S01.E08: Too Rich for Her Blood

[Whimsy]

Quote

Vivian digs into lingering questions after her article's publication, including Anna's formative years in Germany and her stay at L.A.'s Chateau Marmont.

 

[Zonk]

Some comments about the scenes in germany:

There was never in my lifetime a conductor yelling the stops live in the train. Used to be that the conductors voice would come over shitty speakers, you mostly didn't understand. Used to be a joke that you needed a dictionary to translate it into german. Now it's just a computer voice and in that train type it would have been a computer voice. I can also tell you that Eschweilers trainstation wouldn't have looked like that in 2006. But I guess those two are forgiveable since, they are in Vivian's imagination.

In the present day, there was way too much luggage on the overhead racks. Those things are shitty, way too small, so most people don't bother and the luggage will instead clog up the aisles. Yay, Deutsche Bahn and train design.

They always talk about Eschweiler as "small town germany". It has over 55.000 inhabitants. That may be small by american standards, but it certainly isn't for german ones. Yeah it's not a big city, but it's also not some backwater hick town. It isn't a 1000 people town in saxony, it is a big town in the west, so the butcher would never get away with and be so openly racist. I live in a town 4 times smaller than Eschweiler and that wouldn't fly here. Of course there are people who are racist, you have those everywehere, but it isn't socailly acceptable and so the racists keep it to themselves in public and only spout their hate in private or on the internet.

I also really doubt that Anna was the only russian girl in her school. One third of my class were Russlanddeutsche. So germans who had migrated to russia like 80 years ago, or were living in regions that the soviet union captured from germany in WW2 and were now coming back after the fall of the sovjet union. Granted, my time in school was a few years before Anna's, but not by much. And not to give you the wrong impression, none of these people still spoke german. Maybe some of the grandparents of the kids in my class, but not even their parents did. So for all intents and purposes they were russian. Without reading much about her, I suspect that Anna also is from a family of Russlanddeutsche.

Are we supposed to believe that Anna really lived in that contaminated Villa? Because that wouldn't fly in germany. Or was that just part of the idle speculation? Maybe in reality she just took some pictures of it and said she lived there.

How they depicted that Gymnasium (high school) is bullshit on so many levels. Now more and more schools, including the one Anna went to, have lunch, but they didn't at the time. Anna's school started a lunch programm in 2011, when Anna would have gone there from 2007 to maybe 2010. Also, while it's a catholic school and looks a bit more drab than most schools because of it, it certainly doesn't look like Hogwarts.

The cefeteria looks like this:

 

The letter Vivian got with the return adress "Herr Vadim Sorokin" was a bit weird. You don't put the "Herr" in the return adress. It's a form of adress, like Mr. in english, you wouldn't use on yourself.

 

What I did like is that they used actual german actors for the scenes. Often in american production you have american actors with horrible accents playing germans. They even had a pretty well known comedian as Anna's old teacher "Hoecker Sie sind raus!". The only one who sounded a bit weird was Anna's father. I don't really buy his russian accent. But I couldn't find anything about the actor. Doesn't seem to be on IMDB. Maybe I'm wrong here.

 

Edit: Anna's father was played by Peter Kurth. He grew up in north-east germany. So yeah, that russian accent sounding wrong wasn't just my imagination.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Zonk

[Melina22]

This was an interesting episode. Up until episode 7, I was really enjoying Vivian, or rather Anna Chlumskie, but her portrayal is starting to wear on me. She's so OTT that at times she seems unhinged, to the point you wonder why her husband wants to be with her. She seems exhausting. Still, I'm enjoying the show. 

[peridot]

Vivian's obsession and entitlement really got on my nerves.  Months after her article was released, she still couldn't let Anna go?  I'm not sure why a follow-up article was needed and why her editors approved the trip.

When she kept saying things like "I know Anna" or "It doesn't sound like Anna", it just made me want to shake her.  Even her own husband told her she lost her objectivity.  If I was Vadim, I would have called the cops because he was being harassed by an American journalist.

She then had the nerve to accuse the parents of causing Anna's numerous issues.  I really hated that Vivian just found different ways to prolong her contact with Anna.  Why does she even care what happens to Anna?

Good for Rachel for finding a way to get Anna back to New York.

[SlovakPrincess]

LMAO.  Seriously, Vivian, are you dumb??   Spinning all these fantasies to redeem Anna's lies somehow.  And claiming that "A boring life doesn't produce Anna!"   Um, yeah it absolutely does, if you're an insecure narcissist who believes they deserve more than their simple life and develops a compulsive spending habit to inflate themselves.   Vivian is supposed to be this sophisticated New Yorker who's been covering the rich and quirky of Manhattan for years.  And she has already been scammed once by an insecure young person desperate to seem wealthy and special.  

