S03.E13: March 8, 1983

[Caria]

Martha had better be alive, for no other reason than I want to see the unbelievably dramatic scene in which Phillip is forced to kill the woman for whom he's developed genuine feelings.

 

I don't think there's much of a chance that Pastor Tim will not put 2 and 2 together after learning that Phillip and Elizabeth are Russians. This was the height of the Cold War. Just the word Russia evoked a certain physical and emotional response. I suspect Paige doesn't fully understands the ramifications of what will happen to her family, her parents, if they are found out.  The greatest fear kids have is the loss of your family.  I think once she fully grasps what she's done it's quite possible that she will participate in the inevitable demise of Pastor Tim, albeit with enormous guilt, resentment and anger. Maybe that can be her "in".

 

What lack of strategy by the US to immediately apprehend Zinaeda!  They could have fed her false intel for months!  But at least they didn't trade for Nina.  The show would have lost all credibility for me if they'd done that. I actually sighed out loud in relief when that idea was immediately dismissed.

I can now see Stan's creepy interest in Henry being a prelude to his being asked to spy on Henry's parents

I don't think it's creepy given Stan's situation.  He's lonely for company and here's a boy willing to connect with him in a way that Stan wishes his son would.  However, I do see that this is a dangerous situation and I'm surprised that Phillip and Elizabeth are not putting the kobash right away.  It wouldn't take much for it to slip out of Henry that his parents are out late at night for long hours and other little nuggets of info on odd behavior that Stan could put together.

 

What a show. 

Edited April 24, 2015 by Caria

[JennyMominFL]

We also really did ally ourselves the Apartheid regime in South Africa because they were Anti-communists. This while kids in East Germany were gathering thing to send to victims of Apartheid in South Africa. Nothing is black and white, more shades of gray. I can agree the the USSR's shade of gray was darker than ours.

[shura]

What lack of strategy by the US to immediately apprehend Zinaeda!  They could have fed her false intel for months!

 

BTW, what kind of intel was she collecting? She is supposed to be what, a mid-level analyst from the US-Canada Institute, an expert at what's happening in America. She defects, starts meeting all these Congressmen and generals (for some reason that is not entirely clear to me), and what, they go "Now, let me show you our detailed plans for arming the contras, and then we'll look at some Trident blueprints"?

Edited April 24, 2015 by shura

[JennyMominFL]

Sorry.  I got the names off.  Josef Mengele was the father, Rolf was the son.

Ahh.It all makes sense now

[Guest]

I guess I'm the only one who ddint buy Paige's betrayal. But I didn't. It made no sense to me. Her parents are her protectors and she's just met her maternal grandmother,nit made no sense.

So the season ended and no kimmienwrap up ornthe anti apartheid people. Feh.

I too am surprised EST is more than a joke.. And impressed.

I agree but I'm not too impressed by EST.  I didn't even realize this was the season finale before coming here and still I thought it was a dull, disappointing episode.  No Martha, No Kimmie.  Lonnnnggg EST scenes Philip should've been rolling his eyes at.  And if he's so burned out, why doesn't he take a break?  Is he the only killer they have?  Shit, let Hans kill the programmer.  I didn't know who the programmer was until he mentioned he took care of the Martha thing.  I didn't understand the Zinaida assassination thing until I came here, either.  

 

But I liked the clothes!  Sandra's gold metallic threaded blouse.  Paige's footprint t-shirt.  

 

Hopefully there are a hundred reasons that programmer clearly wouldn't kill himself.  You know, he just bought concert tickets, made a date for later that night, ordered pizza, and the FBI will see it's a frame.  

 

It's probably not a good sign I'm pulling for the FBI.  

[Bannon]

Yes. I do not see The Greatness of Paige. I see a little girl who's gone off the deep end with religion, with an acquaintance that she's known what, a year? favoring him instead of her parents... it doesn't even ring true to me. It would be different if he'd been her pastor since she was little. Also calling his wife "Alice?" seems quite disrespectful to me.

 

I could not disagree more. Philip and Elizabeth raised Paige from infancy and have raised a girl who is safe, fed, loved, doing well in school. It is not mere DNA and I find the idea of that a little strange given the circumstances. They didn't put her in an orphanage. They've been ehr parents her whole life. Her suden shift of loyalty doesn't ring the slightest bit true to me.

