Quando

Jimmy: "I once convinced a woman I was Kevin Costner. It worked because I believed it." It wasn't a nail gun. It was a battery-powered electric drill.

My thoughts exactly. My wife fell asleep after the first ten minutes. The next morning she asked me what happened. I said, "Paige broke up with Matthew, and Gabriel left for home with a flower pot full of wheat plants. That's about it."

I love that movie too. I used to watch it all the time as a kid. It is interesting that Breaking Away also involves someone hiding their true nationality and pretending they are someone who they are not, then realizing he needs to be honest with himself about who he really is. The main character is Then Only then,

If the company puts razor wire and guards around the plants in the greenhouse, then why is there a whole field of the stuff growing out in the open down in Mississippi where anyone who wants to can just come and dig up a sample? Now that I think of it, why are Elizabeth and Phillip so sure that what was growing in that field was actually the super wheat? From what I recall, all P&E knew was that (i) Mr. Tai-Chi was taking a business trip to Mississippi, and (ii) Ms. Lotus had some shipping invoices to places in Mississippi. How did they get from that to knowing that these particular crops growing in this particular field are the super wheat? The fact that there is no guard at the field, and not even a fence or a "no trespassing" sign, makes it seem more likely that whatever was growing out there was not the real super wheat, which would be very commercially valuable to the company. Maybe is was just one of many experimental strains they were testing. ALSO, during the uncomfortable scene between Paige and Pastor Groovyhair on the couch, did anyone else get an icky feeling that the Pastor was about to make a pass at Paige?

That's funny! But I would probably peg Chuck more as lawful neutral. To continue the analogy, I guess Hector would be chaotic evil, and Mike would be lawful evil (honor among thieves).

Hmmm. I don't think Jimmy knew he was being recorded at the time. However, after Jimmy goes outside to make his phone call then comes back in and sees Chuck is already starting to take down the mylar sheets, you can see Jimmy react like he wonders whether Chuck may have just done something to set him up (or trap him in some way) and he even looks around a little as if he's checking for a recorder or camera. His reaction for about 5 seconds is like he knows something is not quite right about the situation, but he doesn't know what.

Great. We have to avail ourselves of supplemental content, again, to determine what the show we just watched "meant". While I love the way TV has improved over the years, this is one aspect I don't care for. I think that was conveyed clearly at the end of the scene. Right after Ernesto walked away, Chuck's face changed from stressed to calm to a kind of smirk, and then he casually flipped the wooden salad tongs in his hand.

Heh. I remember The President's Analyst. That was one trippy movie, but ahead of its time in a way. James Coburn didn't play a secret agent - he was a civilian psychiatrist who was brought in to be the personal psychoanalyst for the President of the United States. And because of his position (someone who heard all of the president's most secret and unguarded inner thoughts) he was constantly being pursued, spied on and almost kidnapped by every spy agency in the world. The most powerful spy agency of all, and the ultimate villain, is indeed The Phone Company, who taps everyone's phones and hears and knows everything.

. . . or maybe Soon-Hee's daughter, or niece! Wouldn't that be awesome.

Yeah. When my wife saw this awkward scene she said, "looks like Stan's a bad missionary."

I liked the scene with Phillip and Elizabeth in the hotel room when she puts on his cowboy hat. The lighting in that scene was particularly good. It had a real Urban Cowboy feel to it. I almost expected the Johnny Lee ballad Lookin' for Love to start playing.

It seems pretty clear to me what must be going on in that greenhouse. The Russian defector is helping to develop new strains of wheat that are more bug-resistant. The first few rows of dead wheat that Elizabeth saw in the greenhouse consisted of "regular" strains of wheat that were included in the experiment as the baseline and "control." The next several rows of wheat that were green and seemed to be growing fine consisted of the experimental wheat strain or strains that were altered or engineered in ways that the scientists hope will make them more resistant to bugs and disease. Then the scientists intentionally spray a ton of grain-killing bugs into the greenhouse to see which engineered strains grow most successfully despite all the bugs. The purpose of the experiment is to develop stronger strains of wheat that can resist bug infestation -- not to develop a method for sabotaging Russian crops. As Bannon noted above (just beat me to the punch), if this really was a covert CIA base for developing entomological weapons to sabotage Russian grain, there is simply no way it would be kept in an ordinary glass greenhouse, right off a public road, with nothing but a $2 padlock on the door. No guard? No deadbolt? No bars on the windows? No alarm? No dogs? No security cameras? Not even a gate or chain across the driveway to the farm blocking traffic from the main road? No way. I predict that E&P will take some rash action based on the assumption that this is a weapon meant to sabotage Russian grain (maybe even kill the defector guy), only to find out later that the defector was actually trying to help Russia by developing better strains of wheat that would be shared with Russia -- i.e., that he was trying to help the Russian food crisis not make it worse, and P&E killed him for it.

It is hard to tell unless you pause it just right, but those are definitely MIG-21s -- Russian military jets.

In case you were wondering, yes, there is a Roy Rogers restaurant in Franconia, Virginia, near Alexandria. http://royrogersrestaurants.com/node/101 It might be the prearranged location of someone's covert meeting (Oleg & Stan maybe?).

After the ice cream delivery truck went into the warehouse and they shut the overhead door you could hear a whirring sound like those compressed air power lug nut drills that they use to quickly change tires on NASCAR vehicles during a pit stop. Mike had a look on his face like he understood what was going on. I think that means they were removing the truck's tires and filling them with drugs, money or other contraband to be smuggled.