Summary
“StreamUs” has past meet present rather directly in a mix-up that threatens to ruin a great work of fiction in the name of profit.
This recap of Love & Anarchy season 1, episode 3, “StreamUs”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
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StreamUs, which is also the title of this episode, is Love & Anarchy‘s in-universe equivalent of Netflix, which is relevant since they’re adapting an all-time-great book published by Lund & Lagerstedt. Friedrich naturally thinks the streaming platform should be grateful for being allowed to adapt the material, whereas everybody else is excited to work with StreamUs. Old, meet new. He’s so sick of seeing versions of the film — the company has to sign off on the final edit — that he sends Caroline in his place and signs based on her opinion, which seems a recipe for disaster.
Meanwhile, Sofie and Max get the elevator at the same time, and she tasks him with being CEO for a day since Ronny is out dealing with Lund & Lagerstedt having been sold. He takes to that like a duck to water, even sitting in his office to complete the effect. He comes in and berates Friedrich for screaming after he learns that the latest edit of The Train has turned the story from a metaphorical apology for Sweden’s capitulation to Naziism to a chest-puffing, propagandizing piece of revisionist history that reimagines Sweden as having been instrumental in winning the war. Friedrich is furious at having signed the contract and goes for a meeting with StreamUs — a meeting that Max attends in his official capacity as CEO-for-a-day.
The meeting is a disaster for everyone except Max, who treats it as a good opportunity to order sushi and champagne. When they get back to the publishing house, he calls Sofie into his office for a routine employee questionnaire, which involves her emptying out her bag to verify her answers. One of them is to the question of her “last played artist”, which Max determines she was lying about — a very serious infraction, he insists. Things get very close between Sofie and Max, enough that she hurriedly packs up her belongings and leaves.
At home, one assumes as a way to take her mind off things, Sofie has sex with Johan, but Max messages her in the middle of the night telling her to dress like Cyndi Lauper tomorrow. Of course, she does, so perhaps her mind isn’t as off Max as she’d like to think.
Funnily enough, he isn’t even in the office the next morning, which is perhaps just as well since she’s almost immediately called away to respond to Lars’ one-man anti-capitalism protest. She takes him home for some coffee, and among her dad’s books she finds a copy of The Train. She gets so engrossed in it that she almost misses the premiere, where the elderly original author, Gertrud Hausberg, is going to see the final cut for the very first time in a theatre full of people. Friedrich, having not dared to warn her, instead fakes a panic attack to create a distraction. At the hospital, though, Gertrud confesses to knowing the movie is dreadful — but she wanted a villa, and StreamUs looks after their creators. This is perhaps just as well since at the end of the episode we learn who has bought out the publishing house — StreamUs.
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