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“Hand aufs Herz” recap: Puppy Love

One thing you should know about me is I have a nearly impenetrable wall of favorite things. I mean, I like a lot of stuff. I even like like a lot of stuff. But there isn’t a lot of stuff that I love to the point where I want to wrap it in an affectionate embrace and fawn over it with reread after reread and rewatch after rewatch. Possessive, is how I am with my favorite things, and protective too. Pretty Little Liars? That’s about the gayest good time you can have without the presence of a unicorn, but like, stay over there with your costumes and tomfoolery and I’ll visit you at my leisure, you know? Naomily and Harry Potter need space to move freely over here in my Palace of Favorites.

And lo, this German telenova stands quietly to the side waiting patiently to be noticed. And even when I was persuaded to notice it, it’s not like I had an easy time tracking it down. Or understanding it. But sweetness and light, is how it filled up my heart and even when I could only find the episodes without subtitles, I watched and basked in the radiance of Jenny’s smile and the warmth of Emma’s confused affection.

I guard my favorites, you see. I don’t let just anything in. But something is happening to me with Hand aufs Herz, and when I dropped off two longtime fictional girlfriends to add Kasia Borek and Lucy Scherer to my Hot 100 list, even Dorothy Snarker raised her eyebrows. “It’s … sudden,” she said. And I wrapped my arms around them to protect them from her suspicious gaze: “Even the creator of the show thinks our HAH bond is destiny.” 

When last we left our Deutschland Lesben, Emma had convinced herself that her number one priority in life was to keep her lips attached to Jenny’s lips, until Timo caught her with her lips attached to Jenny’s lips, at which point Emma pushed off Jenny and did a little skit about, “How dare you, Madam!” Jenny asked her to be brave, waited for her to be brave, and when Emma couldn’t summon up her courage, Jenny deleted her number out of her mobile.

And so here we are.

STAG wants to go to Hamburg to compete in a chroal competition. If they win, they’ll get to preform with the cast of Sister Act in an actual Broadway musical. Sadly, STAG has lost its Rachel Berry. Actually, wait. Strike that. Reverse it. Next time Rachel quits on Glee, we’re going to say that New Directions lost its Luzi. What I mean is: STAG is without its star, and without its star, they don’t stand a chance. The group decides that Jenny could be their savior, and they convince Emma to ask her to join the group in Hamburg.

Two things are going to happen in this recap. Well, more than two things. But the two things you should look out for are: 1) The moment when Emma joins the cast of fictional characters in my Palace of Favorites. And 2) The moment when Jenny joins the cast of fictional characters in my Palace of Favorites.

Emma’s turn is … right now.

There’s something about Emma that I haven’t really been able to put my finger on, something heart-swellingly adorable, and this is the scene when I realized what that is. Emma is a puppy, just the cutest puppy in the whole of Europe, and she can’t decide whether to pledge her loyalty to Jenny and lick her face forever, or keep falling over her own feet while running for cover, because everything sounds like thunder when the world is brand new.

Emma is about to do one of my favorite-ever puppy things, and that thing is called “You Can’t See Me If I Can’t See You.” It’s how all dogs play Hide-And-Seek. My German Shepherd is nine years old, and she still thinks her whole body is hidden if she tucks her head under a pillow.

Emma follows Jenny through the school, pep talking herself the whole way about, “Ask her to go to Hamburg, don’t snog her face off. Ask her to go to Hamburg, don’t snog her face off.” When Jenny looks up and sees her, Emma just, like, turns around and stands still. Like some kind of statue. Jenny looks away and Emma creeps closer. Jenny looks up and – BOOM! – shifty eyes, statue. The third time it happens, Emma ducks behind a wooden pillar and Jenny comes around the other side, all, “Seriously, Em?” 

Jenny, note, is dressed like an actual giraffe.

I mean, just zoom out on this scene for a second: Emma playing puppy hide-and-seek to the point where she can’t even make herself look at Jenny’s face, and Jenny over here dressed in something from the Katie Fucking Fitch 2037 Collection. (“You want to check out the end of season sale at Anthropologie?” “Nah, I buy all my clothes from this amazing bitch from The Future.”) Tell me your heart isn’t banging around in your chest just looking at these two. Actually, if your heart isn’t banging around in your chest, don’t tell me anything because if your heart isn’t banging around in your chest, you are dead inside and I am not emotionally equipped to deal with zombies right now.

