The Romanoffs 1.8: The One That Holds Everything: Writer on a Train

Well, The Romanoffs certainly saved the most wicked, and very likely the best, episode for its finale, episode 1.8.   Matthew Wiener as director and co-writer presents the most narratively complex story in the series - at least three stories within stories - and pulls it off with style and aplomb, including at least one scene with music that feels like David Lynch was behind it.  There's even a touch of Hitchcock in this episode, in the sense that beware what happens when you talk to a stranger on a train.

The stories are what the woman on the train tells the writer (who happens to be the writer of the Romanov series we've seen or seen mentioned at least two or three times in earlier episodes, all excellent, too - the series within Wiener's series).  This in turn leads to Simon's story (as a young man), which in turn leads to Christopher's story about Simon as a boy.

Except, that's not the end, by any means, because the woman on the train turns out to be Simon, who is transgender and fully transitioned into Candace (she took that name because Simon's mother always called him her "sugar candy"), so she's in fact telling the whole story, all along.  About that story, I won't say anything more, on the slim chance that you're reading this and haven't yet seen this episode, except to say that the ending comes with just deserts par excellence.

In many ways, this is one of the most remarkable series I've ever seen on television.  Not all of the episodes were equally brilliant, but all were good enough, and it's hard to expect more of eight episodes which are standalone except insofar as they each have more or much less of a Romanov connection.

I'd watch another season in a heartbeat.  And, in the meantime, while I'm waiting or if it never comes, I know I'll be replaying a lot of what I've seen in these episodes in my head.

See also: The Romanoffs 1.1: The Violet Hour: Compelling, Anti-Binge Watchable Comedy of Manners ... The Romanoffs 1.2: The Royal We: A Walk on the Dark Side ... The Romanoffs 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Ghost Story ... The Romanoffs 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled ... The Romanoffs 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse ... The Romanoffs 1.6: Panorama: The Royal Disease ... The Romanoffs 1.7: End of the Line: The Adoption Racket

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

The Romanoffs 1.7: End of the Line: The Adoption Racket

The adoption of Russian children by American parents has played a crucial role in Russian-American relations since 2012, when the Russian Duma, in retaliation for U. S. sanctions imposed upon Russia in the Magnitsky Act, prohibited the U.S. adoption of Russian children.  Conversations between officials in the 2016 Trump campaign, his son Don Jr., and Russian operatives - allegedly about the Russians helping Trump in the election in return for Trump's promise to work to end the Magnitsky Act - have been a large part of what the Mueller team has been examining in its investigation of possible collusion between Trump and the Russians in 2016.

The American adoption of a Russian baby in 2008 thus makes a highly timely topic for the 7th episode of The Romanoffs.  The American would-be mother, Anka, is cousin to Victoria, mother to the boy with hemophilia and Romanov descendant we got to know in the superb previous episode in Mexico City.  Anka and her husband Joe are thrilled when they first arrive in Vladivostok (end of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and hence the name of the episode).  But the euphoria soon turns to despair, anger, and discord, when the couple discover that the baby they came to adopt may be suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome.  The aftermath contains some of the most searing dialogue of the series (which is saying a lot), when Joe, for example, tells Anka that she came to Russia to adopt a white baby because she was too snobbish and racist to adopt a healthy black baby in L.A.

There is a clever, happy end of sorts - I won't tell you what it is - but it's truthfully a little hard to feel happy after all the ugliness and insecurities of the human soul bared earlier.  Excellent acting by Annet Mahendru (Nina from The Americans) as the Russian broker, and Kathryn Hahn and Jay R. Ferguson as the adoptive parents.  And kudos to Matthew Wiener for putting together a series of episodes with a common thread as different from one another as episodes you might see in seven different series.

Next week is the season one finale.

See also: The Romanoffs 1.1: The Violet Hour: Compelling, Anti-Binge Watchable Comedy of Manners ... The Romanoffs 1.2: The Royal We: A Walk on the Dark Side ... The Romanoffs 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Ghost Story ... The Romanoffs 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled ... The Romanoffs 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse ... The Romanoffs 1.6: Panorama: The Royal Disease ... The Romanoffs 1.8:  The One that Holds Everything: Writer on a Train

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

The Romanoffs 1.2: The Royal We: A Walk on the Dark Side

Well, The Romanoffs 1.2, entitled The Royal We, takes a darker, nastier, murderous turn, with none of the comedy of the first episode (The Violet Hour), unless you find dwarfs acting as the royal family Romanoffs (Romanovs) on a cruise to celebrate the family, funny.

