The Romanoffs - "The One That Holds Everything" review

For the past seven episodes, The Romanoffs has mostly been a concept-first show.  That's not to say it didn't have interesting characters, but it always felt like they were secondary to the circumstances they were put in for the sake of the story.  What we learned about them were mostly reflections of the plot and theme of a given episode.  In the finale, the show offers up its first true character study.

"The One That Holds Everything" starts on a train station in France, as we get a quick little nod to the premiere episode with Greg (Aaron Eckhart) and Sophie (Louise Bourgoin) from "The Violet Hour" passing through the frame for a few seconds.  But the person of focus in this outing is Jack (JJ Feild), who was the writer of the Romanov miniseries from "The House of Special Purpose."  When he boards the train, he finds that a woman is sitting in his seat by the window.  The woman (Adele Anderson), who introduces herself as Candace, gets to chatting with Jack about the Romanovs, claiming she once knew someone who was a descendant.  Clearly, Jack has little interest in conversation, and would just like to get back to reading his book, but Candace's insistence eventually gets the better of him, particularly when she teases that the story of her Romanov friend involves murder.

The episode cuts into the middle of Candace's story, as we see a man named Simon (Hugh Skinner) visiting his dying father.  Evidently, their relationship has been strained for a while, as they don't exactly exchange friendly words, and he has even less friendly words for the woman taking care of his father.  The difficulty of those interactions prove to be too much for Simon, who decides to take a handful of pills and try to drink himself to death, though he fails and ends up in the hospital.  While telling his story to a support group, we flash back further in time to provide some more context about his life. After his mother died and his father married another woman, he traveled to Hong Kong to become a bond trader, where he fell in love with his male best friend.  But when his friend/lover announces he's getting married to a woman, Simon gets upset and tries to out him to the new fiance.

This episode functions like a Russian matryoshka doll, nesting flashback within flashback as it travels further into the past.  It moves just as we do when speculating about how a person came to be the way they are now, tracing back into their lineage to find clues that may make sense of things. That's what Simon's friend attempts in an effort to explain away his actions, jumping back to Simon's troubled upbringing.

Simon is a Romanov descendant through his mother, who we see has earrings that have been passed down through many generations of the family.  One night, he discovers his father is having an affair with his nanny Ondine (Hera Hilmar) when he spots the two of them canoodling outside of his bedroom window as his father is about to take her home.  A fire breaks out in the middle of a later night when Simon's father is away, killing Simon's mother and almost killing him in the process as well.  While the police and fire department gather outside, Simon sees Ondine among the bystanders and begins to suspect she was responsible for the fire.  Shortly after, Ondine moves in and assumes the role of Simon's mother figure, ultimately getting him sent away to boarding school.

In this chain of flashbacks, Simon's story is painted like some sort of dark fairy tale.  Throughout the series, the score has been quite restrained and unobtrusive, but it's very prevalent here, with the sweeping strings rising in grandiose fashion.  And the direction is different too, featuring brighter colors that pop out out of the otherwise muted filters to give it a vivid storybook aesthetic.  The grimness of Simon's plight is almost Dickensian in its tragedy.  There's even an evil stepmother, in case the tone this story is aiming for wasn't clear enough.

And of course, it's not a true fairy tale without a few twists of fate.  Many years later, after the death of his father, Simon (who has begun transitioning and now presents as a woman) visits Ondine to try to get his mother's Romanov family earrings back from her.  Despite pretending to understand Simon's transition, Ondine throws some cruel barbs at her when she refuses to let her have the earrings, saying that since Simon isn't a "real woman," then the earrings deserve to stay with her.  Eventually, Ondine's son shows up and we realize that it's Jack, the man who is being regaled with this whole tale, and that the woman telling him this story on the train is who he knew to be Simon.  That's when the true punchline arrives: Candace has poisoned Jack's drink as an act of familial revenge on Ondine.

