PinkRibbons

I've never wanted to reach into my TV and slap Mary so hard as when she said, "My rank is poison". The problems isn't your rank, IT'S YOU AND YOUR FUCKING AWFUL CHOICES. THE COMMONALITY HERE IS NOT A MATTER OF REACHING BELOW YOUR RANK, IT'S THAT YOU ARE AN IMPULSIVE, SHORT-SIGHTED, SELFISH IDIOT. *Whew* Having gotten that out of the way. At least I suppose we can commend the show on Mary's faithful-to-history characterization. I thought Greer and Leith had one of the first truly adult conversations on this show since season 1. You could see both sides of the argument, and I don't feel like either is wrong. Greer has seen change aplenty and with Francis's probable death coming she's likely to be right. Leith has no standing with anyone but Francis, and Catherine won't keep him around as anything major -- she might get rid of him sooner if he does have an affair with Claude. Obviously we know Louis can't get the crown, but I'm betting he'll be behind Francis's eventual death (using his real illness to mask poisoning as just another attack of the same), and he wouldn't keep anyone close to Francis. I'm looking forward to Catherine getting her hands on Conde and fileting him. I love that Leith has such a perfect reaction to the idea of incurring Catherine's wrath over Claude's. Let's just hope that he isn't addicted to reaching above his station the way Mary reaches below. (And btw, I thought Claude's blackmailing was laughable. Who's going to believe her about Leith stealing? The girl could tell any number of sworn truths and no one would believe her, especially her mother. She's a child who clearly enjoys getting herself and others into trouble.) I agree there's something odd about how the show is focusing so hard on Conde. The writers can't be deaf and blind to fan reaction; he has been overwhelmingly disliked by viewers, and has been pretty much since he was introduced. If they're sticking to a season-long storyline they refuse to alter, fine, it's actually interesting to see Mary screw France through this awful affair. But they don't need to keep trying to make Conde likable with his stupid waffling over what to do. It doesn't make him look noble; it makes him look weak. It explains exactly why he would be a terrible king. Francis is so strong and firm in his ruling that in contrast that he makes Conde look all the worse. (Which reminds me, I really wish he had responded to Mary's "I was trying to save his life" with, "yeah, well ten guys just lost their lives by guarding him", and then going on to add how many more lives there would be lost.) I don't have any bad feeling towards Kenna. Bash has already started visiting and presumably sleeping with Delphine; they both know the marriage is over. I liked the pairing a lot but I stopped rooting for it when it came out that Kenna wanted children and Bash didn't. That's something that's extremely hard to reconcile in a marriage. I sort of like Kenna being able to choose for herself what she wants out of a relationship.

Praise the Lord.

Holly Taylor, hilariously enough. She said on the season finale podcast that her first thought on reading the script for this episode was "Oh God, what are they gonna do to Pastor Tim?" Speaking of behind the scenes on this episode:

The only saving grace I can see from Ben at this point is if he's deliberately working as the main investigator so Emily's lawyers can call a mistrial on grounds of conflict of interest. I'm kind of expecting a parade of previously-seen witnesses next episode, each talking about how Emily screwed them. I hope her lawyer (oh, let me guess -- Stevie, perhaps?) is smart enough to point out that in many of the cases where they were screwed, Emily only manipulated them into screwing themselves. Has anyone ever gotten away with the "If I'd done it, there wouldn't be so much evidence and sloppy work all-around" defense? I'd also like to see her getting a lot of support from the common man and the press. Victoria was hated with good reason and Amanda Clark should still be riding some incredible PR. She was the victim of one proven conspiracy-by-Grayson; why wouldn't others suspect it happening again?

