sistermagpie

There was no backstory for Leanne in that scene. Emmett and Leanne found out about the stuff with Kate in the hotel room. When she spoke to Elizabeth she thought Jared was just a normal US kid. I don't see any reason to doubt it was always planned. The writers said it was, everything in the season led up to this. I agree that there are big problems with the way it was supposed to go down, especially with Jared's actor essentially playing innocent in his early scenes--he really should have known so he could at least play some tells that the kid was lying. I have a lot of problems with how this was supposed to go down and I think there's stuff they needed to think through more. But I don't see how that means they must have been flying blind early on with no idea that Jared was the killer. They always knew, they just didn't play it out in a way that holds up for all of us. All they thought they had to do when filming the hotel killing was not show Jared actually in the room when he saw the bodies.

Maybe also that Philip seems to see it that way. He believes in the cause, but seems to feel that he's sacrificed being a good guy to do it. With Nina Philip seemed to be trying to still play the hero and he didn't seem to regret killing Vlad just to make the point that you couldn't kill FBI agents without paying for it.

Seems like just Philip and Elizabeth are KGB at the travel agency they both run. Martha doesn't call Philip at the office, she calls a number for "Clark" that gets relayed to Philip by the Centre's switchboard person who used to be George. However many Illegals there were no, there's no way there's so many that they're sitting around for years creating whole institutions that are anti-Soviet and getting themselves arrested just to recruit one girl who's already got KGB parents--by turning her onto something that's very American and not very Soviet. Like any conspiracy, it attempts to make the world simple and controlled in ways that it isn't. The world is full of belief systems. Paige happened to fall into this one. Philip and Elizabeth were raised in a different one. Stan was drawn to another one. We saw how the KGB went after Jared.

LOL! Gotta stick up for Henry here. He's not a goofball, he's just 11. And he's actually pretty smart and funny, just about the things 11 year olds care about. I think he's actually a lot wilier than Paige, and a better liar. Basically, Paige is like Elizabeth with her idealism and Henry's more like Philip--he's got certain natural spying skills that Paige doesn't have. We don't know how he'll deal with it when he's old enough to start noticing the weird stuff his parents do. Exactly. The stupidest thing to do with Paige would be to try to send her on missions like her parents. The point is to make her as upright and boring a citizen as possible and then just have her pass along documents from her classified job. She's a potential Fred or a turned Stan. She's a public face, she doesn't work in the shadows.

Why couldn't she have done that and be a newbie? Perhaps a more experienced handler would have led to a different outcome for Jared. Not that I'm blaming her for it, just saying that Kate seemed to stay the same level throughout to me--she knew what she was doing, but she wasn't highest caliber. Whatever Stan's reaction to that line, I don't think that was the thing that made him turn back. He's more motivated by his loyalty to the US than whether or not Nina loves him.

I thought it was perfectly in keeping with the situation--and funny, especially with the delivery. He was just saying how tedious Paige was and he said "If she said one more thing about nonviolent resistance I was going to punch her in the face." He didn't say anything about blowing her head off.

She doesn't trust them because she thinks they're lying. If they tell her how they've been lying the dynamic would change. I don't think Philip is a capitalist at heart at all. He's devoted his life to the idea that capitalist is not a fair system. Him being willing to enjoy nice things when he can in no way suggests that he doesn't believe in socialism. If he had to choose between owning the TransAm and someone else not having a car at all he'd want them both to have cheaper cars. You're suggesting that the KGB has a whole program set up to recruit kids to an idea in conflict with Soviet Socialism in order to convert them to Soviet Socialism. They're not just "not talking about Russia" they're converting kids to Christianity which is a totally different thing in conflict with the Soviet ideal. There is no "nice, friendly church" in the worldview. And you don't need a church to move anyone into civil actions. The pastor's probably spent years preaching Christianity every Sunday and we know he's making missionary trips to convert other people. He's converted possibly hundreds of people away from the Soviet cause in order to recruit...Paige? I think he didn't flinch from Philip because a) Like Paige herself he lives in a bubble of security as an American so he always feels safe and b) he has faith that God will protect him and probably thought Philip was a soul Jesus had sent him to save. There's nothing very OOC in his behavior for a Christian pastor.

