Tetraneutron

I think it was just that Elizabeth always went by her full name and no one ever called Philip Mikhail.

That has not been established except on these boards. She figured out her what her mother did with Jackson. And more importantly, she was able to get off the train and back to DC unmolested. And what would she "squawk" about? Unless Stan goes after her personally, no one else in the FBI has the remotest idea she's involved and all she knows is her parents went to Canada with wigs and false names, all of which they ditched. Stan knows she knew about her parents but not that she was ever involved in spying herself. And if he's protecting Henry out of loyalty to Philip, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility he'll protect Philip's other child.

I liked it. But was this the only episode in the whole show where no one gets murdered? Everyone's unhappy, which is how you know it's a good show. Oleg will be in jail for the rest of his life. Stan is a laughingstock at work and will slowly destroy his marriage. Philip and Elizabeth spent their whole lives fighting for nothing. All the Paige haters here should be happy. She ends the show miserable and cut off from her family and life forever. One thing that didn't make sense to me was the FBI knows about Philip and Elizabeth. That means that Henry won't be able to live out a normal American life. Even if the FBI believes that Henry and Paige were completely innocent, how do they just leave him alone? And what about Paige? Does Stan protect her? I suppose so? The implication was she takes off the wig/fake identity, but she's in the safehouse? So she doesn't have plausible deniability and is just waiting to be arrested? What did Elizabeth's dream mean? Any theories?

Yes, it exists (in the world of the show). What would have likely happened was "Wendy" would have given some bs excuse about him not getting the job after all and disappeared. Or just disappeared. Maybe killed him like she does everyone else. This isn't the first time P or E got info from people by lying to them. Same reason they let Philip walk away, I suppose. Either the aggregate work they do is still valuable enough, it would jeopardize the whole operation to kill them, Paige is too important, or they're stringing the Jenningses along and will use them for their own purposes later. We'll find out. What I thought was interesting about that scene was (and the show didn't really address this) Elizabeth just found out she's being lied to. The higher-ups see her as a useless manipulatable pawn, just like she sees Jackson. A dummy who will blindly follow orders without thinking for herself. There were a lot of parallels in those plots. In each case Jackson or Elizabeth was supposed to do their jobs without asking questions. But they did and it ended badly for Jackson (although it's the only time the audience doesn't see him as a joke). Now Elizabeth's just another Jackson to Claudia and the directorate? Does that change how Elizabeth sees her job? No, I don't think most people could smother a loved one with a pillow.

It's preparing her to be ideologically Russian, to see the world as Elizabeth and Claudia do and to neither be loyal to America, see it as her homeland, or see it as a good place to live. Based on her conversation with Elizabeth, that succeeded very well. I don't. His goal this season has been to stop Elizabeth from blowing up the world, not punishing her for wanting a different life than his. He doesn't want to involve the American government, which would doom him and his whole family. This has never been about politics for him. Elizabeth was right when she said he was in the wrong line of work. I don't think so. I think she was reminded about how much it destroyed Philiip and wanted assurances that Paige wouldn't end up that way. I still think the time jump is a narrative cheat because we never saw HOW Paige went from loyalty and admiration to her mother to being in. Her spy arc is actually sort of like Gregory's, I think. General do-gooder who yearns to be part of a cause but when it absolutely comes down to it, isn't really Russian. Interesting that they're bringing back the illegal from one of the first episodes but they aren't following up on all the info they got about the last illegal they knew about, William Crandell. They also got a lot of process details from him. Does anyone else think it's weird that Aderholt is getting all the info about the spies but as a character he's still just an exposition device for Stan? We've had the fakeout tease so many times of Stan seeing a picture of the Jenningses and figuring the whole thing out that I doubt it will ever happen. I bet he dies because his death would be the most tragic for the viewer.

I dodn't see in the show where Elizabeth is remotely, at all, threatened by Henry. She mostly ignores him and has washed her hands of him, in this episode she was amused by him and desperately tried to make an emotional connection with him. If anything, Philip is far more of an independent person than Henry. Philip is going against his culture, country, and training to make an entirely new life for himself, one where he risks getting killed. Henry is basically a male Kimmy with more street smarts. He's the typical All-American kid, 80s version. Besides, Elizabeth respects loyalty and duty and doing your job more than anything else. We've seen repeatedly that she sneers at anything that's fun or decadent or frivolous. Of weakness. I think a lot of people here are projecting heavily onto Paige.

