The Crown pauses the royal drama to introduce us to Dodi Fayed’s dad

[Editor’s note: The A.V. Club will publish episode recaps of The Crown’s fifth season every weekday at 1 a.m. Eastern through November 22. The following details episode three.]

Whenever it starts to pick up speed, The Crown tends to deliberately slow itself down. If you came into “Mou Mou” eager for the bloody aftermath of the release of Diana’s tell-all book, the episode will feel like a bit of a letdown. Instead of barreling ahead in the 1990s, the show ricochets back to 1946, when a man named Mohamed Fayed (Salim Daw) catches sight of King Edward VIII (Alex Jennings, reprising his role from seasons one and two) as he visits Egypt. So begins his lifelong fascination with the royals that will put his future son, Dodi (Khalid Abdalla), in the orbit of Diana (Elizabeth Debicki). But it will take us an hour to get there.

This rich, winding storytelling is a feature of The Crown, not a bug. If you’re looking for fast, scandalous dramatization of the headlines that have plagued the royal family, you can try Lifetime. This show is much more interested in constructing these fictional arcs that tie the dramatic events together.

Which is all to say: Buckle up for an episode on Diana’s boyfriend’s dad.

Mohamed–Mou Mou to his friends–is selling cokes on the streets of Alexandria and flirting with a rich girl when he sees Edward there on a visit 10 years after his abdication. “I saw a king today,” he says over dinner that night, and his own father launches into a lecture about the evils of the monarchy: “The British have occupied us, dominated us, trampled our freedoms.” He has contempt for Egyptians who look upon the British as gods.

But to Mohamed, they are gods. He cites their ambition and vision as the source of their superiority, and he’ll spend the rest of the episode fighting to get closer to them. He marries the rich girl from the opening scene, who gives birth to Dodi.

Flash-forward to 1979, Paris, when Mohamed and Dodi bring a bid to buy the struggling Hotel Ritz. (The Fayeds are now rich men.) Despite the fact that their offer is higher than their competitors, Madame Ritz (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) accuses them of shady dealings. Mohamed switches to Arabic, with Dodi translating, and calls her out for discrimination. When they act as if they’re about to walk away, she calls them back, and the Ritz is theirs.

It seems that Mohamed has no problem with racism as long as it’s not being applied to him. At a party at the Ritz, he notices a Black server and orders Dodi to remove him. Dodi does what he’s told but tells his father he would have liked the man. “His name was Sydney Johnson, personal valet to King Edward for 30 years.” This perks Mohamed’s interest, and the billionaire brings Sydney (Jude Akuwudike) in to ask about his connection to the former king.

The real-life connection here (Sydney Johnson did actually work for Edward for three decades, before then being employed by Mohamed Fayed) is one of those “stranger than fiction” moments, and I can’t begrudge The Crown for wanting to tell the story about this twist of fate. Mohamed, still desperate to gain respect and currency in British high society, asks Sydney to teach him the ways of the royals–which books to read, events to attend, sports to play, clothes to wear, and the ritual of afternoon tea. The two attend an equestrian event, and Mohamed is irritated that he’s not seated closer to the queen. Beside her is the owner of Harrods (“part of the national soul,” Sydney explains) and the sponsor of the event…so Mohamed decides to buy Harrods.

Dodi is concerned what this means for his plans to start a film production company, and there’s a bit of father-son tension about how the Fayeds want to make their mark on the world. But Mohamed eventually relents, and when their company produces Chariots of Fire (“The story of an outsider who became an insider,” Dodi tells his father to make him see the value in the project), they get an Oscar to their name.

But Mohamed’s next effort to get closer to the royals comes when Wallis Simpson dies. She had been confined to her house for eight years before her death, and the estate has fallen into disrepair. Sydney explains that the fate of the house is in the hands of the French authorities, and Mohamed decides to buy and restore it. “It will be my gift to the British royal family,” he announces.

It’s worth noting that as these two men, one Middle Eastern and one Bahamian, grow closer and attempt to gain access to more elite circles of British society, they’re met with resistance at every turn, no matter how much money (Mohamed) or knowledge (Sydney) they possess. Mohamed can buy a home of a former king of England, employ his personal valet to restore it to former glory with painstaking attention to detail, and rename it “Villa Windsor,” but at the end of the day, Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) isn’t interested in visiting her disgraced uncle’s old house. She just wants his stuff—a painting, some pearls, a desk, his diaries and correspondence with Nazis. They prepare for a royal visit (“The mountain is really moving to Mohamed”), but it’s merely a representative to reclaim Edward’s things. Sydney is indignant, but Mohamed is thrilled at the scrap of attention.

Soon after, Sydney himself dies, and we see Mohamed tending to him on his deathbed and then visiting his grave, which reads, “Sydney Johnson, Valet to the King.” How much did Mohamed care for the other man and how much did he enjoy the proximity to royalty and the idea that Sydney’s service made him a bit of a king himself?

We return to the same equestrian event that originally inspired Mohamed to buys Harrods. He’s sitting in the sponsor’s seat, waiting for his face-time with the queen. When she shows up, she hesitates, notices her friend Porchie is here, and asks her staff to handle it. So instead of the queen, Mohamed is seated next to…Princess Diana.

The two get along famously, exchanging jokes and commiserating over the queen’s avoidance. Dodi even comes over briefly to say hello, and as the queen and Margaret (Lesley Manville) observe how well her snub has worked out, Margaret delivers the episode’s most overwrought, heavy-handed line of dialogue: “Out of the acorn of a simple kindness, an oak tree of happiness will grow.” Feels like that one could have used a rewrite.

Stray observations

• No Charles (Dominic West) again this episode. So far it feels like the new King of England is getting off pretty easy.
• The Crown is routinely hesitant to go too hard on criticism of the queen, but her refusal to sit by Mohamed, the sponsor of the event, seems like at least a subtle acknowledgement of her racism.
• While rifling through the Harrods gift bag Mohamed brought for the queen, she calls him “a little creep” and she even manages to make that seem charming.
• In the final scene, Diana says she’s trying to get back in the queen’s good graces, but it seems like this must take place before the release of Andrew Morton’s book that closed out the previous episode. There’s no coming back from that act of war.