Ranking the Episodes of "The Romanoffs"

This is a ranking of "The Romanoffs" episodes. Spoilers for all of them.

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1. House of Special Purpose (Grade: B+)

This story is full of moments that challenge actress Olivia Rogers’s notions of reality. The assistant whom she overhears speaking English despite being told otherwise. Her co-star, Sam, being sexually aggressive with her as Rasputin, blurring the line between actor and character. The little girl she witnesses in her room despite there being no trace of her. Her other co-star, Brian, changing his dialogue to anachronistic song lyrics and receiving high marks from director Jacqueline. It all serves (either purposely or accidently) to effectively gaslight Olivia into feeling isolated and vulnerable. It leads to an elaborate ruse to scare her into giving a realistic performance during the Romanov massacre, only for it to shock her dead – with a little assistance from some drugs, apparently.

I question why Jacqueline felt this whole charade to be necessary. Nothing suggested Olivia was giving a poor performance. We are not given more information on the supposed supernatural elements – little ghost girl, Jacqueline talking to an invisible figure, and Jacqueline being possessed – but the possession is the only one that occurred in front of others, and I feel fairly confident it’s a put-on. While the necessity to pull off this charade is never made explicitly clear, this is still one of the better episodes of this series due to likable characters and a plot you can connect in a relatively straight line.

2. The Violet Hour (Grade: B)

The debut episode of “The Romanoffs” doesn’t appear to quite know who it wants to be about. It orbits around Anushka, who seems to get the lion’s share of screen time, but the emotional center and catalyst for change is with Hajar. Meanwhile, we get glimpses into Greg’s side of the story and it’s his actions that the climax hinges on. In truth, Greg is kind of boring and his presence distracts from what might otherwise be a well-told (if somewhat cliché) tale of the bridging of class, age, race, and religion. Anushka is pretty terrible to Hajar, but we want her to evolve for Hajar’s sake, if not for her own. Ines Melab makes a strong impact as Hajar, and centering the story on her would have been a better choice. Greg is necessary to give Anushka something to hope for but his individual scenes don’t really add much.

Anushka’s life of privilege bumping up against Hajar’s life of struggle and hard work provides some solid material for conflict (the croissant scene is darkly brutal, even though the story may be apocryphal). I think bequeathing the apartment to Hajar is not necessarily out-of-character for Anushka, but I think we needed her to get a little further in order for it to feel earned. But Greg and Hajar’s hookup, and subsequent declarations of love, is forced and lame. We got very close to a winner here, but it lost the thread and ended in a tailspin.

3. End of the Line (Grade: B)

“End of the Line” has probably the most well-developed story of the show. A couple has weathered time, money, bureaucracy, and the remote Russian coldness to finally adopt a child but are conflicted when it turns out the child may have developmental problems. Anka’s reluctance to take in a child with potential problems is an understandable perspective, one that makes her a flawed character without being outright cruel (see: “The Royal We”). If the story ended with them either taking the real Oksana or leaving with nothing, I would question whether this story was worth telling. But the switch that was made with baby Katarina gives Joe and Anka a measure of comfort and success, while still leaving them (or at least Joe) with a fog of regret over the real Oksana, whose future is uncertain, and probably doomed.

The one noticeable critique here is its length, specifically the long prelude to meeting Oksana. It is not inherently necessary that we see the grim, lifeless journey into Vladisvostok, especially the convenience store pit-stop, although you could argue it serves to wear down the viewer until they are at Joe and Anka’s level, tired and anxious after a long journey to finally start their family. We went through this whole charade, just like they did, and we also want something to show for it. I just don’t think the detours were interesting enough to keep me occupied along the way. But of all the creative sins in “The Romanoffs”, this is not the one that sinks an episode.

4. Panorama (Grade: B)

I don’t know why Matthew Weiner feels the need to make almost every story centered on a romance. This is one case where the relationship is clearly getting in the way of another story he wants to tell. Victoria, while a perfectly normal and sympathetic character, does not display anything that would make Abel fall for her almost on sight. They have very little chemistry together and Abel’s actor is shockingly wooden and plain, walking with a strut that seems reserved for runway models and not a struggling reporter living in a low-grade apartment. Griffin Dunne at least provides some spark as Frank.

The “big picture” of “Panorama” is an allegedly fraudulent clinic that is taking advantage of poor and suffering Mexicans (and others, like Victoria, who can make the trip). Abel compares this to the conquistadors occupying the indigenous peoples, using the wonderful Diego Rivera mural to demonstrate Mexico’s vast culture. This is a promising angle, and one I wish Weiner was more interested in. Frank, unfortunately, doesn’t seem taken with it either. The final moments of the episode, with Abel walking through the square amidst Mexican figures, is a visual delight but is not laden with emotion because the story did not take us down that path as much as it needed to (also, Abel does that model walk that I mentioned, which makes the scene more choreographed than I think was intended). Unlike some other “Romanoffs”, this one did not have an egregious trip-up, but it failed to take advantage of a unique idea.

5. Expectation (Grade: B)

The first hour-long episode mercifully does not stretch it out another half hour. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of meat to the story, and the moment of climax is a calm quiet instead of a heated confrontation. Amanda Peet and John Slattery put in quality work as former lovers bickering about the past. It keeps a few points for avoiding the absurd pitfalls of other Romanoff stories but in the end I’m not sure what was so special about this story that it needed to be told. The scene where she tells Eric the truth is revealed to be a fantasy, and Ella lets her off the hook by confirming she already knows. Julia is not forced to make a difficult choice here, and she is a less interesting character because of it.

