Turkish Tuesday, is Back with Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e41: Childish Adults on Day 21 of the Omer?

  Last episode was bölüm/episode 40, which you can find with all of the other episodes, linked at the end of this review:     

   First, the episode begins with Suzan being a bit child-like, wanting to have a girls night out, and then Taci behaves like a child with Dudu’s new love interest, Kendal Bey, telling her that the phone was left off the hook when he actually told her almost-new-boyfriend to go away.  Then, the kids, Cem and Ceren, are being very childish in the bathroom, fighting, and finally, the littlest kid, Çilek, continues to be very childish by both pouting about wanting to play with the Magical Time Crystal Ball, a powerful and dangerous tool, which Perihan has forbidden anyone to touch, and then continuing to call Yavuz, the adult son of Kendal Bey, by his name, rather than adding the honorific abi, which is required of most kids in Turkey when addressing an adult of just the next generation older than they are (kids and even adults address older persons by Name+Teyze or Name+Amca out of similar respect).  Even Yavuz is behaving like a child, in calling Sadık dostum, a bit like calling a co-worker ‘pal’ rather than addressing him by his name.

Naturally, Dudu is being child-like, insisting on going with Kendal Bey to the cafe, which is a young people’s meeting place.  Of course this means that they run into Yavuz and Eda, both of whom end up being told off by their parents and sent home.  Meanwhile, of course, little Çilek is busy looking for the forbidden Time Crystal Ball, even magically faking the voice of Firuze and thus lying to Betüş, and then playing with the tool, while neighbor Avni spies on her, in his child-like way, as usual.  When the news of the littlest child’s mischief comes out, Suzan is at her most child-like, desperate to find out the news that has nothing to do with her.

One of the things I love most about this show is how it models, or rather how Betüş models good parenting.  She never hits any of the kids, and as far as I can recall, never even yells at them.  Even when little Çilek is at her worst, she never yells, even when she needs to restrain her from hitting or using her magic to do harm.  Betüş always explains, sometimes more patiently than others, of course, but always explains, discusses, and works to get buy-in and agreement from the kids, even from little Çilek.

Another thing I love is the way looks are exchanged in order to communicate non-verbally, far more often among Turks, I think, than in Anglophone societies (at least in the US).

And I love how both kids give push back on their parents selfish behavior when Kendal Bey asks his son, Yavuz, why he couldn’t find another girl to fall in love with, and Yavuz tells his father not to tell him who he can or cannot fall in love with.  Eda is not quite as firm with her mother, simply throwing a minor temper tantrum at Dudu, but following far more meekly.  Taci, Eda and Betüş’s father, faces the risk of abuse from Dudu in order to tell her that she has no right to tell their daughter who to fall in love with.  Fortunately, Perihan arrives just in time to protect both Taci and Eda from Dudu’s wrath.

I also love how Turks generally work to make peace with other people, both in families, as shown in this episode, and also as I saw in Izmir at work, when all of my colleagues gathered around for over an hour to comfort and support a weeping co-worker who was in tears over her credit card debt, something which shocked me both for the communal support at work, and also the very fact that they did not simply tell her that it was all her fault for spending too much.  Likewise, here, this episode shows family members taking lots of time and patience to resolve disputes and problems between even the kids, where in most other societies, I think, the offending and/or offended parties would all be told to ‘get over it’ and “deal.”

Yet, while Dudu is childishly pouting about her punishment from Perihan, Taci manages to get through to her and persuade her to go to her hurting daughter, closed up in her room for hours.  What they find shocks them: somehow little Çilek has managed to return her aunt Eda to a state of about 4 years old, which delights Dudu, but enrages a powerless Eda.  Even Perihan is apparently unable to undo little Çilek’s magic, shocking them all.  What I love about this show is that even with this wicked little act of rebellion, no one raises a hand against the little rebellious fairy child, nor even raises a voice (well, Dudu does occasionally shout at her, but Taci always reproves her for it).  And of course, the powerless Eda threatens to cream the poor little kid, who merely laughs at her, and demands that in return for being returned to her adult state, she must not continue to date Yavuz!  What a daring little creature our 5 year old Strawberry is!

(Note that this Featured Image of pouting comes from an earlier episode…)

Side note, that today, Tuesday May 14th ’22,  is the 21st day of the Omer: ”

6 Iyyar · Mon night, 13 May

מַּלְכוּת שֶׁבְּתִּפאֶרֶת Majesty within Beauty

”  -thanks again, Hebcal.

My personal Day 21 of the Omer nested idea set is Health care and Free legal debt-related education, which both require good healthy support for kids from families and friends, both in a mental health regard, and also in a physical health regard, of course.  Kids also need to be taught how to keep themselves safe from financial predators, and how to keep themselves up to date on changing laws related to debt and consumer finance.  I think that this show does model that, as we shall see in upcoming episodes.  (Later update: too bad I didn’t think of this updated review title until after it posted…)

Next week, hopefully, we will see bolum/epidosde 42 which is listed with all of the previous episode reviews on the page for Sihirli Annem/My Magical Mother and Hakan/TheProtector reviews, linked below as part of the work of Project Do Better, and showing how we can learn from shows like My Magical Mother and other TV shows for families.

…

Hoşça kalın!

Shira

*****************

Click on the ShiraDest site menu, above any post in your browser, for more ways to learn through Story, Lessons, or Reading:

Stories can help us learn:  Babylon5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem/My Magical Mother, Lupin: Dans l’ombre d’Arsène, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo  Reviews Page,

And of course,

free  GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans with connected readings Page,

           But learning by reading, both

novels and short stories or short true narratives that read like stories, is an effective emotional experience as well as learning experience:  My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing Page.