It's an odd, over-the-top twist on its face, but it's in keeping with that dark, fantastical tone the episode is going for.  The reveal would be right at home near the end of an Edgar Allan Poe short story.  It also clarifies the theme that the episode and the show as a whole has been building towards.  Amazon's short description of "The One That Holds Everything" is: "In a story that circles the globe, a man tries to escape his family curse."  Candace comes from a family that was virtually wiped out in a fusillade of bullets.  And more immediately, she lived through the hardship of her mother dying, being terrorized by her stepmother, and getting sent off to boarding school.  In a way, this is her breaking that Romanov family curse, getting cosmic vengeance for all the wrongdoing that has been brought upon her head.  By obtaining this symbol of family and femininity, she gets to finally crystallize the identity she's been craving her whole life even if she didn't know it, both as a woman and someone who belongs to something greater than herself.  The series closes just as the opening credits do, with a Romanov living on, casually slipping away into the crowd.

So that's the end of The Romanoffs.  Was it a success?  Most people would have you believe that it wasn't, but I loved the show from start to finish (with the exception of "Panorama").  This series was an example of what happens when one of our greatest living television writers gets a blank check to do whatever he wants.  That resulted in some bloated storytelling and truly wild flights of ego, but it also gave us a bounty of rich writing and a show that existed in a space that no other series come close to living in.  What a joy it was to parse this series from week to week -- it's right up there with Twin Peaks: The Return as one of the great viewing experiences of this decade.  In an age where weekly watching is dying rapidly, that's something to cherish.

On a pure premise level, the show was united by the fact that each episode centered on someone who believed themselves to be a descendant of the Romanov family.  But what really holds the show together are the ideas that it plays with.  Almost every episode wrestles with notions of identity, truth, and impropriety, delivering variations on the theme of how to live and treat others.  It's like an A.I. consumed all of the discourse that society has been engaging in over the last year and spit out eight scripts, trying to make sense of these moral quandaries in the form of stories about people behaving badly.  And therein lies the fascinating tension of The Romanoffs: it's captivating on its own, but more so coming from a creator who is a Man Who Has Behaved Badly.  Perhaps we should let the text be text, but it's hard to do that when so much of that text feels like a creator's direct reckoning with himself and the world around him.  I get the sense that this is a turnoff to some people, but to me it made the show all the more hypnotizing.  Even in its failures, there was so much to unpack.

Here was a show that tapped into the dark hearts of its characters and let them engage in their worst impulses.  In that sense, it exists on the same continuum as Mad Men, Matt Weiner's previous work.  When taken together with that show, the affairs and betrayals and transgressions of The Romanoffs aren't the product of shared lineage between these specific people.  Weiner argues that it's just a common trait among humans no matter what the time period, geographic location, or family background.  So maybe The Romanoffs should be viewed not as a standalone miniseries but as a descendant of the great Mad Men -- more difficult and fussy, but you can still see the resemblance all the same.

Bonus Points

-"The One That Holds Everything" was written by Donald Joh and Matthew Weiner, and it was directed by Matthew Weiner.  I assumed Weiner would choose for the finale to have symmetry with the first episode and be solely written by him, but I was wrong.  He sure did direct the hell out of this episode though.  His use of color felt like one of the Jennifer Getzinger directed episodes of Mad Men.

-I never got to really dig into this in detail in any of my reviews, but I saw this show as Weiner's attempt to do actual literary short stories in the vein of an Alice Munro or J.D. Salinger.  Technically, other anthology shows like The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror are short stories as well, but those still have a televisual flair to their storytelling.  These Romanoffs episodes felt like they were often direct translations from a collection of short stories, which led to many of the issues people found with the show.  However, I often loved the unique vibe of them.

-Shout out to that excellent choice of "West End Girls" by Pet Shop Boys to close the episode.

-Here's how I'd rank the episodes: 1. "End of the Line" 2. "The Royal We" 3. "Expectation" 4. "Bright and High Circle" 5. "The Violet Hour" 6. "The One That Holds Everything" 7. "House of Special Purpose" 8. "Panorama."  I'd classify the top three as excellent, the next three as very good (or in the case of "Bright and High Circle," delightfully insane), the next one as pretty good, and the last one as fine.  A pretty high batting average for an anthology show if you ask me!

