This is fun to read piece on the Akiva's father and his Uncle Characters actors Dov Glickman and Sasson Gabai. Some stories from living in NYC through the beginning of the covid epidemic are there too. Well worth the read.

full very long interview:
https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/05/13/for-the-shtissel-brothers-life-begins-at-70/

For the 'Shtissel Brothers,' life begins at 70
When other actors their age are contemplating retirement, Dov Glickman and Sasson Gabai are enjoying the type of international professional boom actors half their age can only dream of. Life, love, sex, and acting – the two bare it all in a special interview with Israel Hayom.

Do you like any other characters aside from the main ones?

I really like the Kauffman guy, he is very kind hearted person and I like the actor. He reminds me of the Indiana Jones guy that ended up with this necklace burned into his hand. But not the same actor.
I like his appearances in the Shtetel. He bring some warmth of his own to it.

The Königsberg lady, the matchmaker is funny. Nice character. She really live up after her husband died.
I think the actress changed a lot between the last season and this season. I don't remember details but now she reminds me of Sophia Loren. She is full of energy and quite pretty lady. I like her. She does great job with this character.

New Lady .. the father's crash that was not to be.. She is very interesting addition to the series. I miss the little lotto booth guy. He was sweet.

I just re-watched the first episode of the third season. It only now became very clear .. I think I somehow missed it when watching for the first time and was just too excited to see it on and probably was half paying attention..

Anyway.. so I did see it clearly now that his wife is dead from the first minute we see her... that time when he is painting her while she is sitting on the chair, this is her ghost... or his imagination rather..
All of it, how she said she wished she could nurse the baby one more time.. that was so sad.. but also clue..
how he offered to tend to the baby.. clearly she could not.. how they talked about this letter..

Then the scene with the father how he was not rushing home .. then finally his father asking him to move with him..

and the whole car ride.. with her.. but not really..

and her telling him all the time to sell the pictures..

The gallery scene revealed everything and then they took us back showing that empty chair when he was painting her.. that empty car seat where she never was..

oh, sad sad sad..

I might watch the whole thing again. I wonder what else I did miss..

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm done (I also broke my rule of controlling myself)

I thought it was so good. Wow.

re a PP and the flames on her picture, did that relate to the mental illness? I thought it went back to his dream of his paintings of his first wife burning.

re: bolded.

Flames - oh, I see what you mean about the dream but I think it might be more about the mental illness, and if so, that was really kind of.. hm... I don't know.. this kind of image just by looking at it, could set his wife in real life some few solid years back into therapy I think. If it he wanted to make her portrait, I think he could make it real in many ways without being extreme.

I saw it as a metaphor for his life... he lost a wife suddenly, he almost lost his child suddenly, and she came into those flames and saved him in a way.

Really? Interesting. I felt like it was her that was on fire and somehow to me those flames somehow resembled proverbial fires of hell. When I saw the picture I almost jumped back a little like I saw something evil projecting from it. It seems entirely irrational but that's how it felt. I said to myself under my nose or was it inside my head. .WTF just happened on the screen... and I had to take a minute to calm down..

But this is just one person's feelings and art.. like art.. it will most likely affect each viewer differently.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm done (I also broke my rule of controlling myself)

I thought it was so good. Wow.

re a PP and the flames on her picture, did that relate to the mental illness? I thought it went back to his dream of his paintings of his first wife burning.

re: bolded.

Flames - oh, I see what you mean about the dream but I think it might be more about the mental illness, and if so, that was really kind of.. hm... I don't know.. this kind of image just by looking at it, could set his wife in real life some few solid years back into therapy I think. If it he wanted to make her portrait, I think he could make it real in many ways without being extreme.

I saw it as a metaphor for his life... he lost a wife suddenly, he almost lost his child suddenly, and she came into those flames and saved him in a way.

I thought it was brilliant. This show has always shown it’s characters as rather complicated. It can be sad, but it’s also beautiful.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I watched some of the 1st season. Does the hot guy get hot? Meaning do they let him look hot?

Philistine.

Anonymous wrote:I watched some of the 1st season. Does the hot guy get hot? Meaning do they let him look hot?

