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.
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