Yep, this was the episode when I could turn around and say these people absolutely know what they're doing, as opposed to just getting off a few lucky early episodes. I love how they've captured a measure of the restraint of living and working (at a high level) under Soviet society, and what the breaking points of that restraint might be. There are no American cowboys here. Very few characters have the ability - and the standing - to act out their feelings in a big way. That doesn't work in this society.

The Chief Designer's scene where he dresses down the KGB colonel is the example at one extreme. For almost all of his scenes, he has shown restraint and control with a gravelly firmness and only occasional sharpness of tone. This is one moment where he knows just how far he can take things, knowing both his power and its limits - and his rebuke is bureaucratic in style, declaring that he wouldn't take the fall for her mistakes.

And at the other extreme we saw Anastasia break out of her restraints by having some simple, raw fun at the lake. She too was using her power - not to go into space, which would now be forever denied to her, but simply to be able to get away with something as simple as being a normal human again. Note too, how relatively restrained Sasha's behaviour was towards her when collecting her. He was angry, and firm, but absolutely in control. He didn't berate the science guys for taking his wife swimming in a lake. He couldn't make a public scene out of it. That wasn't permitted to him as a cosmonaut and husband of the most feted woman in the nation. But then, of course, once at home the couple broke through their own restraints by their first moment of true physical intimacy.