Summary
The episode “Too Rich for Her Blood” is a mixed bag of filler, leading to little to no revelation on why Anna went on a fraud spree across the world.
This recap of Netflix’s Inventing Anna season 1, episode 8, “Too Rich for Her Blood,” contains spoilers.
Inventing Anna season 1, episode 8 recap
Anna flys the coup and lands in Los Angeles, where we found out in the pilot is where they caught her before taking her to Riker’s prison. She still, though, hasn’t lost her generous side. Anna pays the cab driver at the airport a 100 dollar bill to shut the fuck on the way to West Hollywood. Meanwhile, Rachel shows the U.S. Attorney that she is in California, so go and arrest her. They won’t because they have actual murders to solve. However, Rachel is reassured they will eventually get to it because Anna ripped off a handful of the very rich and powerful who do not want to be embarrassed by this.
She comes back from maternity leave early because she wants to go to Germany and close Pandora’s box that she inadvertently opened when reporting the case of Anna Delvey. She hints that something happened at the Chateau (see more below). Vivian theorizes that she developed an inferiority complex when she immigrated from the falling Soviet Union to her father was living in Germany. Anna flys out to him, smuggling a bag full of money. She was caught at the airport, but two of her father’s thugs intercepted her and offered the officer money for his troubles.
Apparently, during their investigation into Anna’s small-town German life, they discovered it was intolerant. They meet a local butcher who tells them that Germany is no place for Turkish and Russian immigrants. Vivian’s translator surmises that Anna was shunned at the private German school for being Russian. While part of this was genuine, Anna became a fashion-obsessed “bad-bitch” herself. She began to say mean things and found out her father was a gangster.
Except none of that was true. Vivian tracks down her family. She has a pre-teenage brother and weathered parents. There is no explanation for her behavior other than she was felt she was never part of the gene pool. Or a soul that their family would ever produce.
What happened to Anna at the Chateau was a suicide attempt. Anna intentionally swallowed a bottle of Xanax while heavily drinking. She later wakes up in a hospital. She is on a three-day psychiatrist hold until they can decipher if she is a danger to herself. If she doesn’t stay, they will call the authorities. Anna ends up pouring her heart out, for her anyway, to the behaviorist. She tells him how her father drank, and her mean-girl classmates made fun of her for being Russian. She lived an isolated life by carrying her head in fashion magazines. For the first time in her adult life, Anna begins to cry.
She is later released and is sent to a rehab where she can only pay with a wire transfer. You know, the fake kind. There she gets a call from Rachel wanting to forgive and forget. She wants to pick Anna up for lunch because she is in Los Angeles for a Vanity Fair conference. When Anna goes out front to meet her, cops wait for her to issue that bench warrant.
The ending
Anna’s father sends some forms to Vivian. The family was sent the intake form from the mental health clinic. They cannot translate them, so they send them to Vivian to look at. She sees that Anna was conning the mental health team out in California. Anna’s father was not abusive or alcoholic. Her family was just your basic, working-class stiffs, and that wasn’t good enough for her. The entire story was made up to get her to rehab to delay the end of her VISA so she wouldn’t be sent back home to Germany.
Who is Anna? We may never know.
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