I've always felt that Ripperism has been presented as a supernatural version of alcoholism, in a way. Stefan is a blood addict -- what most vampires can (and need to) drink is enough to satiate them, but Stefan can't stop. And when in the throes of addiction, he goes too far in his drinking and ends up killing. I think Damon even said once that Stefan "blacks out" when feeding (in Ripper-state but humanity switch still on) and comes to to find what he's done (and gets so guilty he tries to piece his victims back together). I totally can believe that there is some kind of genetic predilection in the family that, if the individual is turned into a vampire, makes the person/vampire not react "correctly" to blood. There's been debate about whether alcoholism is genetic for ages. So, if we were to remove the driving imperative to drink blood, the conclusion is that Stefan and Lily, removed from their fundamental need for blood, would have nothing left to be addicted to. There aren't a lot of humans who want to drink blood and none that need to. The fact that Stefan and Lily cannot give up blood entirely is what keeps them on the edge. (I have a lot of thoughts on this. Plus I recently found out that I'm a carrier for a gene that, long story short, means that I or my children could react badly to a certain anesthetic. But said anesthetic is used for a specific purpose and there's a good chance I could go my entire life without it ever being a problem. I would have to be in a very specific situation. Stefan, to me, is in a certain situation that specifically triggers a problem that would otherwise lie dormant forever.) During the episode I actually enjoyed the Stefan/Caroline scenes but I guess I just feel they play well off each other. I got annoyed at Jo and Alaric at the end though when they persuaded Stefan to go back to check in on Caroline despite what he said. First of all, he said as much that he knew what she was going through and what wouldn't help. Second, I get this feeling like Alaric and Jo are trying very much to be the grownups that match their upcoming marriage and child, which I get, but I wish for once they'd remembered that they were dealing with a guy who was alive before their grandparents walked the earth. Show some respect to your elders, kids.

NOTE: Reign airs on Wednesdays in Canada, meaning that the episodes are very often viewed a day before they have aired in the US. Therefore please be aware that this thread will almost definitely have spoilers for those who wish to wait until Thursday night to view the new episode. Promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMoswpjw1Ko

For me it was seeing this slightly airheaded silly woman go into badass mode. I have a weird amount of respect for Zinaida; she played her part very very well. I'll bet she was a lot more dangerous than we'll ever see.

I think he can probably tell Martha that the people he works for came up with framing Gene and did it without his knowledge. Martha doesn't have to know it was her Clark that strung up Gene with his own two hands.

You know, these pocasts (especially the one released today) has explained, I think, something about Matthew Rhys's acting to me. He is so frikkin' good at loaded silences and these moments when you think he's going to talk and then the scene ends and you find yourself (*ahem*, myself) screaming at the screen. It's like a loaded gun that you're waiting to see go off any second. And that seems to be exactly who Matthew Rhys is. He, as himself, is like this wonderful ball of hilarity and energy, exploding here and there. And I think a lot of being Philip is holding that considerable energy in. Does that make any sense?

At this point Mary's only saving grace for me that I can see is if she was behind the arson. That would take her into EPIC Magnificent Bastard territory. Otherwise her own stupidity is being brought home and shoved under her nose and I'm glad to see that the show isn't afraid to lay it all out how massively she has fucked up. Love Greer's sudden success as a Madame but still hate her hair. What were they going for tonight? It was almost like they were trying to give her devil horns... Catherine girl, you go get some. She and Narcisse and fantastic. I hope she's not immature enough to be seriously threatened by Lola. And seriously, her guard was I think over-stating the situation. I kept expecting him to say "if that was my wife, it would make me nervous", not, "I'd kill that sum bitch".

I've said it before, I'll say it again; if Paige is held hostage in Russia I can absolutely see Philip murdering his way through the Lubyanka to get her out if he has to. And I will ever believe killing one of their children is an option. I keep expecting the KGB to attack Paige or Henry under a false-flag operation to make their parents think the US poses such a large threat. And if that were to happen and P and E found out about it, I wouldn't be surprised to see them turn double-agent. Trust goes both ways and if the KGB doesn't have their trust, they've lost their agents and a whole lot of valuable information. That's why they have to be so careful about bringing in the kids.

