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The Regime Recap: A Situation With a Horse


Elena and Zubak aren’t fairing very well without each other.

In Alexander Payne’s excellent 1996 debut feature Citizen Ruth, Laura Dern plays a poor, wildly irresponsible drug addict from Nebraska who’s had four children and lost custody of all of them — largely because the state reasonably concluded that a woman given to huffing wood sealant at hardware stores is unfit for motherhood. Opening four months after the last episode, “Midnight Feast” finds the country in economic turmoil and civil unrest, as Elena’s decision to sever ties with her American partner has led to an alignment with China, who has also made her promises in exchange for a cut of the cobalt business. The event goes hilariously amiss, with Elena so annoyed by the grade-schoolers’s not-so-adorable queries that she snaps, rolling her eyes over the “horsey” and blasting the mother, saying that “if you’re a giant pregnant tuna, don’t attend a government protest.” This leads to the even more unpleasant prospect of leaving the palace for an appearance in Westgate itself, which has the piquant dog-poop smell of processed sugar beet to add to the roiling social unrest.

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