sistermagpie

Whoa. Did he turn them in? Or were they turned in and that's how he found out? I remember there was some question in one case of the kids staying in the US since they weren't born here, I think. It's funny on the show that they never seem to fear this outcome, at least lately. They don't discuss it. But I guess they haven't gotten close enough to doing it yet, since Elizabeth's plan is to get Paige really into the cause first. It's not a particularly regional name. Paiges come from all over without being particularly associated with the South even if it's more popular there. Not having a trendy name doesn't make you stand out in the US, really.

I doubt you test for swimming talent by throwing someone in a pool. That just tests the ability to instinctively not drown, which doesn't make for a good athletic swimmer one way or the other. You'd see swimming talent by looking for physical abilities as the child actually learned to swim. I think Elizabeth was just teaching the old fashioned way--no coaxing in to the pool, just start by sink or swim. Yes, the real Illegals were known to occasional bring in a kid. I don't think there's any evidence that it really worked out. No Jared-style meltdowns that I know of, but no evidence of the kids really getting committed and doing it. Of course, it's possible we just don't know about the successful ones. The ones who were arrested had gotten a vow of loyalty to Russia out of their son, I think, and I think another family had a kid looking for potential recruits at college for a year or so before the kid dropped out, maybe? Something like that. This was so one of my favorite scenes because Gabriel is pretty much the first person in his type of position we've seen who seemed to be trying to build a relationship with Philip. Most people seem to just quickly adopt a parental relationship with Elizabeth and leave Philip in the background. Gabriel, though, seemed to have picked up some habits dealing with him the way you'd deal with the shyer child, or the child who doesn't belong, is mistrustful. Philip still seemed more uneasy around him perhaps because he's frankly more uneasy around everybody. Elizabeth's the one with the lifetime of solid relationships behind her while Philip is very much a loner. (And yet Elizabeth seems to get far more reinforcement and reassurance from the Centre--it's a strange strategy.) I suspect that as usual Gabriel will have a closer relationship with Elizabeth--plus, she's pleasing him by already being on board. And Philip figured out pretty quickly that not only was Gabriel there to absolutely get him to recruit Paige, but Elizabeth was on Gabriel's side. So even if Philip likes Gabriel, he knows he's a hostile force now.

Yes, it seems like they at least had 3 incomes--the dad's, Kim's and Kyle's. Kim might have made the most money, but I'd bet the family could have survived on far less. There's sometimes a tendency to make it seem like Kyle's income and their dad's income didn't count or was just like money found behind the cushions of the couch when it came to the family budget. Kim worked a lot because she got cast a lot. Kyle got cast less, but we still a very visible working child actress. Their dad may have died bankrupt, but plenty of parents have been bankrupt without it meaning they never supported their family or earned money.

I think if they ever do that it's more like with Jared--you get a grown adult spy sex worker to do it. Though in Paige's case romance might not be the best way to go. It's not her biggest focus.

I believe the anecdote, but I don't think that represents most of its audience--or definitely not what the show itself is interested in. I've seen probably just as many "couldn't watch this show--too boring and slow." I can totally get having a hard time suspending disbelief when they do that. It is an obvious fail on any mission--which wouldn't be a problem if it happened once but not all the time. Sometimes these things are dealbreakers. It just doesn't, to me, make the show into a cartoon because of what the show is interested in.

Elizabeth does those things far more than Philip. Philip certainly shares his opinions on things and often backs them up--he makes arguments--but he almost never gives any explanation/backstory for his feelings about things. He rarely makes it personal to him. He evades all the time or talks about things outside himself to explain something. Elizabeth, by contrast, gets clear flashbacks that explain where she's coming from step by step, and she also has a few times where she explains really eloquently what she was feeling and why--most obviously in the scene where she talks about Gregory. We know about many formative moments of her life. So I totally agree that the show feels that Elizabeth needs for apologia for her hardline Soviet positions in ways that Philip doesn't need it or positions like "let's give our children a life of their own that's honest" or "I feel badly about killing innocent people." But it's the exact opposite of him stating his feelings and reasons for him. It's just him stating opinions that don't need any more explanation than the context. Still, caracterwise, Elizabeth is a pretty open book at this point. Philip's a question mark. Or a well you could drop a stone in and never hear it hit the ground.