–

     Fellow Change Dreamers, does this episode, in your opinion(s), work as part of  Project Do Better and the work of providing learning tools via reviews of shows like Sihirli Annem,  and its idea for learning via story,  as part of  modeling emotional learning and maturation?

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sihirli Annem (My magical mother) s1e40: Love is sweet, love hurts

Sihirli Annem 40              Birgit’s summary

The jealousy topic of episode 39 is continued. Cilek is deeply in love with the 25 years older Yavuz whom Eda also fancies, and Taci (Dudu’s ex-husband and father of her daughters, right now in the shape of a dog) is jealous of Yavuz’s father (Sadik’s new boss) who seems very friendly with Dudu.

Dudu admits to Perihan that she thinks this might be the man of her life. She is expecting him to dinner and keeps Taci in Eda’s room because she knows that it would hurt him to watch the two of them, and she is also afraid that he might misbehave like he did with Umur. She tells Perihan that Taci was very angry when he saw her preparing the table.

Cilek has two things in her life that she feels everybody is interfering with: she wants to join a song contest to become a popstar mostly for impressing Yavuz, whom she is in love with. Sadik, Betüs and her brother and sister all try to tell her that children cannot participate in the song contest, and that she with her 5 years of age is too young for Yavuz, who is 30 years old.

Yavuz however, is coming to have dinner at the family’s place that night when Eda is there as well. He brings flowers, which, unfortunately, he presents them to Cilek, which gives her a wrong impression and makes her be rude to Eda her aunt. During dinner, Eda and Yavuz are very awkward with each other and try to avoid direct eye contact. The others notice that, of course, which makes Cilek leave the table in anger.

Cilek is very hurt that nobody takes her feelings seriously. In her eyes love is ageless. As far as her singing is concerned, it is about as bad as her flute playing. Also here Betüs has a hard time to talk the child out of it, who even wants to put on a magic show to win the contest. Betüs had discussed often with her that magic should not be used in front of mortals. Right now Cilek would do anything to win Yavuz for her.

Taci feels hurt as well and even suggests to Perihan, who stayed with him for company, to split Dudu and her new lover up, which she refuses to do. That was exactly what Dudu always had tried to do to her daughters and Perihan says that it is not up to her or Taci to make that decision for other people.

Yavuz’s father is impressed by the dinner that Dudu has prepared and tells her that he is glad she came into his life, as he feels so at ease with her. He even asks after Taci, as he loves dogs and insists to say hello to him before he goes home. Taci tries not to like the guy but has a hard time with it.

Meanwhile at the family’s house Cilek puts a spell on Yavuz, who came to her room to talk to her, so that she can look at him in peace without any interference. Even when Betüs comes into the room, Cilek refuses to dissolve the spell, so that Betüs has to make her fall asleep and free Yavuz from the spell. Eda has in the meantime been told by Cem and Ceren that Yavuz had said that he liked her, and in the end Yavuz accompanies her home. There they meet Dudu and Yavuz’s father and tell them that they are in love with each other. Yavuz’s father is surprised, and Dudu is horrified. Here ends the episode.

***

What can we learn from this and the last episode? I think we have to realize that we cannot make somebody love us, even if we love them. That hurts but is a fact. And we don’t have the right to try and separate people from each other. In my eyes, the children Cem and Ceren were also a bit pushing into the other direction to get Eda and Yavuz to admit that they like each other, which they maybe should have let develop in their own tempo. Furthermore, we cannot help falling in love, it just happens.

Sihirli Annem (my magical mother) s1e39: Jealousy and concern

Sihirli Annem episode 39      Birgit’s summary

Sadik’s situation at work is going to change. His awful boss Umur is leaving, and the former one, Umur’s brother will come back together with his son. He had moved away because of his sick wife who had needed a change of air. Umur gave notice and will join a competitive company. Sadik is over the moon that he will get rid of Umur and is certain that the situation at work will improve.

Betüs on the other hand is not that happy about the change, when she hears from Perihan that she has seen in the crystal ball that her mother and sister will fall in love with a father and a son. This fits too well to Sadik’s new boss and his son. Betüs had always hoped that Taci and Dudu will get together again.

Sadik and Betüs plan a dinner for the new boss, his son and their own family. But before that, Betüs tries to influence her mother in not looking for other men anymore because her father, Taci, still loves her. Dudu explains to Betüs that her love to Taci has changed into something more like friendship, which leaves Betüs upset. After that she tries to quiz the new boss, whom she knew from the time before he left. She tries to find out if he is willing to marry again, and to her dismay, he is willing to do so if he finds the right woman, the description of which fits her mother perfectly. Betüs is very troubled.

Firuze, the maid but also the family’s friend overhears Susan making derogatory remarks about Firuze’s bad cleaning and gets into a cleaning frenzy, which ends in a crisis when Cilek drops a whole glass of juice and Cem and Ceren come into the house with muddy shoes after she has cleaned the entire floor.

Betüs comforts her when she comes in and sends her home. She also calls Susan to inform her about it and suggests that she should apologize to Firuze, which she does.

Eda had a little adventure with a very handsome young man who saved her from the rain on his motorcycle earlier that day.