He IS hot.. if you can't see it then you are blind.

Anonymous wrote:I watched some of the 1st season. Does the hot guy get hot? Meaning do they let him look hot?

Philistine.

Anonymous wrote:Last week I wrote a post in the midlife section about missing my family members who had died (titled, "I miss the past"). I had walked into my kitchen and could suddenly envision them all around the kitchen table with their can of nuts and deck of cards. I had missed each one of them individually, but I had suddenly realized it was a group of people that all hung out together that were all gone. I was imagining sitting with them, with my (living) DH, all chatting.

So here I am watching this show, which I find both endearing on the human level and fascinating as I'm not Jewish and know very little about this sub-culture, and here is this scene with the three men and all their dead family and friends around the table. I really couldn't believe it. My own longings are really not so unique in how they present themselves.

This show has done such a great job in relating common human experiences even while portraying an uncommon culture.

Oh that scene was beautiful.

I am sorry for your loss my dear OP>

I watched some of the 1st season. Does the hot guy get hot? Meaning do they let him look hot?

Last week I wrote a post in the midlife section about missing my family members who had died (titled, "I miss the past"). I had walked into my kitchen and could suddenly envision them all around the kitchen table with their can of nuts and deck of cards. I had missed each one of them individually, but I had suddenly realized it was a group of people that all hung out together that were all gone. I was imagining sitting with them, with my (living) DH, all chatting.

So here I am watching this show, which I find both endearing on the human level and fascinating as I'm not Jewish and know very little about this sub-culture, and here is this scene with the three men and all their dead family and friends around the table. I really couldn't believe it. My own longings are really not so unique in how they present themselves.

This show has done such a great job in relating common human experiences even while portraying an uncommon culture.

Giti, Ruhami's mom.. I was kind of disappointed how they wrote her reaction to son's date mishaps.
I was hoping that as before she will somehow put the love first.. but took her a minute to come to her senses, one would think that at this point it was out of the character.

I love Lippe's character, dad.. he has so much warmth in him towards the kids. Of course we all remember what he pulled on his family but somehow we want to forgive him as he seems genuinely nice guy. I also hope that maybe all this escape was something else and he never had any affair in reality but just a crisis that he had to overcome?

How do you think filming of Shtisel 3 rd season during the pandemic impacted it without knowing any details?

My guesses are:
- That scene with his brother jumping attempt was a pretext to close off the balcony so they were not shooting the usual sitting scenes on the balcony... maybe.
- There was seemingly way less group scenes then in previous episodes.
- Also I think there was way less street shoots maybe to avoid people in masks?
- I think that whole episode with the providing extras for the movie crew, filmed on the movie set was probably one way to contain the production at the same location as much as possible.
- I saw few instances when actors looked tired and or had red eyes and I could not help but thinking that maybe the were after covid and still tired?
- More indoor scenes overall.
- The cemetery scenes were few people only.

I may be entirely wrong of course.

Anonymous wrote:I loved the third season. It wasn’t all dark. Ruchami, Kive, Yosale...all lovely stories.

Well.. certainly the Ruchami story ended well, but they really pushed us through the emotional wood chopper there until we could breath again seeing the baby being healthy. Made me cry when she was recording those tapes.

Kive? I think they somehow throw at him a lot of tragedy, like the grief of loss of his mother in the first season was not enough.. poor dude really struggled.. that dream.. those heaters..

So then, they set him up with the silly baby mishap that ends him up in a hot water and him almost loosing the baby and then setting him up with the wife that we already worry about and want badly to somehow turn it all great for both of them to the point of us getting emotional pimples.

What did they do to his father? Have mercy Shtisel writers!

And what about this whole scene at the cemetery with his wife tomb?.. that was total tear jerker. I also think it was not entirely fair just to demand from him such a total cut off from his past, after all this was mom of his baby and it is kind of too much to ask. First they went to one extreme and had her to overpower his new relationship and then they yanked her out entirely?

Overall, yes, we all had to watch it because we are invested two season deep in it but It really could use some lighter themes. Well, there is always the next season..