sistermagpie

Yes, that was I guess where Elizabeth established the relationship that will play out this season. It's great for them to set up a spy/source manipulation relationship that doesn't include sex. I saw the actress in "Disgraced" and she was fantastic. With her in the role I'm really looking forward to the character.

That was the association I made. Or somebody else doing that, maybe faking it. But Paige doesn't actually seem to be drawn to the church for specifically spiritual reasons, and there's a lot of ways that phrase could apply so maybe it's not that at all.

Born Again makes me nervous--though there's many things that could mean that are awesome.

In Nina's case, she might actually have strengthened Stan's love for her by admitting she knew who killed Stan (especially since she may have doubted her ability to lie about it). It makes him believe that she loves him while knowing he's flawed, which is a little better than feeling like he has this dark secret that might destroy the whole thing. While I had the same problems with Jared, I wouldn't call it shark-jumping. It wouldn't be the first important thing on the show that I had to handwave in a meta way.

Just read a notice that the actress who played the woman Elizabeth met through AA last season is going to be a recurring character. It makes sense--Elizabeth was trying to find a way to get information at the plant where the woman works. So this woman is going to continue to be Elizabeth's (Michelle's) sponsor in AA and to be her friend. Interesting since "Michelle" has established herself as having a husband and kids so she's got reason to work out her real life problems any time she wants with her sponsor.

Wow. I've always wondered about Gabriel, and having him be Frank Langella immediately makes him fascinating!

Actually, we've seen Clark and Martha having exactly this kind of sex, same position, same tone etc. Only Martha was screaming happily through it. That's just what she liked about it and what she was describing to Jennifer. When Elizabeth said it didn't seem like Martha wouldn't go for the aggressive type etc., she was just wrong and assuming that because Martha's kind of prim at first glance her sexual tastes must also be vanilla. Philip knows her better--and created Clark to completely conform to her emotional/sexual fantasies.

I would agree. If there were a contest Nina would leave Stan in the dust. Most of the characters on the show would, I think!

From the episode thread for The Echo. kikaha, could you clarify who you are referring to above? I assume they meant Vasily. Stan set him up as the mole to protect that it was really Nina. For me it seemed like that incident clarified things for her as well. It was also after taking her oath that she switched sides, and admitting what she'd done to Arkady could possibly have led to her being executed right then. So I felt like it wasn't just that she had a deep-rooted shame about her treason, but that she'd been going along doing what she felt she needed to do to survive, but when she thought about the one action she took to try to get control of things and make a choice about what side to be on was to side with the Russians. Whether that was out of shame or anger or a feeling about where she belonged or a combination of any of them, that felt like what was going on with Nina. One time Stan has been completely dishonest with her is on the matter of Vlad's murder--he did that on his own and always denied it to her. So for me it seems like the biggest choice that Nina made about her life in terms of it being a conscious choice about who she was and the path she was going to follow, was deciding to throw her lot in with the Russians come what may. And right after that, when she brought the info about the plan to snatch Philip and Elizabeth, she seemed actually engaged in what she was doing. In a lot of her other decisions she seemed like she was thinking more short term or just reacting to things. If it comes down to a choice between her own survival and betraying her country she'll betray her country and feel fine about it, imo, but in the situation she found herself in in season 1 she thought it was better to take control by throwing herself on the mercy of the Russians than to continue to work for the Americans in the hope that they'd eventually put her in witness protection, and I think her actually being Russian (and having wanted to join the KGB) played a part in that. I do totally agree about her relationship with Stan--he thinks he's in a real relationship she maybe sometimes does actually like him, but she's always looking out for her own survival. She doesn't trust him to be able to protect her, she's not (imo) in love with him, she's always manipulating him in their scenes together and never entirely truthful--sometimes she's entirely deceitful. Their situations are also different. Stan likes how vulnerable she is because it inspires him to want to save her. She hates being vulnerable and is constantly looking for ways to be less so--some of which involve making Stan vulnerable instead. True, but I would also say that she was unhappy because Stan had checked out. She tried the first season to reach him, but he couldn't connect to her. He felt more at home in his professional life and almost immediately imo started projecting things onto Nina that he wanted to see while shutting Sandra out. I don't blame Stan for this, really. I think he was changed by his time undercover and has no idea how to come back to himself. But in his marriage it was Sandra who was the more truthful and upfront about everything while he wasn't able to be. The unfaithfulness for her seemed almost like a side-issue--whatever he was doing spending all that time away from home, it wasn't because he had to be.