When Sadik’s new boss arrives, they find out that the handsome young man with the motorbike is his son. He does not recognize Eda, who is a bit offended at first, but in the end the guests are talking animatedly with Dudu, Eda and the children, while Betüs and Perihan, who also is present, look on with foreboding and Sadik is completely left outside the conversation and watches in helpless surprise.

Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e38: Hard-Headed Children and Obstinate Adults?

  Last episode was bölüm/episode 37, which you can find with all of the other episodes, linked at the end of this review:     

     Would you call someone an adult, no matter how old, who refused to be reasonable?   In a child of Çilek’s age, unreasonableness may be annoying, even painful when the entire family suffers because of it, but not out of the ordinary.  When you have reached the age of four hundred years, however, one expects you to be able to see reason a bit better than a five year old.  Yet, Dudu refuses to accept the right of her daughters to live their own lives and make their own plans, while constantly turning down offers from Eda and others to go places.  Dudu wants both of her daughters there at home, her home, with her.  So, everyone is making plans, and both Dudu and Çilek are messing up those plans for all the family.  First, the kids want to spend time without their parents, and the parents want to go out to a taverna with Suzan and Avni, but Çilek, afraid of being left alone as Cem and Tuğçe pair up, while Ceren and Kerem do the same, leaving her with no one to play with, as often happens, refuses to agree to the plan.  Similarly, Dudu wants someone to play with, but at her house.    She even refuses, at first, to come watch the kids while the adults go out, after Çilek has a sudden change of heart upon meeting Kerem’s cousin, only a little bit older than herself, and giving her a pairing like the others.  Since it is near the end of the year, as many modern Turks do, the family puts up a Christmas tree, and wraps presents.  As the episode opens, by the way, we see Suzan wishing Betüş a happy end of year by pronouncing each of the words backwards, as she did when speaking with her childhood friends about things her parents couldn’t hear of, like her boyfriend, Avni.  While Betüş is very surprised to hear of this semi-private language, Sadik walks in to the cafe and immediately begins a conversation with Suzan in backward pronounced Turkish, citing nearly the same reasons:  he had a girlfriend unbeknownst to his parents, and to speak on the phone with her, they learned how to say many words backward so that the adults would not understand what he was saying.  Interestingly, the plot of this episode is a bit backward, since in the end, Dudu agrees to watch the kids, taking Taci with her, and they all end up having fun, with Taci temporarily turned into Santa Claus to distribute gifts, including the gift of his fists when Umur Bey shows up at the family home!  And this, after dropping all of his work for the day on Sadik so that he could go out that night with a young girl, who ended up leaving him.  Betüş saved Sadik’s evening by coming in to the office to speed type his data entry for him, but Umur Bey’s attempt to ruin the family’s evening clearly were not at an end.  Fortunately, Taci was on hand to deal with this, as Dudu celebrated, and the kids made comic remarks.  Overall, this is not one of my favorite episodes, but there are some fun moments, as always, and it is interesting to hear Betüş thinking of how much she is learning about human beings, as Sadik and Suzan laugh about how they needed to learn to speak in code as kids.  They both comment on how Betüş must have had a great deal of freedom as a child, and that is another interesting segue for which I will wait for comments.  Thoughts?

Next week we will see blm/ep. 39:   , all listed on the page for Sihirli Annem reviews, linked below as part of the work of Project Do Better, and showing how we can learn from story.

…

Hoşça kalın!

Shira

*****************

Click on the ShiraDest site menu, above any post in your browser, for more ways to learn through Story, Lessons, or Reading:

Stories can help us learn:  Babylon5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo  Reviews Page,

And of course,

we can also just study, to learn the old fashioned way, using Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans Page,

           But learning by reading, both

novels and short stories or short true narratives that read like stories, is an effective emotional experience as well as learning experience:  My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing Page.

–

     Fellow Change Dreamers, does this episode, in your opinion(s), work as part of  #ProjectDoBetter and the work of providing learning tools via reviews of shows like Sihirli Annem,  and its idea for learning via story,  as part of  modeling emotional learning and maturation?

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e37: Mothers-in-Law!!

  Last episode was bölüm/episode 36: Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e36, Hard Work, and Women Role Models in Business; 

     This week is the “Asla, asla, asla!” Kaynanalar episode.  🙂  There was a popular gossip aka reality TV show, back when this episode of Sihirli Annem aired on TV in Turkey, called Size Anne Diyebilir Miyim (May I call You Mom?), for the Turkish tradition of calling your mother-in-law “Mom,” after this traditional request to the Mother-In-Law, which featured a group of older women gathered to ‘help’ their daughters choose a husband from among the available bachelors presented on the show.  Naturally, there were many dramatic moments, including the often repeated “Never, never, never!” shouted by one mother about the young man her daughter had apparently settled on as a husband.  Turkish traditional culture gives a lot of power over a young married couple to the mother’s mother, who is often the terror of her Damat (son-in-law), as Dudu is for Sadık, and Suzan’s mother is even more so for poor Avni.

