The Vow: Season 1, Episode 4 “Building Character”

In the last episode, Sarah, Nippy, Mark and Bonnie were now out of Nxivm/ESP.

We open with Sarah telling us her first goal in regards to leaving Nxivm/ESP was just to get out. Her concern was for her family and herself. But, knowing how many women were in DOS, because Sarah had brought them in first through ESP, “that was a whole different level of what the fuck.”

We see Sarah calling people to tell them to leave ESP and DOS. She wants to prevent anymore brandings. She and Nippy (in Vancouver) with Bonnie and Mark (in LA) are working as a team, contacting people and encouraging them to get out. Mark and Bonnie decide to call Catherine Oxenberg, whose daughter India is in DOS. Break for Intro.

Catherine Oxenberg

After intro, we open with an exterior shot of Catherine Oxenberg’s house in Malibu. Many people probably already know who she is or have a vague inkling at least. It’s been a long time since she was on Dynasty in the 80’s. I think she did a reality TV show with her husband (now ex), Casper Van Dien. That was most likely in the early 2000’s when every other D-list celebrity was doing a reality show. She seems to have worked steadily enough. Nothing of note except the Dynasty gig, but she lives in Malibu. I am sure she is doing fine.

Interior shot and Catherine is talking on the phone to her mother, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslovia. As one does. Catherine tells her she got a call from Bonnie informing her India needed to be saved from DOS. She gives her mom a succinct summary of the DOS stuff, except leaving out the sex with Keith aspect which she may not have known about at that point. Catherine says none of it sounds like the kind of thing the child she knows would do. She is shocked.

We see footage of India as Bonnie tells us she saw herself as like a mentor-type for India. Bonnie felt India had blossomed while in ESP, but then she started to see concerning behavior. Counting calories, starving herself, lying sometimes… and then India told her she was moving to Albany for a secret project with Keith and Allison.

Bonnie and Mark are now at Catherine’s house as she looks through some of India’s stuff to see if it reveals anything. Catherine makes a point of telling us she has a strict policy of respecting India’s privacy. But given the circumstances, she feels she must go against that policy. I respect that Catherine feels so strongly about respecting her daughter’s privacy she felt the need to say that. Catherine reads a work sheet India had filled out which contains the usual mission talk typical for an ESPian.

Question: “Understanding what you know now, what are the principles you swear to uphold for the rest of your life?”

The next question, “What is the most important value in life to you? Why do you exist? Why live?” Worst. Job. Interview. Ever. No pressure with these questions, wow.

“How will I use the tool of a low-cal diet to build the me that I want?” There is a reference to Keith. “K.R. talk. Vow” then “K.R. Intimacy” There is also a reference to the chain India would wear as a symbol of her vow to Keith.

Jane Doe

We cut to a shot of the back view of a young woman on a beach. It’s Jane Doe. In voice over she tells us she doesn’t want to give her real name, because she doesn’t want to be judged for the choices she has made. There are complexities to having been involved with DOS she is still trying to work out. “What is manipulation and what is consent? What motivations are pure?” Jane believes “anyone can make the decisions that I made. Anyone can be Jane.”

This begins what I thought was one of the most interesting segments of the entire series. Jane is articulate, insightful and everything she says is worth hearing, but… the editing in this episode is done… in such a way… every sentence she utters… is followed by a pause… to extend the footage… as long as possible. It becomes a bit maddening.

Jane was living in New York, she tells us, and working as a freelance filmmaker. She was doing pretty well, but she felt lonely. “Struggling with certain friendships with women… ” She was making a documentary on urban farmers which is how she met Rachel. Jane was drawn to her because she was open and confident. “Comfortable in her own skin” as Jane describes her. They became friends.

And then–you know where this is going–Rachel told Jane about a life changing group she was involved in. But before she talked more about it–and you know what is coming next–she had to get collateral as proof that Jane would not tell anyone about it, because it was a secret group.