-I'm guessing this is the last Romanoffs review I'll ever write since this show most likely won't get another season, but this was so fun!  A part of me is relieved it's over because writing these reviews took alot out of me, but I think they also helped me enjoy the show more.  I hope its reputation slowly improves because I do believe it's doing alot of interesting things, but if not, then these reviews will always be here as a time capsule of me being the one crazy person who loved that show made by an egotistical sexual harasser.

The Romanoffs - "End of the Line" review

The Romanoffs has been quite the diasporic series so far.  Episode settings have ranged from Mexico to Paris to New York and have featured people from all walks of life, a deliberate choice to show just how much the myth and lineage of the Romanov family has spread across the world.  But it also is meant to examine how tenuous that connection is, because there's not much real proof that these people are really Romanovs and even if they are, it's been so long since the family existed as the world at large knew them.  None of the people featured so far have been Russian or have even been to Russia.  Well "End of the Line" marks a first in one of those categories, as we finally take a trip to the Motherland.

Most of the previous installments have received complaints about their expository dialogue, but this is an episode that keeps its cards close to its chest for a very long time.  It opens on Anka (Kathryn Hahn) and Joe (Jay R. Ferguson), an American couple on a flight to Russia.  It's not clear exactly what their purpose is for travelling here, but there's a mixture of excitement and nervousness as they're being processed through customs.  You get a sense of the culture clash that exists, as Anka reminds Joe not to smile when they're getting their passports checked.  Once they're finished, they meet Elena (Annet Mehendru), a chipper Russian woman who serves as their guide.  Lots of strange exchanges occur, from money to children's clothes, and they ask Elena about someone named "Oksana."  It's a terse set of scenes, which only adds to the tense and alienating feeling of the cagey introduction.

Eventually, we're able to parse out enough information to figure out that Anka and Paul are in Russia to bring back a child they're planning to adopt.  Anka is a descendant of the Romanov family, and she tells Elena that she wants to adopt a Russian child as an effort to stay in touch with her heritage.  Though it's not explicitly stated, she sees having a Russian baby as an indirect way of keeping the Romanov line going, a concern that also was the focus of "The Violet Hour."  After a few more exchanges of papers and gifts, they finally meet Oksana at the orphanage.  However, their excitement is tempered with a few strains of concern, as they notice a weird rash on the baby and that she isn't very responsive when they spend some alone time with her.  That feeling of unease continues when they meet some of the other kids at the orphanage, and one of the little girls uses a foreign word regarding the baby that gets her scolded by a nurse.

Back at the hotel while trying to research the nature of Oksana's rash, Anka runs into an American woman (Clea Duvall) she saw earlier who is also there to adopt a child.  She invites Anka and Joe to accompany her and her mother to the flea market, and the nature of the episode begins to curdle a little more on the ride there.  There's a tinge of xenophobia to the conversation in the car when discussing the treatment of children in Russia, as if by adopting these babies, these women are saving them from a country of barbarians.  The following scene leads to the ultimate turning point of the episode, as Anka learns the word she heard in the orphanage earlier means "drinker."  This sets her off into a spiral, completely extrapolating that the baby is suffering from some sort of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome because of this.

The episode uses this moment as a fascinating catalyst, where the uncovering of information about the baby also reveals Anka and Joe's true characters to each other.  They get into an intense fight after Anka insists that she doesn't want the baby now that she knows it will have problems and Joe is appalled by this fact.  Their argument gets at the heart of one of the central issues that The Romanoffs has been circling around this whole time: the nature of charity and how much of our good-heartedness is genuine versus how much is vanity.  Anka says some pretty ugly things about the prospect of having a child that might have developmental issues, views she insists Joe would have too if he wasn't so concerned with proving to others that he's a saint.

It's here where the lack of history and context with these characters bolsters the episode.  At this point we've only spent about 50 minutes with Anka and Joe, and we haven't been given much information about them beyond their present goal, so when they have their fight, it's hard to know how much truth there is to the accusations they lay at each other's feet.  Is Joe really genuine in his desire to do the right thing?  Is Anka simply reacting to the deception that she's just been through and doesn't fully believe all the things she's saying?  From what we're given, Anka certainly doesn't come off looking good, but it's also a bold choice to have a character -- especially a woman -- voice concerns that alot of people would wrestle with if they were placed in the same position.