Emma blurts out that she wants Jenny to go to Hamburg with her, and Jenny thinks she’s asking her to go on a romantic mini-break. Her face – her perfect, perfect face – is as incandescent as the morning after the night you never thought would end. But then Emma explains about Sister Act and Jenny’s heart breaks all over again. She hoofs it out of there and Emma limps back to the chorus room with her tail between her legs. She flops down on the stage and refuses to talk to anyone. 

The next day STAG is headed to Hamburg, and after a very dramatic several hours of sitting on the bus chewing their fingernails, Luzi arrives. The STAG kids are in awe of the theater in Hamburg, the giant stage and the thousands of seats for spectators. They totally win the Sister Act competition against all the other schools that are competing. And by “all the other schools that are competing” I mean “the one other school that is competing.” The next day they get to perform in a real broadway show. 

Back in their hotel room, Emma and Luzi have a little chat about romance. Emma thinks Luzi should give Timo another chance. They talk about the nature of love and how it covers a multitude of wrongs and drives out fear and all that. It’s the kind of conversation straight people have when they’re either drunk or in theology class; and the kind of conversation lesbians have over Cheerios every single morning of their lives. Emma says sometimes there are a hundred reasons to be afraid of love, and she says it with such tortured conviction that Luzi goes, “I didn’t know you are in love.”

Emma pulls an Emma and flips the switch to adorably awkward, babbling about how she’s not in love, but she’s reading this book about two people in love, and how at first they kind of hate each other, but they they realize maybe they’re fond of each other, and then they realize maybe they’re really fond of each other. Like, the kind of fond where you can’t even hear yourself think over the hammering of your heart, and then sometimes you black out when they’re around, and then sometimes you make-out when they’re around, but you don’t know what to do because do you hate them for being stubborn and haughty or do you love them for being so desperately irresistible?

Luzi’s like, “Oh, Emma, how apt that you were named after a Jane Austen heroine ’cause that’s about the Pride and Predjudice-est thing I have ever heard in my life. I think you should just tell Jenny how you feel. Er, I mean the girl in the story should just tell the other girl in the story – wait, no. The boy in the story should write the girl in the story a letter about his unbending heterosexual love. Because clearly we are talking about two fictional characters, both of whom are just super straight.”

And that’s exactly what Emma does. She writes Jenny a real-live letter with a real-live pen and puts it in the real-live mail. Which I think is savagely romantic. Like trains. And thunderstorms. She cries when she’s writing it, too, and I swear to God, just get your zombie heart out of here if you’re not tearing up.

Jenny, I have no idea where to begin. I have no idea if you’ll be able to forgive me. I’m sitting in Hamburg and the only thing I can think about is you. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. The kiss with you was the most beautiful thing that’s ever happened to me. But despite that, I hurt you, because I was too scared to admit my feelings in front of Timo. I’m ashamed of that. But I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to do it next time either. I wish you could help me to be a little braver. Yours, Emma.

Meanwhile, back in Cologne, I’ve started shouting at my laptop.

OK, hang on. First of all, I was swooning all over my laptop because Jenny is torn out of the frame about Emma. This is the part where Jenny makes it into my Inner Circle of Favorites because: a) She decides to console herself with an entire pizza, which she eats while b) wearing a messy ponytail, which comes in super handy when she shoves the pizza away and c) starts doing ballet to d) P!nk in the e) middle of her living room. She dances and dances and hops on the bar and then on the couch and it’s the sexiest temper-tantrum I’ve ever seen. If I ever broke a girl’s heart and she acted like that and then sent me a letter in the mail that I read while riding a train in a thunderstorm, my heart would explode in my chest. It’d be the most romantic death ever. (Sod off, Romeo and Juliet.)

OK, now it’s time to start shouting because Jenny decides to go out and drown her pain in booze and Ben. Ben gropes her real good at the club, and then they go back to his place and have all the sex. It’s heart-breaking the way its filmed: Emma on stage performing Sister Act and Jenny in Ben’s bed performing straight people sex.

