MisterBluxom

I was just about to post that Debbie is most certainly nuts. But then I saw someone else posted that as a question. Tonight's episode will live on in infamy forever. From now on, no one who has an idol will ever leave it somewhere and not bring it to TC. I can't find too much fault with JT. He was up against some extremely wicked and evil people. Or maybe it was really just Sandreck. She may well have exerted some kind of mind control over Mikaela. I feel disappointed with Mikaela. But when it comes to Sandreck, I am at the point of evil rage. I've wanted to see her voted out for the longest time. But after tonight, I now want to see her suffer some incredible and unspeakable evil. I have never felt this way about any other Reality TV contestant. By the way, I call her "Sandreck" because the world "dreck" means something very nasty in a foreign language that many of you may never have heard before. Too bad that Probst has so little imagination. Otherwise, he would have told the audience that from now on, the principle of always bringing your idols to TC - just in case - will forever more have the name, "The JT Principle". I have a great deal of sympathy for JT. Can you imagine just how glorious it would have been if he had played the idol and somehow Sandreck would have been bounced? Delightful. If anyone can arrange to bounce her it will be Sandreck herself. She is her own worst enemy. She calls herself the "Queen" and she don't care who knows it. She is just asking for it and I hope she gets it in a most painful and humiliating way.

It seems to me that Gabriel's attitude towards P & E was markedly different in this episode than we have ever seen before. It was almost "harsh" whereas previously his attitude was almost "fatherly". IMO, the change was so pronounced that I think we will certainly learn more about this in the future. What could this be about? Is Gabriel unhappy with them for some reason? If so, I would have expected he would talk about with them and not behave in a way that can almost be described as childish. What is it that could be upsetting him? Something about his retirement or failure to enjoy his retirement? What is going on with Gabriel? If nothing else, I think it's very clear there is going to be a serious problem for our dynamic duo somewhere in the future and it may well have something to do with Granny and Gabriel and their relationship. Maybe Henry is spending some of that time with Gabriel or someone else from the Center? Just like the young man who murdered his father in an earlier season? Is it possible the Center has contacted Henry without his parents' knowledge? That would certainly cause some attitude problems with Gabriel. It would almost cause the end of the show. If Phillip ever learned that had happened, he would almost certainly terminate his relationship with the KGB and with Gabriel.

If that ever happened, I don't think it would be a big problem. She would just explain that her wig shifted positions. Do you think that just because a lady is wearing a wig, that would give rise to someone getting suspicious that she is a foreign spy? I don't think so. Wigs are not all that uncommon - especially for ladies.

I felt the need to make a comment here. When you said "Things are slowly heating up.", I have to agree but the word "slowly" just gets kind of stuck in my craw. (Is craw really a real word?) Slow is just not the word. I think that a better phrase to describe this would be "at a glacial pace" because it's going so incredibly slowly. Why is it going so slowly? Can anyone imagine there is some kind of problem? After thinking it over a bit, I must admit there are so many sub-plots and we saw so many of them progress so very slowly, it's just incredible for this show. I've never seen anything quite like this before. Never seen so many sub-plots where each of them made such a teeny tiny progress. I still love this show. It's most definitely my most favorite of them all. But it's so puzzling - I cant imagine where things are going or how they will ever get there or how long they might take. My state of mind may have something to do with the President of NK threatening to destroy America in a massive nuclear firestorm because some US senator called him a "fat kid". Back in the 80s, I don't think our KGB agents ever had to deal with anything like that. But I best change the subject lest I will be going "off topic". It just puzzles me how such a thing could have ever transpired in the 1980s. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3203473/senator-john-mccain-king-jong-un-north-korea-war-crazy-fat-kid/ Back to the wheat midgets. How in the world will our heroes ever imagine they will be able to counter any moves made by the USA to destroy the Russian grain harvest? Will they try to poison the insects? Can you imagine the story from the 1963 film Dr. Strangelove where they talked about the "missile gap. Does anyone think we might soon see a "Midget Gap"? I can imagine some wonderful one-liners. "Our midges will crush your midges!" "It is a well known fact that Soviet midges are the strongest midges in the world! I would hope that Costa Ronin will be given most of these lines. He certainly deserves them.