When the time comes to finally take Oksana home, Anka can't quell her doubts and tells Elena and the director of the orphanage that she doesn't want the baby, accusing them of lying and foul play.  This outrages the director, who leaves the room with Elena to further discuss the matter.  Anka begins to panic that something bad is going to happen to them as a consequence of refusing to take the baby, a feeling brought on by her seeing chairs similar to the ones in the opening credits where the Romanov family was assassinated, coupled with her general anxiety about being in this nation she views with skepticism.  But when Elena and the director come back, they have a new, healthy baby for Anka and Joe take home.  Once it's made official in court (after an impassioned final statement from Joe), they're free to go back to America as the perfect nuclear family they pictured themselves becoming on the plane ride there.  In the final shot, the camera lingers on Joe's face with a conflicted twinge.

Joe is the moral center on which the episode pivots.  He's the one who makes the appeal to humanity when Anka is going on about not wanting to raise a baby like Oksana, and he seems to mean it when it comes to wanting to accept what life has presented them.  Yet for all of his grandstanding, when given the choice between a healthy baby and a non-healthy one, he happily chooses the healthy one.  That realization, that loss of moral footing, that's what haunts him in those final moments.  "End of the Line" feels like the perfect kind of penultimate episode.  Even though this show isn't beholden to the traditional structure of a serialized season, this installment does heigthen the dramatic stakes more than any of its predecessors.  And just as last week's "Panorama" was an inversion of many of the ideas expressed in previous episodes of the season, this week is an amalgamation of the show's biggest themes, one more meditation on goodwill, parentage, and the true selves we hide under the mask of adherence to societal expectations before the finale.

Bonus Points
-This episode was written by Andre and Maria Jacquemetton, and directed by Matthew Weiner.  The Jacquemettons have been Weiner lieutenants since season one of Mad Men, the George Pelecanos to his David Simon.  It's an episode that still feels of a piece with the rest of the series, while having its own coarse flair.

-When the cast for this show was first announced, the person I flipped out about the most aside from Kerry Bishe was Kathryn Hahn.  For a long time she was one of the world's most underrated actors, relegated to bit parts where she stole the show.  But lately she's been getting more leading roles and it's been a real joy to see.  She's the rare kind of actor who excels equally at comedy and drama, both of which she displays here.  I love the moment after she reminds Paul not to smile in customs, only to give a reflexive little smile and then shake her head and catch herself.  Not to mention the hilarious moment in the orphanage when she says "He keeps things running smoothly!" a little too loudly.  Her likability as an actress is part of the reason why the episode can push Anka to such harsh territory.

-Connection to previous episodes: Anka's "cousin whose son suffers from hemophilia" is mentioned, revealing that she's directly related to Victoria from "Panorama."

-Is there any significance to this episode being set in 2008?  Maybe people who know global history better than I do can help me out here.  The only thing I thought of was it being the year Obama was first elected, giving rise to America's current wave of wokeness.

-The concept of sainthood and martyrdom recurs frequently in this episode.  Elena even mentioned that the Romanovs were saints in Russia, serving as nurses and helping out during the first World War.

-This episode is like the opposite of last week's travelogue of Mexico.  The snowy Russian cityscape looked so bleak and imposing.

-This week's movie recommendation is Private Life, another story about a character played by Kathryn Hahn who is trying to have a baby.

The Romanoffs - "Panorama" review

We tend to not think about the order of episodes in an anthology series.  After all, the stories are not serialized, so they don't immediately present themselves as existing in a continuum.  But despite the narratives being self-contained in The Romanoffs, it's clear that these episodes are meant to be in conversation with one another in some way, and "Panorama" was the first one that really made me think about how its placement adds to that conversation.  It functions as if it might be the cornerstone of this whole enterprise, gaining more impact because of the specific stories that came before it.