Jane thought she was kidding, but Rachel was like, if you trusted your own word, collateral wouldn’t be a big deal. In fact, Rachel said, this inability to commit might be why Jane was failing in other areas of her life. “You can’t trust yourself,” Rachel says.

Oh, that’s pretty good, Rachel. That is some quality manipulative sales tactics right there. What a flip, too. Why on earth is the issue about an “inability to commit” instead of what the real problem is: handing over deeply personal shit. To anyone. I don’t trust myself? How about I don’t trust you.

Jane handed over some videos, photos and a letter to her brother where she informs him his girlfriend is cheating on him. Her brother watching this must have been like, what the fuck, Jane? She handed over even more stuff, too and then Rachel was ready to tell her about DOS. Or “The Vow” as she called it.

The Vow was “to grow beyond your excuses and challenge all of your fears” and to accept Rachel as Jane’s teacher and guide, except Rachel would be referred to as “Master” and Jane would be her “slave.” Rachel is black so Jane was like, I’m sorry, what?! But Rachel said she had worked through her emotional reactions to it and was fine with it.

Rachel said she was offering Jane a way to be really happy with her life. The big sell here, undoubtedly, was Rachel herself. The way she seemed to be, so confident and self-assured, was what Jane wanted for herself. This seemed like an opportunity she couldn’t let pass. So, she headed to Albany. Initially for only a few weeks, but she ended up just staying on there.

Step one was make a list of goals. One of them was to lose weight. So predictable, zzzzzz. Rachel, having consulted with her master, thought that was a great place to start, because “it offered a tangible way to see [Jane’s] limitations.” A doorway to growth. I could make a joke about dieting for bikini season being the path to enlightenment, but you get the gist.

Jane had to text and ask for permission for every calorie she ate. So, it was “Master, may I have 92 calories?” Every single calorie, all day. Food was not to be used as a means to escape emotional discomfort. Jane also had to get up at 5 am, take a cold shower, meditate and/or journal, do her real life work and throughout the day be ready for what was called readiness drills. Rachel would text her at any hour of the day or night with a “?” Jane had one minute to respond “RM” for “Ready, master.” Supposedly this was about being accountable to someone and having a strict routine of things that needed to get done throughout the day. And initially, Jane liked it. She said it was like Jedi training.

We cut to actress Allison Mack talking with Keith in what looks like a promo-type video. Allison yaks about how if there was just one thing she could do for the world it would be to help women or some jazz. We see some more footage of Allison where it looks like she is about to cry. Which, not to be mean, is kind of her natural state. She is a very emotional woman.

Jane says in voice over she found Allison to be interesting, self-aware and honest about her own flaws. She doesn’t tell us when she met Allison exactly, but they became buds. Allison was very sweet to her—pampering her almost—and their relationship was like an older sister/younger sister type thing. Allison was Jane’s “Grandmaster” and therefore, Rachel’s master, but she still hadn’t met anyone else in DOS until she met India Oxenberg. She was revealed to be an “auntie” of Jane’s, because Allison was India’s master. A pyramid of masters and slaves.

Jane tells us in voice over she liked India and was very relieved to have somebody to talk to about DOS. We see footage of India cooking, dancing and giggling. She looks so young, a teenager.

In interview footage, India talks about how her background is different, because she’s related to royalty, but some of her family is in show business, too. India knows her background is unusual but also privileged. So, what can she do to use that privilege in a positive contributing way? That was the question for her.

We cut back to Catherine’s house. Catherine tells Mark and Bonnie she spoke to India on the phone and she said basically, back off mom. Her life, her choice. Catherine asked her if she was branded. India said yes and it was wonderful. “I’ve never felt so happy and purposeful in my life,” India added. Catherine holds up her arms like, now what do I do?

Jane Doe tells us in voice over she pretty much felt the same about being in DOS. She was doing something purposeful and meaningful. I don’t mean to be rude, but other than dieting and cold showers what exactly were any of them doing? And how did it impact the world? I’m teasing. I get the point isn’t they were actually doing anything that would impact the world. It’s about how what they were doing made them feel. And it seemed to be effective. At least initially.

