Drops of God season 1 episodes 1 and 2 recaps & review

Open Go TV / April 23, 2023 / Reviews

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The first two episodes of Drops of God introduce Camille, a woman who must compete with her father’s student for her father’s wine collection, which is worth millions of dollars. The first two episodes are now streaming on Apple TV+.

Episode 1 recap: A Father

An enologist named Issei Tomine admits that he thought he was the best at what he did until he met Camille Léger. Camille’s sense of taste was developed at a very young age by her rather strict father.

It has been 20 years since then. She is now a writer and lives in Paris. She has not heard from her estranged father, Alexandre, in all those years.

It turns out that Camille cannot consume alcohol because she drank wine during one of her father’s lessons years ago and she ended up in the hospital. If she consumes even a little bit of alcohol, she gets nosebleeds.

Camille gets a call from her father out of nowhere. He tells her that he is dying and wants her to come to Tokyo, where Camille grew up, to meet him. He even books a flight ticket for her.

Camille’s mother thinks that he is manipulating her and tries to stop her, but Camille decides to go anyway because she wants him to tell her why he did not contact her in 20 years.

Unfortunately, Camille does not make it in time, and her father passes away. A rich man who owns many restaurants introduces himself to her as Luca, a friend of her father’s. Luca is grateful to Alexandre, who taught him everything he knows.

Camille spends the night at her father’s house and attends his will reading with Issei Tomine, who was taught by Alexandre. Issei’s mother does not like the fact that he works in the unprofitable wine industry, but he is quick to point out that even though his family owns his apartment, he pays the rent.

There are two parts to Alexandre’s will — one part is concerned with his house in Tokyo, worth 7 million dollars, and the other is concerned with his wine collection, which is the biggest private wine collection in the world and is worth 148 million dollars.

Alexandre wanted Camille and Issei to take a three-round test to determine who will get the collection. His lawyer asks the two of them to taste a glass of wine. They will be given one month to tell the lawyer what this wine is. They will also get to taste it again in a month.

Even though Camille is uncomfortable, she tastes it under pressure and ends up breaking the wine glass in her hand. She also gets a nosebleed and rushes out of there. An upset Camille thinks her father humiliated her and refuses to listen to the message he left behind for her.

She then attends her father’s funeral and decides to leave Tokyo the next day. Before she leaves, Luca takes her to her father’s wine cellar, where she finds a wine he had kept aside to drink with her when she turns 18. Camille finally weeps for her father.

She decides to see her father’s message before leaving. In the video, Alexandre reminds her of old times, when she used to be excited about their tasting lessons. They used to spend their holidays at the domaine that is owned by Alexandre’s friend, Philippe.

Alexandre admits that he has not been a good father to her, but he wants her to stay and take the test, as he hopes they will get to know each other through these tests. Philippe will let her stay at the domaine and teach her everything she needs to learn.

He hopes that Camille will be able to forgive him one day. After watching the video, Camille decides to stay and prepare for the tests.

Episode 2 recap: Sky, Earth, Humans

Camille goes to the domaine and meets Philippe Chassangre. Camille does not remember much from the time she spent here as a child, and Philippe is not very pleasant to her. He asks his son, Thomas, who is a professor of enology, to teach her.

However, Camille tells Thomas that she cannot consume even a drop of alcohol. She has been eating rice and green beans for the past 20 years because she gets sick if she tries to eat or drink anything else.

This disappoints Philippe because he was asked by Alexandre, who assumed that his daughter already knew a lot, to polish her knowledge. Despite that, he calls her mother, Marianne, to stay with them and decides to help Camille, but he wants her to get tested by a medical professional first.

Meanwhile, Issei, who has just started his own company and has no clients yet, is tested by another company that is looking for a consultant enologist. Issei was recommended by Alexandre, and he is able to correctly determine what wine he is tasting just by smelling it.

On the other hand, after getting tested, Camille is told by the doctor that she experienced trauma linked to food, which was most likely alcohol. Her brain now reacts strongly and negatively to alcohol.

Her condition is called psychosomatic, and she is asked not to prepare for the wine-tasting test, as it might put her health at risk. She needs to treat her trauma first in order to get well.

Camille decides to leave and return to France with her mother, who continues to put Alexandre in a bad light. However, before leaving, Camille gets into an argument with Philippe, who defends Alexandre.

Camille finds out that her father tried to contact her several times, but her mother never let him talk to her. He never reached out to her directly because he received an email from her, which said that she does not wish to speak to him and that she no longer has a father.

Camille never sent that mail, which means her mother did and never told her about it. Camille feels betrayed and asks her mother to leave, while she stays back.

Camille cannot drink wine, but she can smell it, so she decides to learn to identify wines just by smelling them. Thomas teaches her, and she initially fails, but the technique taught to her by her father years ago comes in handy, and she is able to identify each item that Thomas presents.

Issei comes from a rich family, and his maternal grandfather does not want him to fight for someone else’s fortune. He meets him with his mother and commands Issei to not take the test. Issei does not have much choice but to agree.

Thomas’ girlfriend and sales director, Juliette, comes to watch one of Camille’s lessons, and Camille fails to recognize the wine because of her trauma. Philippe then takes a disappointed Camille with him and tells her to see wine as more than alcohol, and Camille goes on to taste a grape on her own.

Although she does not remember anything from the time when she was taken to the hospital as a child, Philippe tells her that before that, she had started having memory loss, nosebleeds, and headaches. On top of that, things were not fine between her parents.

After tasting the grape, Camille is able to recognize the dominant aromas in a wine. She even recognizes that the wine she was made to taste with Issei during the test had fern in it.

Two weeks later, even though Camille has made progress, she fails to recognize the wine that Philippe and Thomas give her. She wants to try again, and this time, after smelling the wine, she remembers something from the day she was taken to the hospital.

Alexandre was teaching her, and she kept getting the answers wrong. However, he never allowed her to drink wine. When her mother interrupted the lesson and started fighting with her father, Camille decided to gulp a glass of wine, which caused a nosebleed, and she passed out.

She realizes that her father was not at fault like she had believed for all these years; he never made her drink wine. She takes a sip of wine, and much to Philippe and Thomas’ surprise, it does not cause a nosebleed. In fact, she likes it.

Review

The first two episodes of Drops of God are definitely interesting. The show’s plot, based on a Japanese manga, is good, but the execution manages to get the audience invested in the show; they will want to know what happens next.
Furthermore, the pace at which the plot progresses allows the audience to get familiar with the characters and the premise without losing interest.
The show has to balance Camille and Issei’s stories, but in these two episodes, Issei’s story does not get much attention. As a result, for now, he seems to be inexpressive and dispassionate.
The second episode tries to visually represent Camille’s efforts of trying to reach into her memory to retrieve the information needed to recognize a smell. It is a scene that makes the audience a part of her struggle and gets them involved in the whole process.