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.