The Regime recap: Hugh Grant enters the picture

Four Months Later.

Yes. The time jumps keep coming. Which just means we spend the first few minutes of yet another episode playing catchup with what’s been happening in Elena’s quarters (the Chancellor now sleeps with Oskar, having banished Nicky), in the palace (fully frigid courtesy of endless AC units given Elena’s hot flashes), and in this fictional middle European country (afoul with protests over the Faban annexation, the China deal, and the sanctions brought on by the US and its allies). Oh, except no one is to actually admit there is any unrest anywhere in the country.

No, to hear Elena (Kate Winslet) talk about it, everything is great. And if it’s not (which is the case), then it’s all a U.S. conspiracy. Or the result of that leftist Chanceller Ed Keplinger, who’s clearly working with the global elite. No, no, as Elena reminds her countryfolk every day during her radio address to the nation, there is nothing to worry about. The press spin would be laughable if it also weren’t so obviously common in this age of disinformation.

But if you’re Herbert (Matthias Schoenaerts), getting to listen to these nonstop radio missives everyday from the (dis)comfort of your prison cell is basically torture. Especially since he can’t bring himself to stop hearing the words of hers that most haunt him: “You dream about fucking me…”

So yes, while Elena continues to bury her head in the sand all while requiring her government to spin all bad news into positive PR for her canny local and foreign moves, Herbert is left to wallow in his thoughts—something he’s egged on to do by a fellow prisoner: Keplinger himself (played by a rugged-looking Hugh Grant). Despite what everyone has been led to believe—including Herbert—about Keplinger’s whereabouts and dastardly ways of wanting to topple Elena, the former Chancellor has been in prison all this time, left to make the best of his stay as he can. That apparently involves midnight snacks with the guards and, in due time, meetings with Herbert, who cannot believe what he’s seeing, or what that means for what he’s been led to believe all along. Might these two men, slighted and imprisoned by the loon that is the current chancellor, bond and plot together or will their seemingly incompatible political beliefs keep them from creating a united front?

Meanwhile, at the cold AF palace, everyone is yet again bending over backwards to make sure Elena’s version of the truth (it’s hot!) becomes everyone’s version of reality. (They’re all very cold but refuse to wear scarves or coats or anything to suggest that they don’t share in their chancellor’s need to have fans or ice at the ready.) As with how she’s approached every other crisis, Elena decides that all she has to do is get better PR—and so she stages a live, televised Q&A with kids from the Westgate region to appease talks that things are getting out of hand. It’s a disaster, of course. The kids, indoctrinated as they are, ask softball questions, but soon Elena is revving herself up in front of the cameras. She may be wearing her folksy cosplay outfit/hair piece again, but she ends up scolding the kids around her, clearly aggrieved at the thought that anyone would hold her responsible for what that horse did at that protest (apparently kick a pregnant woman?). “Be grateful,” she berates those in person and those watching at home. Isn’t she doing enough for them? Why must they keep making her look bad in front of the world?

A nose bleed and an outburst later (soon reported by the press as the result of a covert attack by the CIA), Elena finds herself traveling down many hidden pathways in the palace to go and meet with Keplinger. (Yes, the prison is adjacent to the palace.) The two have a somewhat civil chat wherein he basically tells her why she’s failing, which only riles her up more (she instructs him to be beaten), and off she goes, without telling Keplinger where his family is. (“Lisbon, perhaps?” she asks rhetorically, reminding us she remains quite cruel.)

Elena is clearly losing control—of herself but also of her country. And no amount of PR-ready photo ops (like eating fondue with Nicky for “date night” to celebrate traditional family values) will do any good. Not unless, as her husband Nicky insists, she travel to see her people, to hear them out. And so a visit is arranged for her to meet with the Westgate Sugar Beet Union reps at a local factory. It’s all absurd (Elena carries the kind of fan you have with you at Disneyland on a hot summer’s day and keeps her own oxygen tank nearby) and leads to yet another photo-op moment wherein Elena corners herself into making pat platitudes about curbing Chinese imports, supporting the working class, and all around getting the workers who are seeing their very industry disappear before them to moderately support her. She then leaves in her Rolls-Royce, back to the comfort of her own palace where she asks Laskin (Danny Webb) to organize a raid on the Westgate factory where they’ll find weapons and proof that all of the unrest was part of an American ploy to discredit her with her own people.

It’s all authoritarianism 101 (like most of The Regime) and it works: Before she was a monster for fighting off peaceful protests. But now that they’re angry, armed, and ready to up the violence, her forceful handling of protests will be seen as adequate. (See, she’s a protector.) Her lackeys and yes men can’t do much and so they’re left staring agog when, as all of this dawns on them, they see Herbert returning to Elena’s inner circle…and proceed to kiss and undress her.

Oh yes, because Herbert finds a way to escape his cell, make his way to Keplinger’s quarters, and, when not persuaded by the former chancellor’s very canny words on Elena (who starves those around her of oxygen, of the real-life truths out there, only to leave them trapped in the claustrophobic made-up world she’s concocted for herself), kills him and then heads back to the palace. Clearly he didn’t care for the idea of Elena losing power, Ed getting it back, and then have a “fair trial” where her former paramour-cum-tormenter (or vice versa) would be forced to grappled with a reality she can no longer warp in her own image.

And so the butcher is back. He’s folded back into Elena with a fiery passion that leaves her husband agog (talk about being made into a cuck!). And I’ll admit, the metaphor here is hard to read: Is this preamble for the way she’ll soon successfully brainwash the rest of the country? Or is this more of a red herring of a moment where, having read and spoken with Keplinger, Herbert is finally able to see more clearly that he may need to dispose of Elena from the inside?

Stray observations

• Elena’s most obvious verbal tic (“Yes? Good!”) strikes me as a perfect encapsulation of why I’m struggling with The Regime as a whole. Every time anything provocative happens, the series shuts it down with the brisk efficiency of Elena’s verbiage: “Yes, did you get that joke? Good, let’s move on!” It never lets anything linger…or when it does, that happens offscreen (in those time jumps we’re not privy to) and so every fun/interesting bit gets cut down in size.
• Did The Regime really blow through a guest starring role for Hugh Grant in one episode? Or is this a moment where his Ed Keplinger will come back from the dead to haunt Elena and/or Herbert?
• In case you wanted to read the synopsis of Keplinger’s book, Radical Democracy And Its Dialectics: It “addresses the loss of faith in conventional party politics and argues for new ways of thinking about diversity, liberty and civic responsibility. Chancellor Edward Keplinger debates whether democracy is primarily a form of decision making or an instrument of popular empowerment; and whether democracy constitutes an abstract ideal or an achievable goal.”
• What will it take for Agnes to betray Elena and her country? She keeps getting contacted by some Americans who want to help her and Oskar get out of the palace (and the country) ahead of what sounds like a planned coup, but will she continue to ignore them? Can she really stand by Elena that much longer? (Which is to ask: Will Riseborough be given more to play than meek but wary?)

The Regime is available to stream now on Max.