sistermagpie

I remember someone saying that everytime they cut to a Paige/Matthew scene they felt like they were suddenly watching a high school play and I admit, I see it. Though there is something believable in them both being kind of bland people who are into each other because they're conveniently located and the correct gender and age. Although it's hilarious how he unintentionaly makes things uncomfortable by asking obvious questions about Nina. Like how dare he suggest that spies you're playing can play you back! He really does manage to find so many people willing to do that emotional labor for him. Philip offers to have his date over for dinner to make it easier for Stan. Then there's Tori the EST woman who, annoying as she is, is willing to call Stan for a date and just keep offering herself. He's a super easy target. Yes! And he knows he's there to do just that but he's just soooo reuctant to do it. And she's so gleeful when she gets him to do it. She's so cute in that scene. I love the moment when she starts to dance and she's obviously questioning hersef about whether she looks cool or not. She's performing even harder than Philip is, because she's really invested. Yes! I think it certainly makes him feel guilty, but honestly doesn't seem to have any great insight into him personally. Even when he tells her something true about himself, it's usually with the purpose of getting her on his side and it just works. Like it sometimes strikes me how transactional the Clark/Martha relationship always is. Somebody recently even described the two of them as working things out collaboratively and I thought that was nuts. He only cares what she wants to the extent that he has to work around it to get what he needs. But Martha, too, does a lot of quid pro quo. Like the first time he spends the night she basically lays out how she loves him and will do all this stuff for him...so he needs to prove something by staying the night. Likewise, when he proposes, he does it because he knows he has to give her something big to get something big in return. Martha is always, on some level, aware that her power in the relationship comes from what she's giving him and doing for him. Yeah, I think he gets a chance to help a teenager with a lying parent. Also I feel like it makes him think about being a teenager himself in some ways, how he was manipulated. Of course he sees that with Paige too, but with Kimmy he's not her father. I wonder sometimes if on some level he gets that in some ways he's a stunted adolescent since his development was taken over by the Centre around that time. His character, Jim, is able to sort of grow up with her in ways that the real Jim never would have.

Takes toothpick out of mouth: "It's me, Lazlo!" The other line that cracked me up every time was the "other immigrants who are entering this country illegally."

Totally worth watching it 3x!!!!

Hurray! The different endings rumors are truuuuuee! Love Rosemary's Baby, and my favorite part was the Guide imitating Laura Louise's sticking her tongue out at Rosemary/Nadja. Perfectly done!

Nailed it! I'm going to miss all these guys and I can't wait to see what they all do next. Especially Harvey--loved him since Huge and he actually made that Kid Cowboy outfit work especially well!

Right?! It's so weird to me. Music has always been tied to fashion, but the 80s was maybe one of the most obvious decades for that. I look at Matthew and can't begin to guess what kind of music he's into, yet he's supposed to be into music enough that he briefly imagined himself in a band? He looks like he's wearing the same fashion he wore in elementary school in the 70s. Who's even cutting his hair like that? Yet he's okay wearing eyeliner? That was always a big thing to me that Stan was presented as exactly as subtly racist as a suburban guy of his age in that time would be in polite company....yet we're supposed to believe he lived as a Nazi for 3 years? I'm not saying he actually is the guy he pretended to be, but that ought to be informing a lot of his interactions in some way. He talks about them being violent but leaves out the bigotry that is the basis for the whole thing. I remember a quote where Matthew Rhys said they were working on the look for Jim and the costume/make up/hair people kept asking women, "So, if you were 16...." which of course made him even more skeeved out. LOL! I love Julia Garner ass Kimmy. Whenever somebody talks about Martha being some great outlet for Philip where he finds comfort or help etc. And once you can relax about him not having sex with her (until she's older, at least) I kind of like the relationship. I feel like it gets Philip thinking about or processing things in his own life in ways many people seem to think only Martha does. But I feel like there's less stress with Kimmy since he's not trying to get her to do anything for him except hang out.

I remember people trying to rewrite him as a good guy, like as if he was actually at Martha's because he thought she was turned and was trying to catch Clark or whatever and just...no. The guy's literally just trying to use his badge to scare off a potential rival. And this after he only lost Martha because he cheated on her. Something we know he's going to keep doing, since his entire relationship with Stan seems to be about encouraging him to cheat on his hot wife. Sorry but yeah, there's some satisfaction in watching a law enforcement agent try to bully a civilian and finding out he's outmatched. Philip gave him a chance to get away. Philip wasn't even armed--Amador pulled a gun and a knife! He's definitely part of the reason Martha is so open to Clark too.

