S08.E09: In Full Flight

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Quote

Hayes has ideas. Carrie goes shopping. Tasneem has problems.

Promo:

Clip:

Original air date: 4/5/20

[EtheltoTillie]

Don’t even know where to begin. Carrie plays honeypot, then is taken advantage of?  This episode depended too many times on Carrie having to talk someone into something. She’s so amazing. Then she blows it. Too many preposterous coincidences. 

[LoveLeigh]

I found the end of this episode so predictable. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I think I speak for Saul when I say FUCK MIKE.

Tasneem has a lot of balls to tell Jalal she'll hunt him down and replace him with someone else when she's standing in his compound unarmed surrounded by his supporters. I was surprised he didn't kill her right then and there.

Oh, Jenna, when will you ever learn? So much for the theory from the beginning of the season that she was a plant. She really is as incompetent and green as she appeared to be from the moment we met her and apparently she hasn't learned anything because Carrie played her when she got her to just hand over the address of the safe house. I'm just glad that it didn't end with the Americans all being shot in the courtyard.

When Carrie climbed out the window, all I could think of was when Rizzo did the same in Grease and Frenchie said, "What's she going to do? Shimmy down the drain pipe?" Yes, that's exactly what she's going to do.

It seems really anticlimactic that after two presidents were killed and war is on the horizon, the helicopter crash was caused by something as mundane as the oil filter.

I have no doubt that Carrie was just playing Yevgeny to get what she wanted. I mean, sure, I wouldn't want to have sex in the back of a pawn shop while I'm actively being hunted, but she was SO OBVIOUS when she said, "Not here. After we get the flight recorder to the American embassy in Islamabad."

Ben continues to be one of the dumbest and most easily manipulated presidents ever. When he looked at Zabel and whined like a child, "But you said Pakistan would back down!" I just rolled my eyes.

Edited April 7, 2020 by ElectricBoogaloo
typo

[nara]

7 hours ago, Alistaire said:

I do wish early commenters wouldn’t give away the plot.

Anyway, Jenna became interesting. Maybe Yevgeny has other surprises in store. The last scene was not necessary (not spoiling here). He could have dealt with the  consequences in other ways.

I am curious—do you come here before watching the show? If so, why?

Meh episode. I was mainly wondering if those ladies in burkas were somehow protected from COVID 19 by their veils.

 

[scrb]

Yeah that was Carrie's play, to try to sex up Oleg so that he doesn't take over the flight recorder?

Look all she had to do was copy the files off the flight recorder onto her laptop and send that to Saul, the CIA, the POTUS, etc.  Instead she's trying to pack up the red black box and is easily subdued?

Carrie just trashed Jenna's career, probably got those American soldiers arrested or worse in Pakistan.

Um Tasneem, she's a powerful minister in govt. but she goes alone and lets herself be taken hooded to see Jalal who's in her own country?  

And Pakistan would rather roll out tactical nukes to fight Americans rather than take out a bunch of Taliban peasants with rifles?  Yes I can understand Pakistan has greater sympathies to the Taliban than America and Haqqani have served their purposes in the past.

But they'd rather fight Americans than a bunch of goat herders and poppy farmers?

GMAFB!

It's ridiculous, US gives billions in aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan and they're repeatedly telling the US to get bent.

When US Special Forces went into Pakistan and took out Osama Bin Laden, the Pakistanis weren't happy about it but they didn't do anything after the fact.  Now if they had captured the Special Forces soldiers it might have been a sticky situation.  But Pakistan knows where their bread is buttered.  They can't tell US to get lost with the foreign aid nor risk driving the US and India closer together.

Homeland writers apparently think viewers are ignorant of global politics.

Why didn't they make up fake countries if they were going to make up completely fictitious real politik?

[EtheltoTillie]

2 hours ago, nara said:

I am curious—do you come here before watching the show? If so, why?

Meh episode. I was mainly wondering if those ladies in burkas were somehow protected from COVID 19 by their veils.

 

I think there is no rule on spoilers once the episode is aired.  If I'm awake I typically watch at midnight Sunday because Showtime Anytime airs it then. 

[preeya]

6 hours ago, scrb said:

Look all she had to do was copy the files off the flight recorder onto her laptop and send that to Saul, the CIA, the POTUS, etc.  Instead she's trying to pack up the red black box and is easily subdued?

THIS↑ Such a simple process.