At the end of every day Jane had to do a failure form writing about how her failures affected her master, Grandmaster and her community. A failure was considered a “breach.” A betrayal of herself, her morals and her values. Such drama. Failure was like, going over her calorie allotment or forgetting to call her mom. Minor shit.

All the women of DOS were told to do some kind of penance if they had a breach. Standing out in the cold for ten minutes, fasting for the day. Jane began to believe her obedience was the key to greater success in her life. Which is interesting. Had she defined what success was for her? Or was it this abstract thing she’d just one day reach?

We see some texts where Jane is getting scolded by Rachel. In one text Rachel threatens to give her a spanking. (To which I would have said, “Good-bye Albany!” and called it a day.) Jane was also instructed to lose more weight and give more collateral. A lot of collateral. This isn’t what we agreed on, Jane said. Oh, yes it is, Rachel told her. By accepting to be her slave, Jane was agreeing to do whatever Rachel demanded. This is a lifetime commitment, Rachel told her, get used to it.

The whole thing was starting to feel ridiculous. So Jane had a talk with Allison. Jane was so conceited, Allison told her. “Your pride is like cellophane across your eyes and everyone can see it except for you.” You just know Keith said shit like this to her all the damn time. Allison told Jane if she could get beyond her own ego she would discover a whole new world. Jane basically surrendered.

We cut to video footage with Allison who is sitting and chatting with Keith. He is just talking crap about how pain is good and something about having a relationship with human pain. Allison has this look on her face like what she is hearing is so profound.

We then see a quick video clip of a dead-eyed, lank haired India wishing her family a Merry Christmas. It’s disturbing.

We cut back to Catherine who tells us India had texted her. She told her mom her hair was falling out and she hadn’t had her period in a year. Catherine sent her to the doctor who told her she was compromising her health and she needed serious psychiatric care.

Sarah and Nippy are heading out to see Catherine who has asked for their help. Over lunch, Catherine tells them Keith had planned all along to get India into his bed and Allison Mack helped him do it. Sarah promises Catherine they will get India out, but Catherine feels doubtful. Sarah seems to feel really guilty about India, because she was part of the crew that welcomed India into ESP. So what? They were all duped.

Allison meets Keith, 2006

We cut to footage at the gym where Keith has been playing volleyball. Allison is brought in to meet Keith for the first time. They have a seat and, mimicking her body language, Keith asks her why art is important to her. She says everything about herself is wrapped up in art. Keith, paying close attention, asks for more detail. On the verge of tears, Allison says whenever she experiences art–a movie, a painting, whatever–something happens to her “that is so wonderful and exciting. Blissful. Joyful.”

Keith gets down to business. There are methods she can learn to create those types of feelings whenever she wants. They have an intensive for that. What’s it called? he asks his dutiful worshippers, literally sitting at his feet. “Civilization and Humanity,” they tell him. What if art is bogus? Keith asks Allison. What if she could create those joyful feelings for herself whenever she wanted to? It’s like a form of self-condemnation to be dependent on art to create joy, Keith tells her. Allison gets very emotional and like a therapist Keith asks, “Why is this emotional for you?”

Fuck off, Keith. Seriously. He is so full of shit, my God. Art is a way we connect to each other as human beings. There is nothing self-condemning about experiencing joy from it. I know the point isn’t really that. He’s selling her this idea—you’re fucked up, take one of my intensives!—but he is such a sleaze.

All choked up, Allison says she is used to that self-condemnation. At this point, she isn’t even talking about joy and art anymore. Probably as an actress, she is used to feeling emotionally dependent on things beyond her control. It goes with the profession pretty much. I bet Keith intuitively knew how to push those buttons. If it wasn’t this angle he probably could have come up with dozens of others. Actors are so raw sometimes. Allison was fish in a barrel.

