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 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse

Catching with The Romanoffs, now up to episode 1.5, which features classical music (Tchaikovsky and the rest), and the talented piano teacher accused of touching his male students "inappropriately".

By the end, though it's not 100% clear that David the piano teacher is innocent, it certainly seems that way.  The police detective who asks Prof. Ford (Diane Lane) to ask her three boys if David ever did anything inappropriate never does explain why she (the detective) is looking into this in the first place.   And her boys all steadfastly deny that anything untoward happened with David.

As such, this episode becomes a tableau of the falsely accused, and how that easily can ruin the accused's career and life.  Given that surely not everyone who is accused is guilty of the accusation, this episode becomes an important statement that there may be two sides to the story.  Thus, the abuse  here is that suffered by David, for (apparently) being wrongly accused.

I think this is an important episode for our or any age.  What Ford goes through, not really believing the charges against David, but struggling to get the truth from her boys, is in its own way, however, limited, a story of our time.   And a story for any time, which provides the motive for innocent until proven guilty that is the bedrock of our judicial system.

The Romanoffs, in its first five episodes, has covered an enormous amount of territory in subject and style.  I'll be back here soon with reviews of the six and later episodes.

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 1.6: 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 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled

I thought The Romanoffs 1.4:  Expectation, on Amazon Prime this past Friday night had great dialogue, tip-top New York scenery, and fine acting.  But the weakness of its plot, and the in-media-res ending made it feel like much ado about nothing, and thus the weakest of the four episodes so far.

I liked the slight connection to 1.3.  It was fun getting to meet the guy who wrote the script of the television series about the Romanovs that lead to the death of its prime actress last week.  As always, John Slattery gave a good performance.  So did the other Jon - Tenney - as the assumed grandparent of the Romanov heir, when Slattery's character was the real one.  But that's pretty much the long and the short of this little story.

Well, Olivia's struggles were of some interest, too.  But the way the story was told in flashbacks, which works when the plot structure is strong, didn't in this frozen-in-time photograph in slight motion.   Not to mention that we didn't even get the payoff of seeing the baby born, and the reactions of all the characters.

Not to make too much of the title - which works as a double entendre - but I was expecting a little more in this episode.   As I said in my review of the first episode, there's a lot in The Romanoffs that reminds me of Woody Allen.   Expectation shows that that's a two-edged sword.  Because, although some of Allen's movies are brilliant, some are just great dialogue, scenery, and acting, which, without a commensurately strong plot, don't add up to anything close to great.

But I'll be back here next week with a review of episode 5.

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 1.5: 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 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Meta Ghost Story

The Romanoffs 1.3, entitled House of Special Purpose, is the most conceptually ambitious and sophisticated of the standalone episodes so far.  It's also closest to my favorite genre as a reader, viewer, and writer - science fiction - and it stars Christina Hendricks, who was one of the leading lights on Mad Men.

She gives an outstanding performance as Olivia Rogers, an actress who flies to a windy part of Europe to play the Tsarina Alexandra Romanov in a six-part television series about the Romanovs.  That's what I mean about this excellent episode being meta.  (By the way, the offs is an Anglicized alternate spelling of the ovs in The Romanoffs.)

The ghost part, which is not really science fiction but dark fantasy, is why I said ghost story - science fiction and fantasy can be French-kissing cousins.  In House of Special Purpose, there's some serious kissing going on, against a backdrop of Olivia bumping into another reality in which she really is Alexandra, or at least some kind of real Romanov.   (Hey, alternate reality is ipso facto science fiction, too.)  She encounters people who speak Russian who in fact apparently do not.  Passions and memories from the real Tsar and Tsarina and Rasputin are afoot though not in the script.  Olivia struggles to understand what is going on, be professional in her acting, but that becomes increasingly difficult.  I won't tell you the powerful ending, but let's just say that hotel in which she is staying is even more possessive than the Hotel California.

There's dark humor sprinkled into this episode along with the straight-up fright, and lots of inside wit about the TV and movie industry.   A superb episode as good as the second, which I said last week was the best so far.   See you back here after the next.

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 1.4: 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 1.2: 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" ...