I don't understand the obsession Vivian has with making Anna's crimes about something more than a scam artist caught scamming.  If she wants to feel bad for Anna, feel bad that the woman has a personality disorder and a compulsive and ultimately self-destructive need to do this shit.  It's not about her parents, or social structure, or capitalism, or feminism and oh-poor-Anna because "men get away with doing the same things!" (laughable, since the show highlights McFarland and Shkreli ... both of whom also ended up in prison).  

I ultimately just felt bad for the German translator.  And the parents.  And Jack.

Anna realizing there are luxury rehab facilities and then scamming her way into one was kind of funny, in a sick way.  Am I supposed to feel bad Rachel tricked her and got her arrested before she could take a drug rehab center for thousands, as well?  I do not.  

[Showthyme]

6 hours ago, SlovakPrincess said:

 

Anna realizing there are luxury rehab facilities and then scamming her way into one was kind of funny, in a sick way.  Am I supposed to feel bad Rachel tricked her and got her arrested before she could take a drug rehab center for thousands, as well?  I do not.  

Like looking into a mirror - the luxury rehab and Anna. Both there to take advantage while pretending to be interested. 

[LemonLime]

Quote

Am I supposed to feel bad Rachel tricked her and got her arrested before she could take a drug rehab center for thousands, as well?  I do not.  

I can't get over this feeling that I'm supposed to feel bad about it. Why would I? WHY? I was applauding Rachel! Also, she only got her to walk outside, the fact that Anna had a warrant for her arrest had nothing to do with Rachel. This show.

[FozzyBear]

I actually found her fake suicide attempt to be the grossest thing she did. Using suicide as a way to ditch responsibility for criminal offenses plays into a bad stereotype that people who say they’re suicidal just want attention or to get out responsibility and makes it harder for people who are in trouble to get help.  

[peachmangosteen]

3 hours ago, FozzyBear said:

I actually found her fake suicide attempt to be the grossest thing she did. Using suicide as a way to ditch responsibility for criminal offenses plays into a bad stereotype that people who say they’re suicidal just want attention or to get out responsibility and makes it harder for people who are in trouble to get help.  

Anna used the threat of suicide with Chase and Kayce as well so I did kinda like the pay off of her going all the way with it. Really showed what an asshole she was.

[DanielleBowden]

What was that?  Rachel is the bad friend? And, Neff, you were letting Anna pay your way too.  Maybe the show is trying to portray how Anna ultimately gets under your skin and you can't see reality anymore?  Vivi lost her damn mind running off to Germany and stalking that broken  family. I thought the mom explained herself very well.  Anna was and will always be a sociopath.  

[gesundheit]

On 2/17/2022 at 9:02 AM, SlovakPrincess said:

LMAO.  Seriously, Vivian, are you dumb??   Spinning all these fantasies to redeem Anna's lies somehow.  And claiming that "A boring life doesn't produce Anna!"   Um, yeah it absolutely does, if you're an insecure narcissist who believes they deserve more than their simple life and develops a compulsive spending habit to inflate themselves.   Vivian is supposed to be this sophisticated New Yorker who's been covering the rich and quirky of Manhattan for years.  And she has already been scammed once by an insecure young person desperate to seem wealthy and special.  

Anna is boring, that's the strangest part of Vivian's fascination. What's more boring than wanting to be part of high society? Oh how special and rare!

On 2/14/2022 at 10:19 AM, Melina22 said:

This was an interesting episode. Up until episode 7, I was really enjoying Vivian, or rather Anna Chlumskie, but her portrayal is starting to wear on me. She's so OTT that at times she seems unhinged, to the point you wonder why her husband wants to be with her. She seems exhausting. Still, I'm enjoying the show. 

Me too. I didn't quite get why so many people seemed to hate the character so much until these past 2 episodes. Now I'm aboard the hate train.

I'm so, so, so glad that Vivian is supposed to be pretty far removed from Jessica Pressler. But why Shonda thought this would be a compelling character to invent is beyond me.

[lucindabelle]

I did not understand the whole idea that because she tried to jill herself she couldn’t be a sociopath.

um narcissists are more than capable of deep self pity and despair. It doesn’t make them good.