She asks him, “Will you give me an EM?” Keith tells her he’s not usually the one to do that. They have an exchange where Allison flirts with him using a sexual innuendo and Keith pretends to blush. It’s too gross to recap.

We cut to Jane telling us Allison is the one who introduced her to Keith. She encouraged Jane to find the opportunity to sit and talk with him. We hear a very short recorded conversation between Jane and Keith where they seem to hit it off. Jane admired him and wanted to be his friend. We hear more of the recording from one of their talks:

Keith: There is that definition of hell, which I’ve come to love.

Jane: Which is?

Keith: Oh, I thought you knew. The definition of hell is you, on the day you’re going to die… meeting the you you could have been.

Jane: Ohh, that’s a really good one.

Ugh, no, it’s not.

Keith: Each moment we fashion that difference.

I hurt myself rolling my eyes too hard.

Jane tells us she felt like she was learning a lot from Keith and the various curriculum she was taking.

Jness

We cut to footage of Nancy Salzman in a Jness seminar reading, “Our understanding of ourselves as women has been muddled, because our culture and our language has been dominated by the male principle.”

Jane was told about Jness by Rachel. “It was offered solely to women to explore how gender influences our role in society,” she tells us. Jness was about teaching women “what female empowerment looks like outside of a male-dominated world.”

We see what looks like a promotional video where a woman by the name of Pam Cafritz tells us a bit more about Jness. She says it’s about understanding the conflict between men and women… Understanding women will need to fight for their point of view… Pam thinks this is new “languaging” for women. Is it, though?

Jness was created using Keith’s ideas (shocker), but Pam was the one who really started the whole group. Jane describes Pam as a “life partner” to Keith. After Pam’s death from cancer, Jane created her memorial video for the ESPian community.

We see video of some women sitting in a circle paying tribute to her memory. Allison makes it all about herself, because she’s an actress and can’t help it. Lauren Salzman says Pam had faith in Keith and his good intentions 100%.

We hear Keith from the video tell the story of how he met Pam 30 years ago on a ski slope. She was 26. We hear her say in voice over she sensed he was different; he talked of all the things he wanted to do in his life. “Follow me,” he said and Pam said, “Okay.”

I know Pam was the daughter of wealthy socialites and had a sizable trust fund. Many millions. That is what enabled her to follow Keith around while he worked to make his grandiose dreams a reality. She probably had the trust fund blues: All possibilities, no imperative. I heard somewhere Keith had her hooked in less than a day. There is also more to the story of the various ways Pam enabled Keith, but that is coming up later. But, what’s most important to know is Pam was utterly devoted to Keith and thought he was an exceptional man.

We see footage of Keith addressing a large group as he talks about how as a child he would read about the heroes of history and wish he could do the kind of things they did. But he has recognized now is such a time “and we’re here. And we are doing it.” He finishes with, “if you believe I have done something good, that’s important, because I always want to earn my authority. Thank you so much.” I included this bit because I think it once again shows how Keith spoke of all the good the ESPian community was doing when all they were actually doing was worshipping at Keith’s alter. And, it’s a good example of how smooth Keith was/is when it comes to his faux humility.

Jane tells us with a bit of awe (a smidge) Keith was “the leader of a philosophical movement where men and women alike are looking at him with admiration, because he really had changed their lives.” But, she tells us, she did not see Keith as a god-type or a guru. Instead, “he felt familiar.”

Keith charmed Jane by telling her she understood things faster than other people and he enjoyed that. Jane felt flattered and special. We hear a recorded conversation where Keith is rapping to Jane about love concluding that “love is a very demanding morality. You know?” “Yeah” says Jane, sounding like she is in a bit of a daze. Or really impressed with what he said. The whole clip sounds like a Professor seducing a naive student. This is not a putdown of Jane at all. In this case, the Professor had hordes of people who worshipped him. Good leverage for a seduction.