Did she really expect to carry the black (orange) box back to the USA.

Also how and where did she get that very odd looking cable that she used to connect her laptop to the black (orange) box. Does every agent have one of those or was it delivered by the GEEK SQUAD before she "shimmied down the drain pipe."

Edited April 6, 2020 by preeya

[Lemons]

1 hour ago, preeya said:

THIS↑ Such a simple process.

Did she really expect to carry the black (orange) box back to the USA.

Also how and where did she get that very odd looking cable that she used to connect her laptop to the black (orange) box. Does every agent have one of those or was it delivered by the GEEK SQUAD before she "shimmied down the drain pipe."

Maybe they need the actual box to verify they aren’t sending a doctored recording?

I was wondering what the Russian was getting out of this.  Still wondering why russia would want it and why Carrie wouldn’t have been more suspicious of a Russian spy.  

[preeya]

5 minutes ago, Lemons said:

Maybe they need the actual box to verify they aren’t sending a doctored recording?

I was wondering what the Russian was getting out of this.  Still wondering why Russia would want it and why Carrie wouldn’t have been more suspicious of a Russian spy.  

The Russian - he was getting laid.  Russia - I don't know and haven't yet figured it out.

[scrb]

Cuz Russia wants to see US have some big war, get mired in Afghanistan indefinitely like the USSR did?

Who knows, they might as well have faked all the country names, because the way the agents of these countries act has little relation to the real world countries.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

23 hours ago, Alistaire said:

I do wish early commenters wouldn’t give away the plot.

 

12 hours ago, GussieK said:

I think there is no rule on spoilers once the episode is aired.  If I'm awake I typically watch at midnight Sunday because Showtime Anytime airs it then. 

Once an episode has been officially released, it is up for discussion and no spoiler tags are required. Showtime releases a lot of its shows at midnight so you can discuss the episode any time after that without any spoiler tags. 

[Pike Ludwell]

As the series is nearing the end, I think an interesting ending would be the idiot President is on the verge of ordering nuking Pakistan and won't listen to reason. And Saul shoots him, to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Do we know who his veep is, who would then assume power? It would be funny then if that prez had picked Elizabeth Keane for his veep -- maybe she became hugely popular because of a sympathy backlash after her resignation and so Hayes picked her for a sign of unity in troubled times.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Pike Ludwell

[TVbitch]

Ugh. Carrie's magic vagina strikes again! ...but wait Yvgeny is not falling for it! Ahh, but he's gonna let her live with a sweet kiss to the forehead. I guess he really did (of course) fall in love with her while she was having a psychotic break in the Russian prison with really bad hair. 

At least I don't have to endure a scene where she triumphantly marches the black box into the Oval Office and dumps it on the President's desk.   

I think her being ostracised by the agency she sacrificed her many other lives to would be a fitting ending. 

[ahpny]

13 hours ago, preeya said:

Look all she had to do was copy the files off the flight recorder onto her laptop and send that to Saul, the CIA, the POTUS, etc.  Instead she's trying to pack up the red black box and is easily subdued?

If she's already accessing the data by listening to the conversation of the pilots, her computer is already reading that data and could easily have stored it or sent it (We know she has an internet connection because that's how the "dark web" payment got done). Whether she could have sent all the data quickly enough before things went south, who knows. But she didn't even try! 

12 hours ago, Lemons said:

I was wondering what the Russian was getting out of this.  Still wondering why russia would want it and why Carrie wouldn’t have been more suspicious of a Russian spy

Russia would want the black box data (as would every intelligence agency of any regional or world power - as Carrie aptly noted) because, well, to use a cliche, knowledge is power. If Russia wanted to cause turmoil in the US - hard to imagine, right? - Russia could use this information to tar the US as an imperial buffoon for going after Pakistan when Pakistan was not responsible for harboring any terrorist who shot down the copter. If nothing else, this information would allow Russia to get its hooks far more deeply into Pakistan and then do who knows what.

Carrie was suspicious of the Russian spy enough not to tell him about the midnight meeting and sneak out to be there. Why she trusted him to the degree she did, yet still dribbled out the information she did when she did, well those are still curious choices.

Edited April 6, 2020 by ahpny

[EtheltoTillie]

Isn’t amazing how the cell phone service always works so well , and the internet service?  Plus the cell phones are always charged up. 

