The writers handled it the best it could be handled. They had Vasya come into a meeting with the cabinet the next day and give his profuse thanks for the birthday prank. He is being sarcastic but no one besides Olya, who wears a pained expression that they had gone way to far, gets it.
They leave the whole E-21 thing behind and, hard even for me to believe, E-22 gets back on track without any hangover. The rest of the episode is sublime actually, funny and adorable.
The scene switches to Mukhin getting out of his vehicle and one of my favorite characters, Oksana, who has a leading role in this scene, with him. A gaggle of press meet them:
There is little to none of the Ukrainian peoples' stereotyped beauty in Servant's cast: blonde, blue-eyed girls and women mirroring in their coloring the colors of the Ukrainian flag. At least I think that's the stereotype, isn't it? I only knew one young woman of Ukrainian descent, a one-time girlfriend of my son and she was yellow over blue. Perhaps that's not the stereotype, I don't know, but the people in Servant are not objectively what would be called beautiful. Sergey here, he's the most eligible bachelor in Ukraine? Tolya, Vasya's bodyguard, has the shaved head of Sergey and all of Trump's SS agents. Goloborodko/Zelensky is dark. Short. Jewish in real life, I don't recall if his alter ego's religious identification has been mentioned. Yuriy is objectively handsome--and an oligarch mole; Mikhailo, the finance minister, looks like a finance minister should, nerdy. He looks a lot like Molotov without the mustache. Mikhail, the head of state security is Armenian in the film and is stereotypically Jewish in his facial features. Skorik, the defense minister is built like a Russian tank. Vasya's father: a yokel's look, peasant.
Vasya's sister is a disgusting female yokel. Olya is beautiful. Blonde and I don't remember her eye color. Anna-"Ania" is frigging GORGEOUS but she is not a true Ukrainian, not in the blonde-blue stereotype, nor in her loyalties. She is an oligarch plant. I have seen a thousand young women of Cuban descent in Miami who look extremely similar to her: olive complexion, dark hair, the dark, dramatic eyes that drive me, at any rate, to corrupt thoughts. So the two most objectively beautiful people in Servant, Yuriy and Anna-Ania are not "real" Ukrainians. That is deliberate. This is a series about real Ukrainian people, that any one of them is capable of being president or in government. Their beauty is on the inside.
Anyway, back to E-22. Mukhin (Sergey) meets with an Icelandic delegation, the purpose: to get visa-free travel for Ukrainians to Iceland. Mukhin tries to bond with the Icelandic ambassador over football.
Mukhin then astonishes his Icelandic guests, and Oksana, by rattling off the names of Icelandic volcanoes in their language flawlessly.
💓I LOVE Oksana!
The ambassador agrees and Mukhin and the Mouse😄leave the meeting together.
Wait...
So great. Maybe the cutest episode. Yes, THE cutest episode. One more scene: in between the Mukhin-Oksana scenes there's a shift to Yuryi's trial.
Judge Steve Bannon? Unlikely 😀
The series was rescued--with aplomb--by S-2 E-22.
