It’s 2026, and academia is under direct threat by the might of the United States government itself. An entire political party has sworn to destroy it. The Department of Education has been illegally dismantled. The most prestigious universities in the country are being shaken down for billion-dollar bribes. Public universities in red states are being turned into dark-age propaganda mills. Professors and students are being hounded and arrested for having the wrong views. Cancel culture exists, alright, but it has nothing to do with squeamish students who use they/the pronouns. The very people who decried censorship on campus are now working round the clock to destroy campus life altogether. Seen in that light, Vladimir is kinda fighting yesterday’s battle here.
I say all that mostly just to get it down on paper and out of the way, because I don’t think Vladimir can be dismissed as a didactic swipe at political correctness or what have you. The people making those arguments, John and Sid and the narrator, are not terribly sympathetic characters. Oh, they’re likeable, very much so. I especially want to shout out Ellen Robertson as Sid, the high-powered lawyer with the fashion sense and impulse control of a 15-year-old boy, who’s in there doing three-person work with Rachel Weisz and John Slattery and feels every bit as compelling and entertaining on screen. But if you told their story to your friends, your friends would take the other people’s side, guaranteed. This isn’t to say they don’t have valid points, however! It’s complicated!
Vladimir trusts you to be smart enough to properly weigh the advice of infantile people who are arguing that adults should not infantilize themselves. The narrator’s lust for Vladimir grants her keen insight into how human beings work behind closed doors and within their own minds, but it also clouds her judgment. Enough to chain Vladimir to a chair? It seems we’ll soon find out.
I reviewed the sixth episode of Vladimir for Decider.
Tags: decider, TV reviews, vladimir