I know this is a series probably not may are into but I enjoy watching this drama and honestly for the tv series adaptation I though it was enough with just the first season, I mean leave it as a mini series because from what it seems its always the same theme, brothers competing with each other but I get there is a lot to work with as the story behind this series is a very long one. Drops of God Season 2 Episode 2 really gets things moving after that first episode laid down all the groundwork for this whole wine hunt they have going on, this one actually makes you feel like the search is starting to go somewhere real instead of just sitting around talking about it but the series doesnt seem to respect time and space enough as they just go around the world on a single episode. Camille chasing down that garbage truck to get the empty bottle back was kind of funny but also showed how serious she got about helping Issei find this mystery wine, even tho she was the one who threw it away when she got pissed off, she is very dramatic and impulsive, now she regret throwing it away. The sticky wax on the bottle seal ends up been the first actual clue they get, turns out its beeswax not regular resin witch is rare as hell these days for sealing wine bottles, so Philippe suggests they go see his bee expert friend Raphael to figure out where it came from. Watching Camille run around doing all this research while Issei is stuck in the hospital recovering from almost drowning himself was interesting because you can tell he thinks she is trying to beat him to the answer, like she wants to prove to her dead dad that she is still better than everyone else even tho she already won the competition in season one. The whole episode is basically Camille going from one lead to another, getting lab results on the beeswax pollen, going to this huge grape archive place called Vassal, tasting like a hundred different grape varieties until they find the right one, and then eventually tracking the whole thing back to some beekeeper dude in Athens who sends his wax to a monastery in Georgia the country not the state.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6867482/
- Platform: AppleTv+
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Issei gets more frustrated as the episode goes on because he cant do anything from that hospital bed, he is stuck there eating shitty hospital food and watching Camille do all the work without him witch makes him feel useless and like she is stealing his mission from him. When she visits him and admits she dumped all the wine down the drain he gets mad as hell and call her out to realize how stupid that was straight up, that was a funny moment and the reason why I keep watching this drama, he is right to be mad because now they cant test the actual wine itself, they just got an empty bottle with some wax on it and nothing else to work with for figuring out where it came from, then Camille tries to change the subject by talking about Hirokazu leaving with Marianne instead of staying around to support his son but Issei does not want to hear it that part of his life is in the past, he just wants to get out of that hospital and start doing the work himself before Camille finds the wine without him. The doctor tells him he needs rest because his lungs are still messed up from almost dying underwater but of course that does not stop him, as soon as he gets a call from Camille with an update about the Vassal grape testing he just discharges himself and tells Natasha to drive him to Montpellier so he can taste wines with Camille and Thomas. Natasha sees right thru his bullshit excuse about not trusting Camille to do the tasting properly, she knows he is competing with his sister and trying to prove he is better than her, witch is exactly what is happening even if Issei wont admit it out loud to anyone including himself at this point in the story.
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The Vassal Research Center part was probably the coolest part of the whole episode for me, they got this massive archive of like every grape variety that exists and they keep all ind of samples so people can taste them and compare its something really crazy and consider if there is something like this for multiple industries. Camille and Thomas end up tasting 171 different grapes if Im not mistaken trying to find one that matches the mystery wine. The show does this thing were the room fills up with vines and plants when Camile finally find the right grape because even though Issei is now having "visions" too they are not the same as when Camile does, after all it was a nice visual way to show that moment without just having someone say hey we found it out loud to the camera. Turns out the grape they are looking for is called Herbemont, and its basically banned in France because the wine made from it supposedly drives people crazy, although the director of Vassal says that is just a legend and the real reason it got banned back in 1935 is because it does not need pesticides so if everyone used it the chemical companies would lose money and its almost ethanol. Nobody makes wine with Herbemont anymore or at least they are not suppose to, but clearly somebody did because that is what was in Legers mystery bottle, so now they know what grape it is but they still need to figure out where the hell it came from and who made it in the first place. Issei shows up right when they are down to the last ten wines and he joins in on the tasting, you can see he is still weak and his breathing is not great but he pushes thru it anyway because he needs to be part of this search, he can not just sit on the sidelines and let Camille do everything without him or he will go insane thinking about it the whole time he is recovering.
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While all this wine detective work is going on we also get some scenes with Hirokazu running into his ex wife Honoka a part of Season 1 context that you might not get if you havent watch season 1 but the entire story is that her mom is some kind of high class who use to dominate both Hirokazu and Issei until everything falls appart when Issei accept to join the competition not for the money but to proof he is worthit of been call the best ever, they clearly separated on really bad terms and Hirokazu almost called her to tell her about Issei almost dying but he did not because he figured she would not pick up the phone anyway, its when he accidentally sees her in person he tells her everything about what Issei has been doing, how he almost drowned free diving in Marseille, how he is now obsessed with finding this wine to prove something to his dead father Leger who never really cared about him when he was alive. Hirokazu tells Honoka she should call Issei even tho he probably wont answer, just so she can feel better about reaching out, and then they go there separate ways and you can tell Honoka is still miserable and lonely as hell just like she was last season. Back at the Chassangre Estate, Marianne is getting annoyed that Camille has been ignoring her the whole trip, she came there to spend time with her daughter but Camille has been so focused on the wine search that she forgot to eat meals or hang out with her family at all. Thomas tries to defend Camille by saying she is doing this for Issei, but Marianne is not buying it, she knows her daughter has some of her fathers narcissistic traits and Camille is doing this partly for herself to prove she is still the best even tho she does not want to admit that to anyone including herself probably.
The episode ends with Camille and Issei heading to Georgia after Issei talks to the beekeeper Alexi Pipia in Athens and learns that he sends his beeswax to a monastery in his home village in the Kartli region, Pipia confirms that the monastery makes wine and uses his beeswax to seal the bottles witch means they finally got a real lead on where Legers mystery wine came from. Issei calls up his friend Dai to get a contact in Georgia who can help them out and then he books a cab to the airport before Camille even catches up with him, witch makes me think he was planning to ditch her and go to Georgia by himself to get there first. Camille finds him just as the cab shows up and assumes he was trying to leave without her, Issei says he was not but I do not believe him for a second, he already had the cab booked and he called Dai before calling Camille so if she had not found him when she did he would have gone without her for sure. The whole dynamic between these two is getting more tense as the episode goes on, they are suppose to be working together but really they are both trying to beat each other to the answer, Issei wants to prove he is better than Camille and better than Leger, and Camille is clearly obsessed with the search even tho she keeps saying she is just doing it to help her brother out. This episode moved things forward in a good way without dragging or feeling like nothing was happening, the mystery got deeper, the characters are all dealing with there own personal shit, and the whole thing is heading toward Georgia for episode three witch should be interesting to see what they find at that monastery, its a 7 out of 10 for me, solid episode that kept things moving and made me want to keep watching.
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