An Underwhelming Finish
Episode 8 of 50M2 begins with Shadow cleaning up the tailors. Yakup arrives though and swallows his pride, apologizing for doubting him before. As a token of his appreciation, he hands over a snow globe and calls it a family heirloom, Shadow rejects it though and tells him to hold onto it himself. A thin, wry smile crosses his face, seemingly hinting that he was trying to dupe the man all along. As we quickly find out, this snowglobe actually belonged to Adem. Civan arrives at Servet’s office and gives an update over current events. When he mentions the tailors refusing to sell up, Servet confidently shows him a picture of the dead prisoner. Only, he believes this is actually Adem until Civan corrects him and reveals the truth. Well, Servet sends his men round again to the tailors to finish the job. When Shadow sees, he hides round the corner and tries to escape his past. Dilara sits with him though and as Shadow starts to open up, he leans in to kiss her… and she pulls away. When Dilara leaves, it turns out Yakup was watching all this time and curses under his breath. This brings Yakup back to Adli, demanding to know the truth about Shadow. She chalks it up to him being jealous and obsessed, warning him this will only lead to disappointment but keeping Shadow’s identity a secret for now. As Shadow heads inside, Mesut turns up and demands his life back. He’s furious that Shadow has interfered in his operation as he reveals that Ozlem is working with Servet. Shadow decides to use this to his advantage and obtains a meeting with her. They meet in Mesut’s office and he learns Servet killed Mumtaz. Ozlem then goes on to mention the deal about to go down, including how Servet is going to buy up all the land and then sell it on, essentially leaving the original owners with absolutely nothing. Unbeknownst them, Turan and Muhtar decide to meet Servet and discuss the problems they’re facing with their properties. Servet admits he wants to “renovate” their neighbourhood which involves knocking everything down and starting again. Unsure what to do, the men eventually agree to sign. When Shadow learns what they’ve done, he reveals the damning truth to Muhtar who despairs over his situation. Shadow decides to try and deal with this himself, intending to talk to Servet about the situation. Muhtar meanwhile heads to the bakery where Civan sits talking to Dilara, doing his best to persuade her to sell up. When she decides to head over and see Shadow, she finds him fighting with Stain. Shadow gets the upper-hand, downing Servet’s hitman and holding a gun up to him. Dilara sees all this though and begins to question quite who Shadow is. Police arrive at Mesut’s office to arrest the business owner. It turns out those pieces of evidence Civan had were all to incriminate and arrest Mesut at an opportune time. Well, that opportune time is now. As Mesut is taken away in handcuffs, Yakup turns his attention to the construction scam, and specifically speaks to Civan about what’s happened. Civan is bitter and twisted by his past, unhappy that this town has taken everything from him and this is his form of revenge against that. Yakup quite literally slaps some sense into him, telling Civan that it’s not the neighbourhood’s fault his football game went wrong and walks away. Civan directs his anger directly at Muhtar, blaming his Father for what’s happened and shocking choking him out with a pillow. After patching up his bloodied knuckles outside, Shadow tries to admit the truth to Dilara but she talks over him, seemingly unwilling to believe he’s not Adem. When she leaves, Stain awakens again and attacks Shadow from behind, just like he did back in episode 1. This time though, Yakup shows and stops him in his tracks, shooting Stain dead and breathing heavily. As Shadow looks down and smiles, he calls Yakup a stubborn bastard. Shadow brings Yakup up to the dig site he buried Azrail’s man in and they strike a deal together. He’ll agree to keep quiet about the dead man while in exchange, Yakup will keep Shadow’s identity a secret. After digging the grave, Shadow leaves Yakup to finish up. Afterwards, Yakup heads to the bakery and confesses his love to Dilara. Shadow meanwhile, is intent on dealing with his unfinished business. Shadow rocks up in Sevet’s office, somehow evading all the security and surprising Servet. With a gun in hand, he rejects a drink (a spiked drink it seems, given Servet puts something in the drink) and tells him they need to talk. Well the attention soon turns to his family, where Shadow learns his Father killed his Mother and then to finish things off, Shadow was the one to kill his Dad. With his ID hidden all this time, Servet hands it over but Shadow throws it away, telling him he doesn’t need it anymore. Instead, Shadow asks for all the title deeds of the apartments. It’s here Servet admits that he’s responsible for what happened to his parents, as a flashback reveals that Servet was the one acting as ringleader all this time, with Servet’s parents owing him money. When his father arrived home that night, the catalyst of events were partly because of Servet. As the episode comes to a close, Shadow loses his temper and holds a gun up to the temple of his former boss. As he brandishes a gun of his own, we cut to black as a gunshot ricochets in the office. But who fired on whom?
The Episode Review
So it turns out Shadow knew the truth about his family all this time, ever since that dream sequence that showed fragments of the past back in episode 3. I say fragments because unless I’m mistaken, we didn’t actually see the whole truth surrounding Shadow’s family history until right at the end. Sure we were given little flashbacks but this just seems like an after-thought that’s only just come to the foreground of this underwhelming finale. In fact, underwhelming is probably the best word to describe 50M2. What began as an action-packed romp soon screeched to a halt midway through as the story changed from a dangerous game of hide and seek to Shadow trying to help this community overcome their building woes. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it also brings back memories of The Punisher season 2 where Frank Castle spent 3 or 4 episodes fixing up the plumbing and doing house chores. Sure, it may help to build character but it’s not exactly what you’d expect from a show presenting itself as a thriller. The ending leaves lots unresolved too, with Civan’s storyline taking one step closer to the dark side and the rest of the supporting cast kept in the dark surrounding the future of their businesses. It looks like Shadow’s secret is going to stay that way for the time being, partly thanks to the convenient way he’s managed to get leverage over most of the people in town to prevent his secret from being revealed. In the end, 50M2 ends rather disappointingly, and while the season itself has been fun it has hardly been the Turkish delight it so easily could have been.
