The Romanoffs - "Expectation" review

People on the internet keep complaining about the length of these episodes of The Romanoffs, but not only have I found them to be quite manageable, they largely feel much shorter than a movie that's 90 minutes.  Yes, there is a wider problem with episode lengths in TV, but to equate the length of The Romanoffs to that of bloated Netflix shows is a specious argument.  First, these are self-contained stories with a discrete beginning, middle, and end whereas the latter are structureless chunks of a larger content blob.  Second, The Romanoffs makes better use of its family sized runtime.  Scenes in this show breathe and simmer, they don't just stall for time.  Nevertheless, the show gives us something a little shorter this week with the 63-minute "Expectation."

We're introduced to Julia (Amanda Peet) who's meeting her pregnant daughter Ella (Emily Rudd) for breakfast.  There's some general expositional information that the scene delivers -- Ella is due any day now, the doctors are recommending she induce birth, she is choosing not to, the rest of the family is upset about this -- but it's even more revealing of the relationship between Julia and Ella.  The conversation between them is fascinating, as Julia expresses her disappointment in Ella's "old fashioned" views on being an adult woman, since she's opted to not work and marry a rich man who will do all of the providing for her.  Ella then snaps back with some criticisms of her own for her mother, alleging that her philanthropy is only a symptom of her need to feel good about herself.  It's an interesting clash of ideals -- Ella insisting that her life's accomplishment will be that she raised great children, Julia arguing that that's not enough -- one that flips each generation's usual stance.

Afterward, Julia meets with a man named Daniel (John Slattery), who's a friend, but it's clear that there's something more going on between the two.  We learn that the two of them had an affair together years ago and that he's actually Ella's father.  In the first piece of actual bleed over between episodes, we've seen Daniel before.  He's the man who briefly appeared in "The Royal We" giving a seminar on Romanov history to the cruise attendees.  Not only that, but he wrote a book on the Romanovs that's being turned into a miniseries, the same miniseries that's being shot in "House of Special Purpose."  It's a fun bit of connectivity that serves to give the feeling that these people's stories really do exist in the same world.  But more so than that, it adds thematic resonance to Daniel's dilemma.  There's a key line later when Julia is speaking with her friend Katherine (Diane Lane) over the phone about Daniel's book, where Katherine criticizes the book because "there's nothing worse than historians guessing at people's hearts 300 years ago."  Here Daniel is, forced to guess at a royal family's history, while he's also had to so with his more immediate family, seeing his daughter's entire life from the sidelines, having to act as her creepy uncle instead.

The episode doles out the information about Ella's paternity through flashbacks from Julia's perspective.  It's presented as if she's remembering these moments, triggered by what's going on in the present day.  This big milestone has activated an onslaught of feelings about the place that she's in: about to be a grandmother, shocked by how the years have gotten away from her, troubled by the life her daughter is embarking on, and haunted by the truth her own life.  These flashbacks, then, are the puzzle pieces she's hoping she can rearrange to gain some sort clarity and ease.  The episode employs her turmoil in stylish fashion, with match cuts similar to those in "The Royal We," even nesting them within one another at one point.

There's even a fractured nature to the episode beyond those flashbacks.  The scene between Julia and Ella in the beginning of the episode jumps ahead in time from them fighting in a restaurant to reconciling as they part ways, and later, it frames a fight between Julia and Daniel at a bookstore in a silent wide shot, only to cut back to chunks of the scene later in the episode.  It's a stylistic choice that pays off in the episode's climactic scene, where Julia and her husband Peter are getting ready for a dinner with Ella's in-laws.  He mentions off-handedly that he's essentially giving handouts to Daniel, paying for Daniel and his wife to come out on a trip with them, which she accuses of being patronizing.  Peter's rebuttal is that he owes it to Daniel, as someone who's more well-off than his friend, citing the idea of noblesse oblige.  It's a notion that brings to mind some of what "The Violet Hour" was wrestling with, as much of Anushka and Greg's behavior toward Hajar in that episode had the stain of it.  The false honor in charity that these people feel is something that runs through them.

But the term noblesse oblige appears to trigger something in Julia as well, as it also calls back to the charges Ella makes against her, calling out the falseness of Julia's do-gooder attitude.  It causes her to finally come clean to Peter, telling him that Daniel is actually Ella's father.  Not only does he say that he's always known, but he forgives her.  It's a beautifully written scene and devastatingly acted by Peet, made all the more impactful when it's revealed to be a fantasy, cutting back a few minutes later to show Julia not actually confessing.