    So we begin this episode in the cafe, at closing time.  Betüş, bored with the daily routine, suggests to Suzan that the two couples eat dinner together, which Suzan rejects immediately because of Avni’s ‘crazymaking’ ways, counter offering a girl’s night only dinner at the cafe one night.  Betüş agrees, but still wants to eat all together with their husbands one night as well.  Just then, Sadık calls to tell Betüş that he has to work late to attend a business dinner that night, giving the ladies the exact opportunity they needed to have a dinner that night.  At home, Betüş invites Firuze, who is surprised, given that she is merely the housekeeper, but is immediately lovingly corrected by Betüş, telling her that while she does indeed work there, she is also a friend.   Meanwhile, the kids are playing little kids games, peacefully, due to a shared threat to which the formerly fighting siblings Cem and Ceren faced down together.  They explain to Betüş that a very big boy from the older class has taken a shine to Tuğçe, and told Cem to stay away from her.  Obviously this led to a fight, in which Ceren bit the boy in order to save Cem from being pummeled.  This succeeded, temporarily, with the large boy withdrawing, but warning Cem that he’d finish things the next day.  The kids aren’t worried, however, since there will be four of them, as her boyfriend Kerem will walk with them and so the boy should leave them alone, being so outnumbered.  Betüş, upstairs to invite the kids down to an early dinner before Suzan arrives, tells the kids not to fight, of course, and to immediately call either a teacher or Sadık or herself if the boy comes back.  Obviously, as soon as she leaves the room, the kids agree to ignore Betüş’s instructions.  And at Dudu’s Castle, things are worse.  Taci asks Eda why she is playing her musice down in the living room, rather than up in her room, and she explains that Dudu would hear it, shut up as she has been for days, in her own room.  Taci goes up and finally gets it out of Dudu as to why she has been shut up in her room.  Dudu Fairy, like many a selfish human mother, is lonely, and angry that the two girls she popped out are living their own lives, rather than attending daily to their mother.  Obviously, Taci tells her to see reason, and she throws him out of her room.  Meanwhile, back at the neighbors’ with Avni, the new “Fairyscope” has arrived.  While this does not make Suzan happy, of course, and despite her threat to leave Avni and go back home to her mother, she admits to Betüş that she does love Avni.  Asking about how Betüş is doing, Suzan commiserates with her about Dudu’s constant attempts to keep both daughters with her in the castle.   Avni, back to Suzan’s mother, gets a call that does not make him happy at all:  his mother in law is coming to stay with them for a while!  Back at Betüş’s house, the three ladies are singing around the table, and Avni, jealous of the happiness of the ladies, comes to let Suzan know that her mother is on the way, and turns down the invitation to stay and join the celebration.  The girls hear the music from their room in the basement, and then Sadık arrives home and brings Cem downstairs to critique the music and dancing.  The next day,  Dudu comes to the cafe and meets Suzan’s mother, and then the fun really begins.  Why?  Because they like each other, to paraphrase the Old Mickey Mouse Club guy.   Suzan and Betüş wonder why the two mothers are getting along so well, as both are renowned for their stand-offishness, and we see all too soon, when they cook up more magic together to break up both marriages.  This is one of the few episodes to mention human magical, or witchcraft, traditions, in the series, but it is a very interesting one for delving into folkloric superstitions and such, as Suzan’s mother considers herself to be a sort of a Kitchen Witch, performing folk magic.  Unfortunately, she does not know that Dudu is a real magic user, able to make her magic work, and getting a boost from the human side by working together with her fellow scheming mother-in-law.  Betüş is made to believe that Sadık comes home late, is having an affair, arriving with lipstick, hair, and perfume smell on him.  Then Avni sees Dudu Fairy appear to him, and only to him, just in time to infuriate both Suzan and her very similar mother.  The result, of course, is that both women leave their husbands and chaos ensues while the two men sit together in the family house and explain that their wives have left them.  Both mothers in law, by contrast, are very happy to appear to console their heartbroken daughters while each proposing to find news husbands for them.  Dudu tells Betüş to bring the kids to the castle.  But not before little Çilek finds both men sleeping on the family couch, and Betüş not at home.  She asks the Crystal Ball to show her what’s going on,  sees everything that the two mothers in law have done, then tells Betüş, who brings Suzan to the cafe just in time to find their mothers celebrating.   Now, both mothers have some apologizing to do.

…  

The episode ends with two loose ends hanging.  Çilek has secretly managed to prevent the fight that the four kids expected to have with the bigger boy who threatened Cem, but that situation probably won’t keep, because she cannot possibly be there all of the time to watch him.  The other loose end is Eda.  At the start of the episode, when she caught Dudu doing more magic to break up Betüş and Sadık, Eda decided to put a definitive end to that work by destroying the castle’s magic mirror and spell book, not knowing that there is a severe punishment for harming a fairy’s spell book, and of course everyone knows what happens when you break a mirror.  The punishment in this case comes down from the Head Fairy,

 the Periliçe, not from Perhihan herself.  That punishment, being frozen in place for an uncertain amount of time, arrives, trapping Eda in the castle, able only to talk, not long before the episode ends.

Next week we will see, in  blm/ep. 38, how that works out for Eda.   All of the episodes can be seen on the reviews page for Sihirli Annem, here.

…

Hoşça kalın!

Shira

*****************

Click on the ShiraDest menu, out in your browser, above this review, to find pages that link to more posts discussing more ways to learn through Story, Lessons, or Reading:

Stories can help us learn:  Babylon5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo  Reviews Page,

And of course,

we can also just study, to learn the old fashioned way, using Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans Page,

           But learning by reading, both

novels and short stories or short true narratives that read like stories, is an effective emotional experience as well as learning experience:  My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing Page.

–

     Fellow Change Dreamers, does this episode, in your opinion(s), work as part of  #ProjectDoBetter,  to model emotional learning and maturation?

