SusanSunflower

Indeed and this last episode raised the question of whether the "demented" wife is just acting-the-part as her (abusive) husband demands ... She does not have that glazed (fugue) look associated with dementia. She's been playing this role of oppressed early-onset wife, for years. Did it begin voluntarily because family members were too inquisitive for safety?

This series is so breathtakingly uneven ... a truly terrible (in terms of what real people might ever ever do) with periodic extreme violence/gore rubbing shoulders with quite reasonable mysteries. A few seasons seemed to have painful themes (the mysteries of country bumpkins and odd-ones) and then others that are very good, even complex with straining credibility beyond all measure. My personal irritation is the bland as milquetoast (often older) character who kills 3 or 4 people to conceal a "secret" ... usually over days and without seeming even a little bit "off" ... and usually without any suggestion of mental illness or dementia. Like some boggling "reality true crime"

(not to rag too hard on Holly Taylor -- who has been given little to work with -- I caught a Murder She Wrote with Kristi McNichol the other night and was reminded of that great era of very young actors who only got better as they matured. To include also Patty Duke and Sally Fields, Peter McNichol -- even the original One Day at a Time girls whose parts were generally undemanding. I confess I don't watch a lot of TeeVee ... but even just within the American's, the actor playing Henry has had some riveting scenes .... Paige not.so.much )

There is no explanation of why the Rajneeshes went to heavily armed, battle-ready quite so quickly ... so in-your-face provocative from the get-go .... again Antelope was 20 miles away with a population of under 40 souls and dwindling ... it was someone's decision (perhaps 1000% Sheela ) and things didn't seem to ever get better. I have no doubt there was plenty of religious bigotry ... and likely if it hadn't been one thing it would have been another ... but when the guns came out, I suspect things changed irrevocably. (day #3 or 4??) Sheela had too many "accomplices" to conveniently blame it (as seems to be popular) on her psychopathology, sociopathy ... particularly since she (to my knowledge) continued to function well otherwise .. Yeah, I'll have to wait for the book ($$$). God knows there have been other "communities". Driving one of the many long roads into town (I live in the mountains in Colorado ), I passed 3 religious communities that have been in existence for a long time, ... and a very large non-blingy non-resort summer camp ... all travelling the same dirt roads and dealing with each other peacefully. (Much of Colorado is staunchly palpably Christian) Yeah, the use and abuse of the homeless -- so many of which seemed genuinely thrilled to start their "new life" -- again heartless and shameless ... That sort of "sociopathy" doesn't vanish and yet Sheela is apparently managing (hopefully) at arm's length, nursing/care homes ... which means I think that she passed criteria to do so, at least the corporate owners ... all too mysterious, like her pardon ... There seem to be many many "friends in high places" throughout this story (on all sides) .... why? to cleanse the memory of a two-bit poseur who smiled beatifically and made everybody believe everything was gonna be allright! eta: My absolute least favorite plot line is "crazy person did crazy things because they're crazy" ... that's my biggest problem in the end with Wild Wild Country ... so little actual "owned" motivation.

when and to what purpose ... to try to clear her own and/or Rajneesh's name or under other auspices? When also matters?

one of the commonalities of "the underwear bomber" and Nidal Hassan (of Fort Hood) was that they were unable to find properly devout and modest women to marry or even enter into courtship/dating relationship. All the women they met weren't interested in them at all. Omar Matten (Orlando) and I think the San Bernardino couple were arranged through matchmaker services. The stories of the european women to traveled to join Jihad in MENA was often one of disillusionment when they discovered they had entered into arranged marriages of servitude and abuse ... scary stuff.... Have Russian mail-order brides vanished as a comodity? Many of those marriages ended badly in "girls gone wild" divorces ...

