Ron Does Stuff

At the end of the previous episode, the Hillerska students received a piece of bombshell news — the school is going to close if they don’t get their act in order. Yes, teach those richies a lesson!

This episode opens to…phone sex? Yep, definitely phone sex. Because of the new restrictions put on the rich kids, Wilhelm and Simon can’t hang out and have sex, so they’re reduced to doing what they should have been doing as teenagers without their own places — having phone sex. But even that isn’t satisfying because the richies only have an hour to use their phones and I guess foreplay took too long.

While Wilhelm adapts to the new conditions at Hillerska, Simon continues to be suffer under the weight of public opinion. There’s a healthy does of racism, xenophobia, and homophobia in the comments that are made about Simon online, and it must be a bitch to not respond. Trust me, I’ve been the subject of an online swarm before and while it felt good to respond, it’s definitely traumatic once it’s done. I rarely respond to people I don’t know online anymore, when it used to be a pretty safe way to get to know new people before.

ANYWAYS, back at Hillerska, his fellow richies think this new stricter environment is all his fault for coming out, especially when he keeps getting quoted in news reports. Vincent is being an entitled brat whining about how the graduating class now gets nothing for their three years of ~hard work~ because someone got sad at the initiation rituals. It’s even worse when Wilhelm is out of the room, because Vincent says what everybody’s thinking and it’s that they’re all not having fun because Wilhelm came out.

August, in his own way, defends Wilhelm, saying that the school could close, and they’d have to go to school with “socialists and new-money white trash”, and I’m sorry, but I thought that was funny. August’s thinks they should put out a statement in support of the school, but I don’t think that’s going to go over well. At the end of the day, you’re still a bunch of richies and those very same socialists and new-money white trash you don’t want to go to school with will eviscerate any statement you put out.

Meanwhile, Wilhelm is being told of a new development — if any of the initiation stories prove to be true, the royal court will have to pull him out of the school. It’s a complete 180 from the very first episode when he didn’t even want to go to Hillerska in the first place.

The problems at the school, understandably, bleed into Wilhelm and Simon’s relationship. Simon thinks it wouldn’t be so bad if the school closed, but Wilhelm thinks they wouldn’t be together if the school closed, which is “Huh?” but at least Simon points it out to him.

Meanwhile, Felice has just been told that she’s going to be interviewed by the School Inspectorate about the conditions at the school, and the new principal thinks she’s a great choice because she genuinely seems to like the school. The principal didn’t have to say that with Felice, they can show that the school is diverse right in her face, though, because that feels micro-aggressive to me.

But that micro-aggression will have to wait as the class has been told that the school hike and camping trip will push through despite everything that’s happening, and because Wilhelm and Simon are MALICIOUS GAY FAGGOTS, they start thinking about maybe sharing a tent. Maybe even pitch a tent if you know what I mean.

Where’s Sara while all of this is happening? She’s moved into her father’s apartment and just saw Felice and the gang’s plan to go to New York. She’s basically rotting in her father’s apartment the same way she was when she was with Simon and her mother, but this time around her father is more proactive and decides that he’s going to teach her how to drive.

Back at Hillerska, the MALICOUS GAY FAGGOTRY continues as Wilhelm joins the choir, since there’s no way that Simon is going back to rowing club with August still there. Can Wilhelm even sing? We don’t really find out because what we find out is that Wilhelm can snog (get it? get it?) since he and Simon start making out beside the lockers after choir practice.

Over at August’s room, Nisse — gay man number four on the Hillerska campus — reveals that the initiation rite that people got mad about, the one about being made to watch a gay porno and then making fun of whoever had a boner, actually did happen. It happened to him, August, and Vincent, and if I had the energy to do it I bet someone on AO3 has written fanfiction about this. But that opens up the question: Was it Nisse who blabbed? I initially thought it was Alexander and that the gay porno thing was an exaggeration, but this new information changes things.

We’ll have to find some other time because the conversation with Nisse has riled August up and with the curfew in place, he can’t even run it off or work it out. With him confined to his room, August notioces that there’s a socket for the telephone wire available and he plugs in an old phone to…call Sara. But even that doesn’t work out because he can’t muster up the courage to speak to her.

The next day, August does the stupid move of asking about Sara from Simon, leading Simon to share the many different ways Sara’s life has crashed and burned and how August is to blame for all of it. I’m willing to bet that August is even more anxious now! Adding to his anxiety is Wilhelm, who wants to make sure that August steers away from them and the tension between the two of them finally spills over into an actual fight where…no actual punches are thrown. One of you could have at least had the decency to get a black eye.

However, because of that fight, the two of them now need to attend mediation once a week, and they have to attend it together. Neither of them are happy, and Wilhelm even gets taunted by August, who tells him that he never really knew his own brother at all.

Over at Simon’s place, he gets sent conversion therapy pamphlets, I think? How do they even know where he lives? Isn’t he a private citizen? What are the privacy laws like in Sweden? He’s a minor, too! Shouldn’t that information be protected? At least Simon gets to write a song because of everything that’s happening to him right now.

He uploads a video of him performing his new song on Instagram and he gets good comments about it, but Wilhelm’s new public relations person thinks this is not the time to be doing this right now, especially since the song mentions revolution, and it could be misinterpreted. Wilhelm tells him that he needs to take the video down and Simon complies, but directs his anger at Sara instead.

Meanwhile, Felice is having an existential crisis over at Hillerska, as she realizes that while she may be happy in school, what the ~socialists and new-money white trash~ are saying about the school and its students is also true. She’s also realized the micro-aggressions she’s been experiencing in school, something that not even her wealth can shield her from. And her white classmates don’t know how to respond to that.

The day of the camping trip, the kids are told to group themselves by threes and Felice, Wilhelm, and Simon end up in a group. For some reason, Simon’s friends Rosh and Yakub end up making an appearance in the forest, and then we’re having a rave? Is now the right time to have a rave? Their appearance does drive home the class divide very clearly. The Hillerska kids ask Rosh and Yakub if they’ve ever been to New York or anywhere in the United States and it’s awkward. Reminds me of the time I was with a society kid on a plane to Singapore and she was talking about the summer she spent in Rome and when she asked me where I spent my summer I had to say “My room.” Because how the hell am I going to afford a summer in Rome? I can’t even afford to travel inside my own country! The Hillerska kids don’t make themselves look any better when they start talking about imagining not having been to the United States. I haven’t been, either, but it doesn’t sound like a nice place anyway! At least not a nice place for people who look like me. You Scandis are probably gonna be okay.

Of course, this becomes an argument between Wilhelm and Simon. I don’t care about the other richies in the school, I only care about how Wilhelm and Simon are going to resolve this because Wilhelm isn’t just any normal richie. He’s the symbol of a nation and somebody who is more than just “Wilhelm”, so there’s at least a trade off there. A trade off that becomes heavier and heavier as Wilhelm is told that his mother is on “sick leave”, meaning Wilhelm just might become King sooner than he expected.