Eventually, the weight of her secret-keeping gets the best of Julia.  Throughout the episode, she's suffering from some sort of dyspepsia, as she's shown chugging Maalox during various scenes.  This lands her in the hospital near the end, after her stomach pains overpower her at the dinner with the in-laws.  It's only then that she does get her moment of absolution, as Ella makes it clear that she knows Daniel is her real father when the two of them share some time alone in the hospital room.  The idea of Julia facing physical troubles as a reaction to the emotions that she's repressing isn't exactly a subtle bit of symbolism, but it's worth it for the simplicity with which it plays the final moments between Julia and Ella.

"Expectation" is a tricky episode, one that I wasn't entirely sure what to make of throughout the majority of its runtime.  But it's the kind of story that locks into place so thoroughly in those last 10 minutes that it retroactively causes what comes before it to glue together. There's a beautiful sense of symmetry, opening on mother and daughter in bitter conflict and closing on the two of them having a quiet moment of recognition, with past and present swirling together in the middle.  The 90-minute runtimes might have been fine for the previous three outings, but this installment's neat structure makes a strong case for the hourlong format.


Bonus Points
-This episode was written by the great Semi Chellas.  Anybody who knows how militant Matt Weiner is about writing credits knows it's quite a surprise to not see a shared credit.  But aside from the Jacquemettons (whom we've yet to see), Chellas was the Mad Men writer who seemed to get the most free reign in the latter seasons of that show, so it's clear that Weiner trusts her abilities.  And indeed, this episode does have a slightly warmer voice than the previous three.

-Amanda Peet is so terrific in this.  I've always loved her ability to juggle an easygoing, effortless charm with the tightly coiled energy that often lies under the surface of her characters.  She gets so much out of micro-expressions throughout the episode, particularly when she's steeling herself the moment before she greets Ella's in-laws at the airport.

-Last week I gave a movie recommendation, so I'll throw out another one this week: Please Give.  It shares alot of the same themes regarding aging, motherhood, and our duty to be charitable to others.  And it also stars Amanda Peet!  It's one of my favorite films of the decade.

-This episode is still not as big of a John Slattery showcase as some Mad Men fans would like, but at least it's more than the cameo he got in "The Royal We."  His storyline here is similar to his character's situation with Joan on Mad Men, and Slattery even gets in a Roger Sterling-like quip with "apparently you're supposed to save some sort of cat" when talking about screenwriting.

-Affairs are a huge motif on this series.  Every episode has featured an affair of some sort.  And Mad Men was a very affair-heavy show too.  What's going on, Matt Weiner?

-Again, this is a show that richly rewards revisiting.  On my second viewing the breakfast scene between Julia and Ella, which was already my favorite scene in the episode, becomes even more layered.  Knowing what we know by the end, it becomes very clear that Ella's needling of Julia about her self-righteousness is about the fact that she knows who her real father is.  The first time around, Ella seems like a spoiled brat, but the second time around she has a little bit more of a point.

-Amazon's description of this episode is just "Over a single day in New York City a woman is confronted with every single lie she ever told" which is just very funny to me for some reason.

The Romanoffs - "House of Special Purpose" review

Part of the joy of The Romanoffs being an anthology series is that it can really be anything it wants to be.  Sure, it has to include the hook of the show's premise -- having a character who believes themselves to be a descendant of the Romanov family -- but that's less limiting than it initially appears.  It's just a jumping off point for these stories about humanity.  More importantly, the anthology nature allows the show to pull off any genre or tone from week to week.  That's not to say Matt Weiner didn't do his fair share of experimentation on Mad Men, in episodes like the non-linear "Far Away Places" and the pitch black horror of "Mystery Date."  But it was still a show that was tied to certain limitations of plot and character.  With The Romanoffs, it has the freedom to completely reset, which is exciting when you're working with a creator like this.

So reset it does with "House of Special Purpose," which initially appears to be one of those Hollywood insider stories that creators love to make, despite the limited audience relatability.  We're introduced to actress Olivia Rogers (Christina Hendricks), who's opening an envelope with a script for a television series called The Romanovs.  Apparently she's coming on to the project late, replacing the previous actress playing Alexandra Romanov, who she is told was fired.  So there's already that meta nature of Hendricks playing a character in The Romanoffs who's playing a character in a show called The Romanovs, but the episode is also littered with tons of inside baseball about the nature of producing TV, including references to shooting out of order, getting last minute script revisions, and hitting marks.  Olivia even has a winking meta line in the middle of the episode where says, "How are you going to have a Romanov show where there's no murder?  That's all anyone knows about them."

