User Reviews

The romantic in me yearned for Etsy to make a home by going "home." The feminist in me cheered for Etsy to walk her own path. The filmmaker in me reveled in these contrasting climates of Berlin and Williamsburg. Artful without being snooty; edgy without being crude. Thanks for the experience.

I thought Episodes 1-3 were excellent, but the finale is a letdown caused by trying to wrap everything up too quickly. It ends with no real resolution - Esty has her new community in the cafe at the closing scene, but where will they be when the baby comes? She won't have time to tour with the philharmonic as a single mother, will her friends stick around then? We're left hanging and need that story told.

A bigger problem though is that Esty being an amazing singer is suddenly thrown at us without any buildup. With episode 2 I thought that Esty being a mediocre pianist was very brave characterization. Finally we have a strong female character who is not a Mary Sue: Esty is tough and independent mentally, but she's not a genius. She's an average pianist who can only play simple tunes because that's all she's practised. Most women like most men are about average. Yet the tendency has recently been to have female leads who are incredibly gifted geniuses and show all the guys up. Episode 2 broke that trope and showed an average person trying to make their way rather than a suppressed genius.

Yet at the end of this episode we find she is something of a Mary Sue after all. She's a beautifully passionate singer, even though up till now she's only wanted to be a pianist. If she'd sang in episode 2 instead of played piano the whole drama over her upcoming audition would have been avoided. Having her be a hidden songstress ruined the entire buildup over the previous episodes - there's no need to have her pianist dreams crushed initially if she's brilliant at something else.

The first 3 episodes were a believable story of a woman wanting to be independent, and made the point that she isn't especially gifted. This episode is jarring in the context of the series and feels unsatisfying.

Third time trying to post a review.

The attention to detail in the costuming, set design, and locations are ultimately wasted in this series. Instead of also capturing the true motivations of a whole community that picked up the pieces after the Holocaust and built a thriving group that continues to exist today, we ultimately hear very little about Judaism, let alone the Hassidim of Williamsburg.. What a wasted opportunity! (And I'm not Jewish). Instead we get a stereotyped cult, with a manipulated cult member breaking out and being "deprogrammed." I've seen those stories before, and sometimes they're good. This one is breaking no new ground, story wise. This one only has one real character, Deborah. While I was initially sympathetic to her plight, in the end she won't even negotiate with her desperate husband who goes to great lengths (and episodes) to find her, her character's development is suddenly thrown out the window after having 3 episodes of intimacy issues followed by a scene where there is suddenly no issue at all, and the thug is thwarted as he laughs (all that was needed was a bwa-ha-ha or a "I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too"). I was excited to watch it after seeing the accompanying documentary, but ultimately liked the documentary much more than the series. The real-life characters and stories really moved me. The fictional versions not.