But the evil stuff was pretty compelling.  Michael Romanoff (exceptional acting by Corey Stoll) has no happiness in his life, including with his wife Shelly, though that's for no want of her trying.  He finds himself on a jury for a murder trial, obligating Shelly to go on the cruise she booked for the two of them on her own.   Michael seems to hit pay dirt on the jury.  A beautiful former ballet dancer, Michelle (excellent work Janet Montgomery), is on it, too.  He's instantly smitten.  He deliberately extends the deliberations by refusing to find the obviously guilty defendant guilty.  He soon contrives to meet with the dancer when the jury takes a break for the weekend - they're not sequestered - and manages to sleep with her after she more or less seduces him.  Meanwhile, in contrast, Shelly says no to handsome Ivan, in a corridor near the door of her room on the boat, after they kiss and he clearly indicates his intentions.

She returns to a powder keg of Michael wanting to see more of Michelle, and she demurring (she's married, too).  I won't tell you anymore lest I give too much away, but the intensity of what happens is reminiscent of both The Sopranos and Mad Men and Heather, the Totality in different ways.  Weiner is not only a master of societal foibles, but the ugliest, harrowing facets of human nature.

With two episodes of The Romanoffs now on the screen, we can see that they're as different as day and night.  What Weiner is really after in this new anthology is telling very different stories, with no connection to one another whatsoever, except for the Romanoff label. 

Which makes me wonder about the subsequent episodes even more, and want to see them.  I'll be back here next Friday with a review of #3.

See also: The Romanoffs 1.1: The Violet Hour: Compelling, Anti-Binge Watchable Comedy of Manners  ... The Romanoffs 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Meta Ghost Story... The Romanoffs 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled .... The Romanoffs 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse ... The Romanoffs 1.6: Panorama: The Royal Disease ... The Romanoffs 1.7: End of the Line: The Adoption Racket ... The Romanoffs 1.8:  The One that Holds Everything: Writer on a Train

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

The Romanoffs 1.1: The Violet Hour: Compelling, Anti-Binge Watchable Comedy of Manners

I've been a fan of Matthew Weiner's since The Sopranos and Mad Men.  So has my wife.  I even read and rave-reviewed his 2017 novella Heather, The Totality.  So of course we were going to watch The Romanoffs, the new anthology series on Amazon Prime, now consisting of eight standalone 90-minute episodes connected by the sinew of each episode tells the story of a different character or characters who think they are descendants of the royal Russian family, all or most of whom were slain by the Bolsheviks in 1918.   The first two episodes were put up today, and the rest will be shown on a weekly basis.

All ninety minutes of The Violet Hour were excellent.  The story takes place in Paris, featuring Anushka (who claims she is a descendant), her American nephew Greg, his French girlfriend Sophie, and Anushka's caretaker Hajar, who was born in Paris and whose parents came from North Africa.  There's comedy, profundity, passion, and surprises all packaged in this tale of how Anushka is determined to see that her Romanoff bloodline survives into the next generation.

The genre is so original it's hard to classify.  It has elements of Downton Abbey and Woody Allen.  It would have been a good standalone movie, and someone said somewhere that these episodes could be watched and considered as individual movies.  But the fact that Weiner has tied them all together by this unlikely thread makes them all the more appealing - or, at least, that's what I thought before watching the first episode and even more strongly now.

Weiner's decision not to show them all at once certainly supports the each episode is a movie structure.  As such, The Romanoffs could be considered the first deliberately anti-binge-watchable series on a streaming service.  I'm not sure how I feel about that - we're going to watch the second the episode as soon as I post this review.  I know we'd want to watch the third, if not right after the second, at least tomorrow night,

But The Violet Hour was so good we'll be happy to wait for that third, next week.

