Inventing Anna season 1, episode 2 recap – “The Devil Wore Anna”

Inventing Anna season 1, episode 2 recap

Anna doesn’t want to be thought of as basic. She brings this up when Vivian wants to interview Val, who knew her before she was the Belle of the ball. Val tells Vivian about how Anna belonged. She knew the details of people being from generational wealth. How they acted, dressed, and presented themselves. It’s all in the details. Like the one where she had a boyfriend that Vivian didn’t know about, Chase (Saamar Usmani). Val also drops a nugget that his best friend is Nora Radford (Kate Burton), a mother figure he lives with. Both of them were seen at the end of the last episode lamenting that Anna did not take the plea deal.

Anna’s close circle involved three women. In the first episode, Neff met, who works as the concierge at the hotel Anna stayed at. The other is Rachel (Scandal’s Katie Lowe’s), who meets Neff downtown. Neff wants to set up a weekly schedule for one of them to visit Anna. Except neither intends to pursue this, even if their imprisoned friend paid for all of Rachel’s clothes and jewelry she is currently wearing. Even Kasey (Laverne Cox) won’t visit her because Anna was not a natural person when she was her friend. The one in prison is not the Anna they knew. Neff is speechless and astounded at their lack of empathy for their former friend.

Neff is a good person.

Vivian visits Talia in the Hamptons. New York’s premier socialite met Anna a few times but came away impressed. Why? Because she didn’t give a fuck and had excellent taste in art. She liked her because she wasn’t afraid to stand up to her. Anna ran in her circle for a while. That’s until she visited Talia in Ibiza. For the first time, Anna seemed to be out of her element. For example, when they arrive there on a tech billionaire’s boat (played by Shondaland veteran Josh Malina), he detects a slight Russian accent, which Anna denies.

Anna and Chase treat this visit as an episode of Shark Tank. When the billionaires blow off Chase’s pitch, Anna makes her own. And when she toes the line of desperate or brilliant, she falls on the side of brilliant. They invest 100K in Chase’s app, and she overplays her hand. They had been a guest on the boat by Talia. So, when Talia, the girls, and the men with money left, for some reason, Anna and Chase stayed. This embarrasses Talia, and after she orders them to get off, that was the last time she talked to them.

When Vivian returns from the Hamptons, Chase and Anna have a blow-up fight at Fashion week in front of Val because she won’t invest in his business. Chase breaks up with her. The following day, after she spends the night at Val’s place, Chase calls, begging Val to check his ex-girlfriend’s passport. Why does he ask? Because Chase suspects she has been lying to him the entire time, especially about the money.

The ending

Later that night, when Val and Anna return to the hotel, they are barred from entering the room because they maxed out Anna’s 12 credit cards. She tries anyway to talk her way out of it, but she can’t. She then breaks into the hotel lobby, telling Val that her father had cut her off. Chase shows up that morning and pays off the hotel bill. When they meet for breakfast, Chase gives Anna his American Express to go shopping, and Val lets Chase know what he found inside her passport. Anna was born in Moscow but told him she was broken inside. Possibly from defecting as a child and letting Chase know they need to help her.

Of course, Chase tells Anna that Val violated his privacy hours later, and Anna leaves Val on the sidewalk. She is going with her boyfriend, who is waiting for the Russian immigrant’s trust fund to kick in a few years from now. Sometime later, Chase again confronts her about the passport. She refuses to comply and gives him some song and dance about creating the art world’s pinnacle. She even makes Chase repeat that no one can question her origins and even make him deny that even Val checked her passport.

The last time we see Anna, she is banging her head against the wall of her cell, tormented by the memory.

But why?

What did you think about Netflix’s Inventing Anna season 1, episode 2? Let us know in the comments below!

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