Hasamba 3 G

The time is the 1950s. A heroic group of Israeli girls and boys from Tel-Aviv has set up a secret society called "Hasamba"; they gather in their secret base, the Electric Cave hidden in Haifa's Carmel mountain range, and fight the British Mandate for Israel's statehood- all the while crossing swords with various sleazy criminal elements.

All rather idealistic, right?

Well, we're sorry to break it to you, but it's been a while since the 1950s.

Hasamba 3 G (Or more literally Hasamba The Third Generation; Hebrew "Hasamba Dor 3", "חסמבה דור 3") is a 2010 Israeli TV mini-series Sequel to a series of pocket books written by Igal Mosinzon since the 1950s and regularly until his death. The books feature the adventures of Hasamba (which stands for "Absolutely Secret Group" in Hebrew), a Seven Man Five-Man Band: Yaron (The Leader), Tamar (The Second-in-command), Uzi (the Thin), Ehud (the Fat), Moshe Yerahmiel, Shulamit (The Medic) and Menashe (the Yemenite). Hasamba constantly struggled with anyone that got in the way of Israel's foundation or was generally a prick, but held a particular (mutual) grudge for criminal kingpin Elimelech Zorkin, essentially Hasamba's Arch Enemy.

Well, as mentioned earlier, that was then and now is now. As You Know, Israel was founded in 1948, so the 1950s was a rather sensitive and desperate time which called for idealism and positive thinking; this is why the books are rife with Black and White Morality, patriotism and Happy Endings. This state of mind has since been derided and mocked endlessly, by the left-leaning and otherwise, so now- 60 years later- some Israeli screenwriters had decided to go back to Hasamba and make a Darker and Edgier Reconstruction of it.

The show is set in the Present Day and attempts to Retcon all the zany adventures described in the books to make sense while taking them to their logical conclusion. 60 years have passed, and Hasamba has grown old. Yaron is a lt. colonel in reserve duty in the IDF and a pensioner, he and Tamar are divorced and everyone had generally dispersed each to their boring hum-drum lives. Then a Dr. Zacks calls up Tamar, telling her that he has something she "wants very dearly"; it turns out to be a hard disk which supposedly contains some sort of important information. They set up a meeting- then mysterious bad guys show up at the place of the meeting first and shoot the doctor dead.

Thus the 70-year-old Hasamba gets dragged back into the action one by one. But they're not alone: Several guys and girls of the younger and fresher generation find themselves involved, including but not limited to Yaron and Tamar's granddaughter Renan and her schoolmate Iggy (who happened to be assigned to "help" Yaron as a part of an obligatory "help a pensioner" school program). Though inexperienced, reluctant and often at a loss, these two and the other teenagers who soon join are obviously supposed to eventually become Hasamba's third-generation counterparts.

And they don't have an easy way ahead of them. They're up against Big Bad Sunny Zorkin, daughter of Hasamba's hated arch-enemy Elimelech and CEO of Israel's largest cellular communications company, Zorcom. Sunny is incredibly ambitious, ready to do anything to get her hands on that apparently crucial Hard Disk and personally oversees some rather shady conspiracies involving corporate expansion and prototype Brainwashing technology.

Hence the title, punning on Hasamba's evolving third generation and the 3G (third-generation) cell phone technology so popular in Israel 2010-ish.

It is hard to give the average non-Israeli reader the gist of how absurd this premise is. This is like putting Disney Characters into a Final Fantasy Game. This is like if DreamWorks made a CGI movie where we find out that Tom Sawyer had a son, only the Illuminati put him in Cryogenic Suspension and now, centuries later, he is defrosted and starts a great trek across the USA driving a Subaru station wagon in search of his heritage while unravelling a malevolent conspiracy involving the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill. Hellish copyright disputes had to be resolved before the concept even took off the ground.

Will Yaron and Tamar recover their lost love? Will the third generation of Hasamba pull together to save the day? Will the Mind Screwy plot to brainwash children into worshipping cell phones succeed? How will Hasamba deal with the fact that someone took the real cave which inspired their mythological hideout and built a Hilton hotel on it?

All these questions and more will be answered, young love will bloom and hardened avocado fruits will be thrown on the way to Hasamba's most epic mission yet.

