shura

Really, that's the episode title? It might have helped if she didn't unapologetically call him a jackass while trying to apologize.

Hey, maybe that's why they are having a dinner party and not a book club meeting. If you like the food, you say "thank you." If it doesn't agree with you, you ask where the bathroom is. It's not going to be the liveliest of dinner parties, but everybody knows enough to participate :).

Not exactly. Elizabeth also asked Gabriel there if they are putting too much weight on Paige, to which he replied "No, she'll be fine, she'll find her way." That sounded like an endorsement of the whole recruiting Paige business to me since that's what Elizabeth was asking about there, and he must have known that.

I thought it might even have been more than that. That she took Gabriel saying that Paige shouldn't do this as if he'd said Elizabeth herself was a failure. She wants Paige in the game for a lot of personal reasons. Someone elsewhere pointed out that Philip had Elizabeth say how good Gabriel was before he told her what he said about Paige, like he was putting her in the right frame of mind for it. But I think Elizabeth didn't just disregard the idea, she pushed back against it. There's yet another possible layer to this. Mind you, it's just a thought that occurred to me as I was watching Philip tell Elizabeth what Gabriel said about Paige, there is no reason to think the show is going there. But - IF Gabriel wanted for some reason to drive a little wedge between P and E, telling them different things that reinforced their respective conflicting positions on the Paige question would be a good way to do it. Then Elizabeth might start wondering whether Philip was telling her the truth about Gabriel's words to him since what Philip was saying would be the opposite of what she has heard herself. She wouldn't really have a reason to think Philip is lying, but then again, she knows he doesn't want Paige in the business, can he really be trusted here? But like I said, Gabriel probably wouldn't do that to them, both for personal and professional reasons. On the other hand, and also for professional reasons, it might not be a bad thing to have them a bit more independent of each other and maybe go back to the time and state of mind when Elizabeth was informing the KGB on Philip.

I don't understand the mechanics of this. I thought Morozov was a defector, which is why the FBI was guarding him so heavily in his private consulting trips around the country. And yet his wife is free to move back and forth across the Iron Curtain and pick which side she wants to live on? That's not really how it worked even for law-abiding for Soviet citizens, let alone defectors. She could, I suppose, count on propaganda value of her return (as in "it's really so bad over there that even our defectors choose to come back"), but then why would her CIA guy stick around all this publicity? Ah, but Tai Chi looks like slow kung fu, it's so much cooler that EST, which looks like slow... thinking about things?

I don't know if Becca's fun is fake. She might be that all-out, heart-on-your-sleeve kind of person that is just at 11 no matter what emotion she experiences, whether she is having fun or is scary angry. Notice she didn't try to downplay her anger there, she totally owned it in front of Phil. My thoughts on Ashton exactly. Chill, there's no need to keep getting worked up and declaring how much you hate liars. What's the purpose of that? You've learned a valuable lesson about what kind of people Matt and Redmond are. Now you know what to expect from them. File it and move on. The writing this season is not that stellar either. "School supplies are in short supply"? Really?

That's what I thought, too. In my mind, though, the soot would rub off more where the key blank hit the non-moving parts of the lock. Then you cut those parts out and you are left with something that will not hit those obstructions and will turn freely. (I'm learning so much about locks today.) One question - did Elizabeth do this key trick on the unlocked door to the shrink's waiting room? That's what it looked like to me. I wonder what the other patients there thought about someone entering like that. On the other hand, it was a shrink's office...

He's not sure Renee is going to work out and is looking for options? I loved how they lampshaded the question of why exactly Alexei had to travel to the greenhouse in person. It seemed like Gabriel and Elizabeth pronounced his last name differently in that scene though. Come on, Russians, figure out how to say common Russian names! I don't think we should assume that Philip's father would necessarily be despised for being a camp guard, and that other kids would be giving young Philip a hard time over that. This is still the 1940s, Stalin is not dead yet. Many people still believe that what the NKVD is doing is necessary to protect the Soviet state from it's numerous enemies. To these people, Philip's father might just be someone in law enforcement. And even people who knew the truth might shield their kids from it, just to avoid the situation where their kids give away what their parents are thinking.

It could be that the whole episode was basically everybody emoting how they are suffering on the inside, and not much else. Usually we have tradecraft, a con operation going on, someone in danger of being caught, tension (was there even any in this episode?), period references, maybe comic relief of some kind AND the suffering. But 60 minutes of everybody exchanging meaningful glances or looking into the distance while thinking their own thoughts was just too much. It tired me out. Depends on the boy, some just have the posture naturally. What killed me about Henry is that he thought to bring food from his house to his friend. What teenage boy has ever done that? And, btw, vegetables!

Yeah, if that guy has never been kicked in the nuts, then he must have only been around people with tremendous self-control. Even the native-looking greeter fellow looked like he was trying hard not to give it a go.

Exactly. What was she to do in the situation but search for the peanuts in his crotch area?

Oh, production hates him for sure. I even suspect that they already hated him before the window washing task and that's why they wrapped his harness a bit tighter than needed. On a related note, I guess we now know why the show is now at 10 pm. I didn't get the coin flipping "alliance." Was the idea that the first team to arrive would wait for the other team and flip a coin to decide who was the first team? Why?

I suppose. Seemed like there were too many of them guarding him on that trip though, as if they had a reason to think he had to have extra protection. They don't guard him in such numbers in DC, from what I can tell, he bowls and has a beer with Philip without the whole platoon. But maybe that's because DC is a crowded place, as opposed to rural Illinois. Still something is off here. If the company (or the government, for that matter) needs a Soviet expert's knowledge about things in the USSR (soil composition, pesticides, whatever), what is it that he has to go and see in person in an Illinois greenhouse? Seems like the writers just needed Elizabeth to discover the midges and didn't really think this through.

