series review
New to Prime Video
“Damaged Goods” with Sophie Passmann: Vaginismus, self-actualization and an outrageous podcast
The five friends from “Damaged Goods”
©PrimeVideo
Damaged Goods is new to Prime Video. It’s about a group of friends in their late 20s who are looking for answers to life’s questions. But then they find out that their personal lives and secrets are being spilled on a podcast. By a member of the clique.
“Damaged Goods” is a new series on Prime Video. And indeed, a lot is damaged in it, especially the privacy of Nola’s best friends. Nola (Sophie Passmann) is in her late 20s, and she met her four best friends at a therapy session when she was 15. Since then, the five have grown into a clique that talks about everything: love, sex, self-realization and so on – the typical millennial topics and problems.
“Damaged Goods”: Millennial problems on Prime Video
After failing to study psychology, Nola uses her friends as a career springboard. Without their knowledge. She becomes known as “The Kitchen Psychologist” and reveals the most intimate secrets of her best friends in her new podcast. Apparently just to help your podcast get more reach.
When her friends find out that their private lives are being leaked on the podcast, they are angry – rightly so, of course. Because they all have their secrets and live in their Munich bubble of prosperity. The problems that arise from this are precisely those that people have who lack nothing fundamental.
Mads (Tim Oliver Schultz), for example, has bonding problems, Hugo (Antonije Stankovic) is a sensitive, gay steward who couldn’t quite deal with the bullying from his teenage years. Tia (Zeynep Bozbay) is an unsuccessful artist who likes to talk about her vaginismus (the involuntary spasm of the pelvic floor muscles that surround the vagina). Henriette (Leonie Brill) is probably the grown-up: she is making a career in her job and is faced with the K-questions: Quit? Children?
The themes are a collage of different areas, they rush by but unfortunately don’t go into depth; after all, various things were thought.
A little “GZSZ”, a little “Gossip Girl”
Nola, on the other hand, prefers to watch color mixing machines in the hardware store and gives relationship tips to couples who are about to move in together. Most of the time they are: “Break up”.
The series seems a bit like a mixture of “GZSZ” and “Gossip Girl”, after all there is also a mysterious member of the clique who divulges all intimate details. But it’s not just the actors’ stylish outfits that are missing. It’s a series for the side that has one or two good gags. Anyone who finds Sophie Passmann’s Twitter posts funny should also be well advised with this series.
But the episodes are also a critique of millennials. A generation that spends a lot of time on social media and many of whom document their everyday lives there. Sometimes without regard to the privacy of others. Would I give up my friends to become successful myself? That’s perhaps the question that resonates throughout the show’s eight episodes.