“How can a vacation-inspired by Khloe Kardashian result in a felony charge?” If you’re Anna Delvey, however… It turns out that it’s quite simple. At least, that’s the plot of episode six, “Friends in Low Places,” also known as Kacy’s episode, in which she fills in the blanks for Vivian about the ill-fated Morocco trip she, Anna, Rachel, and a cameraman named Noah (Christopher Lowell) had after Anna moved out of 12 George. It’s not only the rapid cuts and stylistic rewinds; the entire show deviates from the recent pattern in certain ways. There are no visits to Anna at Riker’s, and the Scriberia team does not assist Vivian with her research.
You’d be mistaken if you thought Scriberia’s absence meant Vivian wouldn’t try to tell someone the latest episode of the Anna Delvey narrative — this time, it’s her and Todd conducting a tag-team storytime while out to dinner with their husbands. On a double date, a journalist and the lawyer of the topic she’s reporting on. Is this legal?! What if this reaches the ears of America Investigated, Vivian?
Anyway, both Jack and Mags are aware of this — because, once again, Vivian has an Anna Delvey conspiracy wall at home, and Todd sleeps with his Anna files as pillows — but we are not! What occurred in Morocco, and why are Vivian and Todd so excited to get their hands on the raw footage from the trip? Vivian, meantime, seemed to have shaken off her “less enamored with the Anna narrative” mood from the previous episode and is now again all in. Maybe she’s just looking forward to living vicariously through the footage from her vacation to Marrakesh, which is incredibly stunning. This program has a lot of nice-looking rich-people shit to look at, but this episode takes it to the next level — the sequences in Marrakesh are breathtaking.
Anyway, with Vivian’s interest piqued and her connection with Todd clearly growing, we go on to more interviews; she starts with Noah, the videographer, who isn’t particularly chatty; then she moves on to Kacy; then back to Noah; and last, a quick visit at Neff. However, Kacy’s story takes up most of the episode, despite the fact that she suffered food sickness immediately after the party arrived in Marrakesh and had to leave early (a horrible occurrence that she now sees as the universe’s way of protecting her). Kacy already knew the whole story because she got the full scoop on the parts of the trip she missed from Rachel after she got a panicked call from Anna claiming she was mugged and has no way home — asking Kacy to front her the funds for a first-class ticket back to New York — and Anna showed up at Kacy’s apartment to crash for the night. Kacy paints for Vivian a picture of Anna who has progressed beyond “fake it ’til you make it,” which is augmented by a second conversation with Noah. Anna has been faking it for a long time, and she’s “made it” in some areas, such as socially and sartorially (though the loan for ADF has still not come through). Anna in Morocco is an Anna on the verge of despair, edging closer and closer to full flailing mode. Anna may be aware that her house of cards is about to crumble and is either trying to avoid the fallout or having one final hurrah before it happens. (Julia Garner does an excellent job portraying Anna’s growing terror and twitchiness.)
Despite her fear over her loan status, her plainly slackening grasp on her phony-wealthy lifestyle, the complete meltdown she appears to have on the tennis court in Marrakesh, and how lost and unkempt she appears back in New York, Anna is still able to use her deception abilities when necessary. She screams to Kacy about being mugged in order for Kacy to book her a ticket home, claims ageism (as she often does) in regards to her treatment at the Beekman, and then threatens suicide in order for Kacy to let her stay the night. She proposes a trip to the gardens Rachel has been gushing over as a way of regaining Rachel’s trust after the hotel’s first credit-card meltdown. Is her drunken vulnerability genuine after learning that Fortress had accepted her loan, subject to an in-person investigator visit to Germany to verify her assets? Even in that situation, she manages to spit some nonsense about her father advancing her trust, implying that she doesn’t require the loan and will decline it. Even if she knows she’s running out of alternatives, a flailing Anna is still a manipulative Anna who can spin.
So Anna’s world appears to be crumbling, which makes sense at this point in the season and is proving as fascinating to watch as her crafty climb, but towards the end of the episode, the big question mark is who is the Rachel of it all. Is she a good person who was completely duped by Anna for $62k, as Kacy and Noah claim? Or, as Neff suspects, is she an obsessive hanger-on who gave up her credit cards and then abandoned her ostensible friend?
After witnessing Kacy’s side of the story, it’s easy to see why she (and Rachel) would be apprehensive to see Anna at Riker’s as they did in episode two, and why they’d be up against some barriers. But Vivian plainly believes she wants to hear Rachel’s account from the source herself, and she keeps calling the Vanity Fair editor to attempt to get her to talk as she adds images from the Morocco trip to her conspiracy wall. That’s excellent, but I’m curious if the conspiracy wall will be down by the time Vivian’s baby arrives.