The main character this week is Abel Erikson (Juan Pablo Castaneda), a journalist in Mexico trying to write an expose on a doctor who may be duping patients out of their money with an experimental stem cell treatment.  In order to do so, he lies about having leukemia to get an appointment and closer access to the doctor, but his cover is quickly blown.  Outside, he meets Victoria (Radha Mitchell), a mother whose son Nick (Paul Luke Bonenfant) is seeing the same doctor to treat his debilitating case of hemophilia.  After helping them communicate with their driver, Abel offers to give them a tour of the historical sites of Mexico, and from there he begins to build a relationship with Nick and especially Victoria.  Though he tells his boss (Griffin Dunne) that he only wants to write a piece around them, it's obvious that he's taking special interest in them because of his attraction to Victoria.

At its base level, the story of "Panorama" isn't particularly compelling.  It starts off on the wrong foot with the voiceover narration from Abel, which features some severely purpose prose.  The issues don't stop there -- Abel himself isn't all that engaging of a character, and his budding relationship with Victoria is pretty stock romance stuff.  The weakness of the story could be alleviated if the performances were anything special, but they're mostly pretty stilted, especially Bonenfant as Victoria's ill son.  It's hard to even get a read on Abel as a character because Castaneda doesn't imbue him with much personality.  And this is also the first time I've had any issues with the expository dialogue that people have been complaining out in previous weeks, because it's awfully glaring and unnatural here.

But this is an ideas episode more than a story episode, so the narrative itself takes a backseat to what it's actually trying to say.  And there are indeed a few interesting themes that "Panorama" tosses around.  So many of the previous stories in The Romanoffs have centered on what many would describe as "first world problems."  They're about how, when you're afforded the privilege that these Romanov descendants and the people in their social strata have, you're given the luxury of worrying about things like inheriting expensive apartments, whether cheating on your wife will heal the boredom of your life, and neighborhood gossip about your kid's piano teacher.  When you're shielded from having to reckon with things that are actually necessary for survival, trivial things become life or death.  In the form Victoria and Nick's story, this episode offers a contrast to that.  As the doctor mentions to Abel early on, "God does not discriminate between the rich and the poor when it comes to disease."

One of the first places Abel takes Victoria and Nick is the National Palace, which features Diego Rivera's mural The History of Mexico.  After the Mexican Revolution ended in the 1920s, the government commissioned Rivera and other artists to paint scenes depicting Mexican history.  Rivera, famously a Communist radical, took on this project and used the mural to celebrate the victory of the government and its overthrowing of the previous regime.  The History of Mexico mural imagines history as something that is non-linear, something that exists all once, the past lingering in the present and hanging around to inform the future.  That's one of the central ideas that The Romanoffs wrestles with as a series.  And it's something the forms the foundation of an episode like "Panorama" too, even though it takes a while to become clear.  Late in the episode, Victoria reveals to Abel that she is descendant of the Romanov family and that she's responsible for her son's hemophilia, as the disease runs throughout their line.  "You'd think that royal blood dilutes over time, but the poison survives," she laments.

It's fitting that the Romanov reveal doesn't come until an hour into the episode, because it isn't about them just as much as it is.  The previous five episodes have focused on these people who have connections to this royal family from generations ago, but "Panorama" makes an effort to show how small their impact is in the wider scope of global history.  As we see in Rivera's mural and all throughout the episode, there's an entire fabric of culture and history that exists completely outside of those concerns of the rich.  The story of Mexico is one of real struggle, of real adversity.  It's the exact kind of revolution that the Romanov family were on the opposite end of.

These are intriguing questions to ponder, but does it make for a good episode?  Not necessarily.  "Panorama" is the first offering I'd qualify as a bit of a dud.  It's not a complete failure, because it's nice to get something a little more cerebral, but it would've been even nicer to have a more engaging story happening on the surface.  Still, if this ends up being the only miss, that would be a pretty good track record for the series.


Bonus Points
-"Panorama" was co-written by Matthew Weiner and Dan LaFranc, and was directed by Matthew Weiner.

-This episode contains the least amount of star power out of all the installments so far.  The biggest name here is Griffin Dunne, who's relegated to a bit part as Abel's boss.  David Sutcliffe, whom you may remember as Rory's dad in Gilmore Girls, also appears in a couple of scenes as Victoria's ex-husband.

