"Nerd today, boss tomorrow."
"Okay, that's the most criminal idea you've ever had."
— Lenny
How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) is a German Netflix original series created by Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann, which debuted on 31 May, 2019. The series is currently in its third season, and a fourth one has been greenlit.
The series centers around Moritz Zimmerman, who starts selling drugs with his best friend Lenny Sander, because his girlfriend, Lisa Novak, broke up with him after a year abroad in America. After some stalking through his girlfriend's Facebook, he learns that the school's resident drug dealer Dan Riffert is giving her ecstasy. In an attempt to get back his girlfriend, Moritz starts selling drugs (using a project made by Lenny that failed to be funded) while facing all the problems with it: his cop dad and a drug dealer who wants his money back, eventually becoming one of Europe's greatest drug lords.
How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) provides examples of:
- Accidental Suicide: In the final episode of season 1, Buba, a local drug dealer, has kidnapped Moritz, Dan and Lenny. They have a 3D-printed gun with them that Buba believes to be a fake. To test it, he holds the gun to his head and pulls the trigger.
- Accidental Truth: Since Moritz doesn't want to stop selling drugs, he tells Lenny and Dan that the Dutch people that supply them have threatened to kill them if they stop. He says that as a lie, but at the end of Season 2, he discovers that the Dutch actually do kill off people who leave them.
- Adam Westing: Jonathan Frakes makes a cameo appearance As Himself to explain the darknet in the style of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, including overly dramatic narration and cheesy puns.
- All Germans Are Nazis: Moritz's history teacher lampshades this as he teaches about the various wars Germany fought other than World War II.
- Animal Motifs: The "bees and flies in a bottle" metaphor is often brought up, and Moritz and Lenny compare themselves and Dan to such animals.
- Arc Villain: Buba, for season 1, as a local drug dealer who supplies Dan and Moritz with ecstasy. He doesn't really take kindly to having his drugs more or less stolen, or to briefly spending time in prison, progressing rapidly from a really dangerous and unhelpful Token Evil Teammate to actively a threat for the cast. In the season finale, he accidentally shoots himself while mocking Lenny's 3D printed gun, but by now Moritz is getting his drugs from much more dangerous people...
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Buba and his family have a habit of killing animals in needlessly brutal ways, to the point where it becomes somewhat comedic:
- Buba himself has a habit of smashing small defenceless animals into a bloody pulp, sometimes with farm equipment but usually just with his fists; his family share this habit.
- While his family enjoy hunting as a "bonding experience" with Moritz, the intended kill was apparently being any animal that happened upon them during this "hunt".
- Moritz's sister had horse-riding lessons at the families main base of operations, so to stop her coming over and finding Moritz there they come up with an excuse that the horse had a broken leg and needed to be put down; they then proceed to actually break the horses leg and blow its head off with a shotgun.
- Betrayal by Offspring: When Jens asks Moritz to crack the password of Buba's laptop (which Moritz doesn't even have to do because it's just "1234"), he wipes out the hard drive instead. Justified, since the computer had evidence that could be used against Moritz himself.
- Cassandra Truth: Moritz spends a long time (believing he was) lying to Lenny and Dan, saying the Dutch would kill them if they stopped selling drugs. He eventually admits it, so his drug selling partners feel betrayed and cut him off. However, Moritz later on discovers that the Dutch really do that to people who stop selling their drugs, and when he tries to warn Lenny and Dan, they no longer believe him.
- Chekhov's Gun
- Though a rather obvious one, in Lenny's introduction, it is revealed that he is working on an online, completely anonymous shop for users to trade and sell video game items on, called MyTems. In the second episode, Moritz converts MyTems into MyDrugs, using it to sell drugs online.
- Also a very obvious literal one. Lenny 3D prints a gun over the course of the first season after beginning to fear for his life. No points for guessing if it's used or not.
- Cliffhanger: The first season ends with Lisa discovering Moritz's drug stash in the story, while in the Framing Device, she and Lenny chide Moritz's description of previous events and say they're going to say what really happened.
- Consummate Liar: Moritz convincingly lies to pretty much everyone he interacts with, something he's very proud of. Most of it is justified, as he needs to lie to cover up for his drug selling.
- Dating Service Disaster:
- Fritzi complains that guys on dating apps just keep sending her dick pics on the first message, one of the them being from Dan. In her turn, she violates his privacy by sending Dan's nude to Lisa, but it turns out Dan was actually tricking her, since the dick pic wasn't really his.
- When asked by a girl for his picture, Lenny instead sends Dan's photo, which is met with overwhelming approval. Subverted in the second season. After Dan impersonates Lenny on a date with the latter's online girlfriend Kira, she plays along for a moment only to reveal she knows that Dan is not the one she talked to and is happy to meet the real Lenny. She knows how to use Google.
- Both Lenny and Kira discuss how they were concerned about potentially being tricked by chatbots.
- Didn't Think This Through: Moritz tries to treat Buba like a business partner. Being a violent drug dealer without much business sense, he isn't having any of it and threatens them for a better deal.
- Dramatic Irony: The scene where Moritz tells Lenny and Dan that the Dutch dealers are non-violently taking over their distribution is contrasted by Maarten sabotaging the previous distributor's plane so that he crashes and dies.
- Fake Action Prologue: Immediately, as the show begins, cops with guns and armor storm a drug dealer's den and arrest him. The show does not have any other scenes like this.
- Framing Device: The story is told as though Moritz is being interviewed for a Netflix series about his experience. The first season finale has other characters from the story show up, chide his version of events, and promise to tell some of theirs, implying future seasons will be "Rashomon"-Style.
