All of this really sounds like a stretch, but I'm desperately trying to find something that explains why everyone seems to be so insensitive toward Marina and disrespectful of her marriage. I don't want it to just be bad writing, and I don't think they're all evil, but I could be wrong.
The charitable way for me to describe it is that this has run for so long, that small mistakes/oversights early on in how character's were characterized, scenes played out, or dialogue was written may now contradict or add confusion when compared to current scenes. Not because the story has been purposefully retconned, but because pages written way back when weren't future proofed. As such, it's really hard if not impossible to perfectly explain everything because there's contradictions that have no in-universe explanations. Lack of reactions, dialogue that isn't consistent... These are something that if you had the luxury of editing a story once completed, you'd catch.
I think we can rule out crossdressing, because a) when the idea of Andrew posing as Nikos' wife is first proposed, Marina has no objections and even finds it amusing. She's even still joking around about it when she first sees Andrew dressed as Elena.
I think this might be an example of that. I firmly believe this dialogue was written to indicate Andrew had never crossdressed before. But this dialogue also shows her completely unfazed by the idea of Andrew acting and being fully immersed in a role. And later, what she's upset about is that him staying in the role for longer will ruin their honeymoon. If the problem Andrew had months ago was being lost in a role, you'd think Marina would immediately have some concerns. If not for the first night, since it was impromptu, him suddenly committing to an extended time in the role should have set off every alarm bell. When she arrived the next morning, you'd think she'd immediately bring up the events in the past, or demand they leave now, if this method acting problem was something that's happened before.
But she doesn't. In fact, she doesn't bring up what happened before at all. Not even a "You're always doing stuff like this!" or "I can't believe you're doing this again!"
It's hard for me to tell if this is intentional. Because this seems to be in contradiction to Marina's later concerns that current events are similar to the one months ago.
So, either:
This is intentional. This means, Marina was unconcerned about acting the part and didn't try to stop it early because this method acting problem has never come up before. As such, the incident that happened months ago has to do with the claim that Andrew was drugged and can't remember committing to be Elena for longer.
Or
This is not intentional. The earlier scenes were written more as an excuse for why Marina storms off and leaves Andrew vulnerable to more feminization. Something method acting
was intended to be the incident in the past, which is why Marina is concerned later that this seems familiar, and why Aphrodite implies this later.
If it's the former, then this is really tricky. This means, whatever Andrew did months ago was 1) Something reasonably forgivable, 2) Had a believable excuse that wasn't method acting, 3) has to do with Andrew getting caught up in something that he claims he didn't intentionally get caught up into.
Note, this doesn't mean what happened months ago wasn't
caused by method acting. It's just that whatever it was, neither Andrew nor Marina seem to think it had to do with method acting. So for example, under this scenario, it's unlikely that Andrew had taken on the role of a drug dealer/abuser/other unsavory type and "gotten too deep", because the evidence is suggested Andrew and Marina don't think of the incident as being acting related.
BUT, it might be possible that neither
realize it was acting related. For example, if Mr Orlov had secretly drugged Andrew as part of some kind of acting exercise, and Andrew started playing a role. And the next day, when the drugs wore off, he couldn't remember meeting Mr. Orlov and doing the exercise, so he just had the flimsy excuse of feeling drugged and having lost time. Which Marina forgave, but still found suspicious.
I personally find that rather contrived and unsatisfying. It'd be a lot of coincidences and convenient omissions. And even as part of the "intentionally written" path, still makes a lot of the character behavior/characterization seem odd.
I'm generally more inclined to believe the second path, that this was not intentional. This tidies things up a bit, where Marina should have been more vocal in stopping the Elena dressup earlier, but wasn't due to it just slipping her mind. If the incident was really a method acting situation gone slightly too far, that can explain why Marina was willing to forgive Andrew, but also is concerned he might be lost in a role currently and not seeing things right.
If Marina was aware of the lost in the role problems, this could also explain (if you believe Nikos and daughters are intentionally feminizing Andrew) how Nikos and the daughters think they'll get away with feminizing Andrew, as they might have heard from Marina/Marina's mother about Andrew's method acting problems. I'm not sure I'd completely buy that: If the end goal is to ensure your final "product" is reliable, I wouldn't think you'd be so hands off and "hope for the best" on the mental aspect. Although, I suppose you could argue Nikos has certainly not been hands off, and all this extra affection and immersion is to double down on trying to trigger that "lost in the role" state.
...Yeah, after all this analysis, still clear as mud
