PinkRibbons

Yeah, what it keeps coming down to for me is that in general you don't go for your ex's siblings. That's just like good etiquette. Doesn't help that sirebond or no, I seem to recall Elena jumping into bed with Damon roughly five minutes after the breakup with Stefan. It's all just so tacky. If you absolutely must be with the other sibling, you should at least wait for the one you formerly dated to get past you (or like, at least six months, maybe. I realize I'm making arbitrary rules here, sorry). You owe them that much. My favorite relationship on this show has always been between Stefan and Damon. It disappoints me that they have so few scenes together, especially in the past few seasons when Stefan went a little darker and Damon a little lighter. Damon can't tease his little brother so easily as he used to; when we do see them together they have some hilarious snark. I'd love to see many many more scenes with them, especially ones that highlight their similarities as siblings (even something tiny, like having a taste for peanut butter with oreos, would suffice). My umltimate wish is for some flashbacks to their human lives when they were "best friends". Show, don't tell, show! Oh, and I still totally want a Stefan vs. Bonnie rivalry for Damon's big-brotherly affection.

I realize this is a bit off-the-present-topic, but I have to say, ever since this episode aired, I've been wondering exactly what part of Philip's coded message over the phone in the early part of the episode meant explicitly "bring a big suitcase and a tarp". "Moving files" seems to be it, I think...but perhaps he conveyed something else as well in that message, something that meant simply "operation has gone tits-up, am playing speed chess to keep things cool."

It's a funny thing about chocolate; I remember my mother sending Russian candy (made in America) back to Russia because the ones they made in New York used the same recipe but had better and richer ingredients!

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

That was sublime. I cannot believe these voice actors record independently of each other! Although I admit I didn't quite get the Mallory's Phone with an Archer Voicemail thing. Did he actually do it? (I mean, did he sabotage the elevator?)

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=8e8hCoySWG4

I completely forgot about Greer! Now I feel ashamed of myself, and that was heartless of those two. So...who's else is guessing Marcus of Navarre was hit by friendly fire and Bash is gonna try to keep the painful truth from his brothers? I mean, if Bash killed Marcus I don't particularly care, but this show is always about things not being what they seemed. Speaking of which, I wonder what happened to Diane's body. Up until now I've been okay with the slow burn of Mary's recovery and her and Francis's marriage being mended slow step by slow step. But I felt like this episode has finally made the "never mind this can't work" statement one too many times. The writers need to stop going two steps forward, three steps back already. The repetition is getting boring. If this actually does get Francis in bed with another woman I will be disgusted, because it would seem out of character for him; he has the patience of a saint and I don't think will take Mary's words to heart. Although I liked how Francis seemed to feel incredibly betrayed by this idea. I honestly don't think there's really anything that can keep this couple apart; even Olivia redux if it comes to that. Maybe the writers are being ordered by the network to keep putting obstacles in the couples' path, but it's working about as well as every other time they've done that, which is not. Mary and Francis are the rare couple that is actually more interesting in a loving relationship rather than constant angst, at least to me. On a lighter note I loved the scene with Catherine and the syphilis scare. In one shot Adelaide Kane is staring at the ceiling and I personally have only ever seen that when someone was trying their utmost not to laugh. I'll bet the outtakes from that scene are hysterical!

According to my mother and other immigrants who lived in the USSR in the 70s, things were already going to hell, they just "sped up in going to hell" in the eighties. When comparing the country to the 60s, people in the 70s saw a drastic change of mood. My mother puts it, "people started to see that the thaw was over, but the bolts were being tightened". In the 60s it was optimistic -- the camps were opened, they started to build housing; things were finally looking up after the war. But like you say, after the Prague Spring (not to mention the Six Day War, when anti-Semitism skyrocketed), everything started to visibly fall apart. Although it was true that there were some occasional consumer goods, prices were raised dramatically. In any case, those goods when they did very rarely appear only ever made it to the big cities*, and the small towns and rural areas (the vast majority) were SOL. Villages died as young people ran away from them and that basically killed agriculture; it still hasn't recovered. As for all that money coming in, it was pretty much all spent on armament. The consumer goods that did trickle in were of notoriously poor quality, and anything good was only sold on the Black Market at inconceivable prices. *Then there was the bizarre distribution system. One city got light bulbs, another had scissors. In many cities you couldn't get a hold of notebooks, dishes, soap, underwear, socks, knitting needles, children's clothing. Stuff would disappear for years. Clothes were so precious that after you outgrew one (good-quality, usually sent in a box from abroad) item you'd meet it on the street on complete strangers for years as it was passed around.

Fwiw, I assumed that the way Elizabeth could see her mother would be to go to a third country and have her mother meet her there, the way Elizabeth periodically saw Zhukov in person over the years. I think it depends on what condition her mother is in at the moment and whether she's well enough to travel.