This documentary series has gotten massive, extraordinary disproportionately admiring media coverage. I suspect Osho still has influential "followers" eager to "clear his name" and excite curiosity to draw in neophytes. There are massive narrative gaps and strange lack of attribution for "facts" .... I've wondered repeatedly when and where Ma Anand Sheela's interview was filmed ... The lawyer/mayor fellow has been working on a book .... soon to be a wannabe best seller ... with the intent of clearing Rajneesh's name and reputation ... Over at netflix the reviews are overwhelmingly positive however many many refer to Rajneesh as Osho, so I suspect positive bias ... ymmv.

yes -- and as mentioned many times the compound was 20 miles outside of Antelope -- and -- the entire episode unfolded, crashed and burned over about 5 years.-- at which point they were able (afaict) this vastly improved and re-zoned property .... I can't find that "she" was ever prosecuted for those "millions embezzled" or how she cleverly managed to stash the money. Obviously money enough to burn and/or walk away from for all parties. There's very little "religious rigor" at all .... yes, I think he was a con man who recognized that the popular "ashram" tourism in India (Eat, Pray, Love, anyone?) could be all the more profitable in English in California ... I never heard a bad thing about Rajneesh and Rajneshpurim and I knewpeople casually who made the pilgrimage and wore the amulets. That he quickly transformed himself into a "Zen Master" without portfolio, Osho is even more dubious and reminiscent of Diamond Mountain's guru/sage/fraud/disaster .... https://info-buddhism.com/geshe_michael_roach-Death-and-Madness-at-Diamond-Mountain.html So much vengeful violent plotting ... disproportionate given the many legal victories scored.... they weren't very good as spy-novel bad guys although I gather they made a lot of people very very sick (Dalles). The attempted assassination by syringe was left very murky indeed as was Ma Anand Sheela's parole ... Rajneesh just selling old wine in new bottle should have been ashamed ... doesn't seem like he took any responsibility .... this film wants to use the old drug addict using addiction as excuse for bad acts or failing to act ... meh,I don't buy it.

yes, I've wondered how Paige would/will take it when she discovers that "quitting" is not really an option ... "what have you gotten me into?" and (broken record) that Henry (still, for now) has the freedom to do whatever he wants. I wonder if big sis is going to enlighten Henry out of spite ....

PHillip may well see in Henry the high school champion he could easily have been -- the smartest, best athlete, destined for a bright future -- whose (for real, golden opporturnity) bright future was to work as an illegal for 20 years so that his son could thrive with opportunities and luxury and touching-great wealth that Phililp could have never imagined. Phillip does not either feel the need to endlessly protect Henry or to over identify with Henry's success -- either feel diminished or flattered by Henry's success. (Some parents are disturbed when their kids "following in their footsteps" meet or exceed their dreams. They get resentful and undermining). Elizabeth -- by virtue of her covering for Paige's mistakes -- seems over-identified, over invested or however you might want to put it. Paige isn't a "natural and may well jeopardize Elizabeth's safety as well as other and the "mission". Elizabeth thought -- like so many first time grandmothers -- that this would be a time of joyful bonding. Many a father has assumed that his son would carry on the family business only to discover it was a bad match -- the heir was miserable and the business suffered.. nuf.

"Cold case" detective series aren't unusual so at first I felt a let down, but there's a different feel and extending pacing to this. (I won't quibble about any nation's or city's police department dedicating generous resources to such investigations,) The time leap and the characters who are not now who they were then and the stories they tell themselves are interesting and potentially the stuff of really good stories if allow time and room to breathe. Auspicious beginning.

It would seem then that Oleg and Phillip's mission is unsurvivable ... The cadre that Elizabeth is part of AFAICT is very small ... it would be relatively easy to eliminate all members and all reference to that traitorous conspiracy. Oleg and Phillip are screwed if they succeed in identifying the conspiracy/cadre/dissident conspiracy, and also, as you say, quite likely if they fail (even if the trigger for the assassination, successful or failed never activated)

