While the flashbacks in the last episode returned us to the most meaningful time in Palermo’s love life, this one opens with a pivotal moment in Berlin’s: Tatiana dumping him. He assumes it’s because she can’t handle his terminal diagnosis, but it’s that she’s bored. He used to talk about stealing the Spanish gold reserve, but now they’re just like every other dull married couple. He asks whether there’s someone else; her clichéd response — “Don’t make this harder†— confirms it. So he tails her cab to a hotel, where she is met at the curb by Rafael, Berlin’s dumb wiener kid. When she goes up to her room, he quietly ambushes Rafael in the bar and explains his titular elegance theory: When you see a dapper man, you know his wife must be attractive enough to bone, so of course Rafael thought that about Berlin, the very picture of elegance himself! Berlin just thinks Rafael should seduce women himself rather than pursue one pre-seduced by his dad. When Berlin learns that Tatiana and Rafael have only been sleeping together for a few weeks, he sighs that what he had with her must not have been that strong, if it could be shaken by “a fleeting lover†— a characterization that infuriates Rafael, who insists they are properly in love. And when Tatiana appears with her bags, Berlin is only briefly shitty to her, mentioning the widow’s pension and fat inheritance she would have received if she’d stayed with him. “We had so much fun,†he tells her. “I wish you the best.†He even touches Rafael’s forehead tenderly. So all is forgiven? Well, no. Once he’s seen them get into another cab, Berlin goes absolutely ham trashing the hotel bar.
Tokyo narrates that Berlin’s vandalism arrest was the only time he went to prison (and that the authorities added a few months when it turned out his fingerprints had been found at past robberies). “He let them catch him,†she says from beyond. This is the part The Professor is hung up on, too, when he picks his brother up after his release. Berlin just didn’t know how else to react to losing his son, and so soon after Berlin had resolved to acknowledge him. Failure like that defines a man, and now he’s determined to squeeze every drop out of the life he has left: That’s why he’s going to help The Professor rob the Spanish Royal Mint! I know it’s hard to remember that heist when it feels like we’ve been in the Bank of Spain for about 500 years …
… speaking of which, here’s how that’s going. Palermo tosses the last handful of gold grit into the funnel. There’s a brief worry that they’re going to run out of water before it can all pass through to the foundry … but then it does. (It’s not the only moment in the episode that feels like filler, honestly! We already saw people tensely waiting on either side of the pipe in the last episode! You’ve already stretched this out for ten episodes longer than we all expected! GET ON WITH IT!) Only once it’s all done does a tech nerd in the tent monitoring audio report that he’s heard a strong suction sound, like the flush of the world’s largest toilet. An engineer Tamayo summons speculates that the crew emptied the vault and correctly guesses how. He further posits that they’re probably using a much more powerful pump than the bank’s to move the grit downstream, so Tamayo orders all the locations downstream searched. The cops come up empty everywhere before hitting up the Santa Justa stormwater tank at the end of the line …
… and we cut between Suárez and his team — “It has to be here! We got it this time!†— and work wrapping up inside the foundry. Marseille is the first to see the CCTV footage of cars approaching and yells to everyone to grab weapons for the siege. But The Professor countermands the order; he won’t cause a massacre when “it’s already lost.â€
Everyone surrenders. But when Marseille, The Professor, BenjamÃn, and Sierra (Victoria having been taken from her) are all loaded into the same wagon, hands zip-tied behind their backs, The Professor notices that they’ve been sitting there for kind of a while, and isn’t it strange that they can hear sirens but no other noise; the cops aren’t even talking to each other, or on the radios? (He might also note that four such high-value suspects normally wouldn’t be detained together?) WELL, that’s when we see Suárez radioing back to Tamayo that Santa Justa is clean, and find out why Palermo was so confident the cops wouldn’t just post up where the gold came out and pinch them there, because they have actually moved the gold upstream. They’re not downstream at Santa Justa; they’re upstream at Los Migueles.
And after Marseille and The Professor have kicked their way from the back of the wagon through the cab, they see that there isn’t even one other cop car there — just lights and sirens creating the illusion, Victoria abandoned, and NO GOLD. Cut to the convoy of vehicles departing the scene, occupied by a bunch of people we don’t know, and finally two we do …
… friggin’ Tatiana and Rafael! Oedipus who?!
The Spoils
• MatÃas follows through on his plan and (hilariously) shoots his shot with an amused Lisbon; asking her whether she prefers a one- or two-piece swimsuit does not, in fact, turn out to be the panty-dropper of a pickup line he was hoping for. Later, amid the general celebration while the crew in the bank wait for instructions from The Professor, he expresses a wish to get his own city name; if they do get arrested and a news report mentions “Palermo, Rio, Manila, Bogotá, and MatÃas Caño,†he’s going to “sound like a fucking intern.†No one else thinks his chosen name of Pamplona is so hot — it’s obvious, it’s cumbersome to pronounce, and it’s in Spain — but he apparently has his heart set on it, so Pamplona is born.
• Arteche continues covertly making her way around the ducts — including pulling herself up the cable in the dumbwaiter shaft; putting a pin in that for now — ending up back in the kitchen, where she finds one of the commandos’ first aid kits and finally pulls out the large and jagged piece of metal sticking out of her side before stitching herself up. Then back to business. She radios to Ãngel that she’s going back out to defuse the last of the explosives on the main floor.
• Denver wisely disregards Bogotá’s advice and confesses to Stockholm both that he kissed Manila and that he’s “confused†about his relationship with Stockholm. In Indonesia, he felt like everything he wanted was wrong, and reconnecting with Manila, with whom he has more in common, made him realize it wasn’t. Instead of telling him Manila’s not into him, Stockholm asks to discuss it after she’s had a nap. We don’t know whether she took one of the antipsychotics the surgeon gave her last time, but it seems like no as noise in the dumbwaiter shaft wakes her up … and then she starts hearing Tokyo calling her name. When she looks up the shaft and sees a head but not a face — we know it’s Arteche, but she doesn’t — she loses it and starts shooting wildly, almost hitting Denver when he runs in. She begs Denver to let her out so she can seek medical attention, but he says she can’t and then hits upon a very Victorian solution: dealing with his wife’s mental illness by locking her in a room on the premises! In a nod to the start of their relationship, he chooses to move them both to the vault, and they have it out. Berlin was afraid to show her his anger lest he confirm his father’s warnings that she was too good for him, and Stockholm was afraid to ask him what he was actually doing when he went into town to “buy wood†lest he admit that he was bored with her. What she would really like to see is the angry club dancing he was doing without her, but he would actually like to see her dance for him. She’s not exactly in a state to do so, covered in blood and ash and wearing a dirty jumpsuit, but he brings her … a tuxedo? I don’t know if we’re supposed to think he found it in the governor’s office, but this thing is impeccably tailored for Esther Acebo’s body. (Talk about your elegance theory.) And THEN … Stockholm joyfully strips for Denver? And that’s where we leave them?! All that was required to cure Stockholm’s PSYCHOSIS, which includes VISUAL AND AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS, was for her to receive a man’s sexual attention? It’s a hideously unearned male-gaze moment, and it would have been a three-star episode (sorry, but anyone who’s watched The Silence of the Lambs could see the cop-raid switcheroo coming) if not for this bullshit.