- Fauxreigner: Buba invokes the Ruthless Foreign Gangsters stereotype by posing as an Albanian to appear more intimidating, but is actually an ethnic German named Jakob Otto. Season 2 reveals that this extends to his entire family, who are essentially German hillbillies passing themselves off as a dangerous Albanian crime gang (despite the fact that several of them have thick Austrian accents).
- Geek Physiques: The scrawny and fat nerd stereotypes are represented by Moritz and Lenny, respectively.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Despite Moritz's claims that he doesn't want to be like Dan, it's clear that Moritz is incredibly jealous of him and sees him as a goal for a drug-dealing cool kid. He even imagines himself as Dan while getting ready for a party.
- He Knows Too Much: The Dutch dealers kill off people who leave their organization in order to preserve their scheme.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All episodes are named after quotes that Moritz says.
- Kick the Dog: In the fifth episode, when Lenny gets out of MyDrugs, Moritz takes it out on his younger sister by cruelly telling her that their mom isn't coming to her birthday party by reminding her of all the other things she didn't show up for. He gets to make up for it later on when he's proven right.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The show isn't just a Netflix production in real life - it's also one In-Universe, which the show takes advantage of for some jokes. In the first episode alone, not only does Moritz provide Netflix's "ba bum" sound that plays before their videos, but when he goes to explain what ecstasy is, he tells the audience that they can skip the explanation if they already know, at which point Netflix's "Skip Intro" button appears.
- Lovable Jock: Despite their initial conflicts, the popular and attractive Dan ends up being surprisingly friendly to Moritz and Lenny. Even after Lenny tells Dan he's using his pictures to catfish Kira, he takes it very well and even agrees to pose as him when they have a real life encounter. When a group of fellow jocks catches Dan in a restaurant with the two nerds, he briefly acts like a Jerk Jock to them, but he says he was just posing as one to preserve their secret. By the end of Season 2, even after they cut off Moritz when he reveals he's been lying to them, Dan seems to have become geniune friends with Lenny and Kira.
- Luxury Prison Suite: Moritz's sentence is ultimately pretty light despite running an online drug empire, while he might be in prison for a while he was given a laptop to code with (which he manages to hack so he can access the internet again), his sentence ultimately allows him to spend all of his time browsing the internet, gaming and running his newly rebuilt drug empire in complete safety from other criminals.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Dan sends Fritzi a dick pic, which she sends to Lisa, and it briefly appears on her phone (though it turns out it wasn't Dan's).
- Mistaken for Gay: When Lenny tells Dan he needs to admit something, Dan assumes Lenny is attracted to him, as he's constantly sneaking photos of him. He was actually taking the pictures to catfish Kira.
- No Fourth Wall: Moritz frequently addresses the viewer directly and reminds them that they're watching a Netflix series. This is justified by the fact that the main story outside of the framing narration is implied to be an in-universe adaptation of the actual events, filtered through Moritz's own, obviously biased perspective.
- No Social Skills: Good lord is Moritz a socially awkward teenager.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The password of Buba's laptop is "1234", so it's easily discovered by Moritz.
- Pet the Dog: After Marie begins crying because her mom didn't come to her birthday party like she promised, Moritz comforts her by taking his gift for her (a camera), removing the tag saying it came from him, and giving it to her under the guise that their mom sent it to her.
- Poor Man's Porn: While Moritz and Lenny have sex with their respective girlfriends, Dan masturbates to YouTube videos of women wearing tight pants.
- Product Placement: Name an online service for socialization of any kind, and odds are it makes a prominent appearance here at least once. It's very appropriate for the nature of the story, but regardless.
- Reckless Gun Usage: Buba's ultimate demise, lesson in life boys and girls, when someone tries to shoot you with a malfunctioning gun; don't then mock them by pointing said gun at your own face and pulling the trigger again.
- Running Gag: People (usually other drug dealers) looking at Moritz and saying that he looks like the type of guy who hasn't had any type of fun in his life.
- Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: He's a little bit of a coward, and framed as kind of a douche at first, but ultimately, Dan isn't that bad a guy at all, being pushed around by the less sympathetic protagonist.
- Small Name, Big Ego
- The first episode begins with an internet drug dealer being arrested by police. Moritz claims that a petty criminal like that isn't him, but one of his many copycats.
- Moritz himself is this as well. He has a very high opinion of himself and his work for an online drug dealing high schooler.
- Stalker with a Crush: Moritz constantly stalks Lisa on social media. He reaches the point of hacking into her Facebook, where he not only reads her private messages, but also deletes all the texts Dan sends her.
- Terrified of Germs: Moritz is a germaphobe. Exploited by Kira, who spits on an old brush and uses it to force Moritz to unlock his phone. Played for the laughs later on, when Moritz is stabbed in the leg with the same stick that was used to stab Dan, and his response is "That's super unhygienic!".
- Unreliable Narrator: Moritz is implied to be one in the sixth episode. It’s possible Buba might not have died by shooting himself in the head.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: In that the showrunners heard about a teenager selling drugs online, and then decided they could make it more interesting after finding out that most of the true story was extremely mundane.
- Villain Protagonist: Moritz stalks his ex-girlfriend online, hacks into social media accounts to alter conversations she's had, basically steals money from he and Lenny's shop account to buy drugs just to screw some guy over out of jealousy, and then converts his website into a drug service, all within the first couple episodes. He's not a good guy, even before factoring in the obvious, and seems to wear this as a badge of pride, comparing his behavior to that of Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison.
