Blink and you miss it: Even is wearing the Jesus T-shirt now. Given that they came home dripping wet from the pool, Even probably had to borrow a lot of clothes from Isak.



Blink and you miss it: Isak never bothered putting in a proper blackout curtain, he just threw an orange blanket over the white curtains Noora left in the room.



Subtext: The reason Isak never bothers telling Even the rest of the story is because we, the viewers, already should have pieced together what happened in season 2. Eskild found Isak at a gay bar, felt sorry for him, and set up a spot for him to crash in the basement. Isak lived there for a month or so, until Noora moved out and Isak could take her room.



Subtext: What’s happening in this scene is that Noora is falling back into obsessive compulsive behaviors as a way to cope with her anxiety over her relationship with William, and Eskild is trying to signal this. Isak nods back, so obviously both of them know what Noora is like and what she’s doing, which is why they’re both quickly restarting the conversation to smooth it over.



Also, Noora and Eskild are totally on a fishing expedition, trying to get Isak to open up about that guy they saw in the apartment earlier in the morning.



Subtext: No-one believes Isak’s lie about the family dinner, they think he’s acting weird and distant, which is why they’re also shutting him out by not telling him what happened between Magnus and Vilde.



Subtext: The irony of the stupid conversation the boys are having, is that Isak just spent the entire weekend kissing someone with stubble, and he loved it, while the boys are treating it as a weird and horrible thing.

Subtext: Even’s clothes signal his mental state. The more he covers his head, the more down he is. Beanie + hoodie + jacket + scarf signals that he’s had a difficult conversation with Sonja which left him depressed, and he’s been skipping school for a couple of days because of it. Note that he never answers Isak’s question about where he’s been, because he’s not yet ready to tell Isak about his own mental illness and what it does to him.



Subtext: Ironically, while Even is trying to avoid the topic of mental illness, Isak uncomfortably brings it up in the context of his mom. But Isak talks about it in such a way that it scares Even off.



Lost in translation: This piece of dialogue was extremely tricky to translate. In English, there is a stronger difference between a past tense hypothetical, and a future tense hypothetical. A past tense hypothetical is used when you talk about something that didn’t happen or was never going to happen, while a future tense hypothetical is used when you talk about things that could happen or will happen. In Norwegian, this is more ambiguous, a past tense hypothetical can be used for things that might happen, and throughout this conversation, both Isak and Even are talking in past tense hypotheticals. A more literal translation of what the characters are saying is:



Even: “What do you think your parents would have said if you got together with me?”

Isak: “I think it would have been fine. Or… dad probably wouldn’t have had anything against it.”

[…]

Isak: “What about your parents, what do you think they would have said about me?”

Even: “I think they would have loved you.”



Keeping the past tense for the entire dialogue in English is wrong. It makes it sound like they are never ever going to come out to their parents, as if they wish they could, but can’t. But that’s not what they mean, they are discussing how their families are going to react when they make their relationship official.



So why wasn’t this script written using future tense hypotheticals in Norwegian? It wouldn’t have been wrong, it would have had the same meaning on the face of it. But I think that this was on purpose, I think Julie Andem wanted this to be ambiguous, she wanted to hide subtext in this dialogue. Because in hindsight, you can read Even’s parting words either way:



“I think they would love you” (when you get to meet them)

“I think they would have loved you” (but you’re never going to meet them)



Switching this entire dialogue over to future tense hypotheticals in English makes it closer to the apparent meaning of what they’re saying. But it completely loses the subtext, the ambiguity, the double meaning of Even’s words. And this is why I kept the past tense on the last sentence in this translation, to preserve some of the feeling that this whole meeting-your-boyfriend’s-parents-thing might not happen after all. Unfortunately, this makes it stick out more to the English reader, than to the Norwegian listener, but I think it’s the better choice.



Subtext: The tragedy of this scene is that Even decides then and there to break it off with Isak, and kisses him goodbye one last time, which is why he looks so sad when he leaves. While Isak thought this scene went really well; Even came clean with Sonja, Isak shared sensitive info about his mom, they discussed a future as boyfriends, and kissed each other goodbye. So this is why Isak looks really happy at the end, oblivious as to what just actually happened.

Culture: Operation Day’s Work is a charity event where school children work for a day and donate their earnings to youth- and school-related projects in developing countries. It started in Norway, and exists throughout Northern Europe. If you followed the social media for this episode, there were chats and Instagram stories showing how Isak helped the groundskeeper for the apartment building with various chores, such as cleaning the stairwells.



Blink and you miss it: Eskild complained in the first episode that Isak’s room smelled like fart, and that it smelled like lavender when Noora lived there.



Subtext: Isak has such a hard time saying that he is gay, or that he likes boys in general, so he describes his experiences as having “a thing” with Even. They’re “doing stuff”.



Soapbox: Even though Isak puts his foot in his mouth and deserves the smackdown Eskild gives him, he actually has a point in that stereotypes are harmful for everyone. Isak has such a hard time accepting that he is gay, because there are almost no role models for boys like him, boys who like beer and skateboards and FIFA and snapbacks and 90′s hip-hop and football, and beer… and boys. He feels alienated from both the straight world and the gay world.

Blink and you miss it: Magnus says there’s just three of them, presumably to make it sound like there’s not a whole gang of boys coming to crash the party, just a couple of guys who want to join.



Blink and you miss it: Sholess girl is so mad at someone at the party that she left without shoes, while flipping them all off.



Blink and you miss it: Eva making out with P-Chris.



Blink and you miss it: Sana seeing Isak and greeting him.