Once on the set, Olivia meets Jacqueline Gerard (Isabelle Huppert), the director on the project.  Jacqueline is a legendary actress, one who served as an inspiration to Olivia when she was growing up, but she's past the point in her career where she could star in a vehicle like this.  So her path to legitimacy now involves directing, but it's clear that there's a part of her that longs for a time when she was on the other side of the camera.  She makes all of these pointed remarks like "I cannot play all the parts!" when the actors aren't giving her what she wants, always especially resentful towards Olivia and her choices.  Here, the story is reminiscent of the film Clouds of Sils Maria from a few years ago, another narrative where an actress must confront her aging when she has to act in a play in which she played the younger role 20 years earlier.  The portions of the episode focusing on that tension between Olivia and Jacqueline take on that same heady, reflexive nature of Clouds.  The stakes are high for both of these women: for Jacqueline, it's because she's trying to prove herself in this new phase of her career (she had to lie and say she's a Romanov descendant just to get the job); for Olivia, it's because she's trying to regain momentum after the passing of her mother and walking away from this difficult project could be a career-ender.

All along the way, there are odd elements that pepper the story with increasing frequency.  It starts with that foggy establishing shot of the hotel Olivia is staying in, which makes it looks like a haunted Victorian manor.  Then, Olivia is visited in the dead of night by the ghost of Anastasia Romanov, who smells of gasoline and vanishes into the closet (a nod to the urban legend that Anastasia escaped and survived while the rest of her family was murdered).  The episode has fun with this bizarre horror tone it attempts to strike, often playing the terror through the lens of a world gone awry.  At many points it seems like everyone but Olivia is working against all logic and reason, like her scene partner breaking into song and being praised as if it was a normal take.  There's also the hotel concierge, who initially lies to Olivia about there being a bar at the hotel, and then treats her with aloofness and disdain when it's revealed that there is a bar and that she's the bartender.

But the most potent section of the episode is when it really tries to dig into what it means to be a woman in the film and television industry.  Every episode of the series so far has dealt with sexual impropriety in some way, but this one tackles it head-on when Olivia's co-star Samuel Ryan (Jack Huston) goes off-script and sexually assaults her in a scene.  It's a clear abuse of the power dynamic between scene partners, but it's all just bushed off as okay, and worth it because it draws a fiery performance from Olivia.  It's a moment that, intentionally or not, is hard not to draw parallels with Matt Weiner's own workplace transgressions.  "House of Special Purpose" is co-written by Mary Sweeney, the first woman to have her name on an episode of the show, and it feels very informed by a female perspective as well.

Olivia is at her most complicated and absorbing when she's put in these uncomfortable positions, faced with absurdity and animosity and being forced to greet it with a level head, for fear of seeming unaccommodating.  It's a real joy to see Christina Hendricks, who was great on Mad Men but rarely gets used properly anywhere else, get another meaty role to play.  Being able to feed off a legend like Isabelle Huppert seems to have given her alot of inspiration, because it might be her best performance yet.  The scene between the two of them after the investor's dinner, where they are commiserating over the hardships of being a woman in the industry, is an episode highlight because of the chemistry the two of them have when they share a scene and let their guards down.

But that bond is short-lived once things go out of wack all over again.  First, Olivia sees Samuel get mysteriously hauled off in a van in the middle of the night, in a moment that visually mirrors an earlier scene where the two of them watch his character's dead body being disposed of.  (The only explanation that gets offered the next morning is that Samuel wrapped filming early.)  Then Jacqueline shows up to set late and eerily playing some sort of character, eventually getting production shut down.  This is an episode that constantly plays with the notion of what is real and what is not.  What was the true nature of the departure of the previous actress who played Alexandra?  Did Olivia really see the ghost of Anastasia?  Was Jacqueline really possessed by the spirit of a Romanov at the investor's dinner?

And it makes one last play at that reality questioning for Olivia.  She's awoken in the middle of the night by her castmates in costume, except when she objects to them aggressively urging her to come with them, they stay in character.  She's spirited away with violence and hostility, eventually ending up at The House of Special Purpose.  There, everyone still remains in character as she watches in horror while they get gunned down.  Ultimately, the shock is too much for her and she collapses to the floor.  We see a close-up on a puddle of blood next to her body and in its reflection there are the telltale studio lights, followed by "cut."  Everybody's ecstatic -- they've nailed the big moment.  But the episode concludes with a close-up on the blank stare of Olivia, who died due to this stunt.

Now, is Olivia really dead?  Ultimately, it doesn't matter to the point the episode is trying to make.  All throughout "House of Special Purpose," characters are telling Olivia that she is unwilling to lose herself in the role, to really do what it takes to hone in on this performance.  That final moment represents her finally being engulfed so fully into character that she even takes on Alexandra's state of mortality.  Whether Olivia is actually dead or not, everyone around her thinks the level of debasement they put her through was worth it for the sake of great art.

