S01.E02: The Kwon Conspiracy

[ohjoy]

Bentley returns to CIA. Tara travels abroad. Edwards digs deeper. Doug has nightmares.

Originally aired 2019/10/22

[mxc90]

Kohler suspects John to be a double agent and decides to tell him (who possess dangerous skills) he is going to be detained for further evaluation. Smart move sir, that ended well!

After 9 months, I'm surprised they let him go to his locker or talk to others instead of straight to an interrogation room.

If Frank knows my locker combination, I don't trust him.

Yuri yelling at Petra and cut to the next scene of them in bed was funny.

After all these years, did the Russians forget Petra was watching a missile for them? 

Did Petra steal the girl's lipstick?! She didn't have any lipstick on while on the train but when got to the pay phone she had it on.

The mother/master assassin isn't skilled enough to hide a knife up her sleeve without cutting herself? 

For a brief moment, I thought the kid was pointing at me as the person who gave him the toy (almost yelled back it wasn't me)!!!!!!!! 

I hope Michelle Forbes put in a request to not get romantically involved with a sleeper agent on this show (she doesn't want a repeat of her character's end on BSG).

Being an Uber driver must have given Tara the necessary skills in defensive driving.

Didn't take long to get rid of the boyfriend. Once he said those magic words: "we're going to make it, okay"..... that bullet said "Oh! Hell No! She will live but not you!!!!

So Brian J. Smith's character has a wife. I thought she would be a made up story for his cover.

I need to tell my boss "happy birthday" at least 3 times in the year when I want a pay increase.

Edited October 23, 2019 by mxc90

[AnimeMania]

It would have been better if the old lady got on the train all dirty and dumpy and got off the train in a nice new wardrobe, with lots of luggage, and wearing makeup.

I don't usually like care chases, but I liked the double flip at the end.

[blackwing]

3 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

Thank you for typing all of this out.  I am having a horrible time following what is going on in this series.  I don't know if my mind is wondering or if something else is going.  My memory has always been pretty piss poor.

I would have liked that.

I don't understand what caused both cars to flip.  Sure it was cool looking, but I don't know what triggered the event.

Same, I have a hard time following what is going on as well.  I'm most confused with what is happening with John (f/k/a Underwear Guy) in 1973.  He is a CIA agent and was tasked to find and shut down this Cicada program but instead got captured.  He escapes after 9 months and goes home, where the CIA now thinks he is a double agent.  So he escapes from the CIA building, and then what?  The action never went back to him again so I assume he's just on the run again.

English reporter goes to France to try to find dead Korean general's daughter and for some reason bring her to the Bolivian consulate.  Why Bolivia?  She crashes less than a block from the building.  Last episode I had thought that she was a sleeper agent as well but it's not looking like it.

Korean lady's husband gets a promotion, and it appears that the husband's boss is her handler.

Alaskan guy goes home to his wife, and not a lot seems to be happening with him.

CIA guy asks some guy who used to work on Treadstone and is now a hypnotist for help.

Is that pretty much the extent of the major plot points?

[mxc90]

5 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

Thank you for typing all of this out.  I am having a horrible time following what is going on in this series.  I don't know if my mind is wondering or if something else is going.  My memory has always been pretty piss poor.

You're welcome. I find myself having to rewind the DVR many times to make out what's going on.

Your memory is not that bad, at least you can remember it's piss poor!!!😉

1 hour ago, blackwing said:

Is that pretty much the extent of the major plot points?

And young/old Petra.

[BaskingsharkGTX]

9 hours ago, icemiser69 said:

I don't understand what caused both cars to flip.

Serious contrivance. 

21 hours ago, mxc90 said:

Being an Uber driver must have given Tara the necessary skills in defensive driving.

It would have been way more believable if she was an Uber driver rather than driving a black cab which isn't that easy of a job to get!

This is a weird show. It's a bit slow and rather unexciting considering the subject matter, and it all feels a bit... antiseptic. But I'm not out just yet. 

South Korea is my favorite storyline. 

[AnimeMania]

3 hours ago, BaskingsharkGTX said:

This is a weird show. It's a bit slow and rather unexciting considering the subject matter, and it all feels a bit... antiseptic. But I'm not out just yet. 

