why DARK is the best television you'll ever see shut up I know BREAKING BAD just got voted best and sure it's great but DARK is better so just watch it already

This first bit is the SPOILER-ALERT-filler so that those of you who haven't yet watched the show don't accidentally see something that'll diminish your experience and make me guilty of a crime against humanity. 

So to get us below the fold, I'll start off by admonishing you to watch DARK in the original German, with subtitles. I know the dubbed English version (which for some insane reason is the default on Netflix USA) seems like it would be easier to watch, but in this case easier is definitely not better. No offense to the actors who worked on the overdub, but just... no. 

Now go. 

Go watch all three seasons of the best television you'll (probably) ever see and then come back here so I can tell you the definitive answer to the question you'll definitely be asking yourself every moment of the way and also when you're through: 

What. The. Hell?

SIDE NOTE: I was raised to believe that "hell" wasn't a word you could say in polite company, and I'm saying it here not just because the internet is about as far from polite company as you can get, but also because I couldn't think of a better way to express how DARK will leave you feeling. Also, I no longer think hell is real—at least, not in the sense of "a literal place where God'll torture you forever if you don't say the right phrase and really, really mean it." 

More on that, later.

Okay. 

So. 

You've watched the best television you'll ever see, right? 

Your brain's a puddle of mush leaking out your ears. You're desperate to know what just happened to you. Who's who? What's what? He did what to his own grandmother????

I'm not gonna answer those questions. 

There are plenty of websites that'll lay it all out for you, like some string-connected picture collage on the wall of a psychopath's bunker. 

What I'm here to do is to tell you:

WHY?

Because all great art is about something - some deeper idea that, if properly executed, folds a ton of other ideas into it as it goes, before ending up at not just the first question it asks, or even the bigger questions that linger when it's through.

No, what makes great art great is that it talks directly to and about you.

Here's what DARK says to and about you, my friend (Yes, you). It says that you are afraid of the dark. And by the dark I mean The Big Dark. 

Death. 

Your very own, very inevitable death.

Because you are afraid, you have a tough time facing death squarely. To one degree or another, you refuse to do so. You focus on other things (until you can't) and allow delusion to protectively coat the fear that even now sits like a toxic lump in the pit of your stomach (until it doesn't).

This is perfectly normal and, to some degree, possibly even necessary. 

There is nothing scarier than death. 

Death is the enemy, okay? 

But your unwillingness to accept it—to face it squarely and resign yourself to the Factness of it and to carry that Factness before your eyes—well, that's what's gonna lead you into every kind of destruction and pain. The harder you fight against it and the more violently you protest against the acceptance of your own death and the deaths of those you love, well, the more you will tear yourself (and the world) apart. 

WARNING - MAJOR SPOILER COMING (Seriously, why haven't you gone and watched it, yet? Don't be such a stubborn jerk):

In DARK, the Clockmaker literally destroyed the ENTIRE WORLD with his refusal to accept the deaths of the ones he loves the most. 

And why....? 

WHY COULDN'T HE ACCEPT IT?

Because he had never been able to tell those people that he loved them.

The most important thing in the whole wide world, and he hadn't done it.

He could not accept it, so he (inadvertently) destroyed the world and created two new ones: knotted, torturous worlds that were a living, breathing hell for everyone in them. Worlds that birthed twin apocalypses in which the impossible progeny of the Clockmaker's unintended design were tortured forever by their unwillingness to accept the inevitability of death. These primary two—this Adam and Eve—found themselves locked in an endless cycle of pain; becoming uglier and uglier versions of themselves as they worked harder and harder to avoid the one place they could never bear to go: resignation.

So, how did they break the knot? 

They resigned themselves to the fact that the predication of their existence (Death without Love) was wrong, and they went back to make it right—to give the Clockmaker the chance to right the one wrong he could never take back... the chance to know and love his son for who he really was, before he was gone forever. 

Adam and Eve joined hands, resigned themselves to their own deaths, and in so doing healed the Torn world. Then and only then were they free of the pain that had plagued them and everyone around them forever.

Oh. Mein. Gott. 

An endlessly twisty, mind-blowing genre piece that—while largely incomprehensible to anyone without a genius IQ or a willingness to spend half their watching time checking in with a study guide—is still somehow intriguing and watchable the entire way through.

It's a stunning entertainment that sneaks around to a back-door exploration of The Fundamental Question of human existence.

I vill say eet again: Oh. Mein. Gott.