Inventing Anna Season 1 Episode 8 Recap – Too Rich For Her Blood

Vivian’s article gets published and picked up by everyone, including national TV. Meanwhile, Anna becomes famous, and her Instagram blows up. Vivian goes to visit Anna, only this time; there are lots of other people wanting to see her. Vivian is the only one allowed entry. Vivian gives her a copy of the magazine, and she cannot stop smiling while reading it because she is finally famous. However, she tells Vivian that she made it look like she made everything up and that she’s a liar. Vivian tells her that it’s because it’s true – she lied. Vivian reveals that their legal team researched and found that her father is not a solar magnate and that there never was a trust fund. Vivian tells her to let it go and stop pretending. Anna scoffs and laughs at her. Vivian then asks her about what she did in LA, but Anna says she does not know what she’s talking about. “Hundreds of hours, months of research, and you still don’t know the first thing about me,” Anna mocks her.

Flashback: Anna arrives in LA and gets messages from Rachel saying that she doesn’t know where to get rent and from Todd, telling her that the judge is pissed.

Jake raves about how the article is still being picked up even though it has already been two months since it was published. Vivian tells him that everyone missed the whole story because it is about class, social mobility, and identity under capitalism. She says that maybe it is her who missed it. She goes to the public library and researches the history of the Soviet Union.

Flashback: Anna gets a room in Chateau Marmont and posts an update on her IG. Rachel shows this to Catherine and asks her to arrest Anna, knowing that she is just in LA. She tells Rachel that there are far more critical cases on her docket, so her vacation money is not her top priority, but she advises her to wait. She reveals that there are other people and institutions that have filed charges against Anna, but they’re keeping it quiet for the time being because it stands to humiliate lots of influential people, but the DA is looking at impaneling a grand jury.

Vivian comes into the office even though she is still on maternity leave, Landon and Paul tell Vivian that her article is the best-performing piece in five years. They say that the phones have been ringing and everybody wants to know what’s next for Vivian. She says that she knows what she wants to do next.

Vivian tells Jake that she is going to Germany because there might be a possibility that Anna is not fake and she’s doing a follow-up story. Jake is not happy with the idea, but Vivian tells him that the story could be bigger than Anna and there might be more to the story than anyone knows.

Flashback: At her hotel room in LA, Anna dresses lavishly and intentionally drinks pills together with alcohol until she passes out.

Vivian arrives in Germany and imagines Anna arriving there as a kid, with a bag full of money. Her thoughts get interrupted when Mira, her translator, comes. She says she loves her article and everybody in her school raves about it.

Flashback: Anna wakes up in a hospital. Her attending psychiatrist, Dr. Andrew Millikan, explains to her that she was found unconscious next to an empty bottle of Xanax. She tells him that she wants to leave, but he tells her that she’s on 5150 psychiatric hold, so she needs to stay in the hospital for 72 hours until they figure out the next steps. She insists on leaving, so he informs her that he’d have to call law enforcement if she tries to go without permission.

While on the train, Vivian tells Mira about Anna’s father, Vadim. She says that their research team found out that he runs a trucking and cooling business, and that he struggled to feed his family after the Soviet Union fell. She says she doesn’t buy it because they have a big house, and Anna was able to get internships in Paris and Berlin. She wonders where they got the money, but says that it might help to think about recent Russian history. She says that maybe, some oligarchs, including Vadim, hid their money in foreign countries and in boring front businesses like trucking and cooling to keep it from being cracked down by Putin. She says that Anna arrived in Germany during that mad money rush, in 2006. She imagines Anna meeting his father in a restaurant in Germany, and Vadim telling her that he is well-connected and that they are not poor anymore, unlike when they were in Russia. She also thinks that Vadim has instilled the concept of superiority in Anna. She concludes that Anna might have been smuggling money for her father. Vivian tells Mira they have to go to the Sorokin villa to find out more.

Flashback: At the hospital, Dr. Millikan asks Anna if there is anyone he can talk to about her, perhaps someone back in Germany. Anna tells him that her life in Germany is behind her. He says that he needs to talk to someone to know if Anna is safe to send home. Anna tells him that if she wanted to kill herself, she would have succeeded.

Vivian and Mira get to the address of the Sorokin villa but find no villa there. Instead, they find an empty lot and see Vadim walking out of a nearby door. They call his attention, but he tells them to leave him alone. They go to her school and one of her teachers tells them that she was just a normal shy kid, with her head often up in the clouds. Vivian tells her that being shy isn’t like Anna. However, Mira tells her that schools like that are German, so if you are from Turkey or from Russia, they tell you you don’t fit in there so she cannot blame Anna for being shy in a place like that.