I thought the first episode was fine and the fight scenes were really well done.

The second episode had a nice car chase scene, but I don't like car chase scenes and a small, but well done fight scene in an elevator. They should have thrown in a few more fight scenes to punch up the episode, but it wasn't that bad.

[Mondrianyone]

I feel better knowing I'm not the only one who's confused!

My main interest is what things are going to look like when the past and present intersect.  Are all these cicadas from the '70s going to be senior citizens when they wake up?  And what would the point of that be?  Has the project continued training operatives and putting them to sleep down through the decades?  The Korean woman who's so young--when was she trained and put to sleep?  It couldn't have been in the '70s, obviously, so that would suggest that the program's been ongoing, but it's talked about as if it was shut down long ago.  Or do we continue to have some kind of split timeline going between 1973 and 2019?  In which case, who are they going to be "waking up" in the present time?  I may be overcomplicating this--or totally misunderstanding it all.  But I'm hanging in till it gets too ridiculous.  Which is a distinct possibility, I guess.

[BaskingsharkGTX]

4 hours ago, Mondrianyone said:

The Korean woman who's so young--when was she trained and put to sleep?

It's a split timeline. The storyline with Eddie Irvine in it is taking place in 1973. Everything else is set in the present, including the Korean storyline. 

[Mondrianyone]

15 minutes ago, BaskingsharkGTX said:

It's a split timeline. The storyline with Eddie Irvine in it is taking place in 1973. Everything else is set in the present, including the Korean storyline.

Yeah, I get that.  I even mentioned it in my post.  I just can't see how that dual timeline continues in a way that'll be coherent.  And I'm still wondering why there are young cicadas if the program was shut down forty or fifty years ago.  But we'll see!  (I hope.)

[BaskingsharkGTX]

36 minutes ago, Mondrianyone said:

Yeah, I get that.  I even mentioned it in my post.  I just can't see how that dual timeline continues in a way that'll be coherent.  And I'm still wondering why there are young cicadas if the program was shut down forty or fifty years ago.  But we'll see!  (I hope.)

Sorry, I misread/misunderstood what you wrote!

I'm thinking that whatever "great plan" the red-haired spy lady thought of back in the day may have something to do with it. I'm also wondering if (using spoiler tags in case my guess is correct)...

Spoiler

The old Russian farmer husband she killed off at the start (as an old woman) is actually Eddie Irvine's character grown old because he was actually more brainwashed than he thought and she brainwashes him into thinking he's some Russian guy and marrying her in the 1970's. Thing is, there are no old male characters who could be Eddie's character now, so either that or he gets killed off at some point between 1973 and now.

Edited October 25, 2019 by BaskingsharkGTX

[Mondrianyone]

No, no, it's fine.  All these people aren't confused for no reason.  Your theory never occurred to me!  It's very imaginative and probably as likely as anything else.  I'll buy you a drink if it turns out to be true.  🍸 (Couldn't find a vodka emoji.)

[Rambler]

Red's husband accidentally finding the buried missile at the exact moment in time that all these cicada agents are being activated seems like an amazing coincidence…

[blackwing]

Eddie Irvine is the name of the actor who plays John?  I’m curious to see how this all turns out.  Since we have sleeper agents in the present day the program clearly didn’t get shut down.  But if the old guy who is the husband of old Red Haired Lady turns out to be John as you suggest then something went truly wrong for him as he was doing his best to escape her in 1973.

Question... what language is Red Haired Lady speaking?  I thought it was supposed to be Russian since they were talking about that Russian missile.  But I took two years of Russian (albeit ages ago) and that doesn’t sound like Russian to me.  Sounds like it could be some other Slavic dialect, like maybe Ukrainian or something? 

[AnimeMania]

4 hours ago, blackwing said:

Eddie Irvine is the name of the actor who plays John?  I’m curious to see how this all turns out.  Since we have sleeper agents in the present day the program clearly didn’t get shut down.  But if the old guy who is the husband of old Red Haired Lady turns out to be John as you suggest then something went truly wrong for him as he was doing his best to escape her in 1973.

