Great corrupter, huh? That and money, right? S-1 E-16 is all about that most powerful combination $-E-X. Overtly about sex and money, implicitly about sex and money, and in the case of Olya, Vasya's ex-and the current central bank head, symbolically about $-E-X.
First, Sergei (foreign minister), who has already demonstrated himself to be a mark bedding the India ambassador's wife, is found by Vasya in bed and hung over with another woman, "blondie." Vasya goes looking for him because he's already late for a meeting.
Then Olya. Olya goes to a Ukrainian Fort Knox for the unconvincing reason of getting a tour of the vault and the bars of gold. (?) (I said it was an unconvincing reason.) Her guide is a man who evidently meets certain unclear Ukrainian standards of male hotness I suppose, who with the supreme confidence bestowed by his status, hits on Olya before they even enter the vault. There are double entendres in this episode and those may be double entendres: "gold standard"-hotness standard, entry to a closed, secure "vault." However that may be it's a subordinate hitting on his boss. Which is contraindicated no matter the hotness standard achieved. Once alone "inside" (the gold vault) Dimitriy increases his attentions and Olya flirts right along with him, viz:
Dmitriy: "Do you want to hold it?"
Olya: "I don't know..."
Dmitriy: "Go ahead..."
Olya: "May I?"...
Dmitriy: "Sure"...
Olya: "Is it heavy"?
Olya: "Wow."
Well-played, no? If you were blind and just heard...The Ukrainian audience must have cracked up at that.
Ooh, I didn't notice this the first time!
A hand touch as he's putting the gold bar back! Can you feel the ⚡️? Oh Olya, you tease!
Dimitriy knows he's making progress and playfully juggles one of the gold bars. But Olya
has turned her back and doesn't see. Dimitriy drops the on the floor causing it to break in half
to reveal a suspicious white color inside. Cement? "Fools gold?" Olya
abruptly turns around to see what happened and Dimitriy steps over the broken bar in a panic, kicking a piece under one of the racks, and plants a kiss on Olya's cheek as distraction. Olya finally says I'm outta here and tries to leave.
But the vault door has locked behind them,
And Dimitriy implausibly does not have a key,
And cell phones don't work because of the 50 cm thickness of the walls,
And neither does yelling for help or pounding on the thick metal doors as Olya attempts.
Whereupon an icky moment occurs. Preliminary to icky, I have no reason to doubt the translator's captioning. (S)he has gotten everything correct in the English version so far as I can tell and with none of the syntactical awkwardness that can make captions unbearable. So although the word is shocking, I assume it is rightly translated. Dimitriy tells Olya to stop screaming, that nobody could possibly hear her:
"Even if I rape you here."
Definite ick.
The vault flirting scene ends with Dimitriy and Olya having to spend the night together sleeping in the vault--on different racks!--of bars of gold.
Dimitriy: "I could spread dollars underneath and cover you with Euros."
Olya takes that well, responding with a smile.
The
conclusion of the vault scene is interrupted by a luncheon that Vasya
and Sergei have with the IMF head, a woman, who brings along a friend,
woman also, because "You said you wouldn't be alone." Before the women arrive Vasya instructs Sergei to flirt with the IMF
woman "to buy us time, a year, two would be better,” to pay back loans. "Are you using me?" "Yes." So, Vasya has had some ethical gold flake off him. Sergei, the "collector of women", just smiles at Vasya's honest admission and gets down to brass tacks. Which is an uncomfortable moment for me. I don't like when actresses are meant to play role requiring their acknowledgement that they are unattractive. I don't like that at all.
"Is she attractive?" Sergei asks Vasya. The audience has seen the IMF chief and knows the answer to the question. Vasya doesn't respond.
E-16 ends with a role reversal, a smart technique treating with ethical dilemmas that we have come to expect from these marvelous screenwriters. Though I appreciate the technique I don't get this one. In the last scene Vasya is shown sleeping--solo--the next morning, but with one shoe and sock off, when Sergei calls to see where he is. Vasya is late for a meeting, hung over. He sits up after the call to get ready to go to work and next to his bed is a giant bouquet of red roses. Puzzled, Vasya notices a card, with the Ukrainian state seal on the outside. Inside the writing,
"CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR RETIREMENT"