 

 

I can and do condemn her. Her decision to value her own sense of What Is Right above the safety of the two people who brought her up, without talking to them at any length about it, is selfish in the extreme. Paige doesn't know what we know re Elizabeth's murders etc.

 

Please explain what you mean by "Jews in the Holocaust." I'm at a loss.

Are you suggesting Jews in the Holocaust didn't love their children? Or put them in danger by being Jewish, and should have converted?

Are you saying something about Nazis? Because there's zero evidence that the children of Nazis didn't love their parents.

if we want to go religious on this, Jesus was the one who said hate the sin, not the sinner.

Paige's parents have loved her, that much is pretty obvious in the context of the show, regardless of whether you approve of their actions or not.

Yeah, sure they make their kids such a priority that they risk those kids being raised in an institution, after Elizabeth and Phillip are given life sentences, because Elizabeth and Phillip have actually made the advance of their political ideology their number 1 priority. Let us be clear about this. Your kids are not safe as you operate illegally in a foreign country, with your kids living with you. Now, if you are a Jew in the Holocaust, or soemthing similar, then, yes living illegally with your children as you fight your ideological foes is ethical, because you don't have a better alternative for your kids. Elizabeth and Phillip are horrible, horrible, parents. They may love Paige, but they sure love their ideology more, and I don't care what the ideology is, that makes you a crappy parent. They deserve nothing but scorn.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Bannon

[benteen]

You know, if nobody wants the Beeman wedding pictures, I'm sure Henry will take them.

[RedheadZombie]

Well, Paige can't be trusted either.  She has gone behind her parents' back's and done something that she promised she would not do.  I'm just not that concerned with Paige's sensibilities at this point.  Sometimes the survival of the family depends on young people to do very heroic acts.  Throughout history, teens have had to make enormous sacrifices, take up a weapon, walk across an entire country, not eat for weeks, witness their loved ones' death, etc. to protect their family.  IMO, Page didn't really try to protect hers.

 

Absolute 100% blind loyalty to one's family - no matter what - is what protects those committing incest.  It's what's allowed the mafia to flourish for a century.  Philip and Elizabeth are not performing heroic acts, they are working to destroy the country Paige considers her homeland.

 

Is the suggestion that Paige's obligation is to take up weapons and join the KGB, simply because her parents chose to do so?  I don't blame Paige for not keeping Philip and Elizabeth's secrets.  And I don't blame the family of Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) for turning him in.  Ted thought he was part of some righteous battle.  Thank God his family disagreed with him.

[Bannon]

I agree but I'm not too impressed by EST.  I didn't even realize this was the season finale before coming here and still I thought it was a dull, disappointing episode.  No Martha, No Kimmie.  Lonnnnggg EST scenes Philip should've been rolling his eyes at.  And if he's so burned out, why doesn't he take a break?  Is he the only killer they have?  Shit, let Hans kill the programmer.  I didn't know who the programmer was until he mentioned he took care of the Martha thing.  I didn't understand the Zinaida assassination thing until I came here, either.  

 

But I liked the clothes!  Sandra's gold metallic threaded blouse.  Paige's footprint t-shirt.  

 

Hopefully there are a hundred reasons that programmer clearly wouldn't kill himself.  You know, he just bought concert tickets, made a date for later that night, ordered pizza, and the FBI will see it's a frame.  

 

It's probably not a good sign I'm pulling for the FBI.  

It really is quite a hard to sell a suicide to people prepared to be skeptical and very inquisitive.

[henripootel]

Given Oleg's conversation with that woman in the rezidentura (is it Tatiana?) hinting around about maybe having an agent pretend to defect, she should be able to piece it together pretty quickly.

Actually, on reflection, it also occurred to me that the rezidentura should be able to get a precise time when Zinaeda was 'attacked'.  An exhaustive head count (the KGB were nothing if not master record-keepers) will likely show only Oleg unaccounted for, also not on the list of 'people who know Zinaeda is a double', and was in the room when Arkady made his announcement.  Connections or not, Oleg is in a world of trouble.

BTW, what kind of intel was she collecting? She is supposed to be what, a mid-level analyst from the US-Canada Institute, an expert at what's happening in America. She defects, starts meeting all these Congressmen and generals (for some reason that is not entirely clear to me), and what, they go "Now, let me show you our detailed plans for arming the contras, and then we'll look at some Trident blueprints"?