"Freddy: Who is Zehavi working for? Who is paying you? Iggy: I don't know who we are working for. Freddy: For the Germans? For the Japanese? For who? Iggy: (incredulous) What Japanese?! Freddy: (electrocutes Iggy.) Iggy: STOP! STOP IT! Yes, for the Japanese! The Japanese, it's all the Japanese, the Japanese are paying us! Freddy: Japanese who? What Japanese? Iggy: It's the Japanese... Mishima... Freddy: Mishima? Iggy: It's... Freddy: I've never heard about this "Mishima". Iggy: It's a secret organization, controlled by Heihachi Mishima. Freddy: Keep talking. Iggy: Heihachi is um... He's this old guy who has white hair sticking out from both sides of his head... Renan: Also his son. Iggy: Also his son, his son, Kazuya Mishima, and his grandson Jin Kazama. Renan: And Nina Williams and her twin sister... Iggy: Anna. Renan: Anna. (Freddy walks about the room menacingly for a bit.) Freddy: Williams?... Anna? That's not Japanese. Renan: It's an international network. Iggy: All over the world. (Freddy contemplates this.) Freddy: That son of a bitch, Izax. He went all the way to the Japanese?"
 * The Alleged Car: Yaron owns one of these; his driving license has expired, so Iggy has to drive it.
 * All in The Manual: If you're familiar with the book series (or even at least bothered to read up on it), a lot of foreshadowing will jump at you that wouldn't otherwise.
 * Batman Gambit: Dante's almost-successful plan of using Alpha as a proxy is disturbingly believable, so much so that you are forced to wonder whether Real Life VIP security has strictly enforced procedures to prevent that sort of thing.
 * Belligerent Sexual Tension: Hufni and Luda
 * Bond Villain Stupidity: Averted hard with Sunny;.
 * Brother-Sister Incest: Freddy's attraction to his sister Sunny is really out of place in this otherwise family-friendly series, which is probably why it's so understated.
 * Cannot Spit It Out: "You have it all wrong, he took naked pictures of her and now he's trying to frame me for it!" - Come now, Iggy, wasn't it at least worth a shot?
 * Casting Gag: The prime minister is played by Yaron London, who originally inspired the character of Yaron Zehavi.
 * Changing of the Guard: Essentially the premise, though it's danced around for several episodes before being announced outright (and even then the old Hasamba is far from hanging their coats and going home; the show is going to explore this plot for all it's worth). The moment where the new Hasamba is officially assembled is where they, in true Hasamba tradition, get to choose their own monikers.
 * Competence Zone: Applies to the original book series with flying colors; At one point the books actually featured a "second-generation" Hasamba (or a Hasamba Zeo, if you will), complete with Generation Xerox, who were conceived when Mosenzon figured that the original Hasamba had already reached the ripe old age of twenty and ought to retire. This is yet another, slightly more obscure, level the title makes sense on- the now-assembling youngster Hasamba generation really is the third. Ridiculously and purposefully Inverted in the actual show, where the usual Competence Zone for this sort of action series (20-45) is an incompetence zone and all the good guys are either teenaged or elderly.
 * Continuity Nod: When Moshe Yerahmiel sees that Yaron has picked up Iggy, a ne'er-do-well high school kid who was forced on him via the "help the pensioner" program, Yerahmiel comments "rehabilitating the teens again? Wasn't one time enough for you?" in reference to the 1971 Hasamba and The Teens movie (released internationally as Get Zorkin).
 * Convenient Coma: turns out to be in one.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Sunny.
 * Cosmic Deadline: Episode 16 has that 2/3-into-the-season feel to it. The series' next, and last, episode:
 * Cleans up the romantic loose ends by having designated couples kiss and share 3-4 lines of dialogue, after plenty of episodes of diet Ship Tease.
 * Sees the plan of Team Evil shift into gear, reach its climax and fall apart: At the beginning of the episode the original Hasamba is tied up in an airplane about to crash into the sea, Sunny holds Uzi firmly by the balls and Alpha is on his way to . By the end, The Good Guys Win. Somehow. It involves an avocado.
 * Goes through everything you'd have expected the Alpha arc to include and was put off until now: Someone he knew before his brainwashing seriously confronts him for the first ever time, he fights from the inside against his orders, he manages to disobey them, he is admitted to a hospital, we see his full rehabilitation, we don't even see what trouble he is in now for ...
 * Paints the aftermath in a broad stroke and a half: The Zorkins are seen taken into custody and asked a few questions by the press. We don't get to see their inevitable failed escape attempt or any trial.
 * Has Yaron and Tamar apparently reconcile the differences that led to their divorce, brought together again by, after they haven't as much as discussed the issue before.
 * Skips straight over very obvious trust issues Hasamba and have to sort out all the way to Welcome Back, Traitor.
 * Spends its last writhing gasp revisiting Moran and Mr. Lerner, stuck in their Satanistic ritual chamber, lamenting that they seem to have been forgotten there.
 * Phew!
 * Creator Provincialism: Hasamba's hideout and center of operations, the Electric Cave, was originally in Haifa. Israel's media industries are all located in Tel-Aviv, which often induces endemic Tel-Aviv-itis in every show to reach production, and this one's no different; the Electric Cave seems to have moved south for this remake with not even a feeble attempt to Hand Wave the discrepancy away.
 * Cry for the Devil: Though the show already averts Black and White Morality with Uzi's ordeal, it further makes a point to sucker-punch the audience with constant details of Sunny's abusive childhood. Her dad once left her in a hotel abroad as a guarantee when he couldn't afford to pay for their stay. She spent months alone, eating out of trash cans, not knowing if anyone was ever going to come back for her. And ever since then what she'd always wanted was to be in control.
 * Dawson Casting: Most notable with the actor playing teenager Iggy, who was 30 when the series aired.