"House of Special Purpose" is a corker, one that proves The Romanoffs is not only capable of shifting genre from episode to episode, but it can also put on various masks within the same story.  It's an episode that keeps the audience on its toes in terms of what it's doing and where it's going, a deliberate choice to make us empathize with what Olivia is going through.  And the point we land on is a potent one, the idea that the ordinary world often looks like a horror show when you're not in a position of power.


Bonus Points
-I looked up co-writer Mary Sweeney's credits after watching the episode and I learned that on top of being a writer, she used to serve as an editor on most of David Lynch's work.  All of a sudden this episode makes much more sense.

-When the cast list was first announced for the show, I was impressed with the sheer star power of the ensemble, but the thing that blew me away the most was the fact that Matt Weiner got Isabelle Huppert.  She's a legend, and it feels like she's having a blast in this episode.

-The episode has two different scenes of bodies being disposed of.  There are a few references about actors being infinitely replaceable too.  It makes you think that Olivia's death will just be passed over, since there will always be another ingenue to step into her place.

-"I don't know how to say this, but I really respond to praise" feels like such a Mad Men line.  I half expected a "that's what the money is for!" thrown back in response.

-I named-checked Clouds of Sils Maria in the review, but the episode also feels like another Olivier Assayas film: Personal Shopper.  The way it never truly lets you know just how much of Jacqueline's actions in the second half are her playing games with Olivia and how much there is something genuinely other-worldly happening with her is one of the most fascinating threads.

-A second watch really clarified the episode's themes around the looseness of identity, from Samuel's method approach to Jacqueline telling that story of talking to herself in the mirror as a kid to become another person.

-Many critics cited this as their favorite out of the three episodes that were sent to them for review.  I'd say this is maybe my least favorite so far.  Still, it's a terrific episode that really rose in estimation for me when I rewatched it while writing this review.

The Romanoffs - "The Royal We" review

John Cheever is a huge influence on Matthew Weiner.  In a 2014 interview with the New York Times, Weiner was quoted as saying, "Cheever has a voice filled with irony and comedy and pain that, on some level, I'm always seeking to emulate."  But even without getting it straight from the horse's mouth, one could watch just a single episode of Mad Men and see how the preeminant writer on suburban malaise informs the lives of its characters, particularly when they're outside of the walls of Sterling Cooper etc.  And without the plot framework of the advertising world, Weiner has decided to go full Cheever with The Romanoffs.

More so than "The Violet Hour," "The Royal We" captures that sense of irony and comedy and pain, as it introduces the ultimate tale of suburban malaise.  We meet Michael and Shelly Romanoff (Corey Stoll and Kerry Bishe), a married couple in the midst of a couples therapy session.  It's implied that their troubles stem from a lack of communication and listening, as Shelly speaks about an observation regarding relationships that she heard in a movie while Michael blankly stares out the window and fusses with some trinket on the couch's end table.  At the suggestion of the therapist, the couple decides to go on a cruise together.  But when Michael gets stuck in jury duty, an ensuing fight facilitates Shelly's decision to go on the cruise as a solo trip.

What follows are the twin journeys of Michael and Shelly during their respective days apart.  During the trial, Michael becomes fixated on a beautiful woman named Michelle (Janet Montgomery) on the jury, whom he first spotted during the preliminary selection process.  Weiner and co-writer Michael Goldbach paint his obsession as a bit of comedic buffoonery -- he doesn't even know anything about this woman and yet he blows off paying attention to the evidence and testimonies of the trial to draw pictures of her shoe, in lieu of taking notes.  Which makes it even more hilarious when he's the only person to vote not guilty in what should be a clear-cut deliberation, in order to spend more time in the presence of this woman.  He reasons that "this is a man's life at stake."  But he doesn't actually care about this man's life, or else he would have been more attentive during the court proceedings.  There's something almost sad about Michael's sense of desperation.

Meanwhile, Shelly is on this cruise that we find out is specifically for Romanov descendants.  She's an outsider in this inherited world, as she's only a Romanov by marriage to Michael.  Just her luck, she meets a fellow cruise attendee (played by Noah Wyle) who's also only there because his spouse who couldn't make it is a Romanov.  Here, the show returns back to its ideations on family history, as the two of them casually discuss their background.  Shelly says she's a mixture of Scottish and various other things, then finishing it off with a dismissive "who really gives a shit?"  Only everyone else on this boat.