See also The Romanoffs 1.2: The Royal We: A Walk on the Dark Side  ... The Romanoffs 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Meta Ghost Story ... The Romanoffs 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled ... The Romanoffs 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse ... The Romanoffs 1.6: Panorama: The Royal Disease ... The Romanoffs 1.7: End of the Line: The Adoption Racket ... The Romanoffs 1.8:  The One that Hold Everything: Writer on a Train

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

Heather, the Totality: The Bombshell

As everyone knows who has read this blog or seen me talk at conferences about The Sopranos,  etc., I've long admired Matthew Weiner's work on both The Sopranos and Mad Men, and indeed consider it to be at the very apex of television.  I was thus more than pleased to get a slightly-advance copy of Weiner's first novel (due to be published November 7) late yesterday, and read it one-and-a-half sittings (a little in the wee hours of the morning, the rest just this afternoon).  It's only 134 short pages, but it's so compelling I'm sure I would have read all of it in that time, anyway, had it been twice as long.

It didn't need to be. Weiner's novel is exceptional, very much a slice of life in New York at this moment, and very different in style and pacing at the same time.  There's only one line of true dialogue, and it's a bombshell.  The descriptive passages are reminiscent of both Dickens and Salinger.  And the story rings true on all kinds of levels.

Not long ago, I got in my car in the parking lot of a supermarket, and noticed a guy looking at a woman who was walking by.  There was something in his eyes that, I don't know, was more sinister than just appreciation.  I stayed in my car a few minutes, until the woman got safely in her car and drove away.

This is the spark plug of Heather, the Totality.  A father (Mark) notices a construction worker looking at his 14-year old daughter (Heather) as she walks out of their building.  That scene happens 2/3s or more into the novel.  Before that, we learn a lot about Mark, Karen (Mark's wife and Heather's mother), Heather, and the construction worker, Bobby.  We learn enough about Bobby to know that Mark's concerns about what Bobby might do to his daughter are well-founded.

I'm not going to tell you the ending.  Give yourself a treat and get a copy of this novel, destined to be recognized as a new kind of story telling.

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

Mad Men: The End of an Era and the Ultimate Cool

I've been saying lately that we're in the third golden age of television, epitomized by House of Cards streaming all at once on Netflix.  Mad Men was one of the stalwarts of the second golden age - the revolution of cable over network and the first golden age of television in the 1950s.  Mad Men debuted just a month after the conclusion of The Sopranos, which initiated the second golden age.  And tonight Mad Men concluded in its turn, as well.  It was advertised as the end of an era, and it was - the end of cable television as the undisputed creative edge of television drama.

As for the stories themselves in this final episode, there was a lot that was good in them, even satisfying in some cases.  The best of this was Peggy finding happiness and true love at last with Stan.   Pete's ending is happy, too, and so is Roger's.

Joan's is bitter sweet,   In order to pursue her creative, professional self, she has to give up the man she loves.   The lesson there is that in the society of the early 1970s, at least, it was difficult for a woman, in contrast to a man, to have both.  Mad Men has been brilliant in showing the struggles of professional women in that era.  Presumably our world has improved at least a little in that regard since then.

And Don?  His ending is the most frustrating - for the audience as well as him.  He perhaps has finally shed the illusion that he built around himself, but what's left?  I always thought that Don Draper was the most real part of Dick Whitman, and now Don has neither.

Or maybe not.   Who did the Coke commercial we see at the very end?   Peggy and Stan would be the logical people, since we saw Peggy talking to Don on the phone about his doing it, which means it was certainly on her mind.   But could Don have gone back to New York and done it himself?   Or, was Peggy, Don's greatest student, finally putting into best practice what she learned from the master?  Or, in perhaps the happiest ending that went unseen, maybe the three worked on it together.

My wife correctly points out that Don has a motive to go back to New York - to be with his kids - and the Coke commercial could easily have been inspired by that Esalen or whatever hippy therapy group that was.  This would constitute an epic conquering and co-option of the flower-power counter-culture by the brazen commercialism of advertising via the reconstituted Don.  On the other hand, Don sitting there with that beatific smile on his face is a very long distance from Manhattan.