 * Deal with the Devil: Uzi is reduced to having a "you rub my back, I rub yours" conversation with Sunny where he pleas with her to work her connections and move his grandson ahead in the waiting list for experimental cancer treatment. In return he's expected to throw around his political weight and push through Zorcom's cellular antenna construction permissions, which have been stuck in committee limbo (and for a good reason). Later he's even further reduced into becoming.
 * Debut Queue: During the first few episodes both older and younger Hasamba members were being introduced on a one-per-episode basis. Yaron was tracking down the older Hasamba and rallying them; the younger Hasamba started sticking together out of circumstance and, later, commitment.
 * Enemy Mine: Subverted..
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Also Subverted. At the series' climax, Yaron pleads with
 * Five-Man Band
 * The Hero: Renan
 * The Lancer: Iggy
 * The Smart Guy: Luda
 * The Big Guy: Hufni
 * The Chick: Yuval
 * Fruit of the Loon: What's the matter with those avocadoes, again?
 * Genre Blind: The moment Iggy learns Renan has been drugged by Moran who took naked pictures of her, he... Opts not to tell her about it. Not sharing crucial information like this with someone on your side who is likely to take you seriously is never a good idea in this genre, and it comes back to majorly bite him in the behind soon enough.
 * Gambit Roulette: When Iggy confronts Moran with the whole drug-girls-and-take-naked-pictures-of-them thing being out in the open, the school principal intervenes... Renan later arrives... Then they go to Iggy's locker... And the naked pictures of Renan are pasted on the inside of the locker door?! Wait, what? At first you're wondering how it was even possible for anyone to do this, which gets an indirect answer later . Then you wonder, even then, why would have anyone thought to do this? Right up until the moment of confrontation Iggy had absolutely nothing to do with anything, and as far as Moran (and his accomplice) knew nobody was onto them, so why go to the trouble of doing a Revealing Coverup like this? And even if they decided to, how did they know planting the pictures there would do them any good and got the timing to be so perfect? If Iggy had opened that locker himself under any other circumstances, he would have just freaked out, taken the pictures off the door and no harm done.
 * Idiot Ball: Everyone involved with the Prime Minister's security, and most of all his wife. You're telling random strangers you've met half an hour ago your husband is the Prime Minister? Then you're taking them to see him- the most important person in the state- face to face? Not even a little, tiny, twinge of "maybe this isn't a good idea" in that plan? No itty-bitty speck of paranoia? Something? Anything?
 * "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Inevitably, the final confrontation against is this. Peculiar in that the results are very much near the cynical end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The brainwashing is so strong that Alpha is brought to brutally incapacitate his own daughter, who is hugging him, crying and begging him to recognize her. The only sign that it's not working perfectly is that he was not ordered to incapacitate her but to kill her. The most his daughter manages to get out of him through repeated pleas is to yield his assault on, throw his weapon in malfunctioning confusion and pass out.
 * I Was Quite a Looker: Tamar
 * Jumped At the Call: Renan is much less reluctant to get involved in all of this than you'd expect, which is especially glaring when contrasted with the rest of neo-Hasamba's "just here for the ride" attitudes- not to mention Iggy's constant "oh my god what am I even doing here" disposition. The culmination of this is when everyone's suddenly asked to choose their own monikers and Renan before anyone else even gets their act together enough to say anything.
 * Lampshade Hanging: When Freddy tortures Iggy he actually gets him to spill the entire plot of the show- about how a now-geriatric Hasamba has regrouped to foil the Zorkins, and he has joined them because of his school community service. Freddy immediately zaps him, lets him know how ridiculous his story is and demands to know who really sent him. So, pressed for a story so the pain will stop, Iggy gives him the plot of Tekken. No, really.
 * Laughably Evil: Sunny and Dante are apparently out to subjugate the entire population of Earth, but it's hard not to let out a chuckle when Sunny's cell phone rings a joyous chorus of Ke$ha's Tik Tok and they spend about 20 seconds grooving to it before she deigns to pick up the phone. Slightly Justified in that things have been going particularly well for their nefarious plans just up to that moment and they were in a very good mood.
 * MacGuffin: Initially, the Hard disk. Lampshaded in a mind-numbingly direct way; when Tamar is captured and interrogated by the bad guys, the first question she is asked is "Where's the MacGuffin?", only to be later followed by the explanation that a "MacGuffin" is a type of hard disk. The Hard Disk turns out to actually influence the plot in a meaningful way after all- it contains information on.
 * Milkman Conspiracy:  No, really.
 * The Mole: becomes one, though his motivation makes him more of an Anti-Villain than anything else.
 * Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Dante, who pioneered Zorcom's mind control technology, does it For Science! and because he likes "being on the winning team".
 * Never Found the Body: Yaron and Tamar's son, Uri, who disappeared while on a Mossad mission abroad and is presumed dead.
 * Not Quite Dead:, who in Canon was supposed to have been killed.
 * Retired Badass: Yaron
 * Retraux: Done subtly in the scene transitions, which are of the discredited gradual scroll sort typical of the Hasamba era but nowhere to be found in any other serious television in production nowadays. Done much less subtly with the opening credits, which are completely in the style of the now-antiquated original Hasamba book covers.
 * Sequel Escalation: And HOW. Sure, the old books were also supposedly action-laden and whatnot, but evil cellular communication megacorps, cold-blooded torture and plots to take over the world via brainwashing would not have felt at home in the original. This is sort of like if they asked the producers of 24 to adapt Encyclopedia Brown- you'd get something technically in the same genre, but...
 * Shout-Out: Leagues and bounds above and beyond the call of duty. Watch it in all its glory here.