It was after a volleyball game Keith let Jane know he wanted a physical relationship with her. But he didn’t sleep with her until she lost a certain amount of weight. They’d have sex in his study on a loft bed. (We see footage of the room which is loaded with books.) Afterwards she’d feel loopy, kind of nauseous and shaky. Keith told her that was because she was really sensitive to his energy. Allison, who knew about their relationship, said he had sex with women to help them overcome their body issues and to help them. Spare me.

Keith let Jane know he was aware she was in DOS. He knew she had given a lot of collateral and he told her he was the head of the group. He also told her Allison was his slave and “technically” he was Jane’s great Grandmaster. Jane wanted to know if that meant he could command her to do stuff. Keith said yes, but he wouldn’t. He went on to explain he created DOS to empower women and mobilize them to apply what they had learned in the outside world. Oh, I give up.

Jane was aware the whole thing could be used to harm women, but she admits to us she wanted to believe. She wanted to believe Keith was a well intended, good guy.

We cut back to Catherine Oxenberg’s house and she is saying she doesn’t know how to get India out of DOS if Keith has this “Sevengali hold over her.” The manipulation is because he presents everything as “human growth, character building, bonding…”

Frank Parlato

Catherine tells Mark in a phone call she has talked to Frank Parlato. Frank worked for Keith at one time and it ended badly. Keith went after Frank legally so he set up a website, “Frank Report,” with the intention of bringing Nxivm down. Partly in revenge I guess, but also because if he managed to bring down Keith, he wouldn’t be harassed through the legal system by him. Keith had a lot of money at his disposal (thanks to the Bronfman sisters’ inheritance) to use lawyers and the courts to go after people he didn’t like.

The website kind of served (and still does) as a gossipy/newsy place to get the latest goings-on in the cult. Catherine told him about DOS which he hadn’t heard about yet. She tells Mark she found him supportive. By telling Frank about DOS, he would write about it on his website and word would get out in the Nxivm community about what was going down.

Sarah decided to share her story with Frank since she could do so anonymously. The intention was to get people to leave Nxivm, to stop DOS recruitment and to prevent more brandings. Jane was one of the people who heard about what had been posted on the website.

Jane was shocked. She had not known anything about branding. She was starting to question what she was involved in. Moreso when she heard about a member of DOS who was assigned the task of seducing Keith. She freaked out.

Keith called her to see if she was okay and Jane said no, she wasn’t. She felt unsafe and that included feeling unsafe with him. She wanted answers. Keith blamed some situations on “different masters [having] different approaches with their slaves.” He told her she needed to respect that. Jane did not find that to be a satisfactory answer. She had more questions, but Keith kept flipping it to being an issue of Jane’s wants versus her fears. “He’s such a good salesman” she says “and the longer I talked to him, the more I realized the depth of the deception.”

Jane talked with one woman she knew was a part of DOS. Jane told her everything. The woman was horrified by what she was hearing and that’s when Jane was able to admit to herself how traumatized she was by the whole experience. Jane asked her what they should do. “We fucking leave,” the woman said.

Jane was scared about her collateral, but she wanted out. The two woman decided to leave together. Jane went for a walk with India before she left. India told her despite what everybody was saying she was still happy to be a part of DOS and felt she was benefiting from it.

We cut to watching Jane on the beach while she tells us how hard it was to lose all she thought was important while she was in DOS, including her friends and sense of community. But she has learned the only authority anyone can have over her life is her own. And it feels good to take that power back.

Back in Malibu. We see a text conversation between India and her mother. India says Frank is being paid to write slanderous things and everyone Catherine is working with are accused criminals. She texts she will no longer be talking to her mom. Catherine says the daughter she knows would never condone the types of things that have been going on in DOS. “This organization has taken my child and I will do whatever it takes to get her back,” Catherine vows. End of episode.

The outro song is Son Lux “Lanterns Lit”. I don’t think it fits the mood of the ending, but no big deal.

Next episode, Episode 5 “Class 1 Data” – Catherine and company go to the New York Times to expose Nxivm and hopefully get the attention of the authorities. We also learn the countermeasures Nxivm attempted to repair Keith’s shitty reputation.