Oh, they got spies over there. It wouldn't be too hard to go and dig up some actual soil for analysis rather than rely on someone's word. But wait, how is the FBI even connected to that project if this is just a private company growing pest-resistant wheat for sale? Were they simply accompanying Alexei who was consulting for the company? It looked a bit like an overkill then to send three guys like those.

Really? She looks phony to me. I feel like she talks to much to show how strong and in control she is. All these "we'll hold you to that" (to the Jennings she's known for what, two weeks?), "I'm teaching him [fly fishing]", "I'll keep him as long as he doesn't diss the Kings"... It looks to me like she is trying to convey an impression. And it doesn't really matter if this impression is of what she genuinely is - I see that she is making an effort (imo), and it makes me wonder. Maybe if she could show and not tell it would be different.

So one can confess to a murder, try to interfere in matters of national security by blackmailing a government official, and keep going about their life consequence-free? That's cool. I don't get why the FBI had to bring Alexei to that greenhouse in the middle of nowhere. What was so Soviet in there that required a Soviet agriculture expert? Also wondering why P and E had to kill the guy in the lab. They left people alive before, like the guy at the sub propeller factory, for example. Were they not wearing disguises?

Maybe the brim wasn't in the budget. Yo-Yo Ma doing amazing yo-yo tricks can't be cheap.

Clearly, Stan is now going to control the whole government and they will do what he says. Because if they don't, he is going to go public and cause an apparently absolutely unacceptable diplomatic scandal. It's foolproof, how have people not thought of a thing like that before?

And even if they don't misunderstand, there's also the practical matter of being able to determine where you are on a circle. It's all good and easy when you are looking at the whole circle on a map, but if you are actually driving around a large unfamiliar rotary with traffic you have to pay attention to, you are not going to be able to tell how many degrees in you are.

I can't remember, he might not have used the word "turn", he may have said "take the exit at 135 degrees" or something like that. I am picturing the trigonometry circle, you enter at 0 degrees and start increasing the angle as you drive around it, whatever the direction (I'm assuming counter-clockwise). This way, straight ahead is 180. So you reach the point on the circle at 135 degrees, and that's where Vanck wanted her to get off. At least that's my understanding of it. But yes,to me, certainly, "3rd exit" is absolutely unambiguous and easy to count. Interesting. To me, the compass rose would only matter if I planned the route in advance (which I doubt Ashton did). And a roundabout would screw it up anyway :). I doubt very much that Ashton cared even what direction she was going without turning, let alone whether she needed to go SW vs SSW after the roundabout. It looked like she simply followed Vanck's directions to go straight and turn right there.

Oh, they certainly wouldn't give Stan up to the Russians. I wonder if they could lock him up and conduct a closed trial? And present his testimony as delusional (I mean, what normal law enforcement agent shoots a diplomat in cold blood?) if it reaches the public? The fact of the matter is, he murdered someone, can they really let him go free? And if they can because they are corrupt like that and really need to cover it up, the cover-up will have to involve removing Stan from the equation anyhow. You just can't let this ticking time bomb keep ticking out in the open, he always may go public with this thing unless he is locked up or worse. Of course, Stan probably got Pastor Tim's lawyer's number and sent him his own tape already, so the government is kind of screwed there. Yeah, they've got to hush him up and discredit the hell out of him before anything has a chance to go public.

He arrived at the 135 degrees by looking at the map, seeing all the spokes and picking the one at 135 degrees. "Take the 2nd exit after you enter the roundabout" sounds absolutely definitive to me. I'd think that's what the driver would expect to hear, and so it would be more efficient than descriptive but unexpected high school math directions.

Whatever his goal, how is Stan expecting this to be successful? His play is "I committed a crime, and if you don't do what I want, I will tell everybody that I committed a crime." If that were to work, then any federal employee in a sensitive area would pretty much get impunity the minute they were hired, and would be free to not only commit crimes, but also help themselves to whatever they could think to extract from their bosses via this "blackmail." At some point (or right off the bat?) this would become a bigger problem than an embarrassing but harmless international scandal. As it stands, what's there to stop the Deputy AG from saying "Thank you, Stan, let me call someone to take you to jail now", then call the Russian embassy and go "Hey, good news! We've caught the criminal who shot Vlad Kosygin! Terrible, terrible tragedy..."? And then proceed to let the CIA do whatever they want with Oleg?

Oh, the cynic in me was kind of disparaging to some police officers. I was picturing a Rush Hour-type scenario, with the Police Department figuring "Why don't we send these two to TAR and Survivor? The city will be safer that way." It's just so curious that cop partners would both go do reality shows. And I will be there to enjoy it. It will be all sorts of awkward and awesome. Another team that will implode is the red-headed guy (Scott?) and his partner. This one is going to be ugly. This is fantastic. It's not haiku, but I know poetry when I see it.

Yes, for sure. But this is more corruption of the general kind, where any crime is a corruption of how things should be in a fair world. My understanding is that Oleg (or, rather, his boss) is after the specific kind of political corruption where government and party officials on the level of his father's enrich themselves through some black market schemes using the powers of their office in exchange for bribes, or something like that. I can't see yet how the store manager is necessarily connected to that kind of corruption - she can do everything she does without being a part of that. I agree, the story is not nearly clear enough. Hopefully, the writers have something reasonable planned out there.