‘Vladimir’ Episode 7 recap: Cabin fever

Pop quiz, hotshot: Does the protagonist of Vladimir want to have sex with the title character? Think carefully before you answer. I know what it looks like, I know what she says and thinks she wants, but does she really want it? Like, really?

Because if she does, it becomes very difficult to explain her actions in this, the penultimate episode of Vladimir. Ditching her husband John’s Title IX hearing, at which he’s coming across like a world-class sleazeball, our heroine drags Vladimir off to get day drunk at lunch, followed by a visit to her remote writer’s cabin, where she disconnects the wifi (and eventually bricks Vlad’s phone by dunking it in the sink).

Over more and more booze, the pair become more and more openly about their discontents and desires. Vlad’s difficult marriage keeps bubbling up through off-handed comments about being allowed out of the house or never being the center of attention. Attention is what both Vlad and the narrator are after, in the end — for writers, attention is like oxygen. (Ask me how I know!) 

So you can imagine how the narrator feels when Vlad whips out his copy of her book, and it’s absolutely festooned with notes and bookmarks and highlights and marginalia, including the telltale acronym “WIW” – “Wish I’d written.”

This is foreplay on an unprecedented level, people. This is heavy petting of the mind.

Yet it never quite goes anywhere, does it? The professor has all day and night to work her magic on Vladimir, who is obviously receptive to it. There are so many points at which leaning in for a kiss would feel appropriate that I can’t even list them. At one point Vlad insists on going for a swim in the ice-cold water outside the cabin, offering to get changed right in front of the professor, who keeps on demurring — even though he found his swim trunks in her purse. The door’s wide open, lady. Why aren’t you strutting on through?

And it’s not as if she merely ignores his signals. No, she opts instead for actions that are a million times more risky than just saying “Look, Vlad, I’m attracted to you, and I think we have a connection. Do you agree there’s something special here?” She could say something like that. What does she do instead? She mashes up half a dozen Klonopins to slip him a mickey, then zip-ties and chains him to a chair to keep him from falling over and hurting himself.

Are you sure this is preferable to just, y’know, reaching out and running your fingers through his hair or what have you?

It’s not, of course — the narrator is clearly making an incredibly stupid decision. This tends to be the point at which stories of romantic/erotic obsession lose me: when the protagonists are so far gone that their behavior ceases to resemble realistic human decision-making. Can I understand letting your career and family life go to pot because you’re so into a guy who makes you feel alive again? Yes. Can I understand drugging him and holding him captive rather than just saying you have a crush on him? No. At that point we’re into the realm of Villain behavior, and I’m not interested in Villains, I’m interested in people. 

But look at what the professor does when she’s got Vlad strapped to a chair and completely at her mercy. She doesn’t take advantage of him, though she hilariously asks him over and over if that’s what he wants her to do. She certainly didn’t make a move before she got him so screwed up on clonazepam he can’t walk anymore. 

No, instead of having sex with Vlad, she writes. And writes. And writes some more. She spends a night of passion alright, but it’s with her book, not her beau. 

Which makes me wonder: Is it Vladimir she’s in love with at all? Or is it the way Vladimir makes her feel? Is the book he’s generating within her her one true love? Since he came into her life, she’s been writing again, for the first time in years. As we watch her scribble on her notepads, we see that she throws her whole body into it. This work is coming from somewhere deep inside herself. Is it any wonder that when the time comes, she chooses the story over the flesh-and-blood man? And is it any surprise that when Vladimir wakes up, he finds the arrangement less than suitable?

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.