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e36, Hard Work, and Women Role Models in Business

  Last episode was bölüm/episode 35:  Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e35: Magic Is Not Always the Best Weapon  ; 

Sihirli Annem 36 Summary

This episode starts very dramatically with Cem having used the money with which he was supposed to pay his school fees to buy a very expensive watch for his girlfriend Tugce. Sadik is furious, and he decides to punish Cem with taking him to the office on Saturdays to work, hoping that it would make him understand the value of money. Cem is worried that his friends would look down on him if they found out that he was working. Betüs comforts him and tells him that this way he can find out who his real friends are.

  “-Where are you going with all of this going on?   -I’m not a child, I am not staying any longer in this house.”   -Featured Image, above…

At Dudu’s castle there is a mystery going on. For a few days already, Dudu is disappearing, allegedly meeting with friends, but Taci has the suspicion that she has another boyfriend.

At the same time, Cilek has a classmate who owns a pug just like her grandfather Taci, and she gets the splendid idea to let them get friendly with each other so that they get puppies, and then the family would get one or two of them. Her sister Ceren doubts that her grandmother would like the idea, and indeed she doesn’t, mostly because Taci is not really a dog, but a human in the shape of a dog.

“Here, or not, I’m going to explain myself to my ex-husband?”

Betüs’s café seems to get two well-known visitors, and Susan is completely flipped out about it. When one of the ladies forgets her coat when leaving and returns to collect it, they start talking. She is working for an education fond helping students financially.

Meanwhile Sadik and Cem are working together, when Tugce comes to see them. She has talked to Ceren and found out about the watch and where the money came from. She returns the watch and scolds Cem that he would think he needed to give her expensive present to make her love him. She tells him that she already loves him very much, and she doesn’t expect pricy presents from him. She was a bit disappointed that he thought about his friends that they would look down on him if he was working, of course they wouldn’t.

“You need to understand that I do not love you for your  expensive gifts”

In Dudu’s castle Taci contemplates the possibility of getting friendly with the other pug just to make Dudu angry, when Perihan visits and tells Taci and Eda that she found out where Dudu was going these days. She was visiting the fairy of life, who is able to bestow a prolongation of life on mortals. Dudu actually sacrifices some of her own life force, although she cannot die, being a Fairy, for Taci to live longer, as he was going to die soon (pugs live for 15-16 years, human years that would be 105-112 years). They decide not to let Dudu know that they know about her good deed. Taci is, of course, very moved by Dudu’s generosity.

“I am happy, but I would never tell you that.”

When the family meets at home in the evening, Cem surprises his parents with the plan to establish his own fond to support fellow students. He suggests that the money he would earn working with his dad should go to the fund after paying back the school fee debt, rather than to him, as the leftover money he was earning was going to go to his allowance. Sadik is very proud of his son and says that although Cem could do bad things sometimes, he deep inside was a good boy.

51:01 in ep. 36 Dudu gives some of her force/strength, life force, although she cannot die, being a Fairy, for Taci to live longer, as he was going to die soon.
And, at the end,
Cem suggests that the money he would earn working with his dad should go, after paying back the school fee debt, to the fund, rather than to him, as the leftover money he was earning was going to go to his allowance. There was no expectation of extra money, only that his reduced allowance should go to the fund rather than to himself.

Thanks to Birgit for her summary and the images.

…  

     Cem learns about work, and how hard both work and bosses can be, in this episode.  This is what I love about this series.  It shows us the learning that childhood should be about.In this episode, at moment 47:00, Tuğçe tells Cem essentially the same thing this famous Greek  song mentioned in my study notes back on Sunday says:

“Sen Cem olduğun için seviyorum.  /  I love you because you are Cem.”

Or, as the song says it in our recent modern Greek study notes post says:

“Σ’αγαπώ γιατί είσαι εσύ.  /  I love you because you are you.”

Excellent punishment for his crime.  I also want to mention that the famous business woman over whom Suzan goes gaga is  Güler Sabancı.  Twenty years ago, she was one of the most respected business women in Turkey, and I hope that she still is, but I have not had time to look her up.  Comment on her are welcome, should someone else want to look her up and let us know, here.

Next week we will see blm/ep. 37:   ,

…

Hoşça kalın!

Shira

*****************

Click on the ShiraDest site main menu, just above this review, for more ways to learn through Story, Lessons, or Reading:

Stories can help us learn:  Babylon5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo  Reviews Page,

And of course,

we can also just study, to learn the old fashioned way, using Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans Page,

           But learning by reading, both

novels and short stories or short true narratives that read like stories, is an effective emotional experience as well as learning experience:  My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing Page.

–

     Fellow Change Dreamers, does this episode, in your opinion(s), work as part of  #ProjectDoBetter,  to model emotional learning and maturation?

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e35: Magic Is Not Always the Best Weapon

  Last episode was bölüm/episode 34: Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e34: Striving to Learn; 

…  

  Cem has no manners, whatsoever!  What is wrong with him?  Indoors is not for practicing with a ball.  That’s why there is an outside!   How rude, and his father only reluctantly agrees with the girls and his wife to talk with Cem and make him see reason.  After a huge to do, with Ceren being injured and injuring her brother in return, after he runs over to Suzan and Avni, then a drunken Umur Bey arrives at the family house.  After more drama with a toy gun, we see Taci in the morning dreaming that Dudu re-changed him back to his human form.

“Benim ruyalarim cikar.   /  My dreams come true.”

    Dudu then goes to the cafe to see Betüş, who points out the contrast between her unjust punishment of Taci, the fairy twins (Eda and Betüş)’ father, and her lack of punishment to Umur Bey, who really did cheat on her.  Dudu, as usual, dismisses this, and goes back home to cook up some vengeful magic while awaiting the arrival of Umur with his apologies.