The Russians don't micromanage every aspect of their lives. The point is for them to be real Americans, with jobs and money and SSNs and taxes and friends and acquaintances and all the other stuff. And it doesn't really complicate their lives. We haven't seen it getting in the way of anything. I thought it was interesting that in the first season there was a scene where Paige told her mother she knew she smoked and we find out this episode that Henry, who's a lot older now than Paige was, had no idea. The post-phone-call scene showed he's perceptive, so I suppose it was done to underscore how disconnected he is from Elizabeth, how much they aren't in each other's lives. The cancer line? Totally about how fully American he is. Nothing screams late 80s upper-class American teenager than being self-righteous about cigarettes. I disagree that Paige doesn't pick up on her parent's tension. We saw last week that she does.

The promos for next week are completely misleading. No spoilers, but they have to be. Love how everything's actually ending. I don't know if this is deliberate, but every Soviet just seems so defeated. Elizabeth is desperate and stressed and Claudia was incredibly whatever about a deep-cover illegal being captured. And the Jenningses being so blase about the travel agency emergency on Thanksgiving. I can believe Philip wouldn't have been sent back to the USSR because that would raise suspicion, possibly make Paige not love the Soviets (and they're trying to sell her really hard) and up until this episode he WAS still sort of working for them. The Kimmy tapes were valuable. And I think Elizabeth mentally checked out of the marriage. Philip has been reluctant about all this for years. Plus she has her mini me. I can't bring myself to care about Stan or Aderholt even though they're the most dynamic characters at this point. I know we're supposed to think Renee is going to blow up Aderholt's big operation but I think they're doing something else with that. It's been too telegraphed. It would be funny if not only Stan's friend but his wife were both deep cover Russians.

That's the problem with time jumps. They let the narrative cheat. They're trying to sell it as Paige wants something to believe in + the general leftiness she displayed working at the food pantry + she wants her mother's approval + the entire Soviet spy community is working her pretty hard. Besides, WE know the USSR is collapsing and a lot of people back then HOPED it was collapsing and Gorbachev was opening it up but it was far from a known fact. There's always been this layer of dramatic irony to this show. WE know Philip and Elizabeth are destroying themselves and everyone they care about and it's ultimately for nothing. (Although if Elizabeth survives the show I bet she's pretty happy about how much the Russians own the US President). But they don't know it. They, especially Elizabeth, think this all ends with the communists victorious and they're living the good life in Odessa.

They FINALLY addressed that in the show. That Paige has to be familiar with the stuff Elizabeth does and be OK with it. Even if she won't be doing that herself. Although you would think if the job is to get Paige secured in a high-ranking state department job, you would think they'd want her to study and make friends at Georgetown. Not hanging out with her mother and an old lady learning how to make Russian peasant food (which is a lot like American peasant food of a few generation ago). I'm not sure where they're going with Philip and his business. Are they trying to make a point about how he/the audience shouldn't idealize America too much, that the American dream is hard and a lot of entrepreneurs fail and end up with nothing? Is it some kind of thematic thing? This episode was mostly place setting. Nothing happened, but pieces were moved for the coming weeks. I can't make myself care about Stan or his girlfriend. And I reiterate my one complaint about this otherwise excellent show: YOU CAN'T JUST GO AROUND MURDERING PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY NOT HIGH-RANKING, CONNECTED WHITE MEN. THE POLICE WILL NOT JUST SHRUG AND SAY, "EH, SUICIDE." I'm glad Paige asked about that. Finally. A General AND a senior-level security person? /it should be a concern.

Because part of Elizabeth's job is propaganda and recruitment. We've seen her CONSISTENTLY lie to new recruits about the nature of the job and the ideology behind it. She landed Gregory by pretending to be a civil rights activist and hiding or lying about all the unsavoury stuff they did and introducing it gradually. And she lied about the USSR's not-great record in that area. Same with Hans and apartheid. Then once they're in deeper, she peels off layers of the veil. Same with Paige. She doesn't start with the horrible stuff right away but introduces it gradually. And thestuff about being cut off from other agents was also a lie. Not only does Elizabeth have Norm and Marilyn and all her other recruits, she had Leigh Anne and Emmet, fellow spies with whom she hung out socially. I like how this episode addressed that Paige will work for the CIA or something and have a safer spy path than Elizabeth does. But she probably still needs to understand field work, to be deeply devoted, to know what they do. And while she wouldn't be murdering people if she had a job like Stan does, she would definitely need to honeytrap.