When Jenny wakes up in Ben’s bed the next day, she literally goes, “Shit!” and tries to sneak away. At school she tells him it was just a one-off. He’s totally fine with that because he is a teenage boy and so of course he is. In the cafeteria, Jenny and Emma are hilariously polite to each other. “How was Hamburg, Emma?!” “It was so good, Jenny! Thank you for asking!! We won the competition!! How are YOU?!” “I’m good! Thank you for your concern! These sandwiches look especially tasty today!!” “Yes, they do!! Hey, I’m not asking for any particular reason, but has your mail come yet?!” “I don’t know because I’m here at school!! It’s totally not weird that you are asking me that!!”

However guilty Jenny felt before, it increases by about a bazillion when she sees Emma’s sweet face, so she pulls Ben into the restroom, and because she’s never seen a movie or a TV show before, she doesn’t even check to make sure the stalls are empty before going, “I had sex with you. I do not want to have sex with you again. Please do not tell anyone about how I had sex with you. Just to clarify, in case any Gretchen Weiners are eavesdropping, we did, in fact, have sex. Let us never speak of it again.” 

Guess what, you guys? There is a Gretchen Weiners eavesdropping. And by “Gretchen Weiners” I mean “Caro.” 

Caro shimmies up to Jenny’s locker to give her shit about sleeping with Ben, and I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but Jenny Hartmann doesn’t give a f–k. She’s from London, OK? She kisses strangers on the Tube for giggles. So when Caro tries to pick a fight with her, she’s all, “Listen, maybe you haven’t heard what a badass I am, but if you’ll just take a step back and look at my giraffe jeggings, I think you’ll see that you lose this fight in every possible way.”

Caro tells Jenny not to get her hopes up about Ben because he’s only in it for the sex, and Jenny is like, “Awesome, me too. Now, unless you’re looking for some tips or something, maybe you should bugger off.”

The next day, Caro launches a personal vendetta against Jenny and it starts with an announcement to the common room that there’s a new mayor of Slutville and that mayor is Jenny Hartmann. Emma hops right up off the couch and gets in Caro’s face because guess who is allowed to disparage the name of her lady love? No one, that’s who. She’s like, “Say it again and I will throttle you.” And Caro goes, “Jenny. had sexual intercourse. with Ben.” True to her word, Emma tries to murder Caro with her ineffectual fists of lesbian emo rage.

Jenny is at home eating breakfast, sorting through the mail, when a letter from one Miss Emma Müller catches her eye. The same Miss Emma Müller who is, at that very moment, getting her ass kicked trying to defend Jenny’s honor. Jenny opens it up and reads the notes from Hamburg. She moons and swoons and then she’s like, “Oh, shit!” and rushes out the door to try to find Emma before Emma finds out she bonked Ben.

At school, Ben greets Jenny at the door, just bubbling over with the news about the girl fight – “I don’t get it; why would Emma be so upset that you shagged me? She must want a piece of me, too!” – and Jenny knocks him out of the way to find Emma. When she busts into the chorus room, Emma is prowling around on stage, explaining to Luzi about the many, many ways she’s going to murder Caro. Jenny goes, “Emma!” And Emma goes, “Jenny!” And the look they exchange is hot enough to melt the sun, so Luzi grabs Timo, all, “Um, we should go before secondhand fire consumes our souls.”

Jenny says she got Emma’s letter and she felt such an upsurge of affection that she literally flew to school on the wings of love, and Emma starts Emma-ing on about Caro and how she’s got to die now because of being a liar and calling Jenny a slut. Jenny’s like, “Emma, please. Emma, stop talking. Emma!” Emma hushes just long enough for Jenny to say, “It’s true. I had sex with Ben.”

The camera closes in on Emma’s face, and it’s the saddest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

Two more recaps and we’ll be all caught up. Check back tomorrow for the next installment. In the meantime, I want to let you know that the Hand aufs Herz production team is thrilled with the international interest in their show. They’re working on a way to make the Jemma scenes available to a worldwide audience. And later this week I’m going to interview Kasia Borek and Lucy Scherer, who are also super excited about your support.

I said it last time and I’ll say it this time: HaH is the way fandom should be done. A million thank yous to the fans who have worked tirelessly to help me watch this show. You guys are the ones making all this exciting stuff happen. You found something worth adoring out loud, and you’re doing it with all kinds of grace and warmth. And I honor you. I really do. Thank you for showing me the way.

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