What makes "The Royal We" special is how it places these two stories next to one another.  As much as we've seen the lack of connection between Michael and Shelly's relationship when they're together, the stories of them apart seem to work in a rhythm.  Match cuts transition from Michael's story to Shelly's and vice versa, as we see Michelle take a puff from her cigarette just as Shelly is lighting hers miles away.  The episode is full of these narrative daisy chains; it moves so smoothly and fluidly.  They're on parallel journeys almost every step of the way, as each of them contemplate cheating on one another with a person they just met.

Each of their stories play like they're acting out their biggest fantasies, and it's quite the insight into their characters.  Michael's is a mixture of power fantasy and hero narrative.  He meets this beautiful woman, goes on a crime-solving adventure, and brings her to his remote cabin in the woods to sleep with her.  And in the cabin he plays the role of the aggressive type, coming on so strong until she's overpowered by his masculine aura.  It's like something out of a letter to a men's magazine.  Shelly, on the other hand, finds a companion where her husband couldn't be there for her.  (Pointedly, he sits in a seat at dinner assigned for Michael, metaphorically assuming his rule.)  Earlier in the therapy session, Shelly mentions that all she really wants is for her and Michael to do something together that they can both enjoy.  And she gets that in the form of Ivan.  He takes in this bizarre cruise spectacle with Shelly, he's kind to her, and most importantly, he listens to her as she tells him what's on her mind.

For the difference between Michael and Shelly, it's a question of who understands the narrative they're in.  Shelly ultimately doesn't sleep with Ivan, stopping things short at a kiss they share in front of her room door.  She knows that this is a vacation, both literally and symbolically.  A tryst at sea is not going to solve her problems on the land.  And, perhaps naively, she thinks Michael is home doing no wrong.  That's when we cut back to Michael, who isn't even aware that he's in a story that's been told a million times before.  Because of the kind of man he is, wrapped up in his middle-aged self-pity, he thinks his feelings are unique and special, that he's found the real deal with Michelle.

Aside from in the professional prowess and general debonair departments, Michael isn't all that different from a Don Draper type, running to the first sign of a new beginning.  He becomes attached to Michelle and the idea of leaving Shelly, so much so that he latches on to an offhand remark made when Michelle tries to end things permanently, and he gets his mind set on murdering his wife and making it look like an accident.  All of this to be with a woman who he's somehow convinced will fix his unhappiness with life.  As he takes Shelly out on a hike with the intention of offing her, it feels like the story has taken a turn for the shallow, less like Cheever and more like an airport novel.

But I shouldn't have doubted Weiner's ability to zig when I expect him to zag.  And zag he does -- Michael pushes Shelly off of a small ledge, only for her to catch herself and survive with only a few scratches and a sprained ankle.  As much as he tries to convince her it was an accident, she knows he just tried to kill her and it gives her the clarity she needed the whole time.  It's here that we realize once and for all that this is not Michael's story of middle-aged discontent.  The camera follows Shelly as she rides off into the sunset away from him, and reveals that it's actually her story of self-actualization.

Ultimately, that's what makes "The Royal We" land so well.  It takes what we know about the tropes of the mid-life crisis story and Weiner's influences, and completely turns it on its head.  It's a total subversion of the Cheever formula.  Kill your ancestors, the time to embark on a new path has arrived.


Bonus Points
-Kerry Bishe is one of my favorite actors, with my love stretching from her incredible turn as Donna on Halt and Catch Fire all the way back to her appearance in the pilot of Virtuality, the 2009 sci-fi series that never came to fruition.  And it's an absolute dream come true to see her act in a Matt Weiner show.  She's such an open and vulnerable performer, and I love the range she shows in Shelly's arc across this episode.

-Characters discussing their level of happiness is a recurring motif here.  Michael advises a student at the college prep center that nobody is happy, when he really means that he's not happy.  Michelle decides to let her affair with him be just an affair because she's happy with the life she's already living.  And Shelly doesn't sleep with Ivan because she thinks she's happy with Michael, only to learn by the end that she has room to be even happier without him.

-A detail I just noticed as I was taking notes: In an episode about how what we see in people is often just a reflection of what we want, the name Michelle is very close to being a reflection of Michael.  And it's also a variant of Shelly.

-One of the big accusations against this show so far is that the stories are thin, but I couldn't disagree with that sentiment more.  It's a dense show on first watch, and there were so many details that I only picked up on during a rewatch.  For instance, I realized during my second watch that Michael didn't just end up on the jury.  He purposely didn't tank the questioning because of Michelle.

-The all-too-brief cameo from John Slattery in this episode is the ultimate flex.

