Finally, the perpetually discounted, pushed aside Leila gets a win. Well, it’s less of a celebratory, good stuff is coming my way sort of win and more of a “finally someone believes that an evil, powerful shadow figure is trying to kill me” one, which I guess, if you look at it hard enough isn’t much of a win at all. We may not be donning party hats or anything, but it is nice to see someone finally listen to Leila because, as it turns out, she knows more about what’s going on than anyone else on this boat. Most importantly, she informs Rufus that they may have arrested Winnie and she may have been the one to actually murder Danny, but she isn’t Viktor Sams — she is just one of his confederates, a minion tasked with a job. Viktor Sams is still at large.
Down in the bowels of the ship where Rufus found Leila hiding, she tells him her story. Six months ago, Leila was meeting with a source — see, I knew the whole clickbait thing was a cover to protect herself! — on a piece she was putting together. This poor man! Peter looks as frantic and desperate and terrified as Leila does now. When she asks him directly about Viktor Sams, he tells her that they shouldn’t even be saying his name; he has eyes and ears everywhere. He explains that he used to work for the NSA, tracing unusual payments on the dark web, and Viktor Sams’s name came up repeatedly. Once he started looking into him though, his life fell apart. Viktor Sams and his minions, whoever or however many there are, filled his hard drive with porn and he lost his job, his wife, and his kids just like that. He’s tried to track Viktor down, but the guy (or woman, I’m really leaning woman at the moment) is untraceable. He found evidence of him in Argentina, in Morocco, in Hong Kong — but just as quickly as he found him, all traces of him would disappear. “It’s like he’s everywhere and nowhere,” Peter tells Leila before warning her that even just saying his name aloud will get you on his list.
Peter’s warning turns out to be very, very true. As Leila is driving home from the meeting and listening to her recording of the conversation and recording her own notes — in which she says the name Viktor Sams — strange things start happening to the car. The GPS goes haywire. The radio has a mind of its own. The car speeds up and Leila can’t stop it — and that’s when she goes over the side of the road, almost killing her. So, yeah, no wonder Leila is having problems.
We learn the truth about that little walk Leila took the night of the murder and her interactions with Danny, too. The two meet up after Leila accuses him of following her, and he comes clean: He can’t believe she figured out Keith Trubitsky was just a cover. When he asks about Viktor Sams, she explains that (1) she got involved with the Collier family during her investigations, discovering them to be possible victims of Viktor Sams, and (2) DO NOT SAY VIKTOR SAMS. While the jury is still out on No. 1, Leila is definitely right about No. 2. Danny is out there saying his name one minute, and the next, he has a harpoon through his chest.
Leila is proven right on some other fronts, too. This woman is productive today! Not only does she finally ask Anna, who refuses to believe her own wife about anything she says, for a divorce (just wait until Leila finds out about Eleanor!), but Leila also goes about searching for surveillance in her room once again. Jackpot: She finds a camera installed within the wood molding in one corner of the bedroom. When Rufus and Teddy take a look, they realize it could’ve only been installed by someone who had an understanding of the ship and was able to get on and install it before passengers arrived. They assume it had to be done by a crew member — which means Viktor Sams has at least two people on the Varuna working for him.
And so they’re off to narrow down the suspect list. What a cute little detective trio these three make! I know this story is supposed to be about Rufus mentoring Imogene, but she’s off having wine and chatting about Caravaggio with Sunil after getting the Ukrainian refugees safely on their way to Malta — and she has some real competition for the new assistant detective position. While down in the security office, Rufus notices a few peculiar things and does his Cotesworth magic. Isn’t it curious that the exact places Leila said Peter mentioned as locations Viktor Sams would pop up — Argentina, Morocco, Hong Kong — are locations the Varuna has sailed? And if one wanted to be everywhere and nowhere, wouldn’t running your HQ from a location that frequently moves on its own kind of be a genius place to do it? Rufus thinks so. He, Teddy, and Leila head downstairs to a location on the ship schematics that Rufus thinks might just work for something like this, and, oddly, the hallway where they are begins to get narrower as if the room was made for something behind the walls. When Rufus smashes through one section of the wall, he realizes his hunch is right: They just stumbled upon Viktor Sams’s entire operation. Man, Rufus gets a lot done when Imogene is on-shore!