 

and then the reveal that the suicide attempt was fake was meant to prove- what?

in the real Rachel’s article she really did just happen to be on the phone when Anna was arrested. I like tbis better!

oh also, little Anna cutting out aspirational images proves zilch. Lots of kids do that and they become fashion designers or actors not criminals. 

[gesundheit]

Also, how does it make any sense that Cedars-Sinai would send an adult's psychiatric report to Germany??

[ZeeEnnui]

Go Rachel! I love that she helped get Anna busted. Also, SHUT UP, Neff!

Normally, I love Anna Chlumsky but this episode she was playing it for the cheap seats. What was up with her b.s. fantasies of Anna as some tragically misunderstood figure? Someone clearly spent too much time reading Russian lit in the library while on maternity leave. Sometimes a con artist is simply a con artist. Let it go. Color me skeptical that Vivian's bosses would okay a fishing expedition to Germany and that Vivian had to pack right that minute! I appreciate that the German translator was all, "calm down crazy American lady." 

[CeeBeeGee]

On 2/12/2022 at 2:25 PM, Zonk said:

What I did like is that they used actual german actors for the scenes. Often in american production you have american actors with horrible accents playing germans. They even had a pretty well known comedian as Anna's old teacher "Hoecker Sie sind raus!". The only one who sounded a bit weird was Anna's father. I don't really buy his russian accent. But I couldn't find anything about the actor. Doesn't seem to be on IMDB. Maybe I'm wrong here.

I liked the speaking in German, but why didn't the girls in the cafeteria also speak German?

 

On 2/22/2022 at 11:01 PM, gesundheit said:

Also, how does it make any sense that Cedars-Sinai would send an adult's psychiatric report to Germany??

That seems like a huge violation of Anna's privacy. I mean, f*** her but still.

 

On 2/23/2022 at 12:53 AM, ZeeEnnui said:

Go Rachel! I love that she helped get Anna busted. Also, SHUT UP, Neff!

STFU, Neff. Again, you got repaid. She's out $57K. I'm standing up in my seat cheering Rachel for getting the drop on the grifter. Your judginess is stupid.

[Zonk]

10 hours ago, CeeBeeGee said:

I liked the speaking in German, but why didn't the girls in the cafeteria also speak German?

Pretty sure because that was Vivian's imagination of what happened and she doesn't speak German.
The other scenes she imagined were also in English. Except for the train conductor, for some reason. Maybe we are supposed to think that she heard the German train conductor in present time and incorporated him, but like I said, that's just not a thing and hasn't been in the 36 years I've been alive. So it's a bit inconsistent.

[Vivigirl10]

This episode torpedoed the series for me.  I can't think of any better word to describe it than plain old "stupid".  It became like Little Fires Everywhere - I hated every single character.  

I don't want to look at close-ups of Anna Chlumsky's face anymore.  There's one thing to let yourself age gracefully and then there's a person who should stop with the spastic facial gymnastics and who a shot or two of Botox could certainly help. 

Vivian's husband should have locked her up in their bedroom at home.  She failed to protect her own health or the health of her baby.  Why did she act like this pregnancy was something that simply fell upon her one month before she was due to give birth??  It was infuriating to watch. 

I will say the one positive was I thought Julia Garner did an exceptional job.

[mansonlamps]

On 2/21/2022 at 8:46 AM, DanielleBowden said:

I thought the mom explained herself very well.  Anna was and will always be a sociopath.  

And a narcissist.

[LuvMyShows]

 

On 2/12/2022 at 2:25 PM, Zonk said:

Are we supposed to believe that Anna really lived in that contaminated Villa? Because that wouldn't fly in germany. Or was that just part of the idle speculation? Maybe in reality she just took some pictures of it and said she lived there.

Yes, I wondered about that as well.  It appeared to never occur to Vivian to question whether that picture was truly where Anna had lived.  And given that it was next door to where her dad appeared to work, that would seem to make it even more likely that she made it up.

On 2/12/2022 at 2:25 PM, Zonk said:

What I did like is that they used actual german actors for the scenes. Often in american production you have american actors with horrible accents playing germans. 

And this is why I have had such trouble with Anna's accent. It doesn't sound like anything normal, nor does it sound like the real Anna, who mostly has a non-accent but with occasional slight German undertone.

On 2/14/2022 at 10:19 AM, Melina22 said:

Up until episode 7, I was really enjoying Vivian, or rather Anna Chlumskie, but her portrayal is starting to wear on me. She's so OTT that at times she seems unhinged, to the point you wonder why her husband wants to be with her. She seems exhausting. Still, I'm enjoying the show. 