[roughing it]

Maybe Oleg hypnotized Carrie during her psychotic lockdown, so every time she heard a *ping* or something she spills her secrets.  (Kinda like in the old movie Naked Gun when the 2nd baseman heard the designated sound and it triggered him "I must kill the Queen, I must kill the Queen")

[preeya]

46 minutes ago, GussieK said:

Isn’t amazing how the cell phone service always works so well , and the internet service?  Plus the cell phones are always charged up. 

And the conversation continues without anyone ever saying "what did you say?" or "I can't hear you" from 10,000 miles away. 

The magic of television.

[scrb]

1 hour ago, GussieK said:

Isn’t amazing how the cell phone service always works so well , and the internet service?  Plus the cell phones are always charged up. 

Actually I think Carrie has a satellite phone.

Which probably eats battery like crazy.

She must have packed a charger with the right plug for Pakistan.  She may need one for Russia too.

[slowpoked]

Oh well, that ending is predictable. It's disappointing that over the course of this series that Carrie has used her sexuality as a weapon. It would have been a nice characteristic if a show doesn't treat a woman in national intelligence that way.

Quote

Look all she had to do was copy the files off the flight recorder onto her laptop and send that to Saul, 

My husband was yelling at the screen: "Email it now! Email it now!"

15 hours ago, scrb said:

Cuz Russia wants to see US have some big war, get mired in Afghanistan indefinitely like the USSR did?

This is what we think of as well. If US gets ahold of the word that there was no nefarious activity on the helicopter crash, then there would probably be no war on Pakistan and Jalal's claim to power can easily be brought down. I remember a couple of episodes ago or so when Yevgeny told Carrie "You bomb their churches, we build it back. That's what we do. That's why I can work with a lot of people here." So I think Russia wants that standing in which they can be seen as an "ally" to parties being perceived to be attacked by the US.

[EtheltoTillie]

41 minutes ago, slowpoked said:

Oh well, that ending is predictable. It's disappointing that over the course of this series that Carrie has used her sexuality as a weapon. It would have been a nice characteristic if a show doesn't treat a woman in national intelligence that way.

My husband was yelling at the screen: "Email it now! Email it now!"

 

I would love to know the answer to this.  Using sexuality was a big part of The Americans. That's how they were trained.  I do not know enough about how American spies work to exclude that it would also be SOP.  I tend to think that Carrie was always working off book but she was never punished for it.  There may be tacit approval from handlers.

[mjc570]

I've been a loyal watcher since this show started, but I found this episode unwatchable (except for Costa/Yesgeny, sorry).  I think I'm just sick of Carrie how she's so much smarter than everyone else, so good at her job except when the plot requires some massive stupidity to move it along - like in this episode, upload the data from the flight recorder if it was that important! Or earlier, when the soldiers were at the crash site, they should have grabbed the flight recorder first thing, not leave it to the last minute for Max to get.

I know this is probably a realistic depiction of a bipolar person in a high stress job, but I am tired of her relentless focus and unbounded willingness to use everybody in every way to accomplish what she wants.  I'm tired of her.

I love Saul (acting and writing), but really, I'm not in the mood to see him sidelined and powerless. 

Sorry, show, I'll try to stick it out, I guess, but maybe I'll just read recaps or something.

 

[WaltersHair]

I assume at some point we're going to be let in on why the Russians are the heavys for this along with the radicals.

Why do they make all the women stupid? I mean, seriously.

[dwmarch]

12 hours ago, TVbitch said:

Ugh. Carrie's magic vagina strikes again! ...but wait Yvgeny is not falling for it! Ahh, but he's gonna let her live with a sweet kiss to the forehead. I guess he really did (of course) fall in love with her while she was having a psychotic break in the Russian prison with really bad hair. 

At least I don't have to endure a scene where she triumphantly marches the black box into the Oval Office and dumps it on the President's desk.   

I think her being ostracised by the agency she sacrificed her many other lives to would be a fitting ending. 

I am not sure it ever struck in the first place. I commented last season with speculation that she slept with the sympathetic guard and Yevgeny let her do it just to show her that her usual charms wouldn't work on his guys. They seem to have extended that into her relationship with him. "We weren't just walking in the woods, were we?" Well, we've already seen on this show that going manic causes Carrie bouts of intense arousal and Russia basically invented the honey trap so yes, I am sure there was more wood involved than just the birch trees. I don't think Yevgeny is in love with her though. That kiss on the forehead was more of a "thank you for being the gift that just keeps on giving!"