Deliberately withholding morphine and getting Glenn to do the same is pretty torturey to me. And fake nurse Elizabeth didn't care about Erica becoming an addict, she cared about her building a tolerance, which would worsen the pain in the long run. The point is Elizabeth will bond with her and learn to appreciate beauty and then Erica will hardcore suffer. Just like Elizabeth's friend the last two seasons. Also, now that we know Claudia likes classical music, we know that everyone on this show has a hobby or interest in something besides spying and communism, except Elizabeth.

When Claudia first brought up the second gen illegals program back in season 2, she specifically said the point was to get them jobs in the US government. That they wouldn't put themselves in danger sneaking around and doing clandestine stuff like Elizabeth does. She'd still have to be comfortable with it though. So E lying about spies using sex was just another way she's working Paige. We keep seeing that Elizabeth sees everyone in her life through the prism of her ideology and it always blows up in her face. And fire the guy for losing one client? You people are harsh! Besides, the point was this marked the beginning of the end of travel agency being a viable middle-class career. Philip is going down whether he becomes a real American or not. And who was Stavos? I know they've shown in the past that some of the employees at the agency are also spies - was Stavos one of them? The creators said in an interview that this season will explore that Elizabeth feels closer to and identifies more with Paige, and Philip with Henry. That this is a normal family dynamic, apparently. I don't understand why everyone is so bothered that Elizabeth is neglecting Henry, who is healthy and doing well, but no one minds that Philip is neglecting Paige, who is going to be psychologically destroyed at best and murdered at worst. Why is no one mad at HIM for neglecting his child? And even after an explicit conversation between two characters that show Paige is doing well as a spy, we still insist on seeing her as incompetent? So how is Elizabeth going to get her lithium guidance system now? And I assume her assignment this season, with Glenn Haskard, involves torturing his terminally ill wife, whom she will bond with so feel really bad when she has to cause her excruciating pain. How many times can we see Elizabeth make a friend with a mark only to have to destroy them and feel sad? Her life as a spy must be getting monotonous. Flirt with mushy older men, wear wigs, make friends with a professional woman her age, ruin that person, hang with Claudia who honestly seems less fun than Gabriel. She doesn't even have a real marriage any more. The only new thing in her life is somehow convincing her daughter that being a spy is as wholesome as a church mission trip.

This doesn’t make sense. Paige wasn’t chosen over Henry. The plan was always that they’d both be chosen. Paige went first because she was older, that’s all. But when Claudia brought it up at the end of season 2 it was always that all second gen illegals would be groomed. That was the whole point.

Yes, there is another explanation - Elizabeth was a mother protecting her child. It was irrational (we've discussed that) but 100% understandable. We saw it before, in the Pilot, when Philip beat up the gross guy at the mall. That was the point of the scene. Elizabeth, spy extraordinaire whose only loyalty is to the cause, did something that made her bad at being a spy because she put her daughter, in the moment, above her job. If it was about getting the ID back she would have pickpocketed him. The dramatic tension about Paige joining Elizabeth's world is how much she values her family over her beliefs. It raises the stakes for Elizabeth. What is she willing to sacrifice? How much does she really believe in what she's doing? We've seen over the last few seasons that everything is getting to her, having to destroy the YoungHees (one day I will look up the surname of that family) and then the Mozorovs, almost release a horrific bioweapon into the US, definitely release a horrific bioweapon in Afghanistan. And now her daughter. Is Elizabeth willing to destroy her? Does she even realize that's what she's doing? I don't think the Center takes personal feelings into account when running their big illegal spy program as an act of war. Just saying. They won't be turned off because Henry doesn't wanna. The tension with Henry is that, in positive and negative ways, he's the most stereotypically American person ever. If he's not looking for a cause, they'll manipulate or browbeat him until he is. That was the whole point of the second gen illegal program. What if the Center had access to the children of Russians, who could be raised as people loyal to Russia but pass every background check possible? Who are the genetic product of the greatest spies in the country AND raised by the greatest spies in the country. (That's not how it works but that's how the Russians thought). They aren't giving that up especially not when Henry, if turned, would make an amazing spy. He's not only at the fancy school but he's sneaky and crafty and good at getting what he wants and doesn't care about rules. If Jared snapping and shooting his family didn't turn the Russians off the second gen illegals program, then the fact that a kid would rather party is CERTAINLY not going to.

