Some of the most defining moments in Lila and Lenù’s friendship were the result of collaborative action. There was that first adventure, confronting Don Achille to demand their dolls be returned; in early adulthood, Lenù adopted Lila’s plight in Soccavo’s factory as her own, using the means at her disposal to expose the subhuman conditions of the workers there. Most impactful, though, was their reading of Little Women and the story it inspired: The Blue Fairy, a tale spun by Lila that set the path for Lenù’s life. The wonder they felt at reading Louisa May Alcott’s words never quite dispelled for Lila, whose education didn’t continue past elementary school. Lenù’s own education was predicated on lifting the curtains on how a book is strung together, so in adulthood, she is less ingenuous about what words can do.
In “The Investigation,†a spirit of collaboration returns to their friendship. Now older and more world-weary, the question for the two friends becomes: Who will be the one to knock on Don Achille’s door? With children, reputations, jobs, and apartments to lose, the risk of action is much greater. The Solaras, who have always manipulated people to their own ends, have long operated in the shadows, using others as instruments for their gain. In recent years, Lila has learned how to play their game. The events of the past couple of episodes have been building toward the realization that, aiming at her own ends, Lila is also a master puppeteer. Taking in the catastrophic repercussions of her role-playing game with Alfonso, a glint in Lila’s eye suggested she was only coming to realize the scope of her own actions. Lenù noticed it by observing the way she treated the client who came by the Basic Sight office and how she was able to command Antonio.
The question of who stands behind whom, acting in whose name, first emerges in this week’s episode when Lenù learns that she is being sued by her old friend Carmen Peluso. It’s Lila who tells her the news over coffee at the hospital. Lenù had been away doing press for her book (and flirting), relishing the success well earned from the many necessary changes in her life (freeing herself from the prison of Nino Sarratore). The satisfaction of her professional life, in the context of her return to the neighborhood, was surpassing the joys of motherhood: With Lila at home and willing to take care of the girls, Lenù could foreground her career, sacrificing some to get some more. In a way, Adele had been right: Part of Lenù’s professional achievement came at the cost of her maternal role. But then again, okay — it’s not a crime to dedicate oneself to one’s career. God knows that’s what Pietro did.
However, as Lenù is about to take the moderator of her book event up to her room for a nightcap, she gets an urgent call from Enzo: Imma is in the hospital with pneumonia but recovering. Lila maintains that she brought the girl to the hospital as soon as she noticed her difficulty breathing and that up to that point, she didn’t feel the need to interrupt Lenù’s busy life with such domestic concerns. She took care of Imma, holding her all night through the fever. We’re reminded of Lila’s generosity when, sneaking behind Marcello’s back, she held a frightened Immacolata through the night, offering her body as comfort. There is almost no physical warmth between Lenù and Lila, particularly not when the initiative would have to come from the latter. Seeing her daughter sleeping quietly, already past the moment of crisis, Lenù cries softly, and though Lila looks at her with tenderness, she doesn’t reach out to touch. Her only open displays of affection are directed toward the people who are, in some way or the other, an offshoot from Lenù herself: her mother, her daughter.
“I was ashamed of myself and of my ambitions,†Lenù thinks as the surface of contentment on which she’d been coasting falls apart. Though Lila advises her to wait on the lawsuit and see how it plays out, Lenù seeks out Carmen, hoping to speak with her. At the gas pump, she only finds Roberto, her husband. He tells her that Carmen has left Naples for a while to spend time with family out of town but is mute on the question of the lawsuit. As Lenù takes in her surroundings, she notices a layer of unease, like a retreating tide gearing up for a big break, whose motives remain mysterious to her. Seeing Antonio, she hopes to gain some clarity. He tells her, in no uncertain terms, to leave: That’s what he’s doing himself, taking his family, including his mother Melina, back to Germany. Showing Lenù his shaking hands, he believes he’s on the verge of another nervous breakdown, which would be only too easily accelerated by staying. The Solaras are angry about recent local elections; Lila convinced a significant part of the neighborhood to vote Communist, undermining their power over the constituency. All he can tell her about the lawsuit is that the lawyers involved are the Solaras’.