Like as not, Zinaeda wasn't sent here to gather much of anything but to fob off a bit of rot on us.  In real life, a couple of 'defectors' were almost certainly sent here with information designed to either discredit previous genuine defectors (by contradicting them or suggesting that they were plants) or sow dissent by confusing the US about what the USSR did and didn't know.  At least one planted seeds of doubt about moles in the CIA (and elsewhere) which James Jesus Angleton (head of Counterintelligence) became utterly obsessed with, leading him to ransack the place and crippling it for years.  Zinaeda was likely one of these, sent to drop hints and spread disinformation, something the KGB was extremely good at.

 

Boy this show has just gotten better and better.  I know some folks were dreading the 'Paige and Elizabeth's Russian Adventure' plot line but I thought the scene with Elizabeth's mom was genuinely heartrending.  Kudos to you, Ms. Russell, you actually got tears in my eyes.

Edited April 24, 2015 by henripootel

[RedheadZombie]

I think it was very much the norm.  I was in my 40s in the 80s and my children were young teens.  My friends and I did leave our reliable children "alone" at night (Paige is 15) and some of our teenagers babysat "alone at night" at the age of 15.  We didn't have mobile phones where we were all in touch 24/7.  We relied on luck, I guess.

 

I was actually referring to the fact that Paige and Henry were left alone at night as infants.  Vulnerable to any fire, passing child molester, carbon monoxide leak, illness, etc. Paige may be 15 now, but there's no doubt she's been taking care of him since they were very small.   That was not the norm in the 80s.

[Umbelina]

We don't know that though.

 

On one of the podcasts they also said Philip and Elizabeth have entire back up teams, to help with disguises, documents, cars, dogs, whatever they need, including preparing Philip's "apartment" for Martha.  I'm sure babysitting was part of that when the children they were ordered to have were little.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Umbelina

[RedheadZombie]

Actually, on reflection, it also occurred to me that the rezidentura should be able to get a precise time when Zinaeda was 'attacked'.  An exhaustive head count (the KGB were nothing if not master record-keepers) will likely show only Oleg unaccounted for, also not on the list of 'people who know Zinaeda is a double', and was in the room when Arkady made his announcement.  Connections or not, Oleg is in a world of trouble.

 

I'm not as clear on this storyline, but isn't the KGB still only referring to Zenaida as "Willow"?  The only reason he knows they're the same is because of his knowledge from Stan.  As far as the rezidentura knows, Oleg knows there's a spy in the US named Willow, and he's now been instructed that he's not allowed to kill anyone without being instructed to.  Wouldn't that be a big leap to suspecting that Oleg is responsible for Zenaida's outing?

[Cardie]

"Why would Philip not be resisting it? The only thing more increasingly dangerous than being an agent is being a double agent, isn't it?"

 

Different sorts of dangers. By continuing to take what will have to be increasingly desperate measures to keep up the facade, the Jennings risk the KGB terminating those they would protect. The spycraft would be more dangerous but they might be able to leverage protection for the kids, witness protection for Martha, not have to keep offing old lady book-keepers, IT nerds and perhaps a pastor. P&E have to know they can't go on forever; the question is how many they take with them.

[ruby24]

The other question is whether they both go, or if Philip takes the kids and turns against Elizabeth. That seems to be what's coming, imo. I have a hard time seeing how she gets turned- she's still pretty damn committed. I could see him turning on her and eventually forcing her into a position where she must choose to defect or surrender herself.

[henripootel]

Wouldn't that be a big leap to suspecting that Oleg is responsible for Zenaida's outing?

Not that big.  It's a process of elimination, as mole-hunting usually is. Zenaida's all over the news, making speeches and such like the good 'defector' she's playing.  Somebody who didn't know Zenaida's a double served her up a warning to shut her mouth, so who did it?  Make a list of who wasn't in their bed at the time.  

 

Then Arkady makes his announcement, which can only mean the Centre knows that somebody paid Zenaida a visit, info which can only have come from Zenaida.  Make a list of everyone in that room because somebody put two and two together and tipped the FBI, because soon after they scooped her right up.  My guess is that there's only one name on both lists. 

 

They may not know why Oleg would do such a thing but they should have pretty solid evidence that he did.  Whatever hold Stan thinks he has on Oleg may be very short-lived.  

Edited April 24, 2015 by henripootel

[OrientalAmish]

You know, if nobody wants the Beeman wedding pictures, I'm sure Henry will take them.