Carrie did use some subtle (to the audience but not to Yevgeny) tradecraft though. She was leaning in closer to his personal space, letting those awkward sexually tense moments hang in the air, agreeing that she'd knock on Yevgeny's door in the middle of the night if she "needed anything". If she had been using this on a sexually repressed Pakistani teenager it would have worked spectacularly. But Yevgeny is all "I started this honey trap shit... and this black box is the thanks I get." As long as he keeps it gangsta he's going to hand the CIA their asses.

[healthnut]

Even bough Evgeny is evil, I kind of like him. Carrie is Carrie, love her or hate her, she gets shit done. All that I need to end this season is spineless prez getting his ass handed to him. And please let Jalal get exposed as a fraud.  

[nara]

1 hour ago, dwmarch said:

I am sure there was more wood involved than just the birch trees.

I am going to steal this phrase and find a way to use it in a casual conversation.

[pasdetrois]

I've been binging as FiOS is offering Showtime free in April (due to pandemic). Usually I have to wait awhile to watch the latest season.

The middle episodes were fantastic and kept me up late into the night.

Too bad the writers felt they had to try to make a great show better, using obvious and implausible events to sustain our interest. That's not great script writing, that's cheap tricks.

Saul is one of my favorite TV characters ever, specifically as played by MP.

[slowpoked]

21 hours ago, GussieK said:

I tend to think that Carrie was always working off book but she was never punished for it.  There may be tacit approval from handlers.

One of the more memorable scenes for me the entire series was when Carrie and Brody were having sex in the cabin, and Saul and Quinn were listening in on it. Saul had that pained look in his face, probably thinking, "Not again, Carrie, not again..." while Quinn turned up the volume even more so as to fuck with Saul. 

And in Season 1, it was clear that Carrie had an affair with the CIA director that time, the black guy, from my memory. So, I think what Carrie does regarding sexual relations with men are totally off the books and not some SOP.

[ruby24]

I knew the way Carrie was looking at Yevgeny that they were going to end up making out by the end of this episode, for one reason or another. But I guess he really did fall for her while she was a prisoner? It's hard to see what about her having a psychotic breakdown would have made her so attractive during that time. Even if he thought seducing her would get her to spill whatever secrets she had, he seems to genuinely like her. I still want an episode that gives us a real flashback of what happened then.

Unless he was playing her this entire time, but I kinda don't think so. Guys always end up inexplicably falling for Carrie no matter what state she's in. He'll probably help her out one last time by the end.

[Joimiaroxeu]

Wow, once Carrie started confessing to Yevgeny she just couldn't stop. Did he trigger her with a keyword or something?

And Jenna got fooled again. Useful idiot.

OMG, Stevie Wonder could see Yevgeny was working Carrie, especially with all those faces he kept pulling. She actually tried to honey pot him. On an IOU. 🙄

I hope at least Carrie gets to kill Yevgeny before the show ends. She has to break his psychological hold on her or she'll lose what's left of her mind.

Quote

Look all she had to do was copy the files off the flight recorder onto her laptop and send that to Saul, the CIA, the POTUS, etc.  Instead she's trying to pack up the red black box and is easily subdued?

Over on reddit someone speculated that perhaps her laptop did copy the files and automatically backed up to the cloud but I'm wondering how secure or fast that process would be. Plus if Yevgeny now has her laptop he has access to her cloud space, no? I think Carrie's plan was stunningly low tech and fraught with huge potential potholes. Max died for nothing and Carrie handed over a cool million for the privilege of making sure he died for nothing.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Joimiaroxeu

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Inside the episode:

 

Edited April 9, 2020 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Anela]

On 4/7/2020 at 12:42 PM, pasdetrois said:

I've been binging as FiOS is offering Showtime free in April (due to pandemic). Usually I have to wait awhile to watch the latest season.

The middle episodes were fantastic and kept me up late into the night.

Too bad the writers felt they had to try to make a great show better, using obvious and implausible events to sustain our interest. That's not great script writing, that's cheap tricks.

Saul is one of my favorite TV characters ever, specifically as played by MP.

I love Mandy Patinkin. After this, I'll probably watch "Dead Like Me" again. 

[John Potts]

I said last week that Yevgeny was being far too helpful, so I'm glad he was playing Carrie all along. And Carrie - don't apologise for (trying to) keep your real plan from him - he's works for Russia and you have no reason to believe he'd betray them.