Flashback: Anna tells Dr. Millikan about her childhood and how her father forced them to leave everything behind and start a new life in Germany. She says it was hard for her, but she did not resent her father for that. She says she resented her father when he forgot how he taught her that she should not let other people define her by her past. She tells the doctor that when they lost the house because people won’t do business with Russians, his father started to drink and became violent. She narrates that she hid in her room reading magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar when her father got violent. She says she did it because she wanted to learn everything so she could be anything so that she can run away far from home, far from the girls in school, and far from her father.

Vivian and Mira go around town and discovers that the villa had to be demolished because the Health Department found it to be contaminated. They also chance upon Anna’s classmate, who tells her that Anna made her life hell in high school. She lets Vivian and Mira drink with more of Anna’s schoolmates who tell them that she was shy at first, but then she got obsessed with clothes, started dressing better than anyone, and became the fashion police. They say she would say the meanest things if she didn’t like the way they dressed back then, and they would get scared because Anna’s father was a mobster who beats up other students’ parents.

Flashback: Anna tells Dr. Millikan that she was not running from something when she left Germany. Instead, she was running to something in New York, the world she sees in magazines.

Vivian and Mira get Vadim to finally talk to them Vadim tells them that he does not understand why Anna did what she did and that she was just a girl who looked at magazines and who wanted the best clothes, He tells them that she got reckless. Vivian tries to ask him about his money and tells him that a lot of people think that he has money hidden somewhere, so she presses for details. Vadim tells her that all he did was try to provide for his family. At the mention of family, Vivian asks if they can meet his family and see their house so Vadim gets upset and walks away after asking Vivian if she would want something like that to happen to her own family.

Flashback: Dr. Millikan tells Anna that he is signing her release forms because she is not a risk to herself, but recommends that she goes to rehab. Anna goes to rehab in Malibu and tells the attendant that she’ll pay via wire transfer. Back in NY, Kacy, Neff, and Rachel talk about how Anna is enjoying her life in Malibu while Rachel is dodging calls from her credit card company. Rachel calls Anna and tells her that they should let bygones be bygones and that they should meet up for lunch. Anna agrees. She walks out of the rehab facility and gets arrested by the police, saying that there is a warrant out for her arrest in NY.

Vivian tails Vadim to his house and manages to get herself invited in. She verifies that Delvey is a made-up name and that Anna has always been a cold stranger under their roof. She learns that Anna’s parents just let her go and that her parents thought that she was always beyond them. She sees Mira waiting for her outside her hotel building. She tells Mira that she is going to go home earlier than expected because she is not going to write a follow-up article anymore. She says that no child should ever have to hear what Anna’s parents told her.

Flashback: ADA Catherine announces Anna’s indictment. She announces that Anna is charged with two counts of attempted grand larceny in the first degree, three counts of grand larceny in the second degree, one count of grand larceny in the third degree, and theft of services. Rachel tells Neff and Kacy that she was on the phone with Anna when she got arrested. Anna gets on the bus that will bring her to Rikers.

Vivian arrives home from Germany and opens an envelope that arrived in the mail from Vadim. It contains Anna’s hospital records from when she was in LA. She then discovers that Anna painted a different picture of her father to the doctor. She then visits Anna in Rikers and confronts her and shows her the forms, telling her that she knows she really didn’t try to kill herself – she was buying time because her visa was about to expire and according to US Visa law, time spent in hospitals and rehab does not count, so she tricked her way into rehab. Anna mocks her and claps her hands. She asks her where she got those forms and Anna gets dumbfounded when Vivian tells her that her father gave them to her. Vivian tells her that she met him and that he is not a monster, but a father who loves Anna. Anna asks her why he isn’t there for her if he loves her. Vivian tells her that she has given people lots of reasons to give up on her, but she is still rooting for her. Vivian asks her to kill Anna Delvey and stop pretending. Anna tells her that admitting that she is a criminal is not her story and that Vivian has got to find out her real story.

Our Thoughts

Oh, Anna is always craving drama. It is good that Vivian reveals why Anna told the doctor a different tale about his father because I have been puzzled by it in the beginning. It’s really like she was on to something because she stopped using her rich dad story and starts telling that her father was a drunkard. Ugh, by this time, we already know that Anna never does anything without a purpose, so when Vivian discovers that she did it so she can trick her way into rehab, I was relieved that I no longer have to think about it. I hope Vivian really stops looking into Anna’s story because Anna has already taken so much from her.