-The doctor about whom Abel is writing the investigative piece is named Siquieros, which is the same name as one of the other artists commissioned by the Mexican government to create artwork about the history of the country.

-Say what you will about the episode, but it certainly makes the most out of its location.  The shots of all the Mexican locales are gorgeous.

-The street performer song at the end of the episode was written and performed by Regina Spektor.  Remember her?

The Romanoffs - "Bright and High Circle" review

Because of the greater ease of access we have when it comes to everything that goes into the making of television shows, there has been a "Cult of the Showrunner" that has developed over the years.  Where before shows might have been viewed purely on what was in the text of the work, they're now filtered through the lens of auteur theory.  Based on tweets and interviews and previous works, we form an entire worldview around a creator, and anything new they make is an expansion or refutation of that worldview.  There have been times in even my reviews where I've wondered whether I'm doing too much extra-textual reading when I'm analyzing episodes of The Romanoffs.  But then there are episodes like "Bright and High Circle."

It's tough to watch and review this episode without thinking about how it relates to Matthew Weiner's personal and professional life.  So I'll give a rundown for those who would otherwise be lost: Weiner had a writing assistant named Kater Gordon who started on working on Mad Men in season two and eventually became a full staff writer in season three, even winning an Emmy for an episode the two of them co-wrote together.  But Gordon left the show shortly after that, and she's never worked in the television industry since then.  (Some feel like the dynamic between Don and Peggy in the famous Mad Men episode "The Suitcase" -- particularly their argument about awards -- was Weiner making an indirect commentary on Gordon.)  We finally learned the reason for Gordon's mysterious exit from the business last November, when she revealed that she was subject to sexual harassment under Weiner's employ.  She says that during a night working alone together, he once told her that she "owed it to him to let him see her naked" as reward for all that he had done for her.  Weiner has repeatedly denied the allegations (albeit in pretty cagey language), but it's a situation that has hung over The Romanoffs release cycle.

So one would think that everyone involved with the show would want to stay away from anything involving sexual misconduct.  In all of its prior four episodes, The Romanoffs has dealt with matters of sexual impropriety, but it seemed like that's as close to reflecting upon the allegations surrounding Weiner that it would get.  Well no, it turns out.   "Bright and High Circle" chooses to tackle the matter of sexual misconduct allegations by centering an entire episode on it.  The Romanov of the week is Katherine Ford (Diane Lane), who's introduced attending a community piano recital that her sons are performing at.  It appears that piano teacher David (Andrew Rannells) is beloved by the parents and children alike, which makes it all the more surprising when a police detective visits Katherine at her office a few scenes later to question her in relation to an accusation made about David having an inappropriate relationship with a minor.  Though Katherine isn't given much information, like who even made this accusation, it's enough to throw her entire perspective out of whack.  And despite being told by the detective not to share this information with anyone else, she can't help herself, and sets off a whisper network among the community by telling one of the other moms (Nicole Ari Parker) whose kid is being taught by David.

The episode makes an interesting choice of having David not really appear in the present after the initial scene at the recital.  Instead, he is only shown in flashbacks -- a new Romanoffs staple -- as the episode flips to prior moments that everyone is relitigating in their minds now that they're equipped with the knowledge of the allegations against him.  Things that previously seemed harmless now take on a suspicious atmosphere.  And in doing so, "Bright and High Circle" implicates the audience in this fact-finding mission.  It makes us hyper-aware of the way our allegiances shift based on information that technically doesn't have anything to do with whether or not David acted inappropriately with children.  "Oh, Katherine's middle child gets angry and defensive when she asks him if David has ever made him feel uncomfortable?  He must be guilty," we think.  "Look at how passionate he is about teaching the piano!  Maybe he's not such a bad guy," that other corner of our mind rebuts.