Bama, Oops. My mistake. Thank you for pointing that out.

Yes. Pastor Tim is back. But really .... how much back is back? What I mean is there was really little point to having him appear on screen tonight. What was the point? To tell us that Alice is nervous? Oh dear. That was just umm ... in a word ... dismal. Just pathetically dismal. For shame. For shame! The producers could easily rent a soundstage and create a few scenes to tell us whatever they need to tell us. They don't have to waste so much time and resources. To advance the story line, it seems to me, they are just wasting an incredible amount of resources. Just incredible. It is not necessary. Not at all. I am just plum disappointed. Shame on the producers. Shame, shame, shame on the directors too. Someone really ought to know better. The producers, director and actors are all so very talented. They are just plum more talented than this. Shame on them! Why oh why do they feel some need to waste so much of our time? It is just a shame.

Nice observation. Well done.

Alvajon? Did something go wrong with your reply? It looks like maybe you wrote something but then it failed to get posted? SWLinPHX. Oops! I missed that. Thank you kindly. Cosmosgravitation. I did not see your post about Henry being a gifted math student. I'm sorry if you felt I was stealing your idea. It was not intentional. Pls excuse me.

The only possible thing I can see that you might agree is "missing" is that Stan would have been absolutely terrified about doing this and we failed to see that at all. If he wasn't terrified, there are several other strong emotions that he could have shown us. I feel as if I would be within my rights to ask for my money back on account of that failure. Did anyone else feel like that was some kind of FAIL? It must have taken a huge amount of courage for Stan to have done this - especially since he knows what a ****** jerkoff that little weasel (his boss) is and that his boss would almost certainly have chosen to take the course of action that would cause Stan the most amount of pain and suffering (and harm and trauma) and would be most likely to cause him to wind up in prison. Also, I'm taking into consideration that Stan is so very happy to have found this new lady and he would be so fearful to lose her by getting into trouble with the FBI). So ... why in the world did the director not give us some glimpse of all these emotions? We know they must have been there and we know Noah Emmerich is certainly capable of delivering them. So ... why didn't he? I was seriously disappointed with this scene. I thought they could have delivered one Hell of a lot more acting chops - both of them - both Stan and his boss. I was left scratching my head and wondering out loud, "WTH???" I have to say the acting in that scene did not seem very well done to me. I would have expected for Stan to have shown us a much greater amount of tension and fear. In addition, I would have expected his boss to have shown a great deal of anger and stupidity. I just don't understand the casting of Stan's boss. I would have figured he was cast because he has the ability to display a great deal of anger and/or stupidity or something else. But we saw nothing like that. Almost anyone could have acted the part of Stan's boss. If there was one disappointing aspect of this episode, that would have been it. What was the point of casting that guy? Seems very ridiculous to me. Of course, I could easily be wrong about this and I'd sincerely love to hear what you all have to say about this. Since there was so little delivered to us.