I'm going to have to disagree with that. Paige did not bring that creep's behaviour on herself by not being tough enough. Gross men use their power to prey on women from all economic backgrounds. A diner waitress (if you assume that diner waitress = working class and not like many kids from Paige's neighbourhood don't have part-time service jobs, which I don't) is just as vulnerable to creepy men, probably more actually since the kinds of exchanges we saw with Paige and Hanley occur because Hanley could use his power to get what he wanted, and working-class people have less power. Saying it's the kind of behaviour that anyone should have been able to shut down by being cool and sassy enough blames the woman and is commonly used to attack women the person doesn't like or think is deserving. And it had nothing to do with "knowing about" men. You don't think suburban high school girls know about creepy men. For heaven's sake we saw Paige have to deal with a creepy man in the very first episode, when she was an adolescent. In general, acting like men only prey on women who they don't respect, and it's on women to exude this respectability by being some version of tough and cool just excuses the man. Also, I think the show was showing us that Paige made a minor rookie mistake, on her first real spy mission. Not good, but low-stakes and not at all the kind of thing that sets her apart from any other trainee. Yeah, Elizabeth probably would have been harsher to someone else, but I really don't think the show is trying to show us that Paige is fundamentally unsuited to spy work. We've seen every major spy character screw up, ways both big and small.

I agree she had to get the ID back but she could have pickpocketed him easily. Killing a Naval officer who works for the VP is a sure way to get the might of the powerful US government on your tail. But I've been saying the same thing since the show killed Amador so clearly it's just something I'm going to have to accept because television.

As we've seen the past year or so in the news, yes, men with even a tiny bit of power were creepy and horrible to pretty much any woman. It is entirely sad and entirely believable that a government employee would do that.

Keidrich Sellati is still in the opening credits fwiw. Since there are so many dramatic possibilities for the character AND he represents America in the Jennings family, something extremely important in a show about a marriage I have to assume they're building to something with him. Whether E trains Paige or not isn't her decision. It's the Center's. And it makes perfect sense. Paige isn't some rando they've turned like Gregory or Marylin, she's the most valuable asset we've seen on the show. If they pull this off, they could have an in at the highest levels of government, with someone smart and talented and committed. And right now, this potentially incredibly valuable asset is only as involved as she is out of admiration for, and loyalty to, her mother, and liking the extreeeemly sanitized and false image of communism and the state of the USSR, that she gets, entirely, from her mother. (The show dances around this, but even liberal hippies who work at food pantries hated communism and the Soviets). If they're going to draw her in, it has to be through her mother, by emphasising all the things Paige wants (the bonding with her badass, brave, mother) and not working with a Gabriel and being ordered to follow security guards or ruin the lives of nice people like the YoungHees, or have sex with strangers. That would shatter the illusion. Philip is such a passive character and he's become even more so, to me. He's spent the whole show ambivalent about what they do and what they believe but he's never actually done anything. Even with the pseudoquitting, he's not taking a stand, he's just stopping, because the Centre lets him for some reason. Does he not care about the world, he just hates the danger and frustration of the spy life? Does he really want to defect like in the beginning of the show? He's a smart guy - does he think it's possible to have it both ways? I don't know and the show refuses to tell me. Also, not where I should post this since it's not really about this episode, but I find the gender politics fascinating. On most prestige dramas, the husband is the criminal who goes all in and risks everything and is great at their job and the wife is wringing their hands in the background. And people haaaaate the wife. HATE. They see her as a useless bitch who lives off the spoils of the husband's brains and work and risk and just whines about it while contributing nothing. Look at how people saw Betty Draper, Carmela Soprano, Skylar White. But flip the genders, and people cheer for the husband and hate the wife, still.

