Inventing Anna

Not so bad in general, but too long... Julia Garner is always good, but Anna Chlumsky, gosh, so bad acting. Her facial expression is so exaggerated, faces and faces and faces. Watching her scrunch her face up was really annoying.

It is a mixed bag. I like the premise. A con artist tricks all of New Yorks elite into thinking she is a German heiress. The actress who plays Anna does a good job. I don't like the character, but, she is interesting. Then this pregnant journalist is trying to write a story about her, I find the journalist extremely annoying. Then there are all of the super rich characters, I hate them all so much. The show does quite a good job (maybe unintentionally) of showing just how horrible these ultrarich people must be in real life. I am finding it interesting enough, that I will probably finish watching it, but I don't really like it and I am never going to rewatch it.

The story of Anna Delvey/Sorokin is an interesting one that I've been aware of since years before this series came out. Julia Garner does a great performance as Anna both showing her as an entitled wanna-be and a vulnerable girl in over her head. The problem is, for some reason the show decided to frame the narrative around some journalist slowly uncovering the story. It's like they didn't think the story of Anna had enough to work on its own (which it certainly does). It wouldn't be so bad if the premise wasn't so ridiculously tropey and over the top. Disgraced female journalist dealing with her misogynistic bosses while the ticking clock element is the fact she is literal weeks from giving birth. It's all just so unnecessary and distracting from the story of Anna. Netflix is not network television, there is no incentive to make a series longer, this could have all been told in a concise 5-6 episodes without the journalist narrative.

Have you ever watched something where the producer tried to mock something they have contempt for but turns out to be the world the producers actually live in? This program is about a European grifter who pretends to be an heiress and she proceeds to fool all manner of Americans into giving her money and letting her rack up debts she can never pay. All of the characters cry about their victimhood rich and poor. It is a statement about how shallow and phony people have become. In this day and age this type of wealth, pretend or real, is distasteful and ugly. The script is full of contradictions. A journalist who wrote fake news wants people to believe it wasn't her fault. Working class people want you to believe they have already made it and the rich want you to believe they have scruples. Everyone is fake just like the story. Shonda should know that you need at least one redeeming character to hold the audience's attention. I got through episode 5 and couldn't think of one reason to continue watching.

Netflix paid Anna Sorokin, the German scammer at the heart of this series, $320,000 for the rights to her story. Sorokin used the money to pay back some of the funds she had stolen from banks, and some of the fines she owed the State of New York. Then she got on every talk show and new excerpt she could to keep building her fame.

As of this writing, she is awaiting deportation back to Germany, but is currently sick with COVID. ICE believes she contracted COVID so that she could stay in the US longer, because, after all, Anna is a con artist.

And, just so that we all understand how sociopathy and Hollywood works, the banks were repaid with Anna's story rights. The ordinary human beings whose credit cards and bank accounts she use are still out of money. Despite NY's Son of Sam law, Anna is profiting from her crimes by becoming an antihero through this story written by Shonda Rimes. When we watch this film, we are helping a sociopath profit.

Grifters grift.

Julia Garner does a great job as Anna, although her voice made me want to shoot the TV. Shonda gives us an engaging script. But what's the difference in this an making a movie of OJ's "If I DID IT?" The degree of crime?

I didn't like the idea of elevating a grifter, and I especially didn't like the built in idea that her thefts were okay because she only stole from rich people. She didn't.

She wasn't Robin Hood. She was just a thief.