Matthew Weiner, like David Chase before him, is a master of ambiguity. Instead of the sudden cut to black in The Sopranos, we get the Coke commercial - which, in terms of the most important things in life, is itself a blackness or a celebration of nothingness, just a stupid soft drink with caffein.  It's the real unreal thing, the ultimate McLuhanesque medium cool, a canvass that invites us to fill in the story.

But isn't that what Mad Men has always been most about, a celebration of illusions writ large, perpetrated by professionals and self-generated by consumers, in advertising and true life stories alike?  I don't know for sure, but I sure enjoyed the ride.

-> 20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) in 2007 at Light On Light Through

See also Mad Men 7.1: Vignettes and Playboy ... Mad Men 7.2:  Flowers and the Hung-Up Phone ... Mad Men 7.3: "Lunch with Rod Serling" ... Mad Men 7.4: Computer! ... Mad Men 7.5: Retrofit Paranoia ... Mad Men 7.6: The Dance ...  Mad Men Mid-Season 7 Finale: Telescope vs. Television ... Mad Men 7.8: Don, Rachel, and the Waitress ... Mad Men 7.9: Fast Ride ... Mad Men 7.10: "Fast Girl" ... Mad Men 7.11: The End of Sterling, Cooper, Draper. ... Mad Men 7.12: Poor Betty

And see also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination ... Mad Men 6.5: MLK ... Mad Men 6.6: Good News Comes in a Chevy ...  Mad Men 6.7: Merger and Margarine ... Mad Men 6.8: Dr. Feelgood and Grandma Ida ... Mad Men 6.9: Don and Betty ... Mad Men 6.10: Medium Cool ... Mad Men 6.11: Hand in the Cookie Jar and Guy de Maupassant ... Mad Men 6.12: Rosemary's Baby, Dick Cheney, and Sunkist ... Mad Men Season 6 Finale: Beyond California

And see also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

And see also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

Mad Men 6.8: Dr. Feelgood and Grandma Ida

There's always at least one insane show on Mad Men, sometimes two, in which all hell breaks loose to the point where you and the characters don't know who's dreaming what, or if it's really a dream at all.  This is one of Matthew Weiner's signatures, and you'll recall it was used to excellent effect on The Sopranos in the aftermath of Tony being shot by Uncle Junior.   At its best on Mad Men, it had Don going out to California a few years ago in his original identity as Dick Whitman.

Tonight's Mad Men 6.8 was such a show.  The trigger is a Dr. Feelgood kind of doctor - the name the doc who gave JFK a stimulus shot on regular basis was known by - who in Mad Men dispenses a combination of B vitamins and a little something extra (no doubt amphetamine) to most of the major characters including Don.

Don is down because of his loss of Sylvia last week and a cough (which I hope is not the first sign of lung cancer) and is in dire need of a pick-me-up.   The doc gives him a shot in the buttock (as the doc says), and in a few seconds we get a brilliant piece of acting from Jon Hamm.   The gist is he thinks he's come up with a fabulous campaign for picky Chevy, but it turns out most of it doesn't translate to the un-high world.   We also get some fine dancin' from Aaron Staton as Ken Cosgrove, with a cane and all.

Meanwhile, back home, the kids are staying over Don's apartment and Megan has to leave to meet some Broadway producers, and out of nowhere Grandma Ida is inside the apartment and talking it up with the kids.  Never heard of her?  Neither have the kids, and, to make matters even more surreal and funny, she's African American.   Sally and Bobby were at their deadpan funniest, and I was laughing out loud at this scene (and also because there really was a Grandma Ida in our family).   The upshot, however, is Don left the back door open, and Ida was casing the building looking for some suitable places to burgle.

Don collapses when he comes home to find this, but from the shot in the buttock to the faint we get a fast moving collage of zany scenes interspersed with the young Don losing his virginity. Amidst this craziness in the office only Peggy, as usual, is the voice of sanity, but she does get her backside complimented by the copywriter with the beard and says thanks so the episode was not a total loss for her and definitely far from it for us and in fact it was a cracked hoot.

See ya next week.

See also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination ... Mad Men 6.5: MLK ... Mad Men 6.6: Good News Comes in a Chevy ...  Mad Men 6.7: Merger and Margarine

See also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

  

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