing the unborn child she was carrying which neither one of them knew about until then.
This devastates them further, but both know the only way ahead is to get Tayyar into prison for good, but even then it looks hopeless since Ömer's brother STILL won't testify against him, severing ties with his family forever. Ömer ends up manipulating Tayyar into thinking he lost, offering him the man's own belt, and watching him hang himself in prison.
That's a fairly dark and surprising turn for someone as straight-laced for Ömer, though I will say I understand it, but anyway Elif calls it quits after she asks him to quit his job, which he doesn't want, and she runs off, not to be found again until months later when Ömer does eventually quit and go after her - only for the show to end with the pair of them embroiled in another mysterious ring of thugs that are led by some unknown powerful force, exactly what Elif said she didn't want, but which she runs into head-first when she sees it.
Several side plots include that of Elif's older sister, the one with the seizures, who is expecting another child at the start of the show but their mother decides it would be too dangerous so she has her put under and the child aborted, which results in an argument ... and the mother's death when the older sister pushes her against a window sill. She then has temporary amnesia, but after the loss of her husband (Tayyar has him killed since the guy is ALSO looking for those damn diamonds) she sort of manages to pull herself together with her sisters' help.
Arda and Pelin end up getting married and adopting the orphaned child of their friend, who comes up to Istanbul to make problems between Elif and Ömer, but who ends up eventually solving the entire case almost single-handedly, because this is what actually happened:
Elif's father was poor before coming to Istanbul, and he sold his sister Nedret to a wealthy man as his wife so that he could take his younger sister Elif (whom our character is named after) with him, and he went into business with Tayyar to both smuggle diamonds and launder money. Nedret had an affair which produced a baby girl, but her brother took the baby from her and placed her in an orphanage, for which Nedret eventually had him killed.
She then comes to Istanbul to support her three nieces after their parents' deaths, but she also keeps pulling strings with Tayyar as his remaining business partner, trying to keep Elif and Ömer apart and playing this game of Istanbul thrones until the police officer gets on her trail, which ends up with her killed, and Nedret imprisoned. She eventually dies of a heart attack.
So basically, Elif's entire family is about knee-dirt in black money, laundered money, and she finally decides to run at the worst time possible because Ömer and she have basically almost cleared Istanbul of the massive thug ring (Ömer also finds his father's murderer after all this time, also connected to this ring) but she takes off because she wants a 'quiet, peaceful life' which she believes she won't get with Ömer since he's so hell-bent on doing his job.
This stance might have worked in the first half of the show; if she had run off then, it would have even made sense, but after going through so much and RIGHT ON THE FINISH LINE, it's degrading to her character to have her suddenly fold, especially as it all becomes void the second she sees someone else in trouble, calls on Ömer, and then runs towards it, as if what she said before never even happened and is of no consequence.
It's even stupider because they have no connections and no support system in this random small town they're in, with everyone they know who could help back in Istanbul.
But aside from the disappointing ending, I loved the twists and turns of the show and how it kept me engaged throughout - a lot of the time, a plot will reach absurdity levels, but I never felt like this one did (though I will admit I skipped through Fatih's scenes a lot, he ends up escaping prison and going on the run with his pregnant wife, because she's devoted like that or something), and most of the endings were really satisfactory, like Hüseyin pushing Ömer out of the way during an assassination attempt and ending up paralyzed for the rest of his life. Fitting punishment for the guy who ACTUALLY had those stolen diamonds!
It's just the main story ending that's out of whack because it ruins all the character work that's been done over time, but ah well.
Engin Akyürek and Tuba Büyüküstün make the watch worth it, AND they're now paired up again in a new show, The Ambassador's Daughter!
So have a look, if you're interested. I bet they make it worthwhile.
xx
*images and video not mine
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