Of course, she wasn't the only American being portrayed as an idiot. Jenna had no reason to trust Carrie but did so anyway. Saul seemed completely surprised that the VP (who he's presumably had some encounters with) was advocating a new policy in Pakistan (however ill advised) when he's from a different party from his predecessor. And President Flip-Flop was surprised the Pakistanis pushed back at him? Tell me why the late President Warner was worried about his VP running against him - he'd sweep 50 states!

 

[Roseanna]

On 4/5/2020 at 4:23 PM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

It seems really anticlimactic that after two presidents were killed and war is on the horizon, the helicopter crash was caused by something as mundane as the oil filter.

I think it's good to have a different interpretation than the usual one. No doubt it was one more proof of the new president's utter stupidity. 

As Saul said, intelligence information must be analysed. Stalin wanted to do it himself and we know how he failed.   

[Roseanna]

On 4/13/2020 at 12:35 AM, John Potts said:

And President Flip-Flop was surprised the Pakistanis pushed back at him? 

He believes any scrap his new adviser says to him. He has no undestanding for complicated issues and uncertainties. 

[Roseanna]

On 4/6/2020 at 10:31 PM, slowpoked said:

If US gets ahold of the word that there was no nefarious activity on the helicopter crash, then there would probably be no war on Pakistan and Jalal's claim to power can easily be brought down. I remember a couple of episodes ago or so when Yevgeny told Carrie "You bomb their churches, we build it back. That's what we do. That's why I can work with a lot of people here." So I think Russia wants that standing in which they can be seen as an "ally" to parties being perceived to be attacked by the US.

I doubt that if the new president had learned about the truth, he wouldn't have revealed it. He wants war because he believes that he wins it and then he becomes a national hero.

Remembering how Yevgeni used disinformation during the last season, I suspect that he sends the black box to Wikileaks in order to show how the US president lies.  

[Roseanna]

On 4/5/2020 at 9:04 PM, scrb said:

And Pakistan would rather roll out tactical nukes to fight Americans rather than take out a bunch of Taliban peasants with rifles?  Yes I can understand Pakistan has greater sympathies to the Taliban than America and Haqqani have served their purposes in the past.

But they'd rather fight Americans than a bunch of goat herders and poppy farmers?

GMAFB!

It's ridiculous, US gives billions in aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan and they're repeatedly telling the US to get bent.

When US Special Forces went into Pakistan and took out Osama Bin Laden, the Pakistanis weren't happy about it but they didn't do anything after the fact.  Now if they had captured the Special Forces soldiers it might have been a sticky situation.  But Pakistan knows where their bread is buttered.  They can't tell US to get lost with the foreign aid nor risk driving the US and India closer together.

I think that it's an important truth in the general level: people don't live on bread (or butter) alone. They need also to be treated with respect.

  

[paramitch]

I think this season is excellent and complex -- thank God I have some critics I can go to who agree, like Brian Tallerico, who said:

Quote

The brilliance of this very strong season has been in how the writers have captured that events like suicide bombings don’t exist in a vacuum as a singular event — they are the culmination of dozens of decisions on both sides. Set aside the “big plot” of the assassination of two world leaders and think about how many characters have been involved in bringing this event into existence through minor decisions episode to episode. It’s almost the entire cast.

Of course, the main link in this chain is Carrie traveling with Yevgeny into Pakistan after the flight recorder, and then tricking Jenna into revealing the location of the team that was following her. If Carrie doesn’t make that call or Jenna doesn’t fall for the scam, none of this happens. But it’s also Hayes and Zabel playing tough in the White House, leading David to suggest that Pakistan needs to release the prisoners, who then become targets. Also consider how Hayes essentially turned Jalal Haqqani into a hero by claiming he killed the president, or how Qureshi could have really just left the kid in a ditch a few weeks instead of salvaging a warmonger. They are also links in this chain. And then consider the fact that those U.S. soldiers aren’t on that bus if Saul and the former leader of the Taliban had never tried to negotiate peace at all. If one starts to think how past seasons of this show — or U.S. policy in the region after 9/11, for that matter — influenced this specific event, it becomes almost overwhelming. This excellent season of Homeland has captured the complexity of peace in the Middle East in ways we haven’t really seen on TV before, and it all climaxed this week in a tragedy that will almost certainly lead to war.