I have just a very few observations about tonight's episode. When it comes to seducing people with the idea of later on being able to take advantage of them and getting some info from them, E sure does seem to be better at it then does P. At least judging from this epi. P did do a great job on Martha. But after watching tonight's epi, it sure does seem to me that E is the Queen of that department. I don't know how any man could ever resist her. She is such an attractive lady and so appealing. I could write pages in praise of Elizabeth. Tonight's episode seemed markedly different to me than most others because there was so much movement along so many different plot lines. We saw progress in Mischa's story, Oleg's story, oh heck ... in almost every story. But the big surprise was Henry's story. Never expected that. If I had to guess what is going on with Henry, my current guess would be that his teacher has discovered he is a genius "savant" when it comes to math and the school wants to place Henry in some advanced math program and/or pave the way for Henry to attend some advanced university. That would bring a fair bit of attention to the family and I bet that's just what they wanted. What do you think? I'm just joking of course. The last thing this family wants is a bunch of attention. What do you think of Oleg choosing to confide in Mom? Of all the people in this world, I would think the very last person in whom you would want to confide is Mother. It looks like Stan is going to get the CIA to drop its stupid plan to force Oleg to do anything. But if they didn't, I'm guessing that his telling Mom would become a very serious problem. Mothers just seem to need to talk to someone/anyone to help their offspring. Unfortunately, my experience has been that often leads to much bigger problems instead of solving them. Oh, shit! Don't tell your mother. Tell most anyone else. But not mother! Oleg's story line here seems like it might be one of the most interesting of them all this season. Hard to believe the writers made a teeny tiny bit of progress on almost all the story lines. There was a microscopic amount of progress made in the story about the father who hates Russia. But it seemed kind of silly to me that the major happening was for him to announce (once again) that he hates Russia. This is just getting downright boring! Booo! Finally, did anyone else wonder about the name of the "experienced interregator"? My subtitles indicated his name was "Russia". Could that be correct? I have never before heard that name used as the first name of a Russian citizen. What's going on with that? Does anyone know if that is really a first name in the USSR?

I wonder if I'm the only one who would prefer Mutt's gf to return sans Mutt? But I'll just never be able to remember if it is Tennessee or Tallahassee. Never.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someone will have an explanation. If not, at least I hope some other people will post about some other movies that seem to have changed. I sure do hope there will be some kind of rationale explanation. I just don't want to find out that it's aliens from another world who are practicing their mind control techniques on us - you know ... being an inferior species and all. *j/k*

I saw The Verdict with Paul Newman in 1982 - the year it was made. I could swear that at the end of the movie, the jury asks the judge if there is any limit on how much they can award the plaintiff and after the judge tells them "no", they make an award of millions of dollars. The important point is that I'm certain the jury actually named the exact amount. But I saw this film again recently and the jury asked the judge if there was a limit and after the judge said "no", the film abruptly ended. I wanted to be certain so I asked a friend who has a great many movies to help me and he had two separate copies of this same movie and they both ended in the same way (abruptly). Is it possible they actually changed the movie over the past 35 years? Or is the truth that I'm just getting senile with old age. Another example is "Rosemary's Baby". I saw the original in approximately 1967. At the end of the film, they showed a "money shot" of the baby. Just some horribly disfigured creature with a very large and ugly claw. But then, I recently saw it again - a modern copy - and the movie was pretty much identical - except no showing of the baby at the end. What's going on? Are movies being changed for some reason? Or am I going senile? Would anyone know the reason for this? Would anyone have any other examples of movies that have been changed many years after they were first released?

Yes. The characters are all pretty dispicable. But that is not the real point. At least not in my opinion. The real point is about the movie. Is it worth watching? Is it a good film? Is it entertaining? I thought it was a very good. It was very well crafted. It is a suspense thriller and this movie is just full of suspense and full of thrills. As a "suspense thriller", I would recommend it to anyone. As far as the "likability" of the characters, I think the movie works much better given the characters are all horrible. If they were all nice people, I don't think the movie would work very well at all.

I just ran across a strange news story in the NY Times connecting "Midges" with a Reality TV show. Have you ever thought of applying to appear on a reality TV show? Maybe it's time to have a second thought. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/world/europe/eden-reality-tv-show-canceled-scotland.html?_r=0

I doubt that prison in the US was ever an option for Martha. My guess is the KGB would never allow her to live and talk to the FBI and they would kill her before they'd let that happen. After all, consider the relative merits of having a very valuable husband and wife spy team versus whatever Martha would be worth to the KGB after she was discovered to be working with the Russians.