If we accept that spies like Elizabeth and Philip could exist in America, it is absolutely possible that there could have been an actually American Philip and Elizabeth deep cover in Russia: 1. America had waaaaay more unaccented Russian-speakers than Russia did of American-Accented English speakers. There was immigration to America right after the war, not to mention even more in the early seventies. Tons of these immigrants still spoke Russian at home and had children that could speak it unaccented. Hell, give me a couple of years of more formalized training to fix up my pronunciation of certain words and vocabulary and I would be able to pass as fluent, no problem. And I'm American through and through. As for cultural training, there were more than enough Russian natives in America to work as consultants. They're working as consultants for the show right now, to get the Russian details right. So the idea of having an American spy posing as a Russian native is not at all far-fetched. 2. A huge chunk of Russia's records were destroyed in the war. Say the American Phil and Liz came to Russia in '63, the same way the Russian versions came to America. Our Philip and Elizabeth are living under the identities stolen from dead American children. In Russia all a pair of spies would have to do once smuggled into the country would be to say that they and their families came from a town that was destroyed during the War, record hall included. A pair of war orphans at that time would not arouse any suspicions.* In any case, regardless of whether or not there were deep-cover American spies in Russia, to assume there were none would be a huge oversight on the part of the KGB. This was the cold war, paranoia was rampant and justified. *For example: when Russia was allowing Jewish immigration in the 70s, potential emigrants was required to supply an invitation from a first degree relative who was already living abroad. My mother and grandmother (Baba) had no such relative. They did however have friends that managed to immigrate before they did, and those friends tracked down an unrelated woman in Israel who shared Baba's maiden name, and she kindly sent an invitation. Mama and Baba then sat down and made up a false history for this woman in which she was Baba's sister who had been separated from the rest of the family during the war. The town they said she had been born in was one that had had all of its records destroyed. This story was accepted without question because it was perfectly plausible. And now that I think about I'll add the fact that you could basically bribe someone for any kind of legal papers you wanted/needed. My grandparents were divorced and my mother could not leave the country without the express permission of her father, who refused to give it. So when she was 20, Mama had her father legally killed. It involved a ridiculously large bribe and a sudden very long train trip to a suburb in Ukraine, but Mama obtained a death certificate with witnesses saying that her father had died there. Last I heard, Dedushka is alive and kicking in a little town in Russia, and has no idea that in Ukraine he's legally dead. The system was corrupt. CIA Philip and Elizabeth could have found the means to walk into Moscow with perfect Russian and iron-proof documentation.

I think there's a decent shot at Elizabeth getting disillusioned with what she sees. She left in the optimistic, happy '60s. People thought a better life in Russia was right around the corner. She'll be returning in the turbulent, cynical '80s, when everyone is seeing that things aren't getting better, won't get better the way things have been going, and the country is gradually falling apart at the seams and has been since the 70s. And it isn't foreign powers being oppressive -- the USSR was firmly pulled down from within, by its disgusted citizens.

He is presented as a complicated case -- he's been openly unhappy with the Catholic Church, but he only claimed Protestant as a favor to Mary, to give the court a strong Protestant figure to balance it out. No idea where he stands personally. He might by now think of himself as Protestant. I just realized something -- how did Claude even get into Greer's brothel house? She should have been turned away at the door. Maybe Greer hasn't arranged for security/bouncers yet? She's going to need then. Plus she should have a name for her establishment (I've been marathoning Salem with "The Divining Rod".) Think it would be too cheeky of her to go with something like "The Queen's Ladies?" Or maybe she should go with a Scottish reference to set her House of Ill Repute apart from the ones run by the French. (That reminds me; I thought there was a neat bit of characterization with Lola in this episode. I thought her support of sending armies to Scotland was way more about Scotland and less about betraying Francis. I think that's just her priority. It's like when John Philip was christened and Kenna and Greer gave her something with Scottish colors because despite the fact that they've all lived in France for a long time, they're at heart Scottish ladies first.) Anyway, I'd love for Greer to send Catherine an itemized bill for any damages Claude did and any booze she drank. Being a princess doesn't mean she gets a free ride everywhere, in fact historically abusing a title to erase or ignore personal debts doesn't ever end well.

While I liked Matt's speech and find his new approach to vampires admirable, it bothered me that he didn't stop to consider that his own death would cause Tyler to break out all wolfy again. If he was sure he could survive with good medical care then I understand. But how could he have been positive?

NOTE: Reign airs on Wednesdays in Canada, meaning that the episodes are very often viewed a day before they have aired in the US. Therefore please be aware that this thread will almost definitely have spoilers for those who wish to wait until Thursday night to view the new episode. Promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg_eN9h90RM Episode Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vez8xP94pMY

Hot damn I love Francis. I think he's a great example of "Beware the Nice Ones". Mary spent some of the episode threatening in her most majestical manner, but she didn't hold a candle to a weak, bedridden Francis telling her what's what now that he's done with her bullshit. That boy has inherited something special from his mother.