@jjjThe black guy was Norm. He's a low-level operative, like Hans was. We've seen him before. The blonde lady is Marilyn, ditto. They're KGB, but not super-secret Stop the Washington Summit level like Elizabeth. Good point about how old Paige is. It's weird. College is when kids pull away from their parents. We've seen Paige rebel against her parents the whole show, by going behind their backs and becoming a Christian. Now that she's an adult she's her mother's mini-me? That whole scene at Aderholt's dinner seemed like she was 5 years younger. Also, what is the deal with her school? I know I'm the only who cares about this but what exactly are the Russians grooming her for? Shouldn't they be focused on getting her close to powerful people, not sneaking around bars watching randos?

I don't know how the show will end but it definitely won't be with Philip (or anyone) living the All-American suburban dream life. I hadn't thought of that. It would be interesting if, after being 100 % devoted to the cause and expecting the same from Philip, getting Paige in danger is what gets her to crack. And Paige didn't really goof up. She kept her cool and gave the guy a fake everything, and no one expects a teenager to get it 100% right on the first try. That's always what the show's been about - their marriage and what they're willing to sacrifice for it. Philip has always done everything for his family and now he's seriously considering putting the safety of the whole world (and his 3 children) over Elizabeth. As for Paige the show has been pretty clear she had been heavily propagandized about the USSR, coupled with the typical ignorance of any American kid, even a smart and politically astute one like Paige. Besides, you know who's the most ignorant about the USSR on this show? Elizabeth. She has some serious rose coloured glasses going on. I expect the tension this season revolves around how much Elizabeth reveals to Paige about what they're fighting for and what they really do. Also, look how grossed out Paige was by one creepy guy using his small amount of power to intimidate a cute college student. How is she going to handle honeytrapping.

OMG that was a good episode. Again, the Soviets are way too free with the murder. It’s not ideological. If you randomly stab a guard at the damn Naval Observatory, the IS GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE THAT SERIOUSLY AND PUT ALL IT’S MIGHY INTO TRYING TO FIND WHO DID IT. They aren’t going to shrug and say “Random street crime.” It’s like the show doesn’t know spies aren’t supposed to draw attention to themselves. Also I don’t get what they’re doing with Paige. I get Elizabeth and Claudia are trying to get her acclimated to bring a spy but wasn’t the whole point of recruiting Paige that she’s and honest to God American? Shouldn’t her focus be on getting into Georgetown and then working deep cover for the State Department, not being a mini-Elizabeth? I mean it’s still possible that’s where they’re going with her. I love that for the first time Philip and Elizabeth have different goals. That he’s trying to stop her. I still don’t get how the Centre just let him quit though. That ... doesn’t happen. You would think at minimum they’re monitoring him and they know about the meeting with Oleg. Boring Stan is still boring.

That's 100% the opposite of how Philip's been written. He loves his family. He hates his life but puts up with massive amounts of shit for them. The last thing he would so is hide money from them, ESPECIALLY because as a deep cover spy getting big foreign banks involved in his life would be GALACTICALLY DUMB. And he CERTAINLY doesn't hate his daughter. That's straight-up wishful thinking from the fandom, who for some reason insists on seeing Paige as a whiny teenage brat stereotype. Also, does anyone think the time jump is a big narrative cheat? The tension with Paige was always that as an American, she could never approve of what her parents do. Last season they showed her becoming comfortable with communism ideologically, and admiring her mother as a badass, but her parents were still hiding 99% of what they actually do. Now we're expected to believe she's comfortable with all the murder and honeytrapping? Same with Henry. A second-gen illegal getting into a fancy prep school is everything a Soviet true believer could dream of. But no one's talking about working him like they did Paige? The Center is just going to leave him alone? I know I complain about that all the time but it bugs me. If Henry went to that school he wouldn't be living the all-American dream, there would be some Tuan type deep under cover manipulating him into being friends with a Senator's kid. And P and E would be part of the plan, not cheering on his hockey games.

Destroying the printer was a reference to the movie "Office Space" which starred the actor who played Greg.

Loved the monologue. Having a comic hosting is the only time the monologues are worth it. I wonder why last year the Cubs were in two sketches and got to do that and this year the Astros just stood there. Also, TWO separate sketches where the punchline was about cheesy 80s PSAs aimed at kids. Why? What's that for? And Good Neighbor continues be terrible. Hey, remember that thing from when we we kids? Let's reference it!