Deborah Crumbaker

A wonderfully heroic tale inspired by actual historic people. It plays a bit fast and loose with history but what the heck, it is mostly fiction. The most fun I had with the series was playing "spot the anachronisms". Like, seeing a square concreted culvert in a couple of quick shots of a stream. Big laugh! The continuity editor also had lots of problems. In the beginning of one scene the female character has her earring twisted so the back side shows but as the scene moves on the very next shot of her has the earring placed correctly. I love stuff like that! Horses are another problem. Ertugrul rides a white horse all the time but there are about three different horses that are used for his faithful mount Aktogali. You can tell them all apart by their muzzles. The first one has an entirely pink nose (needs lots of sun screen for sure) but in the last season they use two horses I call "Little pink" and "Big Pink". Big Pink has grey nostrils and a wide pink band in between. Little Pink has grey nostrils but just a thin band of pink in between. Although English is my first language I picked up enough Turkish by the fifth season to know when the translators were not really being faithful to what was said in Turkish. Overall those flaws just make for some fun games to play with the series. I really enjoyed the story lines. I have an alternate title for the series, "How can I deceive thee? Let me count the ways."