 * Show Some Leg: Hufni is all too eager to employ Luda in this crucial diversionary role and seems rather content when he gets to watch the diversion play out.
 * Something They Would Never Say: At first no-one but Yaron catches on to Tamar's kidnappers impersonating her being "okay and just busy" through her cell phone, but later they make the mistake of sending her granddaughter Renan a message calling her "Mami"- a very informal and intimate way of addressing someone, which is all but unheard of within the Ashkenazi community. This is when Renan starts seriously believing that her grandfather's babbling about how Tamar has been kidnapped might be the truth.
 * The Unfettered: Alpha, a cold-blooded Hitman in Sunny's service and apparently an Empty Shell exhibiting no emotion or personality..
 * Transparent Closet: Yuval..
 * Token Minority: Played straight in the original book series but lampshaded here. Moshe lists all the member of Hasamba complete with titles for Iggy's benefit, including Medic, Second-in-command and whatnot. When he arrives at "Menashe the Yemenite" Iggy immediately goes, "'Yemenite'? That's a job?". Menashe pauses to contemplate this, then goes, "You know what, he's right. Why 'The Yemenite'? I was a pretty good sniper. Couldn't you have called me 'Menashe the Sniper'?"
 * Trailers Always Spoil: The "next on..." segment basically gives away the whole plot of the next episode, give or take a plot twist or two.
 * Villain with Good Publicity:
 * Moran, the not-quite-model boy scout, drugs Renan and takes naked pictures of her. Then frames Iggy for doing it and comes across, for the upteenth time, as a model do-gooder student.
 * Sunny pulls off a completely outrageous version of this. She's highly esteemed among the population for setting up free playgrounds for children; nobody has any idea that said children are being used as brainwashing test subjects.

"London: Seems like they've started recycling old ideas into new series!

Kirshenbaum: I don't recall them ever doing anything else!

Both: Doh-ho-ho-ho-ho!"