Wrong side of the country, sorry to say. But actually yes, ime there are always dentists willing to do work for cash and no documentation. I really don't want to see Philip have to pull out any of Elizabeth's teeth. This was such a good episode but I got caught up the stupidest thing early on; Nina having toilet paper in her prison. Now, there was in fact toilet paper in the USSR, which sounds like it was about two grades above sandpaper at best, but it wasn't always available. Mostly people used the daily newspaper. They made little embroidered holders for squares (kissing swans being most popular) of the newspaper, and the reason I know so much about it is the absurd fact that my Grandmother was so anti-Soviet that she wouldn't have the newspaper in her house, so they had a worse time getting toilet paper than anyone else. But here I'm just gonna assume that in prison they don't think it's a good idea for people to wipe their asses with the faces of the country's leaders. I'm surprised we didn't see Philip or Elizabeth reacting to Brezhnev's death. He was very much just a figurehead towards the end, but still. He had a long run, including most of the time Philip and Elizabeth have been in America. Matthew Rhys is so good at loaded silences I got completely taken off-guard by the end of the episode, I was so sure Philip was going to offer some of his own history, finally. So mysterious that man is! So, Nadezhda's mother...yikes. I liked the twist about the father being a deserter, I've heard that story more than once (although not allowed to repeat the one that happened in my own family). And sounds like the mother was fanatical all the way. This sheds some interesting light on Elizabeth's character -- maybe she's not so much a fanatic herself as simply following what she thinks of as good parenting. I always get this vibe from Elizabeth, intentional or not, that she keeps trying to be as objective and cold about her children as she can, but at the same time is fighting a powerful, primal mothers' instinct that probably wasn't in her own mother to the same degree. Now to somehow make it till morning without waking up my parents to ask about Soviet Toilet Paper Distribution.

I've heard before that it's easier for some UK actors to do an American accent in a lower voice. Ed Westwick's Chuck Bass comes to mind, that almost pornographically sexy tone.

No anesthetic for any dental work except tooth extractions, no anesthetic for abortions, no anesthetic for pretty much anything your would use local for nowadays. When my mother was doing her mandatory military training to be a reserve nurse, she passed a woman getting getting a boil on her breast lance and the only "painkiller" was the doctor yelling "Stop screaming, you idiot! It doesn't hurt!" On the upside the doctors had so little to work with that quite a few of them became almost supernaturally good diagnosticians. They could tell you what was wrong with you using a rake and some tin foil, basically. (No, not really. It was way too hard to get tinfoil. Usually they just listened to your symptoms and looked at you.) At least one doc I know that immigrated was so good at pulling teeth that he could literally get a tooth out of anyone in under a second, no matter how badly impacted it was. In America my Mom saw him for a tooth that supposedly needed $500 dental surgery, and he pulled it and charged her $25, counting the anesthetic.

What I never understood about them killing Kol (and his bloodline in a domino effect), was, well, when exactly did the Mystic Falls gang figure out who was their progenitor? I know Klaus said it was him outright, but he's hardly a trustworthy person and saying so was an ironclad way to keep himself alive. We know from a conversation Rebecca had with I think Elijah that Klaus is in fact the start of the bloodline, but I must have missed when the MF people starting being positive. And of course no one ever brings up the irony of killing him when he was completely and utterly right about keeping Silas locked up. That was actually incredibly noble of him, even if his whole arm-choppy thing was a gross idea.

From what my parents tell me...not far off the mark. Although there was also the whole "someone is always watching you" thing on top of it. Apparently things were looking up in the 60s for a while, but in the 70s everything went to hell.

I kind of assume that Elizabeth and Philip, along with several other implants, were never expected to last this long. Maybe they were told to prepare themselves to live out their lives in America, but I suspect the Centre was probably taking it a few months at a time, with the assumption of an inevitable result that their spies would be caught or turned or forced to flee before long. It's a rational assumption to make -- not a lot of people are cut out to do the long haul. For all we know Philip and Elizabeth (and Leanne and Emmet) were exceptions to their general track record. And I've always thought that Philip and Elizabeth must be considered the best of the best, since even though the other spies seem spread over the Eastern Seaboard, they're the ones closest to the Capital, and running a lot of operations directly under the noses of the highest government in the land.

She also played Juliet at one point. These videos discussing her work in the role are long but interesting, and the clips of her onstage (starting 4:08 in the first video, 5:23 in the second) have some great flashes of early Catherine.

Actually what I liked about that scene was Francis calling out the unfairness of the system in itself, even bringing up his mother's near-miss with execution for adultery (which, *ahem*, Mary had quite a bit of involvement with). He wasn't trying to justify it; he was just saying what needed to be said. The fight with Conde was so obviously about Mary that it was clear that she did need to create some distance, and someone needed to point it out to her. I thought that Francis put it as kindly and tactfully as he could. Yes, there was some jealousy at play there, but it didn't change the basic facts. And I think it helps that at no point did Francis act as though he intended to cheat on Mary or that he ever planned to take advantage of his supposed right to. Not to mention that he didn't outright accuse Mary of intentionally cheating/planning to cheat, nor did he bring up having seen her grab Conde.

