In Season 1 of the Turkish series Thank You, Next, a successful lawyer in Istanbul tries to figure out her romantic connections to a number of men who are actively trying to win her over. Season 2 is more of the same, only the pecking order of the various men from Season 1 has changed.
Opening Shot: An ambulance drives through Istanbul.
The Gist: Leyla Taylan (Serenay Sarikaya) is in the back of that ambulance, hyperventilating as if she’s in the middle of a panic attack. We then go back to shortly after she left her on-again, off-again love Ömer (Metin Akdülger) on their wedding day. She is now in a huge new apartment, and is the primary caregiver to Buddy, the dog they owned together.
When Ömer comes by to drop off whatever of her stuff he had, he tells her he’s moving to Dubai for good, then once again tries to deny that anything happened between him and his old girlfriend right before his and Leyla’s wedding. She’ll have none of that, and Ömer is so pissed that when he sees Sarp (Ahmet Rifat Sungar), Leyla’s coworker who has a crush on her parking near the apartment with their friend Beliz (Zeynep Tugçe Bayat), he literally picks a fight.
Meanwhile, Cem (Hakan Kurtas) is making a full-court press for Leyla, sending her roses every single day. Now that she’s single, she can’t really deny her attraction to him any longer, even if she tells them during a lunch that love is just brain chemistry and that’s it.
At a group dinner where Funda (Meric Aral) introduces the gang to her new hippie boyfriend, some hallucinogenic tea gets the entire group, including Leyla, completely messed up. She wakes up in her apartment the next day and finds out that Cem slept over; apparently she left him a very loopy voicemail during the craziness. He even comes back later and bathes Buddy so the date Leyla and he had set up for Friday can start a day earlier.
While on the road to the airport with his buddies, Ömer is involved in an accident. He not only assaults the driver of the car his buddy hit, but then assaults a police officer who’s trying to calm tensions. This buys him house arrest at his parents’ house for a month, which also means he likely will not be starting that job in Dubai.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we said for the show’s first season, Thank You, Next is like Sex And The City, but with a lot of lawyers.
Our Take: Listen, we get that the world of Thank You, Next is a bit of a glamorous fantasy world, where everyone is pretty, coworkers are close friends who party together, and people’s apartments and clothes are all top-drawer. But we’re going to reiterate what we said last season: It all feels very empty, for the most part, save for the magnetic presence of Serenay Sarikaya as Leyla.
A lot of the show’s story stems from the fact that so many men are falling all over themselves for Leyla’s attention, and Leyla at times lets what they do guide her decision making. What we have always appreciated about this series is that we never ask ourselves why Leyla is getting all of this romantic attention. That’s absolutely due to Sarikaya’s performance, making Leyla a powerful, sexy woman who is very much an independent adult in every aspect of her life except romance. Of course, sometimes we wonder why she gives up so much control in that department, but without that flaw, there wouldn’t be a show, right?
The rest of the group around her are more or less shallowly-sketched characters, even more than a season into the series. We also get to know Cem’s ex-wife Defne (Gülcan Arslan), who is now dating Feyyaz (Boran Kuzum), whom Leyla dated at the beginning of Season 1. It seems that Defne, who remains close to Cem because of a shared tragedy the two of them suffered, is there to be a complication that gets between Leyla and Cem and little else. And we’re not sure what the purpose of having Sarp pining away for Leyla serves, other than just having someone else vying for her affections.
Everyone else continues to be a Greek chorus whose lives seem to exist in relation to what advice they give Leyla. Even Cem points out to Leyla that all of her close friends are also coworkers, something that she never realized until he mentions it. She seems to be OK with it, but he might have planted a seed in her head that things in her law office might be a bit too cozy for comfort.
We can see where this season goes: While Leyla and Cem try to make the two of them work, Defne is always looming, and Ömer just won’t go away. And the entire time, all we want to do is watch Sarikaya move around in yet another sexy, glamorous outfit. Perhaps that’s the point of the entire series.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: During his date with Leyla, Cem gets word that Defne, who is pregnant, is in the hospital. Then we flash forward and see Leyla get out of the ambulance she was in and walk to the courhouse.
Sleeper Star: At the very least, Metin Akdülger’s character Ömer has some personality, even if it’s pretty pathetic most of the time.
Most Pilot-y Line: The way the group talks to each other at Leyla’s law office, we wonder if HR is on speed dial there.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The only reason why we recommend Thank You, Next is because it’s such a good-looking show with a terrific lead. The storylines and supporting characters are shallow but not annoying enough to turn us off, so we’re all for watching for the show’s high-end eye candy and little else.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.