 

If this happened during this day + age, I can totally picture Henry photoshopping his face over Stan's face....;-)p

[Bannon]

You know, if nobody wants the Beeman wedding pictures, I'm sure Henry will take them.

Fer' the love of Sigmund Freud, can you begin to imagine the psychological chaos if the Phillip starts an affair with the former Mrs. Beeman, and Henry finds out!? Make it so!

[Guest]

I was actually referring to the fact that Paige and Henry were left alone at night as infants.  Vulnerable to any fire, passing child molester, carbon monoxide leak, illness, etc. Paige may be 15 now, but there's no doubt she's been taking care of him since they were very small.   That was not the norm in the 80s.

Did they suggest they left them alone as infants?   I thought there was dialog that explained that they had sitters when they were young.  

[Boundary]

Fer' the love of Sigmund Freud, can you begin to imagine the psychological chaos if the Phillip starts an affair with the former Mrs. Beeman, and Henry finds out!? Make it so!

 

Father and son might have the same tastes.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Boundary

[RedheadZombie]

Did they suggest they left them alone as infants?   I thought there was dialog that explained that they had sitters when they were young.  

 

I think it's been discussed here over the years.  Having sitters in the middle of the night when you're travel agents would surely draw attention.  Plus you'd have a stranger having access to your home, and your stash in the basement.

[Umbelina]

They would have KGB sitters for that.

[bluebonnet]

KGB sitters, or else they'd adjust their spying schedule so that one parent is able to be home.  There are other spies and illegals in the area that could pick up slack.  They weren't leaving babies alone all night to cry and scream and starve.  That would have been more noticeable than a sitter sneaking in on occasion.  

[Guest]

I think if there was a lot of late night need, they could have an insider like Gregory or Hans or lower level, of course.  Or just pay a regular sitter well to not ask questions.  I had a teen friend who would sit for a couple so they could stay home and do heroin and know their baby was taken care of til morning.  That panel in the basement is like behind the breaker box.  No sitter would find that.  

 

I'm pretty sure it was covered in dialog, too.  We've seen them be period-appropriate casual parents and seen Elizabeth be a little cold and intense but nothing's suggested they're abusive, and that would be.  

[dramachick]

ITA about Paige. Sorry, I just found it a contrived bit of writing to lead to a cliffhanger finale, and jumping shark as we did with the retrofitting of teen killed his family when the actor had not played it that way, because he didn't know, which means we now have to believe the kid was not just a murdering teen but hey! Olivier!

I realize most people don't share my opinion of this and that's fine, but I just don't elieve tat Paige would willingly go to meet grandma and then decide she can't handle it. She's had a whole life with her parents. It's a lot to take in, yes, but I think most teens would frantically be trying to make themselves and parents fit the situation, seeing moms pain would make you feel compassion, and solidarity. I do not buy it at all.

Stra to magic football is a long game, like monopoly.

I am in absolute agreement with you.  If the show is going for emotional truth, I think Paige's characterization is way off. She's supposed to be a 15 year-old girl who's just had her world rocked because her parents -- whom she has loved and been loved in return all her life -- have shared their HUGE secret with her.  Yes, she's angry and will treat them like shit ad infinitum, but she would be protective of them as far as anyone else would be concerned, especially because of Henry as she's the older sibling.  Although Pastor Tim has been her sounding board for complaining about her God-less parents, things have gotten frighteningly real for her, and it's time to close ranks and regroup.  She witnessed how scared and on edge Elizabeth was during their trip, so she has a certain appreciation of the seriousness of the situation and should empathize with her mother on some level.  The parent-child bond is so strong that many children don't report abuse or neglect because of the unconditional love they have for their parents, and they don't want their parents to be judged.

 

Maybe the writers have some grand plan for the character that will make sense in the long run, but so far I'm like you. I don't buy it.

[MDKNIGHT]

Maybe the irony will be that Martha kills herself and Philip didn't have to ice that dude.

I remember in one of the spy miniseries (I think Smiley's People) the mole (spy for Russia)had an affair with Smiley's (agent for the Brits) wife because forever more if Smiley ever suspected the mole of being a mole his agency (MI-6 or whatever it was called) would always think" Oh that guy isn't the mole Smiley just hates that guy because he slept with Smiley's wife." It worked for him for decades. If Philip sleeps with the soon to be ex Mrs Beeman and then Beeman goes on about Philip being a spy no one will listen to him.