I sincerely doubt that Paige and Elizabeth will make it to Russia. For The Drama I'm sure they will run into trouble on the way, but on another note completely, Paige is a walking security risk, and it has nothing to do with what she knows. The sensible thing to assume is that if the KGB has deep-cover agents in America, then the CIA has them in Russia. The clothes would be a dead give-away, but also one look at Elizabeth's American haircut will tell them she's a visiting American, and they will try to get pictures of her that could feasibly get back to the CIA. So okay, they don't bring them in as important guest, they even disguise both Paige and Elizabeth against this. Put them in Soviet clothes, wigs even. Still dangerous. Paige is an American. She smiles with her teeth, she holds herself differently from a Soviet Teen. She walks differently. She can't speak a word of Russian. I'm serious about this -- my mother and I went back to Free Lithuania in the early 2000s and every single person that saw me did a double-take. With my mother it was because of her denim skirts -- older women in Europe weren't wearing them at the time. Otherwise she wasn't regarded as such an oddity. But me? Granted, I was short, dark-eyed and dark-haired in a country full of tall blonde people, but I was not an impossibility -- they had people from all over Europe visiting. I was dressed like every single other teen I saw -- jeans, t-shirt, jacket. And yet something made people look twice. It was my earrings from Claire's or small details on my jacket cuffs. My braces were slightly different. At one point Mama and I walked to the city's only synagogue and the Rabbi and his wife pegged us as Americans from the way we walked there. (The Rabbi and his family were American Missionaries from New York, and really glad to see us. We had a meal with the congregation after the service and the Rabbi introduced us with a joke about almost doubting my mother on her being Jewish until he saw me. This made me realize that one of the reasons I was getting so many confused once-overs was because a lot of people in the city didn't know what a Jew looked like anymore, especially the kids. ) Paige won't have a problem fitting in with her looks; but she has a lifetime of mannerisms to hide. Drawing attention to her in Russia could put her family in serious danger from the CIA.

Promo! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0GF4NlP9og

I'm not a huge fan of this Adele thing because you just know she's going to end up six feet under before long, but I've been waiting for Lizzie to make out with another girl since the movie. There's some evidence supporting the idea that Lizzie Borden was in fact gay (and that she was in a relationship with Nance O'Neil, an actress, IIRC), so I knew lifetime was gonna grab that and run with it from the get-go. There was a historical in-joke I truly enjoyed; Lizzie's line of "that poor dog" is probably a reference to the fact that the real Lizzie was such an animal-lover that she left most of her money to an animal rescue society. (Which is why I prefer to believe it wasn't her that strung up all those cats.) I liked that Siringo was spending his time trying to prove Lizzie's guilt in murders other than her famous parents' case in this episode. Last week when he started investigating her it kept bugging me because even if he proved that she did it beyond a shadow of a doubt, she's been tried and acquitted. Double jeopardy means she can't be tried for the same crime twice. He could get her to admit it and he still couldn't have anything done to her. So the fact that he's keeping an eye on what she's doing now makes much more sense. I suspect we're supposed to take the movie's canon as stopping when Lizzie's trial ended since obviously she's neither confessed to Emma what she did, nor has Emma left her. I wonder if they'll decide to revisit the Borden murders and imply something else went on that we didn't see in the movie. They seem to be setting Lizzie up as a lifelong sociopath turned careful serial killer in a way that makes her former crime look very sloppy. ("I ate a pear, I ate three pears".) Perhaps getting away with the first murder gave her the thirst for more, and now she has a better idea of the legal system and how to cover her tracks more effectively. Had Siringo not been on the case no one would ever suspect that it was she who did away with Almy. She does need to be better about disposing of her victims going forward, I mean how many dead bodies are going to be found near the Borden sisters before even more questions are asked? I'm guessing she'll be dropping off her latest victim and Adele in a bad part of the city and making it look like (in the words of Malory Archer) a classic hooker murder-suicide.

Slater and Dr. Skladowska were on that ship too. It was a team effort, in which Archer was very decidedly not in charge. There are two reasons they lost time while they were inside: no one told Archer about not purging the airlock in the half-hour he was in scuba gear, and the people who build the damn sub didn't include talcum powder for the scuba gear. Pam wasn't wrong about that being a necessity. Archer did everything he was told including saving the sub from attack and destroying the blood clot. There was no typical Archer ruining everything by trying to steal the glory, no Cheryl going nuts and crashing he sub, no Cyril making a dumb mistake and steering them wrong. This was the CIA's poorly-planned shit show, not the group-formerly-known-as-ISIS's.

It wasn't dicking around that kept them from getting out in time, it was their not being well-informed enough. Archer never would have hit the purge button if he'd been told it would keep the ship from moving, that was a massive design flaw. They went in with almost no training and lost their friggin' pilot, but still managed to almost do everything they were asked. They were just off by a few seconds.

Just tossing in my guess for Mystery Red Marker Person: Ashley. Because why the hell not.