Our Country Friends

Karen Cho drives up to the House on the Hill from the city and figures there are two reasons for her joining Senderovsky during quarantine. The first is to see old friends that she no longer has the time to see. She, Senderovsky, and their other friend Vinod Mehta have known each other since high school and helped each other to survive the toughest parts of their lives and the difficulties of their respective immigrant parents. Her second reason for coming, however, is to see the Actor, a celebrity joining the group to help finish a pilot script with Senderovsky based on one of his early novels. Karen recently sold her company, the successful Tröö Emotions app, and moved back to New York from out west. The app takes a picture of two people and analyzes their eyes and faces to determine their feelings for each other. As she nears the house, she stops at a sheep field and sees a child singing and dancing to K-Pop. She soon realizes the child is Nat, Senderovsky and Masha’s adoptive daughter, and after reintroducing herself to Nat, Karen takes her home. Masha is relieved to have Nat back, having panicked and gone searching for her. With this rescue, Karen is promoted to Aunt Karen, and as she starts to settle in, Senderovsky leaves for Vinod. His quick exit angers Masha, who believes he should stay to help calm Nat, a child who struggles with anxiety.

As Senderovsky drives to pick up Vinod, he laments being scolded by Masha in front of Karen and is worried that the Actor, who sends cryptic messages about his arrival, won’t make it to the house later that day. In his haste to get Vinod, Senderovsky’s reckless driving results in some of the alcohol bottles he forgot to unload from his trunk shattering. He pulls over to quickly clean it up and even takes a sip of what remains in the bottom of the broken bottle. He picks up Vinod at the bus terminal and realizes that, of all his friends, Senderovsky believes he is on the most even footing with Vinod and is least threatened by his success. On the way back to the house, Vinod doesn’t panic over Senderovsky’s driving like others have in the past. Vinod, who survived a battle with cancer, is missing part of one of his lungs, making him very susceptible to COVID-19. He is prepared for the worst on this trip, and he packs explicit paperwork to help him and his friends in the case of his falling ill.

Vinod settles into his bungalow and he and Senderovsky catch up with each other. Karen was recently mad at Vinod for refusing the money she offered to him. Vinod is a former adjunct professor now working as a cook in a family member’s restaurant, while both Senderovsky and Karen enjoy success in their careers. Vinod, once a writer himself, asks Senderovsky if he still has the manuscript of the novel Hotel Solitaire Vinod once wrote but Senderovsky convinced him never to share. Despite knowing exactly where the box with the novel is in the attic, Senderovsky tells Vinod it is lost.

Masha and Karen make dinner together, as Ed, the supposed cook of the group, remains asleep in his bungalow, while Vinod and Senderovsky set the table outside on the porch. Masha is uneasy about being the odd one out in this group of childhood friends. She tells Karen that even after all these years, Vinod still loves Karen. Karen denies it but secretly hopes that Vinod still holds feelings for her. Ed wakes up and joins the group, apologizing for not cooking and opting to make beverages instead. As the group begins to settle in for the meal, a car approaches.

Dee Cameron drives up to the house, taking in the poverty of the surrounding houses that reminds her of her own beginnings in an impoverished, white community in the Carolinas. She is an essayist and former student of Senderovsky and wonders where she will fit in class-wise with the group, since many in the group are quite wealthy. Senderovsky brings her to the writer’s bungalow, and once she joins the rest of the group for dinner, she cannot help but notice that Ed cannot take his eyes off her.

Elsewhere around the table, Karen wonders if she is placed in the family bungalow—the biggest bungalow, decorated to suit a classic American family—to remind her that she will not have children. Masha, concerned for Vinod, wonders aloud if they should build a fire to keep everyone warm. None of the men succeed in lighting a fire and Masha must light it herself. Ed, sitting next to Dee, begins to flirt with her, and Senderovsky, grateful for his guests, rises to make a toast. Just as he is about to speak, the group hears car tires on the gravel driveway, signaling the arrival of the Actor.

While Senderovsky is excited about the Actor’s arrival, the Actor brushes his host off with indifference. Senderovsky places him in the St. Petersburg bungalow, designed to capture the essence of the city Senderovsky and his wife grew up in. The bungalows themselves are meant to capture the spirit of the bungalows outside St. Petersburg where their families once vacationed and where the couple met for the first time as children. The Actor, here to help finish a pilot script with Senderovsky, tells him immediately that they will have to scrap the current edition. Upset, Senderovsky thinks of his time in St. Petersburg, where he lived at the opposite end of the city from Masha, resulting in two very different lives led by parents with different expectations and standards for their children.