Yes, unhinged is definitely the word and certainly unprofessional.  When she barged into Anna's father's workplace running her mouth, in English, at a mile a minute, I was just dumbfounded (and loved the translator's translation!).  Then in the little restaurant with the father, she apparently didn't build any kind of rapport by first asking about his family and then building towards where she wanted to take it, and instead just launched straight into her loopy and insulting rumor/gangster thing, and then had no concept of how insulting she had just been, and went straight into over-eager bulldozer mode and asked if she could come to his house and meet his family.  She had also been getting all hyped up about all the stuff that the townspeople had said, and had to be professionally reined in by the translator, of all people, to remind her that those were just rumors.

I've wondered why the husband is with her as well.  Usually on shows where a character is so extremely something-or-other, we get scenes of their other side and their redeeming qualities, so that we do understand why someone would choose to be with them.  But not here, and I've actually been subconsciously waiting for it!

On 2/14/2022 at 7:55 PM, peridot said:

She then had the nerve to accuse the parents of causing Anna's numerous issues. 

WTAF is wrong with Vivian?  After she had insulted the f*ck out of the father at the restaurant, and he reacted towards her (justifiably, I thought, and with restraint, given the circumstances), she went on her weird rant to the translator of how awful he is and he must be the source of all Anna's problems, and that he was even pimping her out.  Think about that last part.  How much of a wackadoo National Enquirer hack do you have to be to seriously come to that conclusion?   

On 2/22/2022 at 9:59 PM, gesundheit said:

I'm so, so, so glad that Vivian is supposed to be pretty far removed from Jessica Pressler. But why Shonda thought this would be a compelling character to invent is beyond me.

100%

On 2/14/2022 at 7:55 PM, peridot said:

When she kept saying things like "I know Anna" or "It doesn't sound like Anna", it just made me want to shake her.  Even her own husband told her she lost her objectivity. 

And I can't recall who she said it to, but she actually described Anna as "confident" and "free of self-doubt" (and I think she actually used that assessment as the foundation for a question or hypothesis that she then gave).  Are you f'ing kidding me?  Anna's grandiose OTT displays of confidence have always had a strong undertone of great insecurity and doubt (in spite of her overwhelming sociopathy). 

On 2/21/2022 at 9:46 AM, DanielleBowden said:

What was that?  Rachel is the bad friend? 

So the one thing that I couldn't figure out, was when Rachel was dining out with Kacy and Neff, and mentioned about having been on the phone with Anna when she was arrested...I had previously thought that Rachel wanted to keep it hidden that she was the one who called the cops, but after she said that, and Neff started questioning her and probably figured out that Rachel set Anna up, Rachel got a look that was sort of mischievous, like she wanted them to figure out that it had been her.

On 2/21/2022 at 9:46 AM, DanielleBowden said:

I thought the mom explained herself very well.  Anna was and will always be a sociopath.  

I agree on both counts.  Vivian can take a seat with her high-and-mighty nonsense about "no child should have to hear their parents say things like that".

On 2/22/2022 at 11:01 PM, gesundheit said:

Also, how does it make any sense that Cedars-Sinai would send an adult's psychiatric report to Germany??

OK, so I was stuck on this too.  Even if the dad specifically requested it, which it didn't sound like he did based on the wording that he used, they wouldn't have sent it.  Did this actually occur, or was it a Shonda plot contrivance?

Edited March 15, 2022 by LuvMyShows

[Zonk]

14 hours ago, LuvMyShows said:

And this is why I have had such trouble with Anna's accent. It doesn't sound like anything normal, nor does it sound like the real Anna, who mostly has a non-accent but with occasional slight German undertone.

From the interviews I've seen the real Anna has an accent that is a mix of german and russian. The accent isn't super thick, but always there and I think her trying to hide it makes her sound kinda monotone and a bit weird. I think that weird intonation Julia Garner captured pretty well. The actual accent, she didn't get even remotely close to. It's half the accent she does on Ozark and half all over the place.

I was so confused when the millionair dude, on the yacht a few episodes ago, said he thought he detected some russian in her accent, since while it's certainly detectable when the real Anna speaks, there was not a smidge of russian in whatever Garner was doing at the time.

[hurrrz]

On 2/12/2022 at 9:25 AM, Zonk said:

Some comments about the scenes in germany:

There was never in my lifetime a conductor yelling the stops live in the train. Used to be that the conductors voice would come over shitty speakers, you mostly didn't understand. Used to be a joke that you needed a dictionary to translate it into german. Now it's just a computer voice and in that train type it would have been a computer voice. I can also tell you that Eschweilers trainstation wouldn't have looked like that in 2006. But I guess those two are forgiveable since, they are in Vivian's imagination.