The anxious current brimming under the neighborhood has something to do, too, with the drug problem brought in by the Solaras: Shifting eyes and passing hands predominate over the streets. Dede notices this, too. Though she is not allowed to follow Gennaro on his night wanderings with people Lila calls his “idiotic friends,†she watches him give or take something from someone on the apartment’s balcony. Though Gennaro and Dede’s worlds collide in the apartment, there is a deliberate effort on the part of Lenù and Lila to impose difference on them: Lila instructs Gennaro to speak in Italian, not in dialect, to Dede, and Lenù makes sure she doesn’t follow him out at night. Picking up on the slight indications of a crush with a teenager’s inimitable attunement, Elsa makes her sister’s life hell, teasing her about her love of Gennaro until Dede is crying in a fetal position in her room. Lenù tries to console her daughter to no avail and also fails to ascertain whether Elsa’s accusation is true. The dynamic between Tina and Imma, who are also like sisters, is beginning to show signs of wear, too. While Imma likes to be quiet and watch TV, Tina loves to show off how smart she is and relishes the praise that is given to her indiscriminately.
In the kitchen, Lenù and Lila talk about the lawsuit, which demands Lenù’s book be pulled out of circulation, and a fee be paid to Carmen for the defamation of the memory of her mother, Giuseppina. It’s no news to Lila that the Solaras are behind this, and she thinks Lenù should humiliate them on the national stage by writing a newspaper article illuminating the country on their sordid business. Lenù suggests that Italy at large doesn’t care about who Carmen is or why she might be letting herself be manipulated by the Solaras; or what that means for Lila and the other people in the neighborhood. As Lila herself puts it, this whole mess is a “local issue†with no broader resonance for the country. But what about the time when Lenù wrote about the conditions at the Soccavo factory and made a difference? What about the power of words, Little Women, The Blue Fairy, and the writer’s ability to change the world? Lila wants Lenù to merge the two spheres of her life. The sophisticated public intellectual might just be the hero who can finally bring down the neighborhood’s villains.
If Lila’s ambition, for a significant chunk of her life, has been to strip the evil Solaras of any meaningful power, she has often acted alone in this pursuit. It was she who returned to the neighborhood from the factory with the idea for a new business; it was she who ran the shoe store according to her own design, thereby claiming a piece of the Solaras’ business as her own; when she was a kid, it was she who had the courage to threaten Marcello with a knife. But now that she is in an all-out war with them, she has to use every resource at her disposal, and she sees Lenù’s standing as a writer as an invaluable weapon. What she wants from her friend is for Lenù to be her active partner in reclaiming this territory as their own.
Still, every war produces casualties, and for all of the nobility of Lila’s cause, Alfonso ended up taking the fall. His body is discovered, bloodied and bruised, abandoned on a beach by a person who calls out to a certain Pasquale: we don’t see him, so it’s impossible to know if that’s the Pasquale who has been on the run with Nadia Galiano for years. Either way, Lila is angry and distraught at Alfonso’s death. At Basic Sight, she loses her balance and eventually falls on the floor. Lenù holds her up — warmer by temperament, and she is not as awkward comforting her friend as Lila herself has been. Barely anyone shows up to Alfonso’s funeral: His family is conspicuously absent, particularly in contrast to the presence of the Solaras. Carmen is also in attendance, and Lenù speaks with her briefly, but she starts off on the wrong foot by opening with condescension: “I’m not mad at you,†Lenù says. Of course not, Carmen scoffs — all publicity is good publicity.
Mirroring the fateful day decades earlier when they resolved to get their dolls from the ogre-like Don Achille back, Lila decides she will confront the Solaras, with or without Lenù, who hesitates but ultimately follows her. Lila wants to know from Marcello and Michele if they suddenly grew a conscience. She tells them that their time in the neighborhood is up — they should just leave. Marcello brushes her off, but Michele takes the bait. He tells her she’s the one who should leave the neighborhood — they threaten each other, Michele with violence and Lila with information, presumably details of his relationship with Alfonso and the minutiae of their corrupt business. Marcello tries to de-escalate the confrontation while Lenù looks on, scared. Increasingly riled up, Michele yells at Lila that she knows nothing, is no one, that Lenù is nobody, that no one cares about either of them, that they’re nothing. To put a fine point on it, he slaps Lila so violently she falls to the ground, breaking the spell that had long dictated no matter what happened, he’d never lay a finger on Lila. Lenù shoves him with a start, but he pushes her to the ground, too. This blatant display of violence is what it takes for Lenù. She wants everything Lila has on the Solaras. And she will write about it.