[KayElektra]

No offense, but it would be super awesome if I didn't have to scroll through almost an entire page of speculation to see talk about the current ep.  That said, I will now read reactions to the current ep.

Edited April 24, 2015 by KayElektra

[millennium]

I think Martha's dead. Phillip was way too messed up for it to have been about Annalise. There's no way she's just absent from the FBI when all that is going on -- and there's no way he would have let her leave to her parents or anything of the sort. And there's no way she's okay with what she saw at the end of last episode.

I think from a show standpoint, they couldn't show him killing her -- too much of the show demand us to have sympathy for the Jennings, and then killing strangers is one thing, but killing a regular would be unrecoverable.

So I think she's dead, and that's what fucked him up.

 

Make room for one more on this side of the room    I believe Martha's dead, too.

 

IF Philip didn't kill her, then everything we saw in this episode was a cheap and manipulative trick.    That aside, it wasn't a very good episode anyway.   The one thing I wanted to see was Martha's fate.   If Philip was going to kill her, then I wanted to witness it.   If he decided to let her live, well, I wanted to see that too.   A conclusive answer on Martha is all I expected from this episode, and we were cheated.   Worse, we were made to wait until the last two minutes before her name even came up.

 

Mrs. Beeman was sexy and vulnerable.   Philip had to have been seriously messed up to walk away from her like that (sorry, Stan, what can I say?)

 

I find I don't care about the Paige storyline because I don't like Paige.  The actress isn't very endearing or even engaging.   While on the subject of uninteresting teenage girls, I'm grateful the writers dropped the storyline of Philip and the CIA guy's daughter.

 

"I feel like shit all the time, Yousaf."

 

I think that's the most honest thing Philip has ever said.

 

That final "Evil Empire scene.    Elizabeth's eyes reminded me of a quote:

 

 

 

You know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white.

Edited April 24, 2015 by millennium

[albaniantv]

After that trip to see Elizabeth's dying mother was hyped for multiple episodes, besides regretting all the time they had lost, the only statement the mother makes is something like " I had to let you go, everything was at stake."  The trip was talked about as something important Elizabeth needed --to say goodbye, we assume--and then eventually as something that may also have meaning for Paige.

 

And that's all she says --such an opaque statement. And we saw no follow-up. It's bothered me for 24 hours that it reminded me of another show, and all of a sudden I remembered: Rubican used to do that. (Tear my hair out Rubican, that show.) Build interest and intrigue around an upcoming exchange or meeting or action and then the result was so ambiguous. And no one ever asked the obvious follow-up question.

I didn't want much, just one question --"What was at stake?"

 

I suppose she meant financial security --and a bit of comfort and privilege. Maybe thanks to Elizabeth taking the job that meant they wouldn't see each other, she got her own apartment in Smolensk or even a larger city. Maybe diphtheria weakened her system and she couldn't do the same job --but because her daughter was serving Mother Russia, she was given something less physically taxing. 

 

She seemed to be warmed by holding the hands of her daughter and granddaughter --Paige seemed affected and through the window, Elizabeth watched every moment of her mother getting into the car. I thought she could see them clearly and they her. But the moment did not extend further -- Elizabeth can't see Paige and Paige can't see Elizabeth. Each has retreated.

 

In fact all 4 have retreated almost as far away from each other as they can get. 

[SunnyBeBe]

I'm not sure what you mean by them retreating.  Elizabeth's mom did get in the car to leave, but Page was in the bathroom praying and Elizabeth joined her in that room sitting on the floor near her. I thought they were being close in that moment, even though Elizabeth doesn't pray herself.

[Guest]

And who was the fourth?

 

I liked how the whole visit Elizabeth and Paige were in their pajamas.  It made them more vulnerable and childlike.  And it served to show she was probably only there a short time.  

 

I kind of liked "everything was at stake", too.  For her, 'everything' was probably her country and maybe their lives required that.  For me, my country would come way down the list after my daughter's safety and happiness.  But I don't have to live in their circumstances. 

[lucindabelle]

Yeah, sure they make their kids such a priority that they risk those kids being raised in an institution, after Elizabeth and Phillip are given life sentences, because Elizabeth and Phillip have actually made the advance of their political ideology their number 1 priority. Let us be clear about this. Your kids are not safe as you operate illegally in a foreign country, with your kids living with you. Now, if you are a Jew in the Holocaust, or soemthing similar, then, yes living illegally with your children as you fight your ideological foes is ethical, because you don't have a better alternative for your kids. Elizabeth and Phillip are horrible, horrible, parents. They may love Paige, but they sure love their ideology more, and I don't care what the ideology is, that makes you a crappy parent. They deserve nothing but scorn.