Senderovsky returns to the dinner with the Actor, and the Actor mistakes Nat, adopted from Harbin, a city in northern China, for Ed and Karen’s daughter. Ed and Karen, both Korean, are the only two members of the group other than Nat who claim Asian heritage. After this blunder, the Actor then mistakes Nat for a boy. Smoothing over the mistakes, Senderovsky introduces the Actor to his high school friends, Vinod and Karen. Karen’s Tröö Emotions app impresses the Actor, even though there is a class action lawsuit being brought against the company by those who lost their spouses through the use of the app.

Masha, a psychiatrist, watches her daughter throughout the dinner, analyzing her behavior to determine whether it is abnormal. Nat, who struggles with anxiety and social cues, attends an expensive private school meant to help her socialize and make friends, but she has not made much progress. As Senderovsky and his friends reminisce, the box with Vinod’s novel is mentioned, and Masha tells them she saw it in the attic. Senderovsky quickly corrects her to say it is in a storage container in the city. The moment passes and the Actor and Dee try the Tröö Emotions app. The app takes a picture of the two looking into each other’s eyes, and the result shows them as a cute couple. This is much to the chagrin of Ed, who already has feelings for Dee, and Masha, who harbors an intense crush on the Actor. Karen, looking at the photo, sees a connection between the two.

The dinner lengthens into the night and all but Masha, Nat, and the Actor are drunk. Ed shows the table a picture of a fascist sticker he saw at the train station, amplifying the anxiety Senderovsky and Masha already have over the conservative leanings of their local neighbors. Dee and the Actor, meanwhile, plead with the table for explanations of any words used in other languages, a common occurrence with the Senderovskys and Indian-American Vinod. Dee, drunk, swears, leading Masha to suggest bed for Nat, a proposition not taken well by the child. As Senderovsky watches his child protest, he worries for her and the world she will inhabit as an adult. With Nat and Masha’s departure, the dinner draws to a close. Before people leave, Vinod looks lovingly at Karen, confirming he still holds feelings for her. Before leaving, Dee sends the picture from the Tröö Emotions app to the Actor before they both retire and lose access to the Wi-Fi only available at the main house.

Senderovsky, Ed, Vinod, and Karen stay out on the porch, enjoying each other’s company and reminiscing about the party Senderovsky met Ed at in 2001. It was a party celebrating Senderovsky’s first book, but Vinod, when prompted to reminisce with them, doesn’t want to remember. Ed is too drunk and Senderovsky brings him back to his bungalow and returns to smoke a joint Karen brought. Masha watches the trio from her upstairs window with disproval as they pass the joint around and ignore all the safety measures she instituted earlier that day. When Senderovsky comes to bed, Masha expresses her disappointment and even cries, chiding him for his lack of carefulness and saying he doesn’t love anybody. Before they fall asleep, Masha, who heard mention of the box Vinod is hoping for at dinner, knows that the box is in the attic and that Senderovsky is lying to his friend. She asks what is in the box, but Senderovsky does not answer.

Settled in his bungalow, Vinod obsesses over the eventuality of his being intubated if he contracts COVID-19. Meanwhile, elsewhere on the property, Karen, Dee, and Masha all masturbate while thinking of the Actor. Ed, asleep, dreams of Greece and the need to find his mother to give her a gift in exchange for more underwear, and as he does so, he walks down the street naked from the waist down. As morning approaches, Senderovsky grabs Vinod’s novel and walks to the trashcans. He cannot bring himself to throw it out so he instead buries it in a groundhog’s den on the front lawn. As he works to hide the novel, a black pickup truck passes by, rolls down its window, and its driver takes a picture. Senderovsky, unsettled, sees bumper stickers as it drives away and believes it may be the same right-wing iconography Ed mentioned. Meanwhile, the Actor comes into the house and uses the Wi-Fi to download a picture of Dee before returning to his bungalow and masturbating to it. Nat, who wakes up early every day, sees Senderovsky in the front yard and wonders what he is doing at the groundhog’s den. She also thinks of how the Actor acknowledged that she is not Senderovsky and Masha’s biological child and how this gives her a sense of freedom she never felt before.