 

This has been my take on the entire season. The inclusion of arrogant political naifs who do not understand the simplest aspects of international politics has -- for me -- been the highlight. And it's another example of the writers showing themselves to be remarkably prescient.

On 4/5/2020 at 11:04 AM, scrb said:

Look all she had to do was copy the files off the flight recorder onto her laptop and send that to Saul, the CIA, the POTUS, etc.  Instead she's trying to pack up the red black box and is easily subdued?

And Pakistan would rather roll out tactical nukes to fight Americans rather than take out a bunch of Taliban peasants with rifles?  Yes I can understand Pakistan has greater sympathies to the Taliban than America and Haqqani have served their purposes in the past.

But they'd rather fight Americans than a bunch of goat herders and poppy farmers?

GMAFB!

1. Go back and look at the scene. Carrie has maybe two minutes tops with the black box (most of it used to listen immediately on-site). She does not have the opportunity or time to copy files. She listens to the evidence live, and is immediately knocked out. If she had had 60 more seconds, yes, she could have copied files. But she didn't.

Is she naive to think she has the box and all is well, and Yevgeny will support her? Oh yeah she is. But she's blinded (as usual) thinking she's running him while he's running her.

2. This is 100% realistic in terms of current politics. Pakistan has been very willing to work with the U.S. in the past and overlook operations within borders (like the capture of UBL) after the fact, and while they could disclaim knowledge. But what the president is threatening here is full-scale invasion. Pakistan would have no choice but to react to a full-scale invasion with nuclear power, setting off repercussions among allies on both sides... = world war 3.

3. "Goat herders and poppy farmers?" Seriously? It's worth noting that the U.S. has fought a losing battle with those "goat herders and poppy farmers" and the entire surrounding region for decades now. I'm a US patriot and the daughter of a Navy officer who worked under NATO, but underestimating your enemy (much less assuming superiority) is a massive mistake. And not to mention racist and disrespectful. This exact POV is everything that's wrong with our politics in the region.

On 4/5/2020 at 5:59 PM, preeya said:

Also how and where did she get that very odd looking cable that she used to connect her laptop to the black (orange) box. Does every agent have one of those or was it delivered by the GEEK SQUAD before she "shimmied down the drain pipe."

It's a PC USB-connector variant. It's not that hard to carry a few ongoing. They would be standard for any agent in the field. Some laptops even have compartments for a variety of such cables for people in certain jobs.

On 4/5/2020 at 7:21 PM, Lemons said:

Maybe they need the actual box to verify they aren’t sending a doctored recording?

I was wondering what the Russian was getting out of this.  Still wondering why russia would want it and why Carrie wouldn’t have been more suspicious of a Russian spy.  

My take is they need the box and nothing else will do. Everything else is fakable.

Russia is stronger when other superpowers are in flux, chaotic, and are disempowered. They use those things brilliantly.

On 4/6/2020 at 7:25 AM, TVbitch said:

Ugh. Carrie's magic vagina strikes again! ...but wait Yvgeny is not falling for it! Ahh, but he's gonna let her live with a sweet kiss to the forehead. I guess he really did (of course) fall in love with her while she was having a psychotic break in the Russian prison with really bad hair. 

At least I don't have to endure a scene where she triumphantly marches the black box into the Oval Office and dumps it on the President's desk.   

I think her being ostracised by the agency she sacrificed her many other lives to would be a fitting ending. 

I hate, hate, hate the "Carrie's magic vagina" phrase. It's sexist and unfair. I've watched thousands of hours of TV, and I've seen how many unconventional, unattractive, older or unshapely men lead series and somehow get every woman they want. Which, fine. It's fiction.

And for what it's worth, I love plenty of those unconventionally attractive men too -- don't get me started on how much I love guys like Hugh Laurie or Kevin James or James Gandolfini or John Hawkes, etc. They don't have to be movie stars, in fact, I'd prefer that they weren't.

Carrie, as played by Danes, is a lovely young woman who is brilliant, slender, brave, and creative. She has long blonde hair and represents the epitome of Westernized female beauty in a realistic way. I can buy these men (what, we're talking about 4 or 5 over an 8-10 year period in-show) find her attractive, and really don't get the big deal or why it's so unbelievable that she could attract almost any guy she wants.

I definitely don't get why it's a subject for constant mockery, but YMMV.

