Okay! It wasn't a farce or a fool's production. Meandering, slow. Fourteen of the thirty-two minutes is taken up by the oligarchs meeting to decide who will be their candidate for PM. Vasya is looking for a PM and Olya won't do it. She and Dmitry and Vasya meet. Dmitry engages in the studied nonchalant circling behavior common to animals of prey around a victim. Olya sees what Dmitry is up to before Vasya does.
"You need an enforcer, not a schoolmarm. You need someone who has swam in the sewer, not this lovely swan (Olya). You need someone with immunity."
Vasya refuses and walks out.
The incestuous office romance burst into public view so they have to engage in damage control: Sergey buys Oksana an engagement ring; Ania moves in to Vasya's (and Vasya's family's house); Dmitry tells the press that he and Olya are in love. NOT insulting. Left unresolved in this episode is whether these legitimizing attempts will succeed with Ukraine's people in papering over the office affairs. It seems naive to think they would. The sex is the least of it: all of these people owe their official positions to their lovers or ex-lovers. Sergey's and Oksana's is the least scandalous but Olya's with Dmitry is a problem. It pales, is eclipsed as by an exploding supernova, by Vasya's affair with Ania. She, after all, is a plant of the oligarchs.
The episode ends with the teaser common to episodal stories: the oligarchs say they have agreed on "one candidate". I predict it is going to be Yulya.
