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.

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.