I think he absolutely is--this is his "cause"--keeping his kids free of this stuff. We never got to hear the end of his story of how he got the milk home by facing down a gang of teenagers when he was 9, but he'll do it with Paige too! Both of these projects would be a complete waste of time and money for the KGB. In the first they're recruiting kids to be religious, which is against their philosophy, just so they can then recruit them for their actual philosophy which is anti-Jesus? And nobody knows it? And they're still doing mission trips to convert others? I think the pastor is an actual pastor recruiting kids for his church. If it looks like KGB recruitment it's because recruitment in general looks kind of sinister. Stan's wife has spent two decades married to a guy with nothing to do with espionage and living in the midwest somewhere (I think?) and now she's leaving him. In the kitchen scene she was just being his wife. She could tell something was bothering him because it was obvious. Nothing she's done is particularly helpful to the Soviet cause but it all makes sense as a woman who's what she appears to be.

Seems like once you get to the group everyone revolves around Pastor Tim. He's everyone's new bestie.

Paige had mentioned friends and Henry had friends at his birthday party. We don't see most of their friends because they only matter in how they effect their parents. I wouldn't want to waste time on seeing their lives when they have nothing to do with the themes of the show. That said, Paige quitting volleyball made me think she probably is dropping all her old friends to be all-church all the time and only hang out with her "good people" Jesus friends.

It's a flat little pin. I don't think there's any room for a bug. Yes, if it was Jared it would basically turn it into a monster movie.

Claudia was Emmett and Leanne's handler. But just being a Line N officer would give Kate a reason to protect Jared. He's the son of two of their agents which means he's not only somebody they probably don't want the FBI taking an interest in in general, but someone they care about personally.

He was always important to them because he's the son of Russian heroes. Though they might see him as potentially valuable as a future engineer or something now too. Plus if the KGB knows that Stan's figured out about Emmett and Leanne--which they probably do via Nina--they might be working on getting him out anyway. They are not his friends. Larrick was referring to the military guys Philip killed during Martial Eagle, not Emmett and Leanne. Larrick hated Emmett and Leanne and was planning to kill them once he found out how to find them. Philip and Elizabeth originally pretended to be CIA. They told him to continue working with the Soviets and pass on anything he did to them. Because he talked about being involved in Nicaragua they decided to just takeover running him. When they showed up at the gay club Larrick knew (as they knew he would) that they were actually KGB (which he'd suspected earlier too). So now they all knew who everyone else was working for. They essentially told him they were Russian/KGB when they showed up at the gay club to talk about him giving them info on Martial Eagle. It was a given that he understood and then they continued working together knowing that.

There's no reason to think Emmett and Leanne were disloyal. They weren't friends with Larrick, they were blackmailing them. It would erase most of Jared's personality that we've seen to reveal he's some sort of Soviet fanatic who would murder his parents and sister for "disloyalty" to a country he's never seen and an ideology to which he might or might not understand. Dogs would probably bark when they snuck out of the house at night.

I don't think she compartmentalizes at all, actually. I think what puts her in a better place about this specific issue is that she believes that she's ultimately doing good with whatever she does. She sees the truck driver as a casualty in a just war while Philip has started taking more personal responsibility, questioning what specific good came out of whatever action he took. Elizabeth is much more of a whole person most of the time, I think, where she always knows who she really is and the lies are more superficial. Henry was already upset about what he'd done and clearly understood what the problem was. Paige, perhaps because of her age and probably also her personality, has consistently reacted to her parents this season by rolling her eyes and being dismissive of them. Not only did she not care about their opinions, she considered herself and the pastor morally superior. RE: the church, I think they're supposed to be basically on the up and up but I agree that accepting the money was simply wrong. It was wrong whether they assumed her parents knew or not. I don't think they're supposed to be conning everyone, but I think they're basically focused on grabbing as many kids and others as converts as possible and it never occurs to them to think anything else has to matter. Everybody needs to come to Jesus by any means necessary.