Summary
Star City‘s chickens come home to roost in a satisfying way as the subplot with Irina, Valya, and Tanya dovetails nicely with the Chief Designer’s Venus mission.
Some men are willing to go to Venus to get away from their angry wives, and that’s exactly the case in Star City. I’m being flippant, obviously. The situation between Valya and Tanya is much more complex in Episode 5, “Bite Your Elbow”, but the gist of it is that the jig is up. As was obvious after Irina discovered that Valya was the mole, the chickens are coming home to roost, and the only way out is up (and up and up).
This is, I think, the espionage drama reaching a fever pitch. The overlapping character arcs are reaching the ends of their respective roads, and real consequences are afoot. There’s only so long you can keep a secret in a totalitarian state, and it turns out not to be very long, especially with so many people trying to reverse their own fortunes at the expense of others. Anyone with a conscience is trapped firmly in the middle, trying to make the decisions they can live with, which is usually the ones that’ll keep them alive.
And thus, Irina. Since “Bite Your Elbow” picks up from where we left off, she’s still in Valya’s apartment, faced with an incredibly serious predicament. She now knows Valya is the mole, which means she also knows that Tanya will be considered an accomplice and branded a traitor when that information comes to light. But she can’t sufficiently warn Tanya – even though she tries – without giving away the fact that she has been spying on her at the state’s behest for the entirety of their relationship.
Eventually, Irina has to go the whole hog and reveal everything, including one of the bugs in the apartment wall for a bit of drama, since it’s the only way to get Tanya to properly buy into the predicament she’s in. Irina offers to erase the tape to protect Tanya, but Tanya also has to get out of Dodge, since as soon as Valya’s exposed and arrested, all bets will be off.
We’ll return to this in a minute, since Valya’s escape attempt requires a few other things to fall into place. Most notably, the Venus mission. Lyudmilla got her wish by having Sergei arrested, since it lures the Chief Designer to her and compels him to make some kind of deal, presumably involving covering her back for the mess that was made of the lunar mission, to broker his release. Sergei’s necessary for the mission to take place, as are Sasha and Pavel. Even though Sasha and Anastasia spent the night together, he leaves her with naught but a romantic letter explaining that he does have pretty legitimate feelings for her. I’m sure that’ll be some consolation when, as fans are predicting, she finds out she’s pregnant with his baby and will be left to raise it on her own for nine months.
Star City Episode 5 requires the mission to go ahead since it needs to dovetail with Valya’s personal arc as the mole. Valya’s an advisor on the mission, so it isn’t immediately clear how this might take place, but it becomes obvious eventually. Once again, Irina’s actions have attracted the attention of her jealous comrade, Vika Yergova, who alerts Lyudmilla that Irina has been having a too-personal relationship with one of her subjects. Yergova thinks she has Irina dead to rights, since the fact she has been making in-person contact with Tanya is undeniable, but she obviously thought several steps ahead. When she’s under the cosh, she produces a report revealing that Valya is the mole, claiming that her own infiltration of the marital home was in service of verifying that information.
This leaves Yergova with egg on her face, Irina with some brownie points, and Tanya with an escape route, right under the state’s nose. Tanya, though, goes off-plan a bit to inform Valya that she knows what he has been up to. He never really gets the chance to explain that he was doing it to protect her. Instead, he has to freestyle an escape attempt before the KGB gets a hold of him. Thus, the Venus mission.
Getting Pavel out of the way at the last minute, Valya “heroically” offers to take his place on the mission, and since everything is so secretive and occurring on such an accelerated timescale, he’s being smuggled out of Star City and launched into space before anyone can do anything about it. For now, he’s safe, or at least safe from the KGB. But he has the perils of space to contend with, not to mention the fact that, if it’s unearthed that he was at fault for the lunar calamity, he’s living in a tiny rocket with the man most likely to be very annoyed about it.