6. The Royal We (Grade: B-)

There are two stories here, one which works mostly well, and the other that squanders an interesting premise. Michael manipulates jury duty in order to get closer to the beautiful Michelle, a concept which I find interesting, especially since, as a supposed relative of the murdered Romanovs, he would probably want to be properly judicial when it comes to handing down judgment on accused criminals. Unfortunately, that idea never come to fruition, and Michelle is such a bland character who has almost no chemistry with Michael that it just makes Michael’s little charade an annoyance.

Shelly, on the other hand, is forced to attend a Romanov family cruise alone. It’s odd, a little fun, more than a bit sad, but exposes her to a more colorful and interesting world than the one she has now with a sad-sack husband who only cares for phone games. Kerry Bishe makes Shelly quietly likable as she gets a face full of champagne foam and does a double-take at the Corey Stoll-looking Romanov in the presentation (which got a genuine laugh from me). Noah Wyle’s Ivan is pretty wooden, but at least a step higher than Michael. If we had just focused on Shelly, this could have been a really good episode.

Sadly, they reunite and we are forced to endure a long hike in which it is painfully obvious that Michael is going to do something to Shelly. When we arrive at the top of the hill, get a nice top-down view of the cliff Shelly is standing inches away from, and Michael is growing increasingly nervous, I thought, “No way they are going to push her off. It’s too obvious, and it’s being telegraphed so directly, that it would be creative malpractice to go through with it instead of swerving to something else.” But nope – Michael shoves her. Not to death, nor even to serious injury, and Shelly’s reaction is a little muted for having nearly bene murdered. She pepper-sprays him in the face, kicks him in the balls, and drives away. It’s no doubt a painful climax but it feels very small and shallow for what he actually deserved. We should have seen Shelly conclude on her own that Michael was trash, not as retaliation for almost losing her life.

7. The One That Holds Everything (C)

I think there is a watchable story in here somewhere, but it’s told in such a messy fashion that I end up not caring. There is a Russian Nesting Doll effect, as we get a story within a story (Candace’s story leads to Simon’s story, which leads to Christopher’s story, which is of the young Simon). Was all of this necessary? Certainly there is no reason for us to have Christopher’s perspective, nor even for Simon’s group session to be anywhere other than near the end. I think the tale of young Simon is actually the strongest material, but it’s buried so deep in the show that it takes me a while to figure out that this isn’t just a two-minute flashback, i.e. Alex’s random story in “Bright and High Circle”. Without this important context, Simon’s failures with Christopher (which was shown prior to it) don’t have the impact. Maybe if each narrator had a different, conflicting interpretation of events this style might have worked, but alas they did not.

Then there is the matter of Simon/Candace’s gender identity being treated as the “gotcha” moment, something to be played as a card from a writer’s deck as opposed to making them a fully-formed character. It seemed to happen without much buildup, and, further, you would think Jack would interrupt Candace at some point once she started mentioning things from his own life (I can’t remember if she mentioned the name “Ondine” in a voiceover). And while I don’t think transgender folks need to be patronized so forcefully that they can’t also be villains in a story, I just don’t see why Candace’s ultimate desire was either the acquiring of the earrings or the murder of Jack. The earrings felt like a tacked-on plot point as opposed to an object of affection, and Jack was barely a character, hardly even to blame for any of the pain in Candace’s life. 

8. Bright and High Circle (D)

It’s tough to figure out when exactly this episode started going off the rails, but it’s easy to pinpoint when gravity took over and it had plunged full-tilt into freefall. While it’s not exactly a slog, the premise is dragged out for most of the episode (Is he a predator? No, he couldn’t be. Let’s ask a kid. Repeat) without any ratcheting of the tension. In fact, the tension is slowly released as friends vouch for David’s kind heart and flashbacks show him in a positive light. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but then the tension needs to be distributed elsewhere, and it never really did. Diane Lane was quite adept at portraying a conflicted mother who didn’t want to jump the gun in either direction. The best thing to do would be to make her character choose an option without having all the information, and take the consequences as they come.

Ah, but then she is let off the hook when it turns out David just bought some beer for a teenager, and the detective’s inquiry simply ends. No character change for Katherine. Even when she learns David has been stealing her family history (for what reason, we never find out) she doesn’t confront him. The big climax is her husband, Alex, giving a speech about not piling on someone when there isn’t evidence of wrongdoing – never mind the fact that earlier in the episode Alex was the one pushing to fire David. And then, despite the fact that Alex is a secondary character to the story, we get a childhood flashback about how everyone made fun of his friend Alan for “being a girl”, despite Alan not being a girl, except, as Alex reveals a minute later, “Alan” was in fact “Ellen”. Now, even setting aside that outing someone as transgender is nowhere near akin to accusing someone of sexual misconduct, that little extra bit just neuters Alex’s entire stance: that sometimes the accusation does turn out to be true. In the end, Katherine closes the door on the piano lesson as, I presume, a silent display of trust in David, even  though it means she would be turning her back on any wrongdoing that does occur. David’s habit of letting himself in unattended and lying about himself still indicates an untrustworthy person.

Then there’s the matter of Matthew Weiner, the creator/writer/director of “The Romanoffs”, who himself had been accused of unwanted sexual advances during the peak of #MeToo. If the trajectory of this story was icky on its face, it gets double icky when you realize Weiner has basically used it as a defense of himself, and not a very good defense at that. I have no idea why they decided to put this episode up for viewing. There certainly wouldn’t have been anything of creative value lost.