A few months have passed, and now, Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) has almost completely taken over Elena Vernham’s (Kate Winslet) chancellorship. The Regime is changing hands. Everyone in the palace is drinking tea brewed in wormy dirt. How scrumptious.
But even the muddy tea is complicated: It requires the use of three soils from three different areas of the country in the warm water. If any of the palace staffers screw this up in the slightest, they’ll be ousted. Most of Elena’s employees have grown jumpy, Nicholas (Guillaume Gallienne) warns Elena: “Not hugely terrific for morale, is it?” he asks.
“No baby fat,” Elena snarks.
“And no leeches,” adds Herbert. Is there anything these two don’t agree on? Elena will whittle her palace staff down to just her and Herbert if she doesn’t make some changes to her managing rhetoric. Even Nicholas, who attempts to bring up eight different conversation topics and fails each time, will be running for the exit soon if she doesn’t do something.
Herbert has so much power now that he’s leading Elena’s cabinet meetings, although all of the political hotheads there have no interest in listening to the bumbling beast. Herbert is presenting on land reform today, but when the cabinet asks questions about this pitch leading to food scarcity and other huge nationwide issues, Herbert slams his fists down and demands they get started right away. He’s not here to answer questions, dammit! He’s here to…well, who knows what he’s here to do! But one thing’s for certain: It’s not to come up with solutions.
Elena films a video message for the people of her country. “This beloved land must belong to you,” she announces, explaining the comprehensive land reform program she and Herbert have been plotting. “I will take back what the fiendish oligarchs stole from you and eradicate rural poverty.” Elena’s team has put on a full production, creating a fake European field on a set for her to film this proclamation, which is just hilarious—none of this is real. She’s pretending to be one of the people while spending a year’s worth of rent on one video.
Matthias Schoenaerts, Kate Winslet, and Guillaume Gallienne.
Miya Mizuno/HBO
Which is exactly why Nicholas roasts her after the land reform announcement is made. Sure, he says, this is a real Robin Hood action for her to make as leader. But doesn’t she see the huge problem with that? Elena and the Vernham family own a huge holding company in the nation—she has millions and millions of dollars and tons of land. Elena brushes Nicholas off. She’s not going to give back her land. She’s going to give back some other rich idiot’s land.
Some of the financial advisors and Nicholas meet behind Elena and Herbert’s backs. “She will bankrupt this country if that belligerent buffalo tells her to,” whispers one of the guys. They’re worried about the shrinking GDP, the dormant cobalt mines, and the American cash cow, which has departed their areas for greener pastures. When Elena asks one of her advisors about American media coverage of their nation, the response is frightening: American journalists aren’t covering them at all. Elena looks frightened. Well, this is the isolation Herbert recommended. She’s going to have to be okay with that.
On the eve of her father’s birthday, Elena goes to visit his underground tomb. She has a full conversation with her father—almost as if we can also hear what he’s saying. Elena shouts at her father, cries, calls him pathetic. Happy birthday, daddio. She then goes to work out with Herbert in the terrifying red room, having an eerily similar conversation: When Elena says this training isn’t working, Herbert goes off on her. If we could see the full chats Elena has with her father, they’d probably look really similar to any of these intense discussions with Herbert.
The fight reaches its climax when Herbert pushes Elena into the wall and demands her to breathe in the mold poison eking out into the room. Elena refuses. “You are not cured,” Herbert spits. “You are still sick in the head. It is not in these walls—it is in you.”
Elena, exhausted, has Herbert escort her to the bedroom. She needs an evening alone, so she requests that Nicholas spend a night away from her. Maybe it’ll be a few nights. She doesn’t know. Nicholas is peeved. Whose idea is this? “It’s our idea,” says Herbert. While Nicholas isn’t winning the war against Herbert, there’s someone who actually does stand a chance: Agnes (Andrea Riseborough), who can really hold her own against Herbert when the pair go head-to-head.
Agnes prepares the kitchen for the late Joseph Vernham’s birthday party. There will be a gigantic cake served—it’ll be as big as a wedding cake, but instead of the bride and groom on top, the kitchen has made a plastic figure of Joseph dead in his casket to be placed atop the layers. Agnes announces the menu request to the kitchen, which is “folk cuisine of thorough and rigorous nutrition. My condolences to your whisks,” she adds.