Totally--and with good reason! I remember there's also a scene where Stan drops by his house and Gaad's pointedly reminding him of how Stan's screwed up his life. In fact, iirc, Stan says says something apologetically like "I feel responsible for that" and Gaad says, "You are responsible for it." And Gaad's right! It would be like Philip saying he feels responsible for the state of Martha's life as if he's being generous. It's one of the things I find so amusing about Stan and lines like this really show it's intentional. It kind of slips the maverick hero stereotype on its head when he mentions how most of the office hates him. But it also sets up how this guy will have no guilt about letting the Jennings go.

Yes! I so believe he did this. It's amazing to think how he first appears in, I think, episode 2 as the second in command and then goes on to be one of the most universally beloved characters, all without ever having to do anything super flashy. He's not killing anybody etc., but spray-painting those cars is just it. I admit I completely cheered in that scene with him and Oleg bringing in Philip. It's the perfect contrast to what's going on with Claudia and her gang and Elizabeth. Arkady wants guys who sometimes go rogue because he wants people who are genuinely volunteering for this mission he knows he can trust. Matthew's hair is one of the biggest mysteries of the series to me. I think I even did a post on one of the S4 eps about how weird it is that one of the few things we know about him is that he went to Rocky Horror and was in a band early on, yet dresses and does his hair like he's never heard of MTV, much less chosen a favorite band. It's true! We do get a couple of CIA women (Gaad's colleague that helps in the would-be Arkady kidnapping) and the woman Elizabeth gets the Afghan committee list from--but even she's almost turned because of sexism! The FBI, meanwhile, seems like a big boy's club. I wonder if the domestic Russian law enforcement would skew the same way. He does have some of the best lines (my personal fave: Disappeared? Is she Doug Henning?). I also really do like the way the show hints at his backstory in Vietnam without it being cliche at all. Heh--makes me think of that moment when Stan says he didn't serve since he was in the FBI at the time and Gaad says he was too but he volunteered with just the right amount of potential judgemental tone. That scene they have in the snow always reminds me of that winter's snowpocolypse.

And when he shows up again he basically becomes the big damn hero, figuring out the plot and choosing Oleg and Philip for his team to save Gorbachev. Couldn't have asked for better for Arkady--the guy who came up with the abort signal on the cars back in S1! I really did find it frustrating, I admit. I remember saying something about wanting more Philip/Henry scenes on Twitter and one of the Joel's either replied or liked it, making me think one was coming up...but then it didn't. That scene's like the quintessential Stan--right up there with having Henry there acting like he owns the place when Matthew finally comes back to visit him. "Hey, just wanted to make it clear that I've got plenty of time to hang out with kids, I'm just avoiding you." Then when he sees Mrs. Gaad she talks about none of the FBI guys coming to see her and Stan, who seems to have worked pretty closely with the guy, has only come to get her blessing to protect some random KGB guy after the KGB killed her husband.

Yeah, on rewatch there's a lot of parallel stuff between Henry and Philip that doesn't get underlined, but is there. Henry's life echoes Philip's a lot even without each one knowing about the other one. It took me a long time to connect these two things too! I really appreciate how many repercussions that act had--and such a stupid act it was. It's one of the many things that damages Gaad's career, and Gaad even reminds Stan of it, but Stan never really stops wanting support from Gaad (or his widow). LOL!

