Unraveling the Depths of Emotion: The Bitter Truth Behind Heartfelt Choices

The unnamed protagonist of Vladimir finds herself in a challenging predicament, yet she isn’t entirely without hope. When faced with the option to resign from her teaching role voluntarily or face a formal complaint process, she takes some surprisingly sensible actions—or at least, actions that are close to being sensible.

One such move involves reaching out to Lila, a former student with whom she shares a strained relationship, to express genuine admiration for the roman à clef Lila has been sharing online about her and John. While it may seem humorous that the professor’s highest compliment is her own approval, in academia, this is indeed a valuable currency. This approach is certainly preferable to gatecrashing a university event and berating the president’s wife for embodying outdated gender roles—a stunt she also pulls.

On a professional front, she transforms her lecture into a candid discussion about herself, her husband, and their unconventional relationship, inviting students to ask any questions they wish. Some answers, such as her defense of her husband’s consensual student relationships, fall flat. Her argument that condemning these relationships equates to condemning consensual sex by women doesn’t sit well, especially when a student highlights the power dynamics involved in such relationships, which she fails to address adequately.

However, other responses captivate the students, particularly when she embraces the term “polyamory” for her “open marriage” or “marital agreement” after a student suggests it. This rebranding resonates with a generation often misunderstood by academia, illustrating how much impact presentation has on education.

Consequently, the threat of administrative leave dissipates, but her classes will now be under scrutiny. She’ll be monitored by a supportive colleague and Flo, her not-so-friendly acquaintance. Regular evaluations will also become part of her routine. It’s almost as if her tenure has vanished into thin air!

All the while, her husband John’s all-important hearing is approaching. Yet every time she turns around, he’s not there, out every night with “a friend.” They’re both adults, they both know what that means, but the regularity of it, and John’s cryptic answers and distant demeanor, leaves the narrator curious. 

“Who is this friend?” she asks. But by that point it’s not hard to guess. Following him to a rendezvous one night, she finds him being unmistakably physically flirtatious and intimate with none other than Cynthia, Vladimir’s wife. His later profession of ignorance when she asks him about her — “Which one’s Cynthia?” he replies unconvincingly — seals it: He’s having an affair, with the wife of the man the narrator wants to have an affair with.

The indignity is the final straw for her. She blows off John’s hearing for lunch with Vladimir after all, calling him “my love” (well, saying it to us anyway) when he arrives. It’s not the first time she’s referred to herself as being in love with the man, either, even though she knows her fantasy version of the man better than the man itself. Seriously, I bet she’s spent more time thinking about him rubbing a bitten plum against her décolletage than she has talking to him in person. This decision is romantic but rash, in a way that threatens her family’s future.

But can you blame her for not feeling there’s much of one at the moment, or not caring whether there is or isn’t? Her and John’s marriage, unconventional though it might be, had been rock-solid until now. Early in the episode there’s a scene where John comes across her fallen asleep atop the handwritten, in-progress manuscript for her next book, and he doesn’t snoop or pry at all. He respects her, as a person and as a writer. That’s meaningful.

But lying about Cynthia’s not part of the arrangement. It’s not hard to guess why he does it: Time and again, he’s made it clear he knows how his wife feels about Vladimir, so he knows she’ll be angry if she finds out he’s fucking Cynthia while she’s still stumbling around trying to snag Vlad. Or who knows, maybe he thinks they’re already having sex, and this relationship is retaliatory in some way. Everyone on campus seems envious of Vlad’s rock-star status, which every one of them used to enjoy at one point; why would John, the disgraced former department chair, be any different?

It’s 2026, and academia is under direct threat by the might of the United States government itself. An entire political party has sworn to destroy it. The Department of Education has been illegally dismantled. The most prestigious universities in the country are being shaken down for billion-dollar bribes. Public universities in red states are being turned into dark-age propaganda mills. Professors and students are being hounded and arrested for having the wrong views. Cancel culture exists, alright, but it has nothing to do with squeamish students who use they/the pronouns. The very people who decried censorship on campus are now working round the clock to destroy campus life altogether. Seen in that light, Vladimir is kinda fighting yesterday’s battle here.

I say all that mostly just to get it down on paper and out of the way, because I don’t think Vladimir can be dismissed as a didactic swipe at political correctness or what have you. The people making those arguments, John and Sid and the narrator, are not terribly sympathetic characters. Oh, they’re likeable, very much so. I especially want to shout out Ellen Robertson as Sid, the high-powered lawyer with the fashion sense and impulse control of a 15-year-old boy, who’s in there doing three-person work with Rachel Weisz and John Slattery and feels every bit as compelling and entertaining on screen. But if you told their story to your friends, your friends would take the other people’s side, guaranteed. This isn’t to say they don’t have valid points, however! It’s complicated!

Vladimir trusts you to be smart enough to properly weigh the advice of infantile people who are arguing that adults should not infantilize themselves. The narrator’s lust for Vladimir grants her keen insight into how human beings work behind closed doors and within their own minds, but it also clouds her judgment. Enough to chain Vladimir to a chair? It seems we’ll soon find out.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.