Like they once pored over Little Women, now the two friends lean over the kitchen table scrutinizing every piece of information Lila has accumulated on the Solaras over the years, starting with Manuela Solara’s mythical Red Book — the loan shark’s binder. A feverish purpose seizes Lila, but Lenù treads carefully: She wants to make sure whatever information they choose to put out will hurt the Solaras, not her and her daughters. Together, they write an article detailing the Solaras’ wrongdoings. To determine whether or not it’s damning enough to warrant legal consequences — if not, Lila promises, she’ll kill them — Lenù sends it over to Enrico, who submits it to his lawyers for their opinion.
While they wait, life goes on for the Greco-Airota sisters: Imma is mesmerized by her father’s face on the television, where he supposedly lives; Elsa continues to torment Dede about her love of Gennaro; and the two older sisters join forces to praise Tina in front of Imma, relegated forevermore to feeling bad. Enrico calls: Though the lawyers concluded they don’t have enough information to send the Solaras to jail, the article is solid — Enrico is pleased with the strength of Lenù’s writing, which, under Lila’s influence, is less structured and neat, more given to passion and the “unaesthetic banality of things.†He thinks they should publish it in the magazine L’Espresso anyway, as a gesture — and, it remains unsaid, as a way to continue to cultivate Lenù’s readership.
Lenù doesn’t see the point of publishing the article if nothing can come of it — ultimately a correct prediction — which angers Lila so much that she ends up taking her own name off the byline and sending it over to L’Espresso behind Lenù’s back. Lenù feels used, and she accuses her friend of cowering behind other people, making others do what she doesn’t have the courage to do. But Lila disarms Lenù with honesty: It’s not that she took her name off because she is too afraid to own up to the article, but that her name means nothing, while Lenù’s name has weight. If Lenù thinks Lila overestimates the power of the writer, Lila counters that Lenù underestimates it: that she doesn’t give herself enough credit. As they arrive at this standstill in their battle of wills, Imma and Tina fight in the background. Lila deals one final blow. She accuses Lenù of not paying enough attention to Imma, who has a tic in her eye and is obviously suffering from the lack of paternal presence in her life.
When Lenù runs into Marcello on the street, he approaches her much in the same way she approached Carmen, saying he’s not mad at her — he knows that this is all Lila’s work. They are walking in the direction of Lenù’s apartment when they see Pietro, who has come with Doriana to take his daughters for a trip. As if confirming Lila’s observation about what’s troubling her, Imma is so upset about her sisters leaving with the kind, warm Pietro that not even a present he has brought wrapped for her can lift her spirits.
Just as Pietro and Doriana are about to leave with the girls, they hear screaming and fighting upstairs. Gennaro, his eyes still red and bleary, has come home with track marks on his arms. Lila and Enzo, together, are giving him one hell of a beating, though most of it is coming from Enzo. Lila’s eyes look crazed: She is angry but also scared, yelling at her son that if he wants to die, she’ll kill him herself. Dede wants to run up to defend him, but much in the same way just last week Lila constrained Enzo, Pietro holds her back. When they leave, Lenù takes Tina. Every time one situation resolves, it seems, another one finds a way to be much, much worse.
In Più
• I thought it was gimmicky the way, at the beginning of the episode, when Lenù takes Enzo’s call, we cut to the opening sequence right before he tells her what’s wrong — it seems against the nature of the show to put in this kind of red herring when much of the tension is born out of the characters’ interpersonal relationships, rather than plot points.
• At moments in this episode, Lenù suffers from the hip pain that makes her limp, a condition she has inherited from Immacolata. This motif has sporadically emerged since Immacolata’s death, perhaps too sporadically — something about it feels tacked on to me …
• So far, the show has been steadily faithful to the source material, rarely, if at all, straying from the events exactly as they happen in the book. But in this episode, there was one major departure: the moment when Lenù steps up to shove Michele after he slaps Lila. In the book, Lenù is paralyzed with fear and shock and later feels ashamed of her complacency. Ferrante writes: “My fury first became rage, then contempt for myself. I couldn’t forgive myself for remaining paralyzed in the face of violence. I said to myself: What have you become; why did you come back here to live, if you weren’t capable of reacting against those two shits; you’re too well-meaning, you want to play democratic lady who mixes with the working class, you like to say to the newspapers: I live where I was born, I don’t want to lose touch with my reality; but you’re ridiculous, you lost touch long ago, you faint at the stink of filth, of vomit, of blood.†Here, Lenù is impelled to action by righteousness as well as guilt about the violence that surrounds her but doesn’t affect her directly; in the show, she is a victim of violence, which subtly changes the valence of her actions.