In the last episode, we saw Vivian’s story finally go to print. Despite uncovering all this information about Anna in the last seven episodes, do we really know her? This episode we get even more about Anna.
Beginning
The baby and the story have finally arrived! Vivian’s piece is an internet sensation, her reputation has been regained, and her bosses want to give her her own office. All's well that end well. Anna Delvey is now internationally known and famous, with people all over the world talking about her.
Vivian visits Anna in prison and lets her read the article. But a fake smile comes across her face and she purses her lips.
“I thought you were a real journalist,” she says. Anna is furious she’s made out to be a liar.
Vivian is unsure how else she was supposed to spin it. There was no trust fund, no rich dad, right? But Anna eludes that she still doesn’t know the whole story. Perhaps there was something hidden in her LA trip to the Chateau Marmonte? Vivian convinces her bosses to let her go to Germany to do more digging.
Middle
We explore Anna’s past and childhood via two different timelines: present-day Vivian visiting Anna’s German hometown, and Anna’s psychiatric evaluation in LA.
After Anna lands in LA, she goes to the famous Chateau Marmonte and proceeds to go on a one-woman bender in her hotel room. She wakes up in Cedars-Sinai hospital and is placed on a 5150 hold. Her evaluator begins to ask her questions to determine if she can be released.
We learn that she emigrated from Russia to Germany when she was young. At that time, Germans were prejudiced against Russians. Her father drank and she drank. She claims she never ran away from anything. She was already running towards something – her dreams.
Upon her release, she’s advised to go to a rehab facility. Obviously she chooses Passages – the rehab facility known to all the celebrities that looks more like a 5-star resort.
Rachel calls Anna and tells her she’s in LA. She would love to meet up and reconcile. Anna agrees and wants to use Rachel as a way to leave the facility. But when she goes outside to meet her, she’s arrested for her outstanding warrant for not showing up to her first arraignment.
In present day Germany, Vivian meets her translator at the airport. She explains that after the fall of the USSR, Russian oligarchs stashed their money abroad in small European cities, using business fronts to hide it. The height of that mad money rush was 2006, the same year Anna arrived in Germany.
Vivian truly believes she’s going to find something big here. But all she finds is a hard-working father and mother, shunned from their community because of where they’re from, and estranged from a daughter they once loved.
As a new parent, Vivian starts to sympathize with them. She realizes that it is entirely possible Anna became the way she is because of her own doing, not because of where she was from or how she was raised.
End
Vivian goes home early after realizing Germany was a dead end. But she has something in the mail from Vadim, Anna’s father. They are the Cedars-Sinai psychiatric evaluation records.
The next day at Rikers, Vivian confronts Anna with them. She didn’t really try to kill herself. Anna had planned the Xanax overdose and deliberately ordered room service to come up at a specific time. In other words, she wanted to be found. The way she spun her story made it seem like her father was an abusive alcoholic, but he was far from it.
So why did she go through all that trouble? Per US visa laws, hers was about to expire. But the clock stops for hospitalization, including rehabilitation. She played everyone in NY, then LA, and Vivian.
Anna slow claps. It’s clear she still feels like she has the upper hand in some way. Until Vivian reveals she got the medical records from Vadim himself after going all the way to Germany. Now Anna is shaken – the gig is up.