-I love Matthew Weiner and almost all of his choices, but the Kendrick Lamar "DNA" needle drop was awful and feels as out of place as the time "Infanta" by The Decemberists played during an episode of Mad Men.

-I didn't get to touch on lineage as much in the review but it's interesting that in the final therapy session, Shelly says that finding out more about Michael's bloodline on the cruise made her understand what made him the way he is.  That's a fascinating idea to keep in mind throughout the rest of these episodes.  Michael's troubles in this episode feel less like a genetic disposition and more like your boilerplate sadsack loserdom.  But perhaps there's something Romanovian in his inability to realize that about himself, much like Anushka and Greg in "The Violet Hour" didn't have the self-awareness to realize the emptiness of their resolutions.

The Romanoffs - "The Violet Hour" review

It's tough for a TV creator to follow up their masterwork, to be expected to deliver another success after making something that captures the culture and achieves critical acclaim.  Some play it safe and return to the world they know (Vince Gilligan making Better Call Saul after finishing Breaking Bad), some venture off into the world of film (David Chase directing Not Fade Away years after The Sopranos ended), and others have flopped (John From Cincinnati, David Milch's post-Deadwood failure).  This is the predicament Matthew Weiner found himself in upon Mad Men's completion in 2015.  After coming up in the trenches of writers' rooms for other people's shows, he branched out on his own and made one of the greatest dramas of all time.  But could he do it again?

Enter The Romanoffs.  It came pitched with the odd premise of "an anthology series on Amazon Prime where every episode centers on a different set of people who believe themselves to be descendants of Russian royal family the Romanovs."  With that description, married with its reportedly astronomical budget, and heat against Weiner due to allegations regarding his sexual harassment of a former writer on the Mad Men staff, it felt like the energy surrounding the show had all the makings of it being a massive failure.  Well now the first two episodes have been made available -- with the rest of the installments dropping one at a time every Friday -- and everyone can see for themselves.

The first of the two episodes is an 84-minute affair titled "The Violet Hour."  The France-set episode introduces us to Anushka (Marthe Keller) an elderly woman who is being rushed to the hospital for an incident related to high blood pressure.  Once she's there, her American nephew Greg (Aaron Eckhart) comes to her aide.  Right off the bat, we get one of those classic Matthew Weiner lines that's economical, witty, and character revealing all in one go: when Greg asks the doctor for the prognosis, he retorts "Even hypochondriacs get sick sometimes."  The episode paints a clear picture of Greg not long after, as we quickly learn that he is basically the only family Anushka has left, and he and his French girlfriend are waiting for her to pass away so they can inherit her swanky Parisian apartment.

Not to be outdone by her nephew's vulture circling, Anushka's got some personal flaws of her own.  She operates with a curtness and sense of entitlement, and never has a shortage of vitriol to throw in any direction.  This amplifies with the appointment of a new maid in her apartment, a Muslim woman named Hajar, which causes conflict because, well, Anushka is racist as hell.  She's constantly making assumptions about Hajar's heritage and overall level of class due to her skin color and religious background, casually cruel in a way that makes clear this is a deeply ingrained mindset.  But eventually she does find space to not be completely bigoted and dismissive around the halfway point of the episode, when we finally loop back to the series' central premise, as Anushka tells Hajar of her connection to the Romanov family.  Earlier in the episode, Hajar's eye is caught by a gorgeous jeweled egg in the dining room, which Anushka now tells her is a family heirloom.  What's more is that it belonged to the Romanov family and traveled to France before they were all murdered.  It's a symbol of their wealth and stature, "the family bank," as Anushka describes.  But once France was under Nazi occupation during World War II, the egg was stolen and had to be replaced with a fake.

"The Violet Hour" ponders all manner of lineage and class throughout its run.  For instance, Anushka always makes jabs about Hajar being a foreigner but Hajar was, in fact, born in France.  Hajar even has to point out to Greg that she's a native Parisian when he asks her where she's from when they first meet.  For all of Anushka's haughtiness, Hajar is just as French as she is.  Maybe even more so, because the former sequesters herself in her apartment, shielded away from the real world of Paris.  At one point, Anushka insists that she knows what it's like to be an exile, stating "I dream of Russia every night."  But the irony is that when Hajar asks her how long it's been since she was there, Anushka replies that she's never actually been.  So she's never been to Russia, her whole family is dead, and the only thing that ties her to her bloodline is a Faberge egg that isn't even real.