Paige's name was coming up a lot on the latest episode's thread, so I thought I'd bring my thought over here. My little pet theory about Paige's name is that her first initial is taken from someone Philip or Elizabeth wanted to honor. Maybe Elizabeth's mother or an old friend of Philip's. They would probably be too paranoid to Americanize a whole Russian name that started with P, like Polina (Pauline), but they could subtly do with just the one initial. They knew they wanted their baby's name to start with a P, then probably looked at a list of American names and chose whichever they liked the sound of. (The reason this came to my mind is that I see this a lot among Jewish people; the older generation will be incredibly firm about passing on names of dead family members while the younger generation will want more freedom of choice. Then everyone fights for a while until finally the younger generation compromises by choosing a name that shares the first letter of the required name and saying the child is named "in honor" of them. That's how I know a Shawn named after a Shiah.) And on another topic completely...does anyone else wonder if Paige is gonna question her paternity if and when she finds out what her parents really do? I mean, if she learned the full extent. Because to be honest with the frequency Elizabeth has used sex to get information on this show, I've been wondering myself if the kids are definitely biologically Philip's. I'm pretty sure they are (she definitely did sleep with Philip to try and conceive children even when she was apathetic to him), but I wouldn't mind a clarification on how Elizabeth was/is sure.

I've been thinking about Greer and what her options are. From the beginning we knew Castleroy was a businessman with international connections -- didn't Greer even mention a relationship to the Habsburgs? Unless he's been unable to escape or has been very very stupid, he's doubtlessly in another country right now. He's lost everything in France, yes, but again, unless he's very stupid he has assets in other countries. How has he been funding his own lifestyle in hiding? So Greer needs to get to Castleroy. Failing that, she needs to get back to Scotland, where her family is and the government is Protestant. I was disappointed that Mary wasn't shown slipping Greer a bag of gold before she was taken away. Maybe Mary, Lola or Kenna bribed the driver taking her away to slip her some money or at least take her somewhere she can work from. Otherwise what, they'll just dump her in the countryside in her party dress? So yeah, Greer needs money first and foremost. I'd think Castleroy would try as hard as he could to get her out of the country and to him, but if he can't and Greer really is alone and penniless, my guess is that before long we're going to see Leith walk in some place where Greer is working as a kitchen maid. I was also thinking about Conde...I loved Lola telling him that his romanticized image of himself as being the gallant prince is actually jackassery. And he's done it before, putting his lovers before anyone else. Speaking of which, I wonder if he would be at all attracted to Mary if she wasn't married? Seems he has a very specific type.

The part that's freaking me out is the whole "taking on aspects of the other twin" thing. Obviously Kai didn't immediately grow a luscious mane of blonde hair, so we know it's not a physical change, but dammit this probably means he's gonna start having "feelings" and "compassion", and I liked him best as an unapologetic psychopath. I don't mind Liv though, and this pretty much guarantees her survival -- whatever of Luke is left in Kai is gonna be pretty fierce about not hurting her, I think.

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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tex0SUjZlNI Episode Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQrxN1RSPw

Just going to say this first: I am basically just the typist here because it's my mother who's responding to this comment after I read it to her. She too mentioned Cancer Ward when talking about the Soviet attitude towards telling patients about their terminal diagnoses. She says that some patients in the novel do guess what's going on, but none of them are actually told so by their doctors. And in this case, the handling of terminal illnesses was in fact culturally ingrained, so yes this generalization stands.

I just love Archer and Pam's particular sort of weird fondness for each other. And I basically split a gut laughing at Edie and Pam fighting. And Pam ruining her sister's life. (I'm a younger sister, can't say I didn't feel a bit of catharsis there.) And Pam as Marilyn will now be my computer wallpaper. Even all beat up she looked like a million bucks.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough about my mother "rewriting the scene". I mean she told me how that tape should have sounded if they were being historically and culturally accurate. Instead Nadia's mother specifically said that her doctor had told her that she had terminal cancer. Discussing this with now both my parents (this show gets a lot of discussion in my house), they are both adamant that no Russian doctor would have given their patient a fatal diagnosis. Mama's rewriting was the more accurate approach many people would have. Apparently that habit of not telling people when they were dying led to a lot of paranoia on the part of some patients, especially ones who already suspected it was bad.

After listening to that tape recording my mother basically rewrote it for me to be more accurate and it was kind of harrowing: "The doctor tells me it's only anemia but I don't know, I think it's something worse, I can't help but worry about what's going to happen to me. Nadinka this may be the last thing you ever hear from me..." And the part that creeped me out most was how easily Mama came up with that. She heard it from people right before they keeled over.