Also going to the Nina thread...

But Stan was also the person in the relationship who had the responsibility to not have an affair and he knew that. The fact that she made a move on him is kind of irrelevant to all that. So just as she was a spy who accepted his deal of staying out of Soviet prison or being executed by spying, he made the choice to completely compromise himself and his whole operation by getting into a sexual relationship with the woman he was forcing to work with through that kind of pressure. He knew why she was working for him and the terms of her deal. I guess for me his being upfront about their relationship doesn't meant much because that's the appeal for him. Like his position is that he's looking for a romance that feels real to him, and to him Nina is someone who came into his life under difficult circumstances but now he's saving her by hopefully sometime in the future getting her to a safe place in America away from those Russians. The part where he's not being upfront is with his own wife. Where as from her pov she did something wrong, which gave the Americans a chance to use it against her. She agreed to spy for them which is not only dangerous if the Russians find out but also makes her do something she doesn't want to do, which is betray her country. So she's looking for a way to get right with the Russians again, but she has to keep both them and the Americans happy and having Stan personally in her corner is a thing she can have. If he's longing to make this into a tragic love affair, that's her opening. One of Stan's blindspots, I think, is that like many Americans he can't quite wrap his mind around somebody not seeing being American as a good deal. It honestly doesn't seem like he's spent much time at all thinking that it pains Nina to betray her country. And then, of course, the Russians made her their own deal where she could avoid being jailed and/or executed if she turned Stan so she tried to do that using any means necessary. In that case she didn't get forced to make the deal because she got caught after making the choice to do something illegal, but because she made the choice to throw themselves on their mercy because she didn't want to be a traitor. So in that way she's got something in common with Stan in that there was a point where she made a decision based on the desire to not betray her country.

Stan blackmailed her into betraying her country and then wanted sex too. So I don't think she ever owed it to him to not lie or misrepresent herself to him. He may have had her best interests at heart sometimes in a vague way, but he still just forced her into a dangerous, potentially fatal situation. It's just an interesting relationship because it's so subjective which person's behavior comes across as more or less wrong or which character got themselves into their own mess. Nina did by trying to get blackmarket goods back to Russia, Stan did by wanting a love affair.

I don't think there's any question that he killed them for Mother Russia. He just lashed out at them emotionally for lying to him and then trying to take away the thing he'd glommed onto to make it all make sense. So first he found out they lied, then he found out they didn't even want him as part of the team and were going to get rid of Kate as well. It was more like any domestic dispute. If he was thinking of Mother Russia he wouldn't be murdering their most valuable agents! He just afterwards had to make it part of his adolescent hero fantasies as if he was the real spy and they didn't get it. As for Paige, no idea how the Soviets imagine this is supposed to work if Paige is just horrified, as she could certainly be. Especially since they come from a culture where people informed on family members. If one kid actually murdered his parents, why wouldn't another kid blow their cover?

I don't think there's any mystery about why he chose to act shocked. He didn't have orders since it had just happened spontaneously. He was just covering him the murder he'd just committed--a person with no ties to the KGB might have done the same. He'd already set up his alibi by going to the pool.

I love that MR once when talking about Philip said that when he's with Elizabeth that's "as close to" the real man that we ever "see." It's such a slippery way of saying it that's perfect for Philip. He's not saying that the "real Philip" is the person he is with Elizabeth, he's totally reinforcing the idea that the "real guy" is completely elusive--certainly to the audience, and perhaps also to Philip himself.