Again, it's an episode full of this Weiner gift, pointed bits of dialogue that sketch out a whole lifetime of character.  He can construct an exchange of conversation that carries the weight that pure plot does on other shows.  It has a spark and litheness, allowing you to not just marvel at the surface beauty of the content but the subtext of it as well.  All of that is on full display in Greg and Hajar's conversations after Anushka's spitefully changes her will to leave the apartment to Hajar.  They share a dinner and a long walk-and-talk, and the night unfolds in such a way that their eventual tryst feels both unexpected and inevitable.  What's most interesting is how close the episode plays its cards to its chest regarding each of their motivations.  We assume that Greg is trying to use his charm to seduce Hajar into giving up the apartment, but that becomes less and less clear.  Same with Hajar -- is her decision based on a desire to class-hop or genuine connection?  Ultimately, I think it lands on a fascinating brew of everything at once.

The story remains fleet-footed and surprising until the very end, where it almost turns into a broad comedy when it reveals that Hajar is pregnant with Greg's baby, causing the two of them to profess their love for one another.  It feels like something out of a Jane Austen novel, but it works because of the place it leaves all of its characters.  Greg and Hajar are left with a romance, but can it work when it's built on such a weak foundation?  Anushka gets her wish of continuing the bloodline, a fact that's only important to her.  And as a consolation prize for all of her trouble, Sophie chooses to leave with none other than that fake Faberge egg.  It's a happy ending right up until the point where you realize all anyone has is a meaningless token.

So which category does The Romanoffs fall into as a follow-up?  Most critics would have you believe that it's a failure, with many calling it thin and self-indulgent.  But after "The Violet Hour," I'm inclined to believe that it's a rousing success.  It's a terrific example of Matthew Weiner applying Mad Men's writing style to a slightly more flexible frame, and he shows that he's still one of the best at creating wholly-realized characters and constructing stories that breathe and flow with ease.  This is an hour and a half of television that feels nimble and elegantly sculpted and so, so textured.  Bring on the next six weeks.


Bonus Points
-I'd be a fool if I didn't give a shout out to the opening credits, which start out elegantly and refined before turning into a bloodbath soundtracked by "Refugee" from Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers.  Mad Men has one of the most iconic opening credits of the century, so it can't quite match that, but this one is pretty bold and interesting in its own right.

-I'm no expert, but Aaron Eckhart French seemed pretty good.  The moment when he mispronounces Hajar as "Hagar" is one of the funniest parts of the episode though.

-I couldn't work it into the main body of the review but Hajar and Anushka's argument about her people being the backbone of civilization was not only a terrific scene, but an excellent tie into the episode's musings on lineage and class.

The underrated Nicole Holofcener returns with The Land of Steady Habits

Longtime readers of this blog know how much of a Nicole Holofcener fan I am.  The sublime indie writer-director is known for taking long gaps between her films, and while this still holds true, she's actually been quite active since the release of her previous feature, 2013's excellent Enough Said.  In the time since then, she's had a number of jobs directing episodes of TV shows like Togetherness, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Orange is the New Black, while also penning the scripts for 2014's Every Secret Thing and this month's Can You Ever Forgive Me?  But the only way to experience the full power of Holofcener's prowess is through a project where she's responsible for the writing and directing, and in that sense, her newest film, The Land of Steady Habits is her first mainline film in five years.  For a superfan like myself this was an absolute event, and I treated it as such, watching it shortly after it premiered on Netflix last month.

After making her name as one of the most observant and thoughtful filmmakers when it comes to the inner and outer lives of women, she tries her hand this time around at a male protagonist.  (Perhaps an even bigger shock is the fact that this is her first feature film without longtime collaborator Catherine Keener.)  Based on a book by the same name, the film follows Anders Hill (Ben Mendelsohn), a man who finds himself restless after the twin major events of his recent divorce and an early retirement from his soul-crushing job in finance.  On its journey to find Anders' true north, the story ends up being slightly more incident-heavy and darker than what we're used to from Holofcener.  So Steady Habits clearly finds Holofcener pushing herself out of her comfort zone in small ways.

But while giving us a slightly new taste, the film still ends up feeling like classic Holofcener on a bone-deep level.  It's imbued with her usual sense of grace and wit, gliding along in its 98 minutes full of relaxed, true-to-life banter that hits the right balance of quotidian and insightful.  Her characters are always slightly brittle, uneasy folks that you somehow feel an incredible amount of warmth for and it's no different here.  Anders is another character in the Holofcener tradition, a man who is acting out of a surface frustration and dissatisfaction without fully grasping the true thing that's gnawing at him.  In a few bits of economical exposition, we learn that he retired from his job because, as he describes, it was very demanding and morally unjust.  You get the sense that it was a move he made because it would be the thing that finally made him happy.  But shortly after that, he decided to leave his wife Helene (Edie Falco) as well.  And that's where we arrive at his story, no more content or whole than he was before he blew his life up.  The whole movie is him trying to remedy the wrong ailment, not realizing that his entire sense of unease is driven by the fact that he has the rest of his life in his windshield and no idea what to do with it.