Kim and Kyle discussed the whole school/not school jealousy thing during season 1. (I believe.) Kyle still denies being jealous of Kim's success, and her lack of it, I don't believe her. I specifically remember one scene where Kim was saying she never got to do "normal" things, like learning to put on make up. Kyle was applying make up to Kim at the time. There were others. Kyle wasn't as successful as Kim but compared to most child actors she was very successful. Not that the difference didn't matter at all, but I doubt she thinks of herself as lacking in success in general. I hated Kim's stories about not getting to do normal things--it was ridiculous. Kim was having make up applied by professionals at the time (not Kyle) and claimed that Kyle, going to high school more often, had time to learn things like putting on make up. As opposed to Kim on movie sets surrounded by and chatting to professional make up artists who could show her what they were doing. That was one of Kim's stand out moments to me, that she could make herself such a victim as to actually imply that being a child movie actress kept her from learning things like putting on make up. She might as well say that she never got a chance to learn how to hold a job or act like Kyle did in high school!

Answering in the Philip thread.

I think that's the idea, but isn't that really an illusion? He often has reactions that are less abrasive to your average viewer perhaps-he cares about hurting people, wants his kids to have fun, doesn't think the US is pure evil. I can see them thinking those things don't need softening or explaining. But in reality Elizabeth has far more strong relationships than he does, she's more emotional, she's more open about her emotions. Plus her motivation is pretty clear early on: she's caring underneath but thinks she needs to be strong for her cause. Where as Philip is a nice guy who nevertheless seems to even more capacity for viciousness. He's family oriented, yet chose the same lonely life as Elizabeth. Philip's in many ways the opposite of heart on his sleeve guy. He's incredibly closed off and hard to reach. He's just outwardly affable, the kind of guy that everybody likes but nobody knows. Elizabeth is the type of person who seems intimidating at first but inspires devotion and freely gives and returns it. I feel like of the two Philip is the more natural spy--a natural at deflecting attention. Presenting as the opposite is part of that, I think. He's not less guarded than Elizabeth, he's guarded on more levels, imo. For instance, her past always exists right under the surface, ready to come out in dialogue or cloaked dialogue to the kids or flashbacks. Philip's is buried so deeply it takes an entire night of battering to get to "I like the cold," which manages to sound like a major bit of info.

She probably would have just thought that she would take care of him and be a great caregiver--and happily put aside the obvious problem of having all those drugs in the house even though subconsciously that was a plus for her. Which has been proved true with this story about her being in great pain that the doctors couldn't do anything about until Monty gave her a pill that came from...somewhere.

Emmett and Leanne said no to the program. I think we can safely say Kate definitely honeypotted him. According to some people who have had jobs with security clearance, yes she would probably pass. They wouldn't be searching into her parents' life. They'd just have records of her parents being responsible business owners for decades and her own life. Yes, I know she didn't recruit her. I meant just that she was mentoring her.

Nope, he actually didn't. Philip has the ability to leave people with the impression that he's shared something of himself when he's said absolutely nothing. It'd be interesting to see how many scenes there are where somebody makes a speech and Philip just listens in silence. But he does seem like an orphan, I agree. Even in the Gabriel scene he's more hesitant than Elizabeth, I think. He always needs Gabriel to draw him out rather than seeming at all confident about showing affection and having it returned--and Gabriel seems a lot like a father figure. I get the impression that the subtitles are written first, and then given to a translator who then has some leeway to translate it into Russian. Which I think is a good thing--that way the person can write the scene as it would play out in Russian, adding little things that aren't strictly sticking to the English lines. I think it probably makes the scenes in Russian play much more organically and the language much more alive than someone trying to stick to exactly the way it was originally written.

