This week’s episode of A Gentleman in Moscow finally gets the heart racing. It’s been five long weeks in the Metropol Hotel holding cell, but now, Count Alexander Rostov (Ewan McGregor) is breaking out.
Everything starts out like usual. We’ve hopped a little over a decade into the future, now in 1947, where high school-aged Sofia (Beau Gadsdon) is giving Alexander (who she now calls Papa, so sweet) flak over him caring too much about boys and homework. When Alexander catches Sofia taking piano lessons from a boy her age—gasp, piano lessons!—he screams at her in the hotel lobby. Alex is very protective over his adopted daughter.
Anna (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Olga (Anastasia Hille) have also taken part responsibility over Sofia. Anna is especially perturbed by Alex’s helicopter parenting when she’s been giving Sofia plenty of advice on boys. Alex demands that Anna stop trying to step over him as Sofia’s primary guardian, but Anna fights back—she has done so much to help Anna become the woman she is today. Alex should be thanking her, not chastising her.
Things between Sofia and Alex aren’t all that tense, as long as boys aren’t involved. The pair still find ways to stay entertained around the hotel. They chase each other into different rooms. On one fateful evening, however, while Alex chases Sofia around, Sofia falls around 25 feet into a stairwell, cracking her skull open. The hotel wants to call in a doctor; Alex demands that she be rushed to a hospital. When no one at the hotel wants to listen, Alexander scoops his daughter into his arms.
And he runs outside the front door.
Reminder: Alex is strictly prohibited from leaving the Hotel Metropol. By leaving its walls, he becomes a fugitive of the state. This is, by far, the biggest moment thus far in A Gentleman in Moscow. He’s broken out! The bishop (John Heffernan) is peeved and immediately calls the federal guards, who start interrogating hotel guests and throwing rooms apart to find Alex, if he’s hiding somewhere.
He isn’t—the count is now at a nearby hospital. His personal guard Osip (Johnny Harris) has followed him and, in an interesting twist, is looking to help. While none of the doctors listens to Alex pleading for help, Osip is able to have Sofia seen by the best surgeon in all of Russia. The surgeon informs Alex and Osip that Sofia’s skull is fractured and her brain is bleeding. “There’s only so much I can do,” he says before whisking Sofia into an operating room.
Then, Osip demands Alexander get his butt back to the hotel—the national guard is hunting every hospital in Moscow hoping to find and kill the count. Alex fights back; he needs to stay until he hears Sofia is okay. Back at the Metropol, the bishop is overjoyed to see Alex’s room being thrown apart. Finally, the guest he hates most will be thrown out!
Unfortunately for him, the rest of the Metropol mainstays have been planning to cover Alex’s tracks. Everyone from Olga to Emile (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) lies to protect Alex. Anna goes really hard for her man, inviting the police captain for drinks at the Metropol bar. The captain says that, if Anna undresses for him, he’ll let Alex off the hook—but Anna pushes him away. Instead, she fakes an alibi for Alex: He was in her room. He wasn’t, but anyone who knows him would believe that he’d be spending a night with Anna—wink wink.
Over at the hospital, Alex is still waiting to hear about Sofia when a bunch of new guards bust through the front doors. Osip can try his best to hold them off, but Alex’s stubbornness is going to get the best of him here. He needs to flee. “You’re no good to your daughter dead,” Osip says. Finally, Alex agrees, and Osip finds a way to sneak him out without anyone noticing. Once the count is back at the hotel, he sneaks back in with the chefs.
The bishop is about to tell the police captain that Alex is nowhere to be found in the hotel when Alex walks into the lobby. This makes the bishop look terrible: He started this fib because of his pet peeve. Osip also returns, blasting the bishop for slandering Alex’s good name. Once again, Anna confirms that Alex spent the night in her chambers.
Sofia wakes up, safe and healthy. Phew. This was the kind of action we needed in A Gentleman in Moscow—now, let’s see what happens when the count actually gets caught.