Elena gives a speech dedicated to her father as her guests sit, staring at his glass casket—which has been brought out from the lower bunker he’s normally stored in—on the dance floor. She is incredibly awkward, stuttering about how she can still feel her father present. Then, the worst happens: Herbert stands to give a speech. Elena looks shocked. She did not approve of this. This moment is jarring, as Herbert starts to talk about Joseph Vernham but uses the dead man as a way to transition into chatting about the freakin’ land reform plan. Just let it go for one night, man! Elena cuts off Herbert, singing “Happy Birthday” to cover up his rude proclamation.
Finally, we get to see what Elena sees when she visits her father once more after he’s been put back into his resting place. The dead man comes alive, cracking his jaw open to insult his daughter from beyond the grave. Joseph tells Elena she must do a better job; she’s the laughingstock of the country, and her staff is walking all over her. The next day, Elena finally takes control of her position again, butting Herbert out of her seat at the cabinet meeting. Herbert can’t lead all of the land reform meetings anymore.
The next step on the land reform movement, Elena announces, is that the country’s leadership needs to start taking back all the land from their people. In order to redistribute the land, one has to have control over the land in the first place. One of Elena’s staffers whines, asking about the future of his summer cottage. She ignores him and, somewhat suddenly, pitches an entirely new plan. The nation will shut down the Faban Corridor instead of focusing on land reform. The room becomes a chorus of fear at this point—if they propose an annexation of the Faban Corridor, they’ll need to be careful. NATO could resist. There could be war. But Elena doesn’t really care; she demands her team mobilize by next week and hires Herbert as the so-called Faban Freedom Captain.
Matthias Schoenaerts.
Miya Mizuno/HBO
Later in the day, Elena announces this plan at a press conference. Reporters ask if Elena has really thought about the danger this could bring to the country. Elena pushes back—does the United States ever worry about these things when they invade countries? This may be the hardest path to follow, but Elena knows they need to go down this route in the name of liberty. Herbert confronts Elena after this, worried about land reform. Elena now treats him the same way she treats Nicholas, as if he were a buzzing fly, irritating her while she swats him away. Land reform is not worthy of her time anymore.
Elena holds a party akin to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where a comedian hosts the evening and roasts everyone in the room. This comedian takes a particular liking to flaming Emil Bartos (Stanley Townsend), asking him why he brought his daughter—a young woman who is actually his girlfriend—to the event. After the comedian wraps up, a bunch of dancers take the stage for a lights show, which results in poor little Oskar (Louie Mynett) having an epilepsy seizure. Luckily, Agnes saves him before it’s too late.
Herbert confronts Elena after the event, angered by the lack of humor in the comedian’s jokes. If Elena wants to seem powerful to her people, she can’t allow comedians to mock and tease her and those surrounding her. Elena fires back: Does Herbert realize he’s doing a little sniffle all the time? It pisses her off. The two get into a lover’s quarrel, each dragging the other for random things that have stacked on top of each other to create resentment. Herbert accuses Elena of stealing money from her people; Elena wants to know if Herbert dreams about fucking her. They’re screaming at each other—until Herbert cuts to the chase and just starts physically attacking Elena.
Herbert punches the security guards who flank Elena. Everything goes downhill fast. Elena escapes, but Herbert—who likely has some sort of PTSD from the mines—can’t stop punching and kicking palace officers. Before we see an end to that, though, we see Agnes begging Elena to restart Oskar’s epilepsy medication. Elena approves, on one condition: Oskar will now be supervised by her instead of his real mother, Agnes. Agnes obliges. She’ll do whatever it takes, as long as he’s taking the real medicine he was prescribed instead of the tea leaves Herbert attempted to use.
After Agnes takes back some control, Herbert loses all of his. He’s escorted out of the palace and onto the street. Gone are the days of Herbert. Elena is back, now the one and only chancellor, and The Regime now has an opportunity to go wild with her power.
This post was originally published on Daily Beast