Meanwhile, the girls wonder how to hide Ceren’s facial bruises, and Çilek suggests make up, which topic will come back with a vengeance later.  Cem gets a phone call, on which the girls angrily stay on the line to eavesdrop.  But after they listen in on his phone call with a teammate, feel bad, and then try apologize, he rejects their apology, sending Ceren into a tearful spate of self-recrimination.

  Dudu’s magic-making is interrupted by Perhian’s strong suggestion, seconded by both Eda and Taci, to make Umur sorry in the same way that a human woman would, rather than via magic: by making him jealous.

A pattern is emerging here:  revenge.   Except for Dudu’s moment of wisdom, in refusing to tell Çilek how to do the magic she wants to do to heal her brother in time to go to the match with Tuğçe, both the kids and the adults have revenge plots going on, pun intended.  But Cem is more worried about his friend making eyes at Tuğçe after the match.  He should have been more worried about Keren winning the match in his place.

Umur Bey, how stingy!  50YTL roses, 35 is all he wants to pay, so he shows up with a much smaller bouquet at the castle/house to apologize to Dudu.  …  And then demands to meet the man she claims to have fallen in love with already, in Umur’s absence.  After negotiating strenuously, Dudu agrees to return Taci to his human form for one day only, in order to show him off to Umur Bey as the new love of her life.

I love how we get little health lessons on the importance of using a tissue and tossing it right away for sneezes.  Unfortunately, the peace lasts very little time, as the kids go right back to fighting.  Likewise, Dudu returns Taci to his two feet, but not to his entirely own old form.  They visit the office to  meet Umur, with the desired effect.   So, in fact, Taci’s dream did come true, if only for a day.

Next week we will see blm/ep. 36: Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e36, Hard Work, and Women Role Models in Business  ,

…

Hoşça kalın!

Shira

*****************

Click here for more ways to learn through Story, Lessons, or Reading:

Stories can help us learn:  Babylon5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo  Reviews Page,

And of course,

we can also just study, to learn the old fashioned way, using Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans Page,

           But learning by reading, both

novels and short stories or short true narratives that read like stories, is an effective emotional experience as well as learning experience:  My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing Page.

–

     Fellow Change Dreamers, does this episode, in your opinion(s), work as part of  #ProjectDoBetter,  to model emotional learning and maturation?

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e34: Striving to Learn

  Last episode was bölüm/episode 33: Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e33: Make Me Someone Else!    

…  Fellow Blogger Birgit says: 

Sihirli Annem 34 Summary:

Cilek is trying to play the flute but can’t yet. Her incoherent tones are driving everybody crazy.

Cem admits that he doesn’t like her “music”, and she tells him that he will remember this moment when she has become a famous composer.

 “… do you hear that?”

Betüs and Susan are about to leave the café. Susan forgot something and starts fumbling behind the cashier and ends up getting an electric shock which makes her hair stand on end. Betüs leaves her the car keys so she can go home in comfort. Betüs transports herself to her mother who had called because she cannot get hold of Perihan. She doesn’t answer her calling and they cannot see her in the magic mirror.

Finally, they find out that Perihan is sick and they bring her to Dudu’s castle to take care of her.

“I am the world’s richest fairy, now.  What valuable good friends I have.”

It seems like fairies cannot do magic when they are sick, so Dudu uses this opportunity to cast another spell on Sadik to separate him and Betüs. This time she chooses to make him angry and violent towards the children.

This works and Betüs takes the children and goes to her mother with them. Dudu puts on a drama show of righteous outrage for Betüs and Perihan and swears to punish her brutal son in law and flies off to his office to have work with him. It ends badly, Sadik pushes her and she gets so angry that she casts a freezing spell on him so that he cannot move. Betüs feels sorry for Sadik despite his behaviour in the morning. Much to Dudu’s disappointment, the children wish for their family to reunite and be like before instead of staying with her in the castle.

“I remember how happy our family was this morning…”

Taci tells Betüs and Perihan that he suspects Dudu to have cast a spell, because she knows that Perihan cannot do magic right now and therewith cannot punish her. Perihan and Betüs turn the time back to before Perihan got sick so that she can punish Dudu in advance. All the nasty events are erased, and Betüs can even warn Susan so that she does not get an electric shock.

The family is reunited, and Dudu is punished with catching the illness from Perihan so that she cannot do any magic until she has recovered.

************

[I wonder when Dudu will learn that she is hurting everybody with her shenanigans in her egotistical efforts to separate Betüs and Sadik, so that Betüs will return to living with her mother. In today’s episode she is even taking it out on the children. How can they be living happily with her after what happened with their father?]

Thanks to Birgit for the summary and images this week.

Shira’s Comments:  I also wonder when Dudu will learn.  She seems to believe that if she is happy, everyone should and will be happy.  She does, I recall, finally learn, but it has been over ten years since I first watched this series, and I do not recall any real change in her until around or after episode 100 or so, if memory serves correctly.  This is a nice episode, though, for showing how little Çilek does grow, as she admits that she needs to do much more work in order to learn how to play correctly, and forgives the family for their little white lies about the quality of  her playing.   I love how once again we see the theme of needing to strive for a goal in order to do well in life.

    Next week we will see blm/ep. 35: Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e35: Magic Is Not Always the Best Weapon  ,

…

Hoşça kalın!

Shira

*****************

Click on the ShiraDest site menu at the top of this post for more ways to learn through Story, Lessons, or Reading:

Stories can help us learn:  Babylon5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo  Reviews Page,

And of course,

we can also just study, to learn the old fashioned way, using Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans Page,

           But learning by reading, both

novels and short stories or short true narratives that read like stories, is an effective emotional experience as well as learning experience:  My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing Page.

–

     Fellow Change Dreamers, does this episode, in your opinion(s), work as part of  #ProjectDoBetter,  to model emotional learning and maturation?

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e33: Make Me Someone Else!

  Last episode was bölüm/episode 32:  Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e32: Beauty, Internal vs. External  ;   

     This week, we look at how children, like Cem, and even Eda, who acts very much like a child despite being the very same age as her fraternal twin sister -actually, she was born two seconds earlier, making her the revered Big Sister, but she still behaves like a little one.  And both children in this episode do what children often do, as they seek to become Adults: try on different identities.  At least she is finally growing up and out of the poor influence of her mother,  it seems.   This image refers to the first episode, and how Eda went along with Dudu:

“Mom went to ask for help to keep you from marrying a human man.”

   But, who would have thought that a fairy would want to be human?  Fairies, after all, aren’t exactly little wooden Pinocchios, right?  Reminds me of a K-drama someone told me about called Doom, At Your Service, about a Pinocchio retelling where the puppet starts out as a sort of Grim Reaper.  In any case, in this episode, we see Eda Fairy starting to really mature, while young Cem is still not maturing, at least not on his own, but he is getting a little help from his girlfriend, finally.  Note that the Youtube version of this episode cut out the pop song, likely due to copyright infringement issues, but it is all there in the original, which should still be back on Kanal D (sorry, no CCs or subtitles as far as I know on Kanal D, and I am still not sure how the hard of hearing watch shows in Turkey, as the European Union requires all shows to be CCd for the hearing impaired, from what I have seen on both French and Spanish public television…).  So, I’m sure I am not the only person who sees this one as  the ‘Calgon, Make me someone else!! ‘ episode.  It does sort of remind me of those old commercials, if anyone else remembers them from the 1970s, or maybe the 80s.  Eda says ‘Perihan, make me a human being!’ while young Cem says, ‘Little Sisters, make me my girlfriend’s favorite singer!’   Obviously, neither of these requests goes as planned.  But I love Eda’s reasons for wanting to try out being human for a day.  She finds her life empty, as Perihan explains, without a large challenge/purpose/end goal/larger meaning for her life.  While Good Fairies are supposed to serve the needs of humanity, they are actually rather limited in what they are allowed to do, for just this reason, as we see discussed in an earlier episode on striving.

–

Next week we will see blm/ep. 34, on striving to learn,

…

Hoşça kalın!

Shira

*****************

Click on the ShiraDest main menu above for more ways to learn through Story, Lessons, or Reading:

Stories can help us learn:  Babylon5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo  Reviews Page,

And of course,

we can also just study, to learn the old fashioned way, using Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans Page,

           But learning by reading, both

novels and short stories or short true narratives that read like stories, is an effective emotional experience as well as learning experience:  My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing Page.

–

     Fellow Change Dreamers, does this episode, in your opinion(s), work as part of  #ProjectDoBetter,  to model emotional learning and maturation?

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e32: Beauty, Internal vs. External

  Last episode was bölüm/episode 31:  Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e31: Everything is NOT Money  ; 

…  

The summary comes from a fellow blogger (Birgit)’s point of view.

…

Sihirli Annem 32 Summary:

      The first thing we see in this episodes are the dreams of the family: Cem dreams of dancing tango with Tugce; Ceren dreams of Kerem giving Cem a bloody nose for his stupid behaviour; Cilek dreams about a cartoon, in which an evil sourcerer is defeated by a fairy; and Sadik is mumbling in his sleep about a woman called “Banu”, which alarms Betüs. Sadik tells her about a new employee, whom he has to teach everything. He even goes to work on that same day, a Sunday and finds it funny that Betüs seems to be jealous.

Betüs looks into her mirror to see what happens at the office and sees Banu and Sadik interacting. Banu seems to be a bit stupid and Sadik makes irritated grimaces behind her back. That does not convince Betüs that Sadik might not find Banu attractive.

Later on it looks like it is more Umur, who is attracted to the young woman.

At the same time, Dudu gets a visitor, her old friend Cherry, who can predict the future from residue in cups. She predicts to Eda that a woman will ask for her help, and later on she will find out that she doesn’t need any help at all.

They also talk about Umur, and Cherry thinks if Taci and Eda think that he is a bad person, maybe he is. So Dudu and Cherry pay an invisible visit to Umur at his office, who just at that moment is working and not flirting with Banu. Sadik complains about her to Umur and wants her out of his hair, being concerned that they will lose customers because of her, but Umur is decided to keep her on claiming that her beauty is very important for the company.

The children at the breakfast table find it strange that their father is working on a Sunday and are wondering what is going on.

Betüs goes to the café, where Suzan for the first time is looking unkempt and in not so tidy clothes. [Here is a break in the subtitles, and I don’t know what they are talking about until …  (Shira response:  Suzan tells Betüş that she had a fight with Avni, and didn’t have time to come in properly done up, then asks if her hair is really terrible looking, to which Betüş replies that it’s not too bad, but in the evening she may want to go to the hairdresser, and Suzan says, what, for Avni, no, just let it go.  Suzan tells her not to get too upset or depressed about it, and they get to work, with many interruptions due to Betüş distractedness that day…)] Betüs decides to go and get shined up, which Suzan thinks is completely unnecessary. She suspects that there are problems between Betüs and Sadik. Suzan herself had a big fight with Avni during the night because of his fairy obsession.

Betüs asks Eda to help her shining up her style and goes through some weird metamorphoses. Eda seems to have a bit of fun with Betüs because she knows from Cherry’s prediction that there isn’t any real problem but in the end she gives her an absolutely elegant appearance.

FOTO3: Betüs in black dress 

   

   “Let’s have a look, do you like this one?”

Cilek in the meantime has found out what Betüs’s problem is by watching what happened in the morning in the crystal ball and watching Betüs and Eda trying out styles. She wants to help Betüs, but first she has to prevent Cem from attacking Kerem again who is coming to see Ceren. Cilek gets angry at her siblings for their silly behaviour but still creates a timeout and then deflates the situation, before getting to helping Betüs.

Dudu and Cherry drop in at the café to see Betüs but Suzan tells them that she doesn’t know if she will be back. Cherry notices immediately that Suzan is hurting inside. Dudu tells Suzan that Cherry can read fortunes, and, of course, Suzan is eager to have hers read. It seems that Cherry cannot lie about this and tells her that Avni will at a point prove to her that fairies exist. That leaves Suzan in a shock, and she faints.

Dudu “fixes” it by erasing the last minutes from Suzan’s memory.

Sadik later tries to get hold of Betüs and is told by Suzan that she had gone home early and that she seemed to be angry with him. When Sadik calls home, he talks to Cilek who tells him that Betüs is not at home and that she is very angry with him and thinks he should apologize to Betüs. Sadik is confused, not conscious of having wronged his wife. Then he gets the idea that it could be connected to the girl at the office and he storm over to Umur to give him a piece of his mind again. He catches Umur and Banu in an incriminating moment and leaves in shock.

Perihan has caught up with Cherry and Dudu and tries to explain to him that they should not predict the future to humans, as for them the future is the result of everything that is happening here and now. They could make or break a human’s future with their predictions. She warns them to never do that again or their punishment would be severe.

FOTO4: Perihan, Eda, Dudu and Cherry = Featured Img

Betüs gets home in her elegant outfit and the kids admire her. Cilek tells her what she said to Sadik, and Betüs explains to her, if she had lost him, there was not getting him back with magic, she would have to accept the facts.

However, when Sadik comes home he explains that everything has been a huge misunderstanding, and that he loves Betüs, and that it was actually Umur who was having something going on with Banu. Betüs feels bad for her mother, should they tell her? She would be so upset. They come to the conclusion that Perihan would be the best person to tell her. What they don’t know is that Perihan overheard them.

[The translation of the scene with Taci, Eda, Cherry and Dudu at the end is interrupted. But I think Taci wants Cherry to read his fortune; he would like to know if he will ever become human again. But Cherry is not doing it, it seems.]

Cherry is in the end the person who shows Dudu what happened at the office between Banu and Umur. Dudu feels angry and humiliated and breaks up with Umur.

[… because I didn’t love him as much as I love you.] [Oho, Dudu let something slip … 😉 ]

–

     Many thanks to Birgit, of the Stella, oh, Stella blog, for today’s summary, images, and last image CC translation.

–

Shira’s comments:

     In response to Birgit’s question on whether ‘Cherry’ reads Taci’s future, it’s no.   Kiraz (Cherry) refused to read his future because it was forbidden by Perihan to read any human being’s future, even though Taci already knows about Fairies, and also, Dudu insisted repeatedly that Kiraz Fairy not read his future because she, Dudu, was the only one allowed to decide Taci’s future.  This idea of the human need to strive both hearkens back to episode 25, and also reminds me of that poet so beloved by Cmdr from another SFF series, albeit an American series with more science fiction than fantasy, but similar ideas about human beings needing purpose in our lives: the place, Babylon 5, where Commander Sinclair’s favorite poet is quoted as “to strive, and not to yield” being the whole basis of human endeavor, and also part of the reason that Earth Government kept rebuilding those exploding and disappearing Babylon stations out in the middle of nowhere, but I digress: back to Dudu.

     So, Dudu finally gets it, sadly.  She has resisted the idea that Umur Bey could be a skirt-chaser for so long, and I wonder if part of that is because she knows, deep down inside, that she has been and continues to be extremely unjust in her treatment of her ‘former’ husband, Taci, who remains trapped in the body of a dog because she refuses to trust or respect his word.  It’s nice to see Betüş finally also learn a lesson, even if it was a bit out of character for her, it seemed at first, to me anyway, for her to react so rashly toward her husband when she normally trusts and talks with him before jumping to silly conclusions (or has she been spending more time around her mother lately?).

–

Next week we will see blm/ep. 33: Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mom) s1e33: Make Me Someone Else!

…

Hoşça kalın!

Shira

*****************

Click on the main menu of the ShiraDest website (at the homepage, above this review) for pages leading to posts discussing more ways to learn through Story, Classroom Lessons, or Reading:

Stories can help us learn:  Babylon5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo  Reviews Page,

And of course, we can also just study, to learn the old fashioned way, using Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans Page,

           But learning by reading novels and short stories is an effective emotional experience as well as learning experience:  My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing Page

     Fellow Empathy and Compassionate Tool Creators, how does this episode work with, or as part of  #ProjectDoBetter,  to show that trust and mutual respect are just as beautiful, if not more so, than makeup (and far less expensive, to boot…)?

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.