Question... what language is Red Haired Lady speaking?  I thought it was supposed to be Russian since they were talking about that Russian missile.  But I took two years of Russian (albeit ages ago) and that doesn’t sound like Russian to me.  Sounds like it could be some other Slavic dialect, like maybe Ukrainian or something? 

Jeremy Irvine, he said he had to pretend to speak Hungarian. Here is an article where he talks about  what he did in episode 1 and 2.

 Jeremy Irvine On The Hardest Part About A Major ‘Treadstone’ Scene: His Nipples

[BaskingsharkGTX]

15 hours ago, blackwing said:

Eddie Irvine is the name of the actor who plays John?  I’m curious to see how this all turns out.  Since we have sleeper agents in the present day the program clearly didn’t get shut down.  But if the old guy who is the husband of old Red Haired Lady turns out to be John as you suggest then something went truly wrong for him as he was doing his best to escape her in 1973.

Yes that's him - thanks, I couldn't remember his character's name!

[nuraman00]

So the scene when the two guys were under water, and one was shackled, was that a dream?

[nuraman00]

When Dae Pak was talking to his wife, and telling her about the promotion, there was a flashback to SoYun finding a picture of General Kwon.

When did she have a picture of General Kwon? 

I don't think it was in the video game device.

I've gone through the the first two episodes on the DVR several times, and still can't find scene in non flash back form.

[Whimsy]

On 11/6/2019 at 12:09 AM, nuraman00 said:

So the scene when the two guys were under water, and one was shackled, was that a dream?

I don't think so only because of the scar on his ankle.  I thought it was at first, too.  

[WatchrTina]

Yikes I'm confused.  I thought brainwashed underwear guy (which was definitely set in the past) was the same dude as disgruntled oil-field worker guy.  But if that is set in the present that can't be true.  There was also a bearded guy at Langley who I thought was present-day underwear guy.  If true, that means he eventually stops being on the run and is brought back into the fold.

I loved the mind-twisty aspects of the Jason Bourne novels so I'm down for whatever is going on here.  I just wish I could keep the characters straight.   

That car chase scene at the end (complete with double-flip) was pretty amazing and tells me they are willing to put some money on the screen, so that's nice.  But yeah, add me to the list that thought a discredited-reported-turned-cab-driver was unlikely to have those mad driving skills.

[John Potts]

OK, sacked oil worker’s wife is his handler, right? She was supplying him with pills and immediately asked him about his headaches. Sure, it’s the sort of thing a loving wife would ask, but probably not first thing (I'd imagine "Shouldn't you be in Alaska?" would come first!). At least they avoided the “Awkward!” of him walking in on her having an affair (which strengthens the “Handler” vibe, because she wouldn’t want to risk alienating her agent)

Still liking Michelle Forbes’ No-Nonsense Agent and British journalist lady, who assume nobody’s telling them the (whole) truth, but get on with their jobs.

Love the fact that when 9-fingered (old) lady called in, the number was disconnected (or rather, re-assigned) because that’s the sort of bureaucratic screw up that happens IRL. It's the little touches of realism where Agencies aren't always Uber-competent that make it seem realistic (well, more realistic, anyway).

On 10/23/2019 at 5:50 AM, mxc90 said:

After 9 months, I'm surprised they let him go to his locker or talk to others instead of straight to an interrogation room.

Agreed. But how exactly had he not learned the date before then? He got from Berlin (I think) to Virginia and nobody mentioned it? Did he not notice the weather was so unseasonal?

On 10/23/2019 at 5:50 AM, mxc90 said:

Didn't take long to get rid of the boyfriend. Once he said those magic words: "we're going to make it, okay"..... that bullet said "Oh! Hell No! She will live but not you!

He might as well have said he was “One day from retirement”!

On 11/6/2019 at 5:09 AM, nuraman00 said:

So the scene when the two guys were under water, and one was shackled, was that a dream?

They were both played by the same actor (I think?), so I’d say yes. Presumably one represents his sleeper identity and the other his “real” personality (but which is which? Who can say?). OTOH, I have no trouble believing he had to undergo something like that as part of his actual training (which would explain the scarred ankle).