Oksana is having an instructional lunch with Sergei preparatory to his meeting with the King of Spain, a wine aficionado. Here's how you hold the glass, here's how you examine it for light, here's how you sniff it's aroma, taste it, swish it, etc. etc. Brandy too...Sergei gets sloshed. Oksana too. And wakes up the next day in bed in Sergei's flat. "My tiger cub. Moor. That's what you called me last night." 😂She cries she is so mortified. He tells her he didn't fuck her and that makes her feel better. 🎵Lie to me. I promise, I'll believe.🎵 You see? The screenwriters root out the ethical dilemmas, big and small, that we all face every day for real. "LYING IS WRONG!" How about a "white lie"? How about here, where a man, seeing a 27 year-old virgin who is his assistant, wanting to disappear into a hole, wrong here too?
Vasya is napping off his hangover in his presidential office when his solicitous secretary Bella Rudolfovna (HEREINAFTER Bella) enters the inner sanctum to tell him to go home, that she has canceled all of his meetings for the day. He thanks her and apologizes.
"It's okay. You did it for the good of the country. You are justified."
The ends justify the means. Good intentions sometimes produce good results, sometimes not; all intentions good or bad come at a cost.
E-17 ends with the oligarchs in a garden, one painting the other, and while painting they agree that they just about have Vasya where they want him. All he needs is a little nudge.