Yeah, I cringe at that line. It sounds like Paige has no idea what she means or why she's saying it, but I can't blame the actress on that one. I haven't gotten to S6 yet in my rewatch, but when I think about it, it seems like a lot of the time Elizabeth is trying to convince herself that everything's going well when it obviously isn't. Like when Paige screws up with losing her ID Elizabeth just assures her that that's normal (which it isn't), then randomly tells Philip that Paige is good at this stuff even after she realizes that not only did Paige lose her ID, she got the guy's name totally wrong. She even tries to tell Philip that she did that, but makes it seem much less important than it was. Then over the season she seems to get more freaked out by the problems so she's more aggressive about telling her she did wrong, but still acts like it's fine. So I tend to take as her just really trying to believe things are the way she wants them to be, if she just makes some adjustments like cleaning up after Paige's mistakes or getting her into a desk job where she's "safe?" It's maybe a bit harder to buy given that Paige always seemed to come across as so arrogant and clueless! I remember people thinking that at the time--especially when I think she uses a birthmark on her face at one point that people thought seemed like it was real. Oh yeah, I think he definitely gets treated as the younger kid who got away with more. Although Paige also often objected more to everything, so that might have played into it too.Like when he's breaking into houses we know that Henry already felt really bad about it...but you can definitely still see it from Paige's pov as the big sister.

All Glory to God, I thought. Loved this ep and it made a great ending. Everybody made good choices to move forward and be healthy and happy. I was looking for Iceland throughout Sam's song, and I loved how they first just showed him in the background watching her. Oh, and love that Sam's now volunteering at the pet shelter. I see a foster fail in her future. I didn't even mind the lack of resolution to Fred's marriage story--or I guess it's more accurate to say it was just a subtle resolution. Brad and Joel don't do everything together, but it seems like it's in a good way, where they both understand why the other is doing something else, and they can be a little disappointed, but it's okay. I totally get why of course it would be easier for Joel to talk about this with Sam than with Brad--and I loved how we saw why Brad loved his church the way Joel loved his. Him being all excited about the sermon and having all these questions was so Brad--this is the same guy who gave Joel that great history lesson (real and made up) on their first date. It's something Joel loves about Brad, but doesn't share. But with Fred it seems like it's less healthy. His wife is just putting down rules and it doesn't seem like it's something she's as open to talking about as Brad, so Fred is just going to work around her. In fact, it was nice how the show had little nods to that, like the way that, iirc, Joel waved to the guy who used to bully him in school. He'd accepted his apology, but he didn't want him in his life. Likewise it would have been false for Susie to be at the bar at the end. But Fred was, so it was happy.

I do agree about that Philip scene--it's so funny the few times he really allows himself to get fully annoyed at somebody. And both Tuan and Paige come across as so insufferable and arrogant respectively in those scenes. (That's another scene where going by my memory of it, I feel would play much more interestingly if Paige could do subtext! Yeah, I think she's got to be thinking of Tuan and imagining Paige in some way. But I also wonder if Elizabeth is more thinking that would be fine for Paige to not have a true partner, since she's imagining Paige having a very different job than she has. Plus, at that point she might be just imagining her having her mother. For instance, I get the opposite impression. I think she's convinced herself Paige will just photocopy things at the state department and never have to use sex. In the scene where they talk about their first times, Claudia does introduce thte idea of sex in exchange for something--and Paige rejects the idea. But I can't believe Elizabeth's "first time" story is true at all. She was definitely telling the truth to Philip when she said she'd never had a boyfriend. I don't think she was trying to have sex with a rando whose name she doesn't even remember just to do it. So to me it seems like she goes back and forth because she's so conflicted about it. She blatantly lies about sex work being part of her job even when Paige knows it's true (until Paige really pushes her), but she's also so freaked out about the idea of Paige ever doing it that she makes it totally obvious that she's lying about it being a thing. It's very strange, because Stan is obviously not able to do what he needs to do as a father, but somehow people think he can make up for it by entertaining the kid across the street That's so not parenting! I have a theory about Henry, too, there, where people assume that since he hangs out with Stan it means he's specifically lacking a father, when to me it seems like the reason Henry has a series of older male role models and mentors and male friends in his life (Stan, Matthew, his guidance counselor, Chris's dad, dads of his friends at school, the hockey coach...) is in part because he's so comfortable with men because of his father's always been warm and nurturing. Meanwhile, his history with women is a string of girls he can't have, whether it's Sandra Beeman, his science teacher, Brooke Sheilds, Chris (who never seems to become his actual girlfriend) and some girl at school he says dumped him for reasons he doesn't understand in S6. It's almost too perfect how he's recreating his parental relationships to me. He loves his Dad, but maybe senses he doesn't really know him so fills that with men who are fully themselves and want to guide him. He loves his mom, but... She does wear them well! But yeah, compare her to Sandra and she just seems barely real.

Funny this subject came up right after I saw this video.