Throughout all of this, you could probably hold on to some naive belief that this is just a thorny story that Weiner and crew were interested in telling with no agenda whatsoever.  After all, it's an engaging tale, absorbing enough to make you block all of its meta elements out of your mind.  But then it takes the time to have a scene where Katherine's husband Alex (Ron Livingston) recounts a story from his youth, where Alex had a friend with long hair whom everyone in the neighborhood accused of secretly being a girl.  One day, Alex's curiosity gets the best of him and he asks the friend if they're a girl.  When Alex later recounts this information to his parents at dinner, his dad lays into him for "believing the mob" and hurting his friend's feelings.  It's an incredibly didactic moment that feels like Matthew Weiner talking directly at the audience about jumping to conclusions.  But what truly tips it over into bonkersville is the capper to this story, which arrives near the end of the episode, when Alex reveals to Katherine that he eventually found out that his childhood friend was a girl.  In one quick strike, the episode makes what we're supposed to take away from its message incredibly muddy, as opaque as things are for the characters at the end of this story when they never truly find out what the deal is with David.

"Bright and High Circle" does an effective job of depicting what it's like to be caught in the middle of a sticky situation that has the potential to shake up a community.  It's the most traditionally watchable episode, getting lots of mileage out of the excitement involved with attempting to get to the bottom of this mystery.  In many ways, it's also the most simple episode from a storytelling standpoint, offering up a compelling conflict and really honing in on it to explore every available avenue of drama.  And as an installment of this thematically linked anthology series, it gives us another examination of people struggling with what they owe to themselves and those around them.  All around, it's a thought provoking exercise.

The problem is that this is not just a thought experiment.  It has real life implications.  By telling a story that so closely parallels his actual situation, Matthew Weiner makes it seem like he's the victim of anonymous and vague rumors run amok.  But the fact is that the accusations against him come from a real, public place and are told in vivid detail.  To stack the deck so forcefully in the other direction in a proxy version feels irresponsible.  When all is said and done, "Bright and High Circle" might be remembered as the episode that most encapsulates The Romanoffs as a whole: a strange and prickly work of hubris, but one that's absolutely fascinating nonetheless.


Bonus Points
-This should go without saying but in case it does need saying: I believe Kater Gordon.

-It can't be stressed enough how insane this episode is.  I sat through most of it with my jaw on the floor, unable to believe that Weiner and company had the nerve to do something like this.  By the time it got to the one-two punch of Alex's childhood story plus the final reveal of that story, I was cackling from how loony it all was.

-"Bright and High Circle" is co-written by Kriss Turner Towner and Matthew Weiner, and it's directed by Matthew Weiner.  It's entirely possible that this idea was Towner's or some other person in the writers room, but even if that's the case, it's nuts that Weiner would hear it and think "Yes, we should do that."

-You'll recall that around the time the long-rumored sexual misconduct accusations around Louis C.K. dropped last year, he was also slated to have a movie he wrote and directed called I Love You, Daddy be released.  It was about a teenage girl who is seduced by a much older filmmaker.  Though it wasn't directly related to the rumors about him, some critics who saw it at film festivals felt like it was a confession.  That's how this episode feels.  That's how this whole series feels!

-When the credits roll on a new episode, I always think "well how am I supposed to review that?"  So you can imagine the particular pain I felt at the end of this one.  What a minefield Mr. Weiner has stepped into and has thus made me step into.

-Connections to previous episodes this week: Katherine Ford is a relative of the husband of Amanda Peet's character from "Expectation."  Also, Katherine's son is playing the same phone game that Corey Stoll's character is playing while awaiting jury duty in "The Royal We."

-The casting of Andrew Rannells as David is such a wonderful choice.  His demeanor can be read as boyish charm or oily plasticity depending on what angle you look at it from.  I've always liked him, but this performance is particularly great.

-One argument that gets made in the episode, and one that gets thrown out alot in real life, is that accusations like these can ruin a man's life.  But keep in mind that Matthew Weiner's life is doing just fine.  He just got a truck full of money to make a series in which he complains that accusations can ruin a man's life.

-I like the symbolism of ants in this episode.  Katherine wakes up in the middle of the night to find one ant crawling on her arm, and even though there's no evidence of there being other ants, she can't stop itching hours later.  A neat little way to package the nature of the suspicions about David.

-My movie recommendation of the week is Unfaithful, the erotic thriller starring Diane Lane that was very, let's say, "formative" for me as a young boy.