On 4/6/2020 at 7:27 AM, ahpny said:

If she's already accessing the data by listening to the conversation of the pilots, her computer is already reading that data and could easily have stored it or sent it (We know she has an internet connection because that's how the "dark web" payment got done). Whether she could have sent all the data quickly enough before things went south, who knows. But she didn't even try! 

Russia would want the black box data (as would every intelligence agency of any regional or world power - as Carrie aptly noted) because, well, to use a cliche, knowledge is power. If Russia wanted to cause turmoil in the US - hard to imagine, right? - Russia could use this information to tar the US as an imperial buffoon for going after Pakistan when Pakistan was not responsible for harboring any terrorist who shot down the copter. If nothing else, this information would allow Russia to get its hooks far more deeply into Pakistan and then do who knows what.

Carrie was suspicious of the Russian spy enough not to tell him about the midnight meeting and sneak out to be there. Why she trusted him to the degree she did, yet still dribbled out the information she did when she did, well those are still curious choices.

Listening to the file is not the same thing as copying it. She could possibly have had access to a temporary archived version after listening but it's not a 100% given. I could fault Carrie for not saving/uploading the file if she had had even 60 seconds further, but she didn't. She listened once and was knocked out. I still find her pretty blameless there, although personally I would have grabbed the box and tried to listen from a hidden or remote location. But on the other hand, I can understand why she stayed and listened ASAP because she was then able to pass the info along.

I'm 100% agreed on Russia's motives and find them believable.

Carrie trusting Yevgeny was frustrating but believable to me. Loyalty is her Achilles' heel. He helped her with Max so she didn't let her guard down 100%, but she thought she controlled him. And she was wrong.

On 4/6/2020 at 12:31 PM, slowpoked said:

Oh well, that ending is predictable. It's disappointing that over the course of this series that Carrie has used her sexuality as a weapon. It would have been a nice characteristic if a show doesn't treat a woman in national intelligence that way.

Sexuality has always been a believable and documented aspect of spycraft, and one Carrie has never shied away from. In part, because she's a patriot that I firmly believe would sell any aspect of herself to save the world, and (secondly) because she's turned on by danger and intrigue on an occasional personal level (as with Brody, Quinn, Yevgeny, etc.). She's shown she can use sexuality coldly and also give in to it in another more personal way.

On 4/6/2020 at 1:15 PM, GussieK said:

I would love to know the answer to this.  Using sexuality was a big part of The Americans. That's how they were trained.  I do not know enough about how American spies work to exclude that it would also be SOP.  I tend to think that Carrie was always working off book but she was never punished for it.  There may be tacit approval from handlers.

My take is that the ends justified the means, and (as we've seen here) as long as Carrie got results, the agency sat back and let her do what she needed to do.

It's interesting to me that Carrie is so stigmatized by her use of her sexuality. Especially when compared to Elizabeth and Philip on "The Americans," where it was routine, and accepted from episode 1. For me, both are equal presentations -- both sides think they are doing so in service to a greater good. It's just that Carrie is so intense and yet so opaque I think many people are threatened by how she does so. Especially as she is alone, so she doesn't share her feelings about the episodes (unlike Philip and Elizabeth).

Ironically, this makes me sorrier for Carrie than for Elizabeth or Philip. She has to do so much of this stuff on her own, and I can't help but think that when she spends her body constantly in service to her country, that she may not always be clear emotionally about where the line is drawn herself.

On 4/12/2020 at 1:11 AM, Anela said:

I love Mandy Patinkin. After this, I'll probably watch "Dead Like Me" again. 

I've always said, if Saul ever called Carrie "peanut," I'd fall out of my chair in sheer happiness. Man, I miss that show! 

Edited January 17, 2021 by paramitch
typo: "woman" not "women"

[Kel Varnsen]

At the end of this episode I was totally expecting Yevgeny to just shoot the black box totally wrecking things for Carrie. Although I would hope a flight recorder, especially in a Black Hawk helicopter, would be bullet proof. 

The kind of hilarious thing is that Carrie has kind of lost all her credibility. So even if there was a decent president people probably wouldn't believe her account of what she heard if the actual box was taken or destroyed.

The other hilarious thing was how Carrie was trying to be all secret with the guy selling the box. But then when she hands over the computer to him, she leaves open the email from Saul Berenson right on her screen. I wouldn't be surprised if it was from saul.berenson@whitehouse.gov.