huh? from wikipedia: Like Nina before him, Oleg is on borrowed time and has almost used up his 9 lives and second chances, (if he's caught before the resolution of the summit) but wouldn't working at the behest of Arkady/Directorate S, and saving the day by uncovering the evil plot, protect him .after the fact once back in Moscow. The plot would remain a deeply kept secret (the very idea of such a plot being being "unthinkable") ... I'm not sure what fate would befall Philip,although concealing information to "save" Elizabeth would be (death sentence) compromising. I think the likelihood of Elizabeth telling Phillip anything (unless the plot is activated) is almost nonexistent. As I said last episode, "I could tell you but then I"d have to kill you." for realz. Elizabeth could unburden herself to Phillip wrt the artist and that mission at any time without ever mentioning the dead-hand plot, since (I think) surveillance and intelligence gather wrt the Summit is a known shared major KGB mission. Similarly she could probably "share" issues wrt Paige if she were willing to admit there were any. (Philip is likely to keep pressing but I doubt E. going to vomit up all of her problems to him, rather than giving him real "stuff" to satisfy his curiosity and maybe send him into Mr. fix-it mode. What happens now to DeadHand, Elizabeth having failed to get the "lithium-based radiation sensor" from General Rennhull is anyone's guess. Wiki says they are related, but the linkage between the two is unclear to me except they said so ... He didn't have the sensor on him when he died and nothing I can see to link his death to it, even if the death is considered highly suspicious and even summit related. Elizabeth making another secret emergency trip might make some watchers suspicious of a link between the death and the meeting, but not what link and probably not ring bells with Phillip or Oleg about "the nature of the plot" eta: Certainly Philip and Oleg could be in great danger from Elizabeth and the other members of the dead-hand cadre if their mission were suspected.

It occurred to me that Elizabeth will spend the rest of her life in jeopardy whether or not it becomes "necessary" to kill Gorbachev, just for having been a member of a tiny cadre who developed a contingency plan to do so .... Gorbachev didn't die (and I assume the plan would have been to make it look like a natural death or something that could pass as a natural death -- rather than some public shooting) -- but that doesn't remotely mean that Elizabeth (and others) would survive the plot being somehow discovered ... I'd imagine most (sane) people would have opposed decapitating the regime ... Imagine trying to explain to Paige that Elizabeth was killed because she plotted to kill Gorbachev ... Although Yeltsin didn't become President until after the fall of the USSR, he is probably due to make an appearance ... (wiki) ""During the late 1980s, Yeltsin had been a candidate member of the Politburo, and in late 1987 tendered a letter of resignation in protest. No one had resigned from the Politburo before. This act branded Yeltsin as a rebel and led to his rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure."" Can't wait to see all the characters react to that ....

oh yeah, Trevor Eve is always an excellent bad guy but the voice of the Tom Courtney who created my first "rush to imdb" moment ... then actor who played "Shrimpie" on Downton ... I don't recall ever seeing the woman playing the victim's mother was remarkable (particularly as she revealed eventually what a terrible mother/person she had been ... she looked like such a sweet grieving old lady ... and her son's childhood was a living hell. correction: Walker was paired with Robson Green (as Creagan) in Touching Evil 1997-1999. Wire in the Blood was later with Hermoine Norris, great actor, whose character did try to have more than a working relationship with Green's character Tony Hill. As Jane Tennyson's dalliance with one of her subordinates caused more fallout than would have probably resulted from male superior and a female subordinate, so many cop shows suggest a flagrantly grab-ass environment ...bad role modeling for young men and women but particularly women who may not realize how often it's the woman who is expected to quit and find another position elsewhere. (in the #metoo era, young men need warning that what looks like "easy pickings" can also have really back career repercussions."

Gobachev might "give away the dead hand" but Yeltsin would appall her and it would be hard to reconcile the free-fall spiking the the government mis-management versus corruption or malign US influence dilemma. It was pretty shocking ... not just how fast things fell apart (with plenty of help from fire-sale opportunists) but also how far ... I listened to this BBC report a few days ago about 1992 (very short) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0634tz1 -- utter chaos

and that's when Paige would learn that there's no resigning and going back to her old life ... would she submit quietly or would she need to be terminated?