I would guess that as long as the name isn't Russian they'd feel free to name her whatever they wanted. It's not a new name--I knew people Paige's age who were named Paige. They probably wouldn't be expected to go completely trendy on names, since naming is very individual in the US. It is, imo, a pretty nondescript name, it's just classic rather than trendy. And then that's an interesting point anyway: where did they get it? It's not like Elizabeth would have been eagerly looking up every English name she could find, so she may have discovered it somewhere and vetted it because she liked it into something Elizabeth Jennings would name her daughter. So she wouldn't be just another Jennifer in the class.

As somebody who used the "get away" idea, I think, I do want to clarify. I'm not saying that Kyle handles everything right or that her reactions to Kim aren't flat-out bad or all about herself. I'm just saying that that's what people do--just as Kim does it, Kyle's going to do it. Her being the sober one doesn't mean she's necessarily going to be better at controlling herself. Her sister walks up out of nowhere and basically announces that she hates Kyle right then, Kyle leaps up, gets upset, needs to know what's going on. Is it all about Kyle? Sure. Is it, from an objective pov, melodramatic? Yes--from my pov Kim's just causing trouble and looking for attention and Kyle should be able to walk away. But that's not Kyle's personality. For whatever reason she always has a big emotional reaction to it. So if Kim provokes her and Kyle responds, putting it on Kyle to be the bigger person seems like letting Kim off the hook. Like when you've got the two siblings and one makes the other angry and the mom says, "Well, you're older so you should know better." She doesn't. She's just as screwed up as Kim. Kim knows how to push her buttons and Kim's just as capable as Kyle is of not acting in the way that always causes the same reaction. If Kim's not being held responsible for Kyle's outburst while Kyle's held responsible for escalating that's imbalanced--and more importantly it's just so in line with the way Kim's treated all the time for obvious reasons. Kim's a master of getting other people to give her less responsibility and more leeway than other people. Even in an ep where there's a fight around her the fight's about who's not being supportive enough of Kim.

That's my impression as well. She'd still, I think, be trained in the basics of spywork but she wouldn't be like Elizabeth. She'd be more like Fred, probably. In some ways better than Elizabeth's life, but in other ways harder because she's betraying her country. It's a lonely life, either way. Elizabeth can probably rationalize that part of it because in her mind a) Paige is really Russian and b) loyalty to Russia is just loyalty to the right ideas of Communism. But if you look at it another way, who really wants their kid to grow up to be Kim Philby? I think he and Elizabeth are supposed to be the same age. He's from Tobolsk so if he remembered the war it would be very different from her experience in Smolensk (maybe she would have been evacuated closer to him in that time, actually--not that I have much information on this AT ALL). I love that icicles scene--it's like the first moment we seem to really see the guy buried underneath all that. And he starts to tell that great story about getting jumped in the streets but gets interrupted and never finishes! It's very hard not to think of him as an orphan because it really does seem to fit his personality--he's very family oriented, yet also seems very isolated (and chose to leave everyone he knew behind). Seems to constantly be reading other people for how he should act to fit in. Gets no tapes from Russia when Elizabeth does.

