Her wig is magnificent, her skirts enormous. She was not welcome in Russia, none of her daughters but Catherine survived infancy, and when Catherine assumed the Russian throne, she had been dead for two years.ĭo you remember Gillian Anderson’s muted performance on The X-Files (with some exceptions - see: “Three of a Kind,” season six) and how once she was able to pull away from the show, she made excellent choice after excellent choice, all of them stretching her as an actor and making her somehow even better than before? And now she’s at the age and has the star power where she can seemingly do projects she wants to do and pick genuinely fun roles like here, where she makes a Kate Winslet–esque entrance in a grandiose hat. As represented here, nothing is true about Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp but her name. In terms of historical veracity, let’s just chuck all that out the window immediately. She plays Catherine’s mother, Joanna, and she is perfect. I feel instantly sorry for anyone in a scene with Gillian Anderson, because she exerts a gravitational pull towards which we all must lean. I am burying the lede because GILLIAN ANDERSON IS HERE. Instead, Grigor and Peter’s lookalike rob the representative from Norway of his invention (an icebox) and conk him on the head.
He does, however, choose to help Catherine with the science competition, saying he will invent something. He spends all his time with his meditation teacher, Dmitri Kang (to Grigor’s dismay), and is practicing what he calls “kung fu thinking.” He later tells Catherine of his realization that God chose him, his parents chose him, but he never chose to be emperor. From his slow-moving plot to take back the throne to his sped-up plot to take back the throne, now he has decided he does not want the throne. It beats out Katya’s tree-sap Velcro, birthing forceps, and the Exaltation death machine, which is a roller coaster that does not loop, but just ends mid-track. You might think I am devoting too much recap space to this invention, but it does get selected as Russia’s entry until Peter steals Norway’s entry and Catherine goes along with it. I know we no longer use staples in this paperless world, but name a better way to hold paper together. If the stapler sounds too modern for 1760s Russia, you are correct because a stapler prototype was not patented until 1867 in America. One of those ideas is the stapler! As my notes recount: Catherine is not impressed by the stapler even though it’s SO COOL. Unfortunately, everyone’s inventions are Romy and Michele’s Post-It level ideas and will make Russia look like chumps next to all the other countries. Marial says this should cheer her up because this is the kind of boring shit that Catherine loves. Really? A science fair? Did elementary school not scar us all enough in this department? Someone is trying to assassinate Catherine, but she can’t be bothered because she is holding an international science competition.