So what is Imogene up to on land in Malta? Honestly, not a ton. After helping Eva and her parents, Imogene has a mini-meltdown about how difficult the past few days have been and Sunil wants to help. He thinks he knows someone in town (he knows everyone in town, apparently) who could help them figure out the date on that bill of lading hidden in the Collier-Mills books — a forensic accountant who specializes in international trade documentation. Why Imogene doesn’t at least question how in the world Sunil happens to be friends with the one type of person who could help them in this endeavor and just happens to be in Malta where they currently are is beyond me. Isn’t she supposed to be at least a little good at detective work? Is she just playing Sunil?
One other super suspicious moment with Sunil: As he and Imogene flirt their way through Malta, they wind up taking in Caravaggio’s The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, which they are both quite knowledgeable about. Imogene definitely clocks the way Sunil compares himself to the artist, a man who tried to absolve himself from a murder by creating something beautiful — a man who seemed “out of time.” We don’t know a ton about Sunil, but we do know that he so badly wanted to restore the Varuna to make something real and beautiful, and he’s obsessed with restoring it to exactly how it looked when it first set sail 70 years ago (he, too, is a man out of time). Did Sunil … kill someone? I’m stressed!
Later, the big “secret” he reveals to Imogene when she asks him to be real with her is that he’s broke because of the Varuna project. Sunil has a trustworthy face, but I’m sorry, something shady is happening here.
After Imogene agrees to leave the bill of lading with Sunil’s friend to work on — she only agrees to it because she trusts Sunil, which, um, is this a mistake? — the two realize a man has followed them in a white suit. They make a run for it. They … are having fun? They are definitely getting horned up, which is basically business as normal for all the passengers on this ship. On the way back to the Varuna, Imogene decides she wants to share her deepest, darkest secret, too: She cried more the day Rufus abandoned her than the day her mother died. She got really attached to that guy! I wish you could feel more of that tension, that anger, that longing for a parental figure in Imogene and Rufus’s scenes together, but thus far, there’s very little crackling between them. Okay, the anger is there, but the deeper emotional connection? Not so much. Hey, at least Imogene is connecting with Sunil, and by connecting, I obviously mean putting her mouth on his mouth because they definitely do that before reboarding the Varuna. Good for them! Maybe!
The Aforementioned Other Details
• So, who do we like for Viktor Sams? Since he was up to no good 18 years ago, that eliminates our younger would-be suspects unless “Viktor Sams” isn’t just one person but a movement or something. What about Hilde, you guys? Is the real Interpol going to show up at some point and make us all feel like fools?
• I haven’t found the big Collier/Chun deal super compelling thus far, but the big meeting they have in this episode is wild! The new deal the Chuns are proposing is, yes, three billion dollars, but also they want to own 51 percent of the company — they want a majority stake. All of the Colliers are immediately on their feet, ready to walk — except for Lawrence, who says he came here to close a deal and … does just that! He gives the Chuns 51 percent of his company! His family is aghast!
• Lawrence was acting strange before the deal meeting, too. He’s still locked away in his cabin, sucking down those blue smoothies. When Tripp comes to ask him for a million dollars (big ol’ eye roll) from his trust, he bites his head off. When Tripp follows that up by asking if he is blackmailing the Governor of Washington, well, he really loses it. This guy gives me the creeps!
• Alexandra confronts Llewellyn about the photos of her and Tripp and all that coke. He admits the Colliers had Tripp tailed for a while, but he has no idea who sent those photos to her — it wasn’t part of some Collier blackmail situation. She reminds Llewellyn that she, too, has blackmail she can play with — she even brought it on this very trip! People are very prepared here. Alexandra does not, however, look prepared for whatever illness she’s currently dealing with. However, can she feel that bad when she needs almost zero convincing to hook up with Tripp again?
• Yeah, yeah, I’ve been saying everyone is horny on this boat, and yet I still was unprepared for Interpol’s finest Hilde Eriksen being turned on by Llewellyn’s dom/sub kink. She’s waiting for him outside of his room to punish him. Get yours, girl!
Maggie Fremont , 2024-02-06 21:04:49
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