  

Absolute 100% blind loyalty to one's family - no matter what - is what protects those committing incest.  It's what's allowed the mafia to flourish for a century.  Philip and Elizabeth are not performing heroic acts, they are working to destroy the country Paige considers her homeland.

Glad to know you think beingJewish is ethical. But what if you could have your kids convert? Many people had at option and would die before doing it. By your reasoning, every Jew who didn't convert during the inquisition was a terrible, terrible, parent. As a Jew, I find that a pretty disrespectful thing to assert. Some people really care about these things and it's nt all "better alternative" or pragmatism. Heck many people right now would have an easier life if they weren't Jeiwsh, should they convert or pass? The whole idea that people should somehow not commit to their ideology or religion because others persecute them is foreign, to me. Maybe you have to be a member of a persecuted minority to really understand this.

Many parents love their religion and ideology and I don't know why you think this is a bad things we've actually never seen P and E ne awful parents. Remember when Elizabeth pierced Paige's ear?

Suggesting that family loyalty is akin to invest and serial killing is taking this to the extreme. I simply do not BUY that Page would react that way. I don't believe it. It's implausible, you're arguing something else entirely.,

 

[Bannon]

  

Absolute 100% blind loyalty to one's family - no matter what - is what protects those committing incest.  It's what's allowed the mafia to flourish for a century.  Philip and Elizabeth are not performing heroic acts, they are working to destroy the country Paige considers her homeland.

Glad to know you think beingJewish is ethical. But what if you could have your kids convert? Many people had at option and would die before doing it. By your reasoning, every Jew who didn't convert during the inquisition was a terrible, terrible, parent. As a Jew, I find that a pretty disrespectful thing to assert. Some people really care about these things and it's nt all "better alternative" or pragmatism. Heck many people right now would have an easier life if they weren't Jeiwsh, should they convert or pass? The whole idea that people should somehow not commit to their ideology or religion because others persecute them is foreign, to me. Maybe you have to be a member of a persecuted minority to really understand this.

Many parents love their religion and ideology and I don't know why you think this is a bad things we've actually never seen P and E ne awful parents. Remember when Elizabeth pierced Paige's ear?

Suggesting that family loyalty is akin to invest and serial killing is taking this to the extreme. I simply do not BUY that Page would react that way. I don't believe it. It's implausible, you're arguing something else entirely.,

 

I can do without the snark (and if I am misunderstanding your tone, my apologies), via a baseless implication about my views of the ethical basis of being a Jew, thank you. I thought it was pretty clear (and judging from another comment, at least one person thought it was clear as well) that I was saying that you only had the ethical right to risk your child's physical safety, in pursuit of your ideology, when your ideological foes were placing your children in such severe physical danger in any case, that pursuing your ideology made your children no worse off. The situation of forced conversions is certainly a problematic ethical dilemma; is it ethical to place a third party, in this case, your children, at pronounced risk, by refusing to convert? My inclination is to say no; if you wish to sacrifice your own life by refusing to comply with some thug's demand that you behave in the manner they wish, that's highly honorable. Putting third parties at risk is not. I wouldn't say refusing to convert makes you a terrible, terrible, parent, but I think religions are making a real misstep when they don't make allowances in their Faith for people pragmatically acting to protect innocent third parties.

 

In any case, this is most certainly not a good analogy for Elizabeth and Phillip. Elizabeth and Phillip are concealing their ideological identity, and have chosen to live illegally in a country, in a manner which places their children at risk. The analogy would be Jewish parents who emigrated to Nazi Germany in 1935, with their children, concealing their Jewish identity, because they thought they could do something useful to protect their fellow Jews. If a Jew without children, or grown children, did that, it would be incredibly brave. If a Jew with small children did that, while leaving their children behind in safety with the other parent, it would be incredibly brave, but I'd note that, like Stan Beeman working undercover among the neo-nazis for years, away from his family, the choice had been made to abandon your children for a number of years, which means you really aren't a good parent, even if you have chosen to not be a good parent for the best of reasons. If Jewish parents made that move to Nazi Germany, and brought their children with them? Yeah, I'd say they are terrible, terrible, parents, deserving of scorn..   