In the present day, there was way too much luggage on the overhead racks. Those things are shitty, way too small, so most people don't bother and the luggage will instead clog up the aisles. Yay, Deutsche Bahn and train design.

They always talk about Eschweiler as "small town germany". It has over 55.000 inhabitants. That may be small by american standards, but it certainly isn't for german ones. Yeah it's not a big city, but it's also not some backwater hick town. It isn't a 1000 people town in saxony, it is a big town in the west, so the butcher would never get away with and be so openly racist. I live in a town 4 times smaller than Eschweiler and that wouldn't fly here. Of course there are people who are racist, you have those everywehere, but it isn't socailly acceptable and so the racists keep it to themselves in public and only spout their hate in private or on the internet.

I also really doubt that Anna was the only russian girl in her school. One third of my class were Russlanddeutsche. So germans who had migrated to russia like 80 years ago, or were living in regions that the soviet union captured from germany in WW2 and were now coming back after the fall of the sovjet union. Granted, my time in school was a few years before Anna's, but not by much. And not to give you the wrong impression, none of these people still spoke german. Maybe some of the grandparents of the kids in my class, but not even their parents did. So for all intents and purposes they were russian. Without reading much about her, I suspect that Anna also is from a family of Russlanddeutsche.

Are we supposed to believe that Anna really lived in that contaminated Villa? Because that wouldn't fly in germany. Or was that just part of the idle speculation? Maybe in reality she just took some pictures of it and said she lived there.

How they depicted that Gymnasium (high school) is bullshit on so many levels. Now more and more schools, including the one Anna went to, have lunch, but they didn't at the time. Anna's school started a lunch programm in 2011, when Anna would have gone there from 2007 to maybe 2010. Also, while it's a catholic school and looks a bit more drab than most schools because of it, it certainly doesn't look like Hogwarts.

The cefeteria looks like this:

 

The letter Vivian got with the return adress "Herr Vadim Sorokin" was a bit weird. You don't put the "Herr" in the return adress. It's a form of adress, like Mr. in english, you wouldn't use on yourself.

 

What I did like is that they used actual german actors for the scenes. Often in american production you have american actors with horrible accents playing germans. They even had a pretty well known comedian as Anna's old teacher "Hoecker Sie sind raus!". The only one who sounded a bit weird was Anna's father. I don't really buy his russian accent. But I couldn't find anything about the actor. Doesn't seem to be on IMDB. Maybe I'm wrong here.

 

Edit: Anna's father was played by Peter Kurth. He grew up in north-east germany. So yeah, that russian accent sounding wrong wasn't just my imagination.

To add to this:

 

The Airport they landed at was Berlin (though clearly not Berlin).

That's such an odd choice, because it's nowhere near where they needed to go. I'd expected Frankfurt (plenty of direct flights and sort of centerish of Germany), Cologne, Düsseldorf (both closer to Eschweiler), or even Brussels of Amsterdam, as they both seem to be closer than Berlin. Such a weird choice.

[ALittleShelfish]

The scenes of Anna in the school lunch room... No Hogwarts ideas for me, but I immediately thought "Chilton. This was where Rory Gilmore went and sat next to the Puffs in S2 of Gilmore Girls."  My bf asked me to stop watching television with him.  He's mad I roped him into this show, and now he wants to see the Chilton cafeteria.  

[txhorns79]

On 3/15/2022 at 11:58 AM, LuvMyShows said:

WTAF is wrong with Vivian?  After she had insulted the f*ck out of the father at the restaurant, and he reacted towards her (justifiably, I thought, and with restraint, given the circumstances), she went on her weird rant to the translator of how awful he is and he must be the source of all Anna's problems, and that he was even pimping her out.  Think about that last part.  How much of a wackadoo National Enquirer hack do you have to be to seriously come to that conclusion?   

I'm seeing how Vivian ended up getting snookered by that student in the article she wrote that nearly destroyed her career.  She was all over the place here.  She seemed willing to believe anything, no matter how out there it was. 

[rlc]

I think that Vivian views Anna as her redemption arc as a journalist, and is therefore trying to find some good in her, or at least a reason why she's like that, out of some sense of guilt.

Either that, or she's just your average Shonda character. Never forget- Shonda created Izzy Stevens. Yeah, forget my first theory. Shonda likes to create crappy, crazy, OTT self-righteous female characters.

[Cinnabon]

Is Anna still in the country? She was supposed to have been deported months ago.