Crap Happens is a new German comedy on Netflix where a man pushing 40 finally gets his big break in the world of rap, but has to deal with a ton of issues in his weird hometown in the state of Brandenburg.
CRAP HAPPENS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A female voice says, “As long as he could remember, Toni Fleischer’s only goal was to make it big.” We see a closeup of Toni (Anton “Fatoini” Schneider) dropping some rhymes, but when the camera pulls back, he’s merely lip synching while working at a pizzeria.
The Gist: Toni has been living in Berlin for years, hoping to make it big as a hip-hop artist. But now he’s pushing 40 and he hasn’t gotten anywhere, living in the basement of the pizzeria, thanks to the owner, Pipo (Salim Samatou).
He’s going to a local club where a freestyle battle is taking place, and he’s clearly the oldest person there. He gets a call right before he goes on that his mother, Wera (Ruth Reinecke), who runs a towing business in his hometown of Schitten, died while doing what she loved: Trying to get a duck out of a tree. The branch she was on broke, then she was struck by lightning.
When he gets the news, he freestyles a depressing, bitter and powerful rap about how his life hasn’t gone his way. He then gets into Schitten the next day to attend Wera’s funeral. There, he sees his sisters: Nancy (Jordis Triebel), the town cop, and twins Kaia (Sophia Munster) and Karo (Jana Munster), the latter of whom hasn’t spoken to him since he ruined her wedding. Also there is Johnny Carrera (Dimitrij Schaad), Wera’s latest husband, who talks to Toni like he’s a doting father even though Toni is older than he is. Johnny is the only one who seems overly emotional about Wera’s death.
At the funeral, Toni sees a teenager playing ’90s pop hits on a keyboard, and finds out he was brought in by the funeral director. That happens to be Jana (Hannah Erlichmann); the two of them used to date when they were teenagers, before Toni left for the big city.
The next morning, Toni is awakened by a helicopter landing next to the family’s towing business; on the helicopter is Pipo, and Dalia Muller-Muller (Taneshia Abt), an A&R rep from Cutie Heart Records. She heard his freestyling in Berlin and thinks he has heart (they also specialize in heart transplants). She gives him two weeks to come up with some completed songs. But on his way out of town, he almost runs over that teen at the keyboard. The kid then introduces himself as Charly Schrammel (Sky Arndt) and says that he’s Toni’s son.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The “going back home” plot of Crap Happens (original title: Kacken an der Havel) is similar to the fundamental plot of a very different show that’s also debuting this weekend: American Classic.
Our Take: The goal of Crap Happens creators Alex Schaad and Dimitrij Schaad to contrast Toni’s sad ambitions in Berlin with the quirkiness of the life he left behind in Schitten. It’s a weird little town, which is why Toni left it to begin with; he never felt he fit in there, and his hip hop ambitions surely didn’t fit within the confines of the never-changing town. He even knew that staying in Schitten would make for too many distractions as he gets probably his only chance to make it as a rapper.
But the discovery that Charly is his kid — Jana is his mother — is going to keep him in his weird hometown, living with his emotionally-suppressing sisters and overly-emotional stepfather. The show got much funnier when Toni got to Schitten, so the longer he stays there, the better.
The tone of the series definitely leans towards some absurdities, like Wera’s duck fascination, the absolute devotion Toni’s childhood bestie Paulie (Vincent Redetzki) still has for him, Johnny quoting Haddaway during Wera’s funeral, the actress who is the town’s mayor, and just the overall stuck-in-time weirdness that is Shitten. Sure, there will be jokes about the town’s name, but they won’t be any more oppressive than what we heard during Schitt’s Creek, for example.
Performance Worth Watching: We also enjoyed the freestyle that Anton Schneider dropped after Toni found out about his mother, so it’s not a stretch to think a record label rep did, too.
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Toni finds out about Charly after almost running him over.
Sleeper Star: A CGI duckling steals the show after Toni inadvertently runs over his family, then decides to take care of him.
Most Pilot-y Line: Johnny consoles Toni by saying that Wera praised him for wearing “some really sturdy pants.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. The quirkiness of Crap Happens doesn’t get in the way of finding out more about Toni, his history and his ambitions. Let’s hope we find out about more of the people that surround him in Shitten as he tries to navigate both his new fortune in his rap career and the new discovery about Charly.
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.