 

We see Elizabeth and Phillip be awful parents in every episode, because in every episode they place the saftey of their children in a very distant second place, compared to their desire to fulfill their ideological goals. You don't appear to be discerning the difference between risking your own safety or persecution (and really, there is an ocean of difference between risk in the form of life imprisonment,  and risk in the form of being discriminated against in employment, housing, etc.,)  out of ideological commitment,  and exposing innocent third parties to risk out of ideological commitment. They aren't the same thing. Finally, you know absolutely nothing about me, so it may be preferable to avoid making assumptions with regard to my personal experience with regard to persecuted minorities, and what I understand.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Bannon

[sistermagpie]

I don't think it's creepy given Stan's situation.  He's lonely for company and here's a boy willing to connect with him in a way that Stan wishes his son would.  However, I do see that this is a dangerous situation and I'm surprised that Phillip and Elizabeth are not putting the kobash right away.

 

 

What's interesting is that the showrunners mentioned this could be something P&E would use--like he saw it as an advantage. Philip has also established a close friendship with Stan, so it doesn't have to be a Stan/Henry thing.

 

One thing I was thinking about Henry is he's very much often characterized as being like his father or paralleling him just as Paige and Elizabeth are. That makes for a more subtle characterization in both cases, of course. And one of the ways they're the same is they both are naturally pretty closed-mouthed about giving away personal info and stuff about their family. Paige started unburdening herself to Pastor Tim right away about all her suspicions and her parents' behavior but I don't think Henry would even if he noticed.

 

More interestingly, there's Henry's porn stash. We saw early in the season where Paige came across his picture of Sandra and he was furious at her and instinctively lied. Later see he created a much better hiding place for it. Henry, unlike Paige, thinks secrets are normal. He's not bothered by lying to cover up for people for the right reasons. Hell, the kid assaulted someone with a bottle and didn't feel the need to unburden himself about it, despite being a little worried he might have seriously injured the guy. This kid's a secret keeper.

 

He's also an American who likes the idea of Stan as an FBI agent. I'm just really starting to think it would be interesting now to see how Henry reacts to the truth differently than Paige. Also in this ep we got another subtle parallel with Philip when he runs into Sandra, who we know Henry has a secret crush on. I don't think Philip is going to have an affair with Sandra (that would be so terrible and stupid) but it does seem like a nice little subtle connection between them.

 

I was actually referring to the fact that Paige and Henry were left alone at night as infants.  Vulnerable to any fire, passing child molester, carbon monoxide leak, illness, etc. Paige may be 15 now, but there's no doubt she's been taking care of him since they were very small.   That was not the norm in the 80s.

 

 

We do not know that this ever happened.

 

The other question is whether they both go, or if Philip takes the kids and turns against Elizabeth. That seems to be what's coming, imo. I have a hard time seeing how she gets turned- she's still pretty damn committed. I could see him turning on her and eventually forcing her into a position where she must choose to defect or surrender herself.

 

 

Yeah, but that can also be setting her up for a change. As the showrunners have said, Philip evolves and has been throughout the show. Elizabeth's evolution is more about a series of cracks. They planted a seed with Betty, for instance. And Elizabeth at the end of this ep is clearly clueless as well as committed. It's not just that she cares more about what Reagan is saying and sees that as a bigger threat than the ones inside her home, it's that she doesn't see the threats inside her home. But she presumably will. She does tend to sometimes swing back and forth, for instance, especially when she's meeting with an old authority figure. When she met Gabriel again she immediately started pulling away from Philip ("Things are different now...well, they WERE different...") before later softening a bit. Here she's just seen her mother, reminding her of how she was tossed into this life, and her mother again justified herself and Elizabeth automatically agreed with her. Yet the fact that she was so preemptively defensive of her mother to both Paige and Philip seemed to me to indicate some doubts. She was practically saying to both of them that she didn't seem like she loved Elizabeth but she totally did.

 

IF Philip didn't kill her, then everything we saw in this episode was a cheap and manipulative trick.

 

 

Huh? There's no trickery going on. Philip and Elizabeth both said she's alive, and he killed Gene because of it. No reason to kill Gene if Martha's dead.

 

I suppose she meant financial security --and a bit of comfort and privilege. Maybe thanks to Elizabeth taking the job that meant they wouldn't see each other, she got her own apartment in Smolensk or even a larger city. Maybe diphtheria weakