Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Erkenci Kuş: Bölüm 1 (2018)


Series Summary (from IMDb):
Sanem, a young girl with aspirations of becoming a writer, is forced by her parents to choose between an arranged marriage and finding a proper job. Rushing into a new job at an advertising company, she soon falls for her boss, Can.

I watched this because I stumbled across this gif in a "sweet and clean" romance group I'm in on Facebook.

Someone commented that it came from the best romcom she'd ever seen, this Turkish show called Erkenci Kuş. I went on a search and found English subbed episodes on Facebook. (Unfortunately, these episodes have now been pulled down.) I started watching the first episode, and by the time I went to bed that night, I was all in.

Recap: Threatened with an arranged marriage to the neighborhood fool (seriously, he's the worst), Sanem convinces her older sister Leyla to help her get a job at the advertising agency where Leyla works. Sanem gets a job as the lowliest of low assistants (her main job seems to be making coffee and tea), and she also gets invited to the company's 40th anniversary party that night. Of course, this being Sanem, she gets lost when she gets to the opera house where the party is being held and ends up in the dark in one of the boxes. But she's soon joined by a mysterious man who kisses her, and then she runs off before either can speak. All Sanem knows is that the man had a beard and was wearing shiny black shoes. Thus begins Sanem's search for the mysterious man. That mysterious man turns out to be Can (pronounced "Jahn"), son of the company owner and Sanem's new boss (but neither discovers that in the first episode). Sanem also gets pulled into Can's brother Emre's scheme to take over the company, basically because she is naïve and can't imagine anyone lying to her. When the first episode ends, Can has just caught Sanem sneaking around his house (on Emre's orders).

Reactions: Like I said, after the first episode, I was all in! The one thing that made me hesitate (briefly) is that most dizi episodes run anywhere from 1:50-2:30. So it's like a movie in each episode! Erkenci Kuş (EK) is 51 episodes, and I wasn't sure if I wanted that big of a commitment. I got over it 😂

I loved the concept of the main couple kissing before they'd even met and then not knowing the other's identity once they were introduced. One of my favorite scenes of the whole series is when Can and Sanem meet in the office in the middle of episode 1 because it highlights the crazy chemistry of Can Yaman (Can) and Demet Ӧzdemir (Sanem) ... and it's not even a romantic scene!

Keep watching? Um, yeah. I watched the entire series in less than two months and rewatched my favorite episodes this spring. I've now watched the entire series run of five dizis and several episodes of probably ten others, and EK remains my favorite.

Where to watch: Good luck! All of the episodes have been pulled off of Facebook. You can probably find them on some sketchy websites (read: contains porny popups) if you run a Google search for Erkenci Kus English, Early Bird English, or Daydreamer English. I watch on Fun Network, which is a subscription site similar to Netflix. It's pricey, though -- worth it for me since I'm pretty much exclusively watching dizis now, but $15/month is probably too steep for a casual viewer! You can see a lot of subbed clips on Instagram -- just search for #CanEm. 

Extras: I wrote (gushed) about EK here and here on my other blog.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...