I don't think he let her die at all. Choking didn't sound like anything--the lamp was the danger signal and he responded to that. There was nothing good for him in having a dead body to get rid of. He just improvised getting Yousef back under control using it. He couldn't jump the gun and blow everything if there wasn't a good reason. He's always going to try to hold on to it. I think there's plenty of drama without Elizabeth having to get her mother to the US for treatment that probably wouldn't work there either. Her mother dying will make her think about their relationship, which basically ended when she was a few years older than Elizabeth is now. I think it's more about giving her something to react to and a reason to think about her mother as she decides what she should do as a mother. She can't do anything about her mother--it's all in her imagination. I thought it was a think tank. If it was DS I think they'd do more than just send her a message. There'd be no chance whatsoever of her being "safe" in the US (as Gaad said they were going to make a point of just reminding her). She'd have assassins gunning for her everywhere. New recruit. I think South African. Let's see if she does better than the outcome of Lucia! Paige's recruitment is at a totally different stage so we wouldn't see this play out with her, especially now. This guy's already on board and, most importantly, he's basically an adult. I admit that to me Paige currently being trained as a spy would seem just way to YA novel to me: Ordinary girl who's totally helpless against larger forces but incredibly important to the world etc. While I love all the info we get on Elizabeth sometimes I get frustrated that we get a lot of Elizabeth apologia with nothing about Philip. I mean, we've been filled in on a lot of formative experiences in her life, and presumably now we're getting more detail on her relationship with her mother. So whatever Elizabeth's doing we've always got these scenes to explain her thought process in case we would find it off-putting. Even here it's like--Gabriel brings Elizabeth a tape and Philip gets nothing, like there really are special rules for Elizabeth where she gets to keep her mom. Where as Philip just always has to react in the moment to what's immediately happening without any historical context. And yet in many ways he's the more contradictory character.

I don't think that's all on Eileen. She wasn't just making fun of Brandi for not knowing the name of the thing. Brandi specifically mentioned them to tell everyone that Eileen was a terrible hostess who served kid's pancakes--implying that she was cheap and unsophisticated. Eileen just clarified that they were blinis, a pretty standard adult cocktail food. I just don't believe Kim's stories about broken ribs etc. We've never seen any evidence of the bronchitis or the pain on screen but now she's got tales of how she was in incredible pain the whole time and just so stoic nobody knew. Wasn't she having lunch with Kyle the same day? I badly bruised a rib once--so not even broken (I only took Ibuprofen) and it was incredible painful to the point where it restricted movement and breathing and had me making occasional yipping noises. Kim was fine at lunch with Kyle but we're supposed to think that shortly after she was in such terrible pain with those things? But the only symptom we ever managed to catch on camera was her looking completely high because she took pain meds? Pain meds the doctor allegedly prescribed for her without yet diagnosing the broken rib etc.? Of course, my main reason to not believe her is that this is like the thousandth version of this story where due to complicated OTT reasons Kim accidentally seemed really impaired.

True, but that gets back into the idea that Kim needs special treatment and always needs to be protected from the consequences of her actions. So she should be able to tell Kyle she's mad at her and Kyle needs to not react by wanting to know what's up with that, because she needs to be focused on hustling Kim off camera so she doesn't look bad. Kim obviously has problems with drugs, but she probably also has problems with sudden bursts of spite that Kyle might have good reason to want to address immediately. Kim seems to have spend something like a year in that state with Kyle, so it's probably also a danger sign that she's starting that up again. Basically, Brandi and Kim are both expecting to be able to say whatever they want and then act put upon when people react to it. If Eileen walked up to Kim with an angry "thanks" Kim would probably have gone after her too, but since it's Kim and we know she's high it should just be swept under the rug. In some ways maybe that's true--Kim doesn't even remember what she said later (or will claim not to), but probably there's been times in the past where Kim actually did really mean whatever thing she said. Or at least was angry enough to use it to do something self-destructive. Glad I wasn't the only one watching Rumpy drag Ken over the grass and thinking, "Three months of training school for this?" Re: Lisa and Brandi, I don't think Lisa literally told Brandi to go after anyone, but Brandi seems to make it her business to figure out who somebody doesn't like (and Lisa's pretty open about that and also says she expects her friends to have her back) and attack them. That's basically what she was accusing Lisa of exploiting in her, saying that since she only attacked people because Lisa didn't like them, it becomes Lisa using her. But really, if anything, it was just Lisa enjoying what Brandi was doing at the time.

Pretty sure Kyle had started mending things with Brandi way before that. I thought it was in response to the reaction to Game Night etc. Best line of the episode was Brandi actually saying with a straight face "everyone's depending on Kim and she has no one to depend on." I can't even imagine a universe where ANYONE depends on Kim. She's the definition of undependable. And of course what Brandi's talking about really isn't a lot of that. A wedding that's over, that Kim probably didn't take the lead on planning, a kid going to college, and Monty who's now taking Kim to the hospital and seems to have more moved into her house like he does a lot than become her patient.

Yes, the idea that Kim's daughter would be leaving it up to Kim to plan the wedding is laughable--or would be if it wasn't so sad. Kim can barely get to anyplace on time. She's not going to be going to appointments with wedding planners and decorators and bands etc. Brandi was exaggerating the way I think Kim always does, so anything going on near her can be used to make her sound important or to give her an excuse. She'll do some little thing for the wedding she can handle. She's not going crazy trying to plan it while also overseeing Monty's chemo etc. Re: LisaR and Kyle, they have known each other for a long time, so it's possible they have had conversations about this a lot and Lisa was just saying things they would normally say to each other. Kyle was maybe reacting differently because it was so fresh for her and because of the cameras.

But what's funny about that is that Kim did that way more than Kyle! Kim played the victim in Game Night even more than Kyle did. Kyle's problem, as I remember, was that she did try to make peace with Brandi, but really never apologized as fully as she should--in large part because she kept focusing on how terrible, mean Brandi accused Kim of doing meth. But Kyle was the Richards sister who bore the accusation of bully and took what responsibility there was that was taken. Kim, by contrast, refused to apologize to Brandi and basically kept claiming that Brandi needed to apologize to her--and Kim was even the meaner of the two on Game Night. So it's really nothing to do with the Richards' good/bad behavior that's made Brandi focus on Kyle as the enemy and more quickly become Kim's buddy. It's more that Brandi just responds well to Kim's victim act when she's given the chance to be the protector or something. It really seems like Kyle's always been more of a problem for her because Kyle isn't really a victim. I mean, she knows how to play the martyr, but even when she's doing that it's about Kyle taking care of things, not about Kyle needing to be taken care of by others. So that seems to be the bigger issue--and I suspect Kim is kind of similar in that way.

Yes, while Kyle hasn't completely changed all her habits with Kim, it's kind of fascinating to me that it seems like she has really tried to adjust her behavior. Kim punished her for a long time for limogate where Kyle wasn't allowed to speak to her and had to be oh so very respectful of Kim's boundaries etc. So of course now Kyle's being criticized by Kim and Brandi for having slightly healthier boundaries apparently. It's probably hard to tell with Kim after so many years of drug abuse that's probably both altered her chemistry and just given her no practice in having normal human interactions. But I didn't take Kim as admitting anything when she said Lisa said the same thing. She was eagerly grabbing onto Brandi's cover story. The two of them were trying to act like they were completely practical and sober and were figuring out just what was slightly wrong with Kim that made others suspect ridiculous things like her being on drugs. So when Brandi gave her the story about how she was just under so much stress and it made her incoherent Kim put on her thoughtful-and-totally-reasonable voice and wondered at how Lisa had said the same thing so yes, perhaps in her stressful state she sounded a bit incoherent. Admitting to Lisa also having noted she was babbling isn't admitting that she was high and not getting away with it, it's making herself into the reasonable person who's generous about understanding Lisa's mistaken impression.

Best moment of a HW show ever was Eileen's "Oh, shut up Brandi." I can't even remember what she was responding to, but I know I was saying it with her. Brandi was like a textbook of toxic personality that you wouldn't want near your addict. Love her bragging about how she takes phone calls from Kim at 2AM about how hard her life is, and her explaining to Kim how she was incoherent because she's taking care of kids and her ex-husband and planning her wedding. Yes, it had nothing to do with her just popping some pills. Just like Kim calling at 2AM is all about how difficult her life is and not Kim being on a screwed up schedule because she stays up doing drugs and sleeps all day. How dare Kyle say that all this drama has been regular for Kim's entire life. How can she not see that it's only all the terrible stress she's under right now that's suddenly making her this way!

But there's nothing else that's really an issue there other than Kyle's feelings. She can't just discount Kim when she says she's fine without totally babying her and controlling her life and making decisions for her. In a normal situation, if someone invites someone to something that winds up being unenjoyable for them, they're going to feel bad. There's nothing else for them to do but express remorse and say they feel bad. Of course it is possible for the hostess to be insensitive about it and make it about their feelings instead of the person wronged, but sometimes the hostess is far more mortified than the guest is hurt. I think Kim's pretty much said she has no friends. The only friends she ever really picks up on the show are other people with similar problems like Ken and Brandi. And probably Monty. But at the same time, she's a terrible friend to others. I think there's two slightly different things going on with that. I do think that Kyle is way too Sally Sunshine about Kim's sobriety and still hasn't really stopped lying for her and allowing Kim to tell everyone how she's doing when she's clearly not doing that well. That's something Kyle does that's really not healthy--and Kim kind of demands it as well. But in that particular scene, at least, it seemed like the right thing to say. In talking to Kim's face telling her that you "know" that she's strong enough to handle a day with alcohol seems a much better idea than implying she's not and giving her an excuse to relapse. Even not reassuring her that you just know she can do it seems like an opening. So I took that particular line more as something you'd say to support the person. But with the Lisa R scene it seems like she's covering for her, which I do think she does. It's like she's admitted that Kim has a problem but still hasn't admitted the whole problem. She still doesn't seem to be seeing (or admitting to seeing) the sister she actually has, who has a history of pretending to be a superstar rehab person when she's still using. One look at Kim's blog makes that clear. And Kyle seems always ready to swear to Kim's sobriety when even as a TV viewer I don't buy it. Sometimes it seems like she's doing it to keep Kim from coming at her again about the limo. (It's funny, actually, that Kim and Brandi both seem to have "outed" Kyle as an alcoholic as well, only nobody takes that as a terrible thing to do because nobody believes it.) It's kind of like Kim's "one pill" confessions. She admits to a little thing to keep from admitting to the truth. In Kyle's case it's like she's thrilled to be able to come out and say Kim has a problem but after that everything is fixed and perfect now! If they have restaurants they can serve lunch anywhere if they arrange it with the TV show. This wasn't just a bunch of women wandering into the room and looking at a menu. It was something set up in production for them that happened to use that room.

Kyle definitely has a history of being a big martyr and playing up how hard this is for her. But Kyle really wasn't doing it there at all. Her story all along--the same story all the other women seem to agree on--is that she arranged a thing at the hotel and the hotel offered something in the wine tasting room that they all thought was a lunch with different wines paired with courses. When they got there they saw it was literally a tasting with people sitting down and sniffing and tasting wine. And Kyle did feel badly about this--it left Kim completely out of it. She apologized, she asked Kim if she was okay, she told Kim and other people that she felt bad. Really, a person would probably feel bad about that even they didn't care about the person's sobriety, because you don't want to invite somebody to something that they can't participate in at all--the wine pairing wouldn't have left Kim out. So she said she felt badly about that and wouldn't have intentionally arranged a thing that was completely about alcohol that Kim couldn't drink. She praised Kim for handling it well, assured her that she knew she was strong enough to do what she needed to do (iow, didn't take the role of the only personal capable of keeping Kim sober, but as a sister apologized for arranging something Kim wouldn't enjoy when she wanted to do the opposite), and that was that. There was no problem with Kim or Kyle at the wine tasting. Later, at Eileen's, there were huge problems, and it had nothing to do with the venue. Kim got high at home on her own without any alcohol as far as we know. Kyle taking responsibility for where she brought Kim was irrelevent.