So Vladimir finally, finally, pins her up against the wall. He takes our heroine in his hands, his arms. He throws her around the cabin, kissing her hard, telling her all the things he’s wished he could have done to her throughout their times together. Everything he does matches the fantasy snippets we’ve been seeing in her mind’s eye. These weren’t just fantasies, they were prophecies.

The result is an incredibly hot sex scene. It works because it pays off every last bit of anticipation we’ve experienced all season long. It achieves catharsis through sex just as surely as the final battles in shows like Chief of War and Last Samurai Standing and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms offer explosive emotional climaxes through violence. All of it is driven by Vladimir’s vocalized desire, and the narrator’s vocalized enjoyment. “Oh my God! Oh Jesus! Oh fuck!” she exclaims with each of Vladimir’s moves and maneuvers. She is absolutely transported by all this. When he finally penetrates her she orgasms instantly. Her dream has literally come true.

I reviewed the series finale of Vladimir for Decider.

Pop quiz, hotshot: Does the protagonist of Vladimir want to have sex with the title character? Think carefully before you answer. I know what it looks like, I know what she says and thinks she wants, but does she really want it? Like, really?

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Vladimir for Decider

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.

It’s fascinating and funny to watch sex, not even the reality of it but the imagined promise of it, turn the narrator into the proverbial Absent-Minded Professor. She’s a fine educator by all accounts, and a fine writer too. But she neglects her duties, her students, her own standards, and basic professional due diligence in her pursuit of falling into Vladimir’s loving, muscle-corded arms. 

And let’s say you sympathize with her as both a sexual being as an educator of students who are, ultimately, sexual beings themselves. Maybe you’re thinking “How dare they make an example of this woman for saying the embraces in Edith Wharton novels are a metaphor for the female anatomy or whatever? They are! Grow up!” Maybe you’re think it’s like the misleadingly edited takedown in Tàr, in other words, a work that looms large over this one despite its much different, more dour tone. 

But it’s about more than that, isn’t it? Her egregious apology to Lila, her neglect of a student she’s advising, her theft of a scholarship file — there’s no possible pedagogical or sociopolitical justification for any of that. And her continued support of John neglects the fact that conduct may be legal and even fully consensual, but still sleazy and stupid and unbecoming of an educator. Ironically, understanding this requires the kind of nuance she asks of the students she wants to forgive her. 

I reviewed episode 5 of Vladimir for Decider.

There are a couple of interesting reversals from the norm at work here. Obviously there’s the fact that both Vladimir and the professor have spouses who more or less endorse them stepping out.. But on top of that, only one of the two marriages involved can even be said to be unhappy. Vladimir and Cynthia are struggling, but John and the narrator are basically rock solid. 

Even through his scandal and suspension, she’s on his side, as both a practical matter and a matter of principle. She and John clearly love each other — and lust for each other, however horny they are for other people — and want each other to be happy. Their marriage is open, not on the rocks. That’s not a dynamic you often see explored in TV shows about extramarital affairs. (The bit where she slashes the deer net protecting his precious vegetable garden out of frustration is a bit more of what you’d expect.)

I reviewed the fourth episode of Vladimir for Decider.

A fascinating frisson arises from all this. We’re seeing everything through the professor’s eyes, so Vladimir comes across like a misunderstood dreamboat genius being neglected by his standoffish wife. But he can just as easily be described as a gym-bod literature bro who’s clearly thinking about stepping out on the mentally ill woman who nearly lost her life to postpartum depression while raising their toddler. That makes him sound a whole lot less sympathetic.

But such is the power of the professor’s gaze that we can feel what it’s like to ignore the red flags. The professor is so twitterpated by this guy — I feel like I could recreate his calf muscles from memory after watching the narrator watch him run — that even as you watch her neglect or mess up nearly every aspect of her life, you get it. Considering that this all ends with a man chained to a chair, I wonder just how long Vladimir can make us see things through our heroine’s besotted eyes.

I reviewed episode 3 of Vladimir for Decider.

The problem I’m having with Vladimir is that instead of reviewing it, I want to transcribe it. Adapting her own novel, writer-creator Julia May Jonas alternates aphoristic quips, keen interpersonal observations, and steamily subtle come-ons with such alacrity that I don’t think a review can do it justice. People use the phrase “thrill ride” to describe action movies, but with one gleefully surprising line after another, Vladimir earns the title.

I reviewed episode 2 of Vladimir for Decider.