Yeah, I actually get the impression that Paige has picked up on their mistrust of religion by picking up subtext rather than anything her parents have said, at least until now. They're not militant atheists as far as anyone knows, they're just not religious. It's only when openly confronted with it in certain contexts that they're more vocal or demonstrative about it. I don't even know if Paige thinks they're self-confessed atheists rather than just that religion "isn't their thing." If they were militant atheists it would be in character for them to actually be more straightforward about not believing in God, but as it is they're more passively uncomfortable. Which probably reads to Paige as just more weirdness.

The Soviets were atheist. Russians historically aren't always atheist. I think going to church would have been considered really weird in the USSR where P&E lived. I liked how the first season Philip just said in passing how he didn't like dealing with people who believed in God because they made irrational decisions. Elizabeth sees it as a foreign group and a competitive philosophy that Paige is joining and she believes just about any negative thing that would ever have been told her about church. Philip is I think sad to think of his kid joining something that he can't really get, but he thinks Paige has the right to choose her own path even if it's not one he shares. I think Paige often has very reasonable problems with her parents but other times she's got her own warped sense of things, like her being convinced currently that anybody no in her church group isn't on her level morally.

Robert and Anna were hands-on, responsible (when not being kidnapped etc.), involved parents from the time Robin came on the show until she was 14. If that can be retconned out into them being absentee parents with Mac doing the majority of her child-raising I wouldn't trust that Mac's title as best soap dad is safe either.

He didn't really have to keep checking the time, imo. He scheduled his conference call at a time when he was obviously not going to make it and could have texted beforehand to just say he was doing this call and he'd text when he was done or whatever. Having seen Josh over and over and heard about the way he's operated in the past anyway, this isn't about him getting engrossed in other things and losing track of time, it's about him making it clear that whatever he wants to do is always the only thing that matters. He never thinks about Kristin or the kids at all. Of course it wouldn't occur to him to think about having promised to get home at five during the conference call--or before the conference call, or after the conference call. Any more than he'd consider his wife and kids when changing his business or moving to another coast. And yes, it's somewhat of a mixed message for her to be angry at him when he gets home in that it makes him not want to be home. But that kind of assumes that Josh needs some sort of reward for coming home at all. I mean, he was giving just as mixed messages by complaining that he doesn't want to come home because there's no dinner waiting for him and then insisting on playing games with the time he's coming home. Since he's far more demanding than Kristin it's just hard to think of him as a beaten dog. He was screaming at her almost immediately when she asked if he could let her know if he was going to be late.

I can't believe he did expect to get out by 5. Nobody schedules a conference call that close to when they've said they're going to be somewhere and actually expects to be on time. (Also isn't sending a text totally easy during a conference call? He kept talking about "stepping out" when the other person isn't even in the room to begin with.) Whether or not Kristin would or wouldn't have been satisfied with a text, he didn't do it. I know she can be grating, but her whining seems like it's just annoying but basically has no power. Where as every single time he shows up he's getting his way and putting her down. It's like he's got this one narrative that he's always pushing, which is that he is the professional, rational, important man and she is the unprofessional, irrational, hysterical, silly woman. Everything he does comes down to his big important business that she doesn't understand--that's why he can't be expected to even half pay attention to anything in his life involving her or the kids. And when Kristin was the one at work making that video he cleared his whole schedule just so he could hang around and push that narrative again, bonding with the other "professional" men making the video by making jokes about how Kristin was useless and a big fake. This guy just seems to never miss a chance to try to impress on her that she's nothing. Unfortunately, instead of responding to that in a strong way by just not accepting it and potentially leaving, she just ineffectually lashes out in pointless ways. Thanks for the info about Aviva's inhaler. I wished somebody would explain to her that she's proved herself completely untrustworthy when it comes to her many illnesses, despite the missing leg, so naturally no one takes her seriously. She had phobias that needed attention that came and went when convenient for her and now she's claiming she has 50% lung capacity that's also apparently never interfered with her life. Plus she seems to use her standard just-in-case medication more to make a point than to help her breathe.

Pretty fitting that it ended with Hank making some big gesture and Karen allowed him to sit next to her and continue to adore her while reminding him that he hadn't won her over. So basically more of the same for the rest of their lives.

Isn't that always the way with Karen? She doesn't have a problem with anything other women, especially young women, do--in fact she outright encourages it, but once they do it it's another thing to blame on Hank. One of the worst was when she went on and on about her magical affair with her professor in college and how great it is to be with an older man to Mia while they were at the house of that rock star who was trying to sleep with her. On her way out she reminded Hank that it was his responsibility to make sure the guy didn't sleep with Mia. (Another fact that never gets brought up is that didn't Mia specifically target Hank because she was angry at Karen? Not that Karen's responsible for everything Mia does but it was another example of Karen positioning herself as the great parent that everybody loves when she was nothing of the kind.) You can totally bet that Karen would encourage Becca now and if she was miserable commiserate with her on how Hank both ruined Becca's great marriage and also forced Becca to make the bad decision to get married when she obviously shouldn't have.

Interestingly, I've seen this idea come up a lot--and it came into my head too. I could totally buy it. I don't think Philip's line about his father dying tells us one way or another whether his own father died at the same time since whatever he said to Paige would fit his false Philip Jennings backstory, which might or might not intersect with Misha's real life, and would have to include him being an orphan since he has no family. But regardless, as you say, a man his age from that country would always have a good chance of not having a father. In the first season I remember in discussions a lot of us wondered if he was an orphan because family and protecting family seems like such a hot button for him, yet at the same time he left everyone he knew behind, which seems at odds with someone who values family relationships so much. It seemed at least logical that if he'd lost his family he'd be hyper-vigilant about this one. It's also why when we got that tiny snippet of his childhood I wondered if orphans would be sent to get milk, or whether as an institution it would be just be delivered. (Of course, he could also have had some family earlier that died as well.) That does seem to make a lot of sense. I like the way the two of them are both supporters of the same cause but in different ways and perhaps for slightly different reasons. We didn't see any flashbacks to Philip's relationship with Emmett (like we did with Elizabeth and Leanne) but I remember when he spoke with Fred he said something about how Emmett liked people who saw the world "the way it was" and that seemed like something Philip would agree on, that he would see the world as unsafe for people without protection. In fact, he says as much when he's talking to Martha as Clark, that the world is full of terrible people. (It's one of those moments where he's speaking in character for a specific reason--to play her the tape of her co-workers being terrible--but seems to be speaking a personal truth as well.)

Exactly! Not the first time knowing some backstage thing has just interfered with what I'm seeing onscreen. I often don't want to know! Wasn't there a similar thing that happened in Breaking Bad--even more egregious? There was a certain thing that Walt did that the actor didn't know he'd done while doing an important scene where he's claiming that he didn't and BC was understandably annoyed at that. (Not saying the actual thing to avoid BB spoilers!)

I don't understand why they lied to the actor, in fact, except that it seems like they didn't want to tell anybody where they were going that early. In their minds, as they've said, They thought it was okay because we didn't see Jared actually see his parents in the room. So we're to assume he went in, gave himself a moment to take it in allegedly, and then screamed to draw attention and establish himself as the traumatized kid. I guess they figured a kid would be able to scream and be upset under those circumstances (he probably was actually upset, to be fair). So to them they thought telling the actor "scream as if you just found your family dead in the room" was the same as telling him what really happened....but I don't think that's fair to the actor. If I were him I wouldn't be able to think that there wouldn't have been more depth to the scene if I'd known what to play. If that were the case the scene would be a lot more interesting on rewatch. Now that I know the actor playing Jared was playing the wrong thing I know there's nothing more to get from his performance. Had he known I'd more enjoy watching it as Jared faking (and it would probably play better as that than it does now) and unwittingly manipulating Philip even more than he knows by doing it. That said, they've made mistakes before that they thought better of, so I don't see it as so much of a general problem--usually they're more committed to the realism of the moment. I'm thinking, for instance, of the scene where the KGB guys pulled the Clark wig right off Philip's head easy as pie and them watching it later and seeing the same problems the audience saw.