I don't think that was a one-time sighting because she looked so desperately miserable and unhappy. So there is something more to the story and it would be terribly cruel and unfair if the two J's didn't explain to us just what was causing her misery - even though it would seem to be fairly obvious - no food - no romance - no entertainment - no fulfillment. Those are just some of the reasons why she would likely be so unhappy. Don't you think? She could likely get by without most all of those. But being deprived of all of them and everything else would be just too much to bear for any American girl. I just can't imagine. Remember when P&E were talking about her? One of them said that she would be a "hero" in Russia. Did she seem to be living the life of a hero? I don't think so. I wouldn't be so bitter about her fate if only they would have sent her to Cuba. Why didn't they send her to Cuba? She could have likely found romance and food and drink and hapiness in Cuba - even if she would never get rich. I will go out on a limb here and suggest the single biggest reason for Martha's misery is the realization that Clark & Martha could never live happily ever after. Even if he really did love her (which we are fairly certain that he never did), there was no chance they could ever have had a happy life together - not in the USA and not in Russia and not anywhere else either. She had consigned herself to a life filled with cold and misery in a place with no love in her heart. Poor dear. It's enough to make me cry real tears. I feel so badly for her. Poor baby.

Let me predict the three most common probabilities - a girl or drugs or a criminal gang.

I think she would have been very much happier had they moved her to Cuba than USSR. I'm fairly sure it would have been much easier for her to learn Spanish than Russian and she wouldn't have had to spend a lot of money on trying to keep warm in Moscow. That must eat up a large part of whatever money she gets. Hard to forgive the USSR for the way they have treated Martha My Dear. I'm almost certain that any man who had a choice between Keri Russel or Alison Wright would stay with Keri. She is just so much more pleasant to be around.

That is a very observant conclusion. Still, I would have hoped Misha would have left at least half of his money plus everything else in his backpack in some safe place (assuming that any place in Yugo could be safe). At the least, I would have hoped he would have hid half his cash under a rock somewhere if that was the best he could do. But to show someone all your money when they ask to see your money .... well, I hope that will be a good life lesson for everyone who saw that. If that guy did that to me, I think that I'd try to find a way to pay him back. Not sure how. Especially since I would have lost my money due to my own stupidity.

I'm not trying to be a smart alec. Honest. But I'd really like to know what you loved about it. I found it very slow and I may well have missed something or misunderstood something.

I don't know but I'd guess they work in much the same way as illegal back room gambling rooms work in the West. Maybe people know a password? Maybe they are asked, "Who sent you?" But one thing I'm positive does not happen is they aren't asked "Do you have any money?" Then, if they say they do they are told, "Show Me!". Then if they show that person their money, he will just grab it and run away. Sorry. But I'm really disappointed in stupid Mischa. Strangely enough, it seems to me that many other good stories from our past begin in that way. The hero does something stupid and loses all their money. Remember Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? (BTW: I just realized the significance of that title. It stands for WTF!) Heh Heh. Also Midnight Cowboy. I sure do wish I could remember more. There are many other stories from our past that have that scene near the beginning of the story.

I think we would have to guess that would be some other KGB agent. I don't think it's anyone we've seen before.

Is it possible that grain land needs to "rest" every one year in seven? I had heard that old Biblical homily is actually true. The USSR would never pay any attention to anything from the Bible and so they probably insisted that farmers plant every inch of land every year and perhaps after many years, the land became depleted and failed to grow much. The Ukraine was always known as the "breadbasket" of Asia. In the 1940s it apparently produced incredible amounts of wheat. If there is any single reason why the USSR failed to be a successful country from an economic POV, I would guess it would be because the Party would insist that people do things to improve productivity that were hugely counter-productive. The USSR seemed completely incompetent when it came to basic services like a telephone service. You want a telephone? You have to get on a waiting list. You want it soon? You have to pay a bribe. If you pay the bribe, you can get the phone in just 2 or 3 years. Can you imagine?

Martha looked horrible. She did not look at all happy. I would expect that if we see her again this season, it will be when she kills herself. Can you imagine coming to a Russian grocery store after being used to American grocery stores?