The mainstream (including at the Centre) support the current regime and Gorbachev in usual unwavering loyalist fashion (even if they privately think his reforms are too much too fast or have other misgivings. ) Gaining control of nuclear weapons programs/arsenals and the "arms race" was generally seen as a good thing by most people because of $$$ and the 40 years of increasing stability under MAD ... (The "dead hand" I think may have been rumored rather than being a known "checkmate" and so "giving it up" was probably not much considered (and not seen as a threat to anyone who did not consider that Gorbachev might give it away as a bargaining chip. ) Remember, it's far from certain that Gorbachev WILL give this away, and unless and until he does, Elizabeth's special mission will not be activated. Which individuals -- exactly -- can be trusted to get-on-board a last-minute hail-Mary assassination of Gorbachev is the sticking point. Elizabeth's renegade team sees Claudia as iffy in this regard, even if her reaction after-the-fact would probably be predictably stalwart. Similarly, Claudia will reliably support Elizabeth in this secret mission, because she is, in fact, reliably stalwart. eta: Is the artist/patient's husband supposed to somehow provide Elizabeth some early-warning about Dead Hand? This seems to be a routine unrelated pre-summit, Centre approved surveillance

and nobody really expected such a mundane story line and few are finding this aspect of the story very interesting ... nor is the mother/daughter evolution being shown (or even "told") effectively. Paige and E. have now been in this mother/daughter apprenticeship dynamic for 6 years and Paige seems largely frozen in time and still extremely dependent on "Mom" ... on practical procedural instruction and emotionally ... I don't see that the writers are emphasizing this relationship because if they were we would have been shown more and have more reason to care. (They could make this a compelling story threat, but it really isn't. On the face of it, E. is failing Paige and Paige is simply failing. Since I never developed a reason to care much about Paige, and E. is such a chilly character, this is less interesting than it might be assumed to be ... given multiple seasons of Paige)

One of the things that I first noticed about Nicola Walker back in "Wire in the Blood" days was her ability to play a competent professional woman (police) with none of that odd approval seeking or secretly-in-love-with-her-boss undertones or playing on her looks which were never referenced (the audience was allowed to notice something that was never mentioned). In this role, she's almost unrecognizable. There's none of the hardness or impending impatience/snark I felt in other roles. She regards her co-workers with affection and again flirts with no one. She loves her job (the puzzle), wants resolution but is not on a mission-from-god and is not angry-all-the-time. In Last Tango, it was her genuine "how did I get here" puzzlement over the story of her life (which in hindsight seemed like a series of preventable calamities). It was part of how she remained a largely (if not entirely) sympathetic character throughout. last tango spoiler

Really liked this tonight (U.S. PBS masterpiece mystery) .... large great cast and Nicola Walker shapeshifiting magnificently ... Apparently there are 18 episodes in all (so far in 3 seasons) ... if feels like an unexpected treasure ... hooray, something to look forward to on Sunday nights.

thank you, it's been bugging me.

okay, that make better (if convoluted) sense ... does the dohicky even relate to deadhand or is it just a mcGuffin (some ridiculous reason characters do something)

yes, I hate this morphine/private nurse thread ... morphine does not work that way and being a registered nurse is not really something you can fake ... rather insulting to nurses, imho. reminds me: How soon (or far away) is this summit? Weeks, months, next year? also, Yes, that was my impression ... and that E was inexplicably given no cover story to feed Claudia.

If I had been Paige and witnessed my mother kill someone and leave their body in the street, I would be looking for a story (be it ever so tiny) in the newspaper and/or in the scuttlebutt at the food pantry ... apparently (we don't know) there was none or Paige didn't care and/or hear anything ... ever. The sailor/mugging is hinky for a lot of reasons. Again (although we don't know how long ago it was -- or whose doing the surveillance these days) nothing to rouse Paige's curiosity unless she actually reads the paper and watches the news and realizes the location is ... and oh, the photo looks like that guy ... (we've gotten no explanation either way) The body in the park should get some media attention because of who he was ... the cops will be able to tell there was a struggle meaning another person present and, again, just hinky -- even if it looks like suicide -- (assuming they find the body as E. left it.) If the crew vanish the evidence, a not-even-brilliant Paige might be surprised there was nothing ... assuming she's not still catatonic and babbling.