That ennui is the driving force for what is another theme that fans of Nicole Holofcener will know very well.  One of the most poignant threads of her previous film Enough Said was the B-plot between main character Eva (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her daughter's best friend, Chloe (Tavi Gevinson).  It's the summer before Eva's daughter goes away to college, and she finds herself getting attached to Chloe, who will still be around when fall starts.  It's a small, unspoken little throughline that never fully gets verbalized or confronted, but it's very clear that Eva's actions are a way of working through her anxiety that her daughter will soon be moving far away, leaving her all alone.

In a similar way, Steady Habits has Anders form a bond with Charlie (Charlie Tahan), the son of his ex-wife's best friends.  The two first encounter each other in the film at a party thrown by Charlie's parents that Anders crashes.  When Anders wanders outside, he happens upon Charlie with his friends smoking a bong, and Anders' mid-life crisis-induced odd decision-making leads him to join them, where he learns that the marijuana is laced with PCP once he smokes it.  Charlie overdoses later in the night and must be taken to the hospital -- just another chapter in his apparent battle with drugs.  The wayward relationship between Anders and Charlie ends up forming much of the skeleton of the film's back half.  Not only is it a situation that gives us further evidence of how adrift Anders feels in his life, it takes on even more significance when viewed alongside his relationship with his own son, Preston (Thomas Mann).  See, Preston has his own issues with addiction -- a past stint in rehab gets mentioned a few times in conversation -- and his life isn't exactly in order, as he's chosen to loaf around after graduating college.  Anders has a decent enough relationship with his son, yet he seems to inadvertently spend so much time with Charlie.

Is Anders drawn to Charlie because he sees Preston in him?  Is it a way to not actually deal with his own son's problem?  Is he grasping on to any thread from his previous life, however tenuous?  Does Anders even know why he does what he does?  It's a series of questions that Steady Habits asks the audience to ponder, and that mystery is what makes him such a compelling protagonist.

What makes the film so special is that it's not wholly Anders' story though.  Holofcener has a way of distributing her narratives in a generous fashion, spreading them out wide enough to touch a myriad of supporting characters and their lives.  Some critics, like Indiewire's David Ehrlich, took issue with the way she seems to have her attention on so many different threads in this one, but I love the way that every character and subplot add to the general idea that the film is trying to express.  It's a story about the life unlived, ruminating on everything from what parents and children owe each other to whether it's worthwhile to steer your existence in another direction when you've already spent so much of it going one way, and every new branch that explores those themes just deepens the roots of Anders' struggles.

In previous works like Please Give and Walking and Talking, Holofcener has favored happier endings for her characters.  They go through their trials, but they tend to come away from those situations with a better understanding of themselves, their place in the world, and how they relate to those they love the most.  The Land of Steady Habits, then, is a bold turn in that regard.  Charlie dies of another overdose towards the end of the film and is found by Preston alone in the woods, a grim flash for the latter of what could've happened if a few things went differently in his own life.  And everything comes to a head at a dinner between the two families, where Charlie's parents learn that Anders was the last person to see Charlie, and that he let Charlie run off instead of calling to inform them that he had broken out of the hospital.  It's a bleak climax, one that's made all the more fascinating because what follows is pretty ambiguous in regards to Anders' growth as a person.  Months pass and everyone attempts to move on with their lives, with Anders continuing to date the woman he met earlier in the film (played by the great Connie Britton) while also looking after the turtle Charlie left him.  Holofcener loves a symbolic token, and the turtle is just another one in a long line of them.  Instead of leaving Anders with a lesson learned, it presents him with a more difficult task, the choice to learn a lesson from everything that just happened to him.

This is a film that doesn't seem to have landed with too many critics out there.  Nicole Holofcener isn't exactly a widely celebrated filmmaker, but she has certainly carved out a niche for fans, and even many of those people consider her latest to be a minor misstep.  However, the film and its ending in particular walloped me.  The Lands of Steady Habits sits right alongside the rest of her sterling filmography; it's another work that gives us a view of her considerable ability to sketch out the lives and psychologies of characters in simple, fluid strokes.  And in its small storytelling risks, it points toward exciting new avenues for her to explore as a filmmaker.  Hopefully this won't be the last time Netflix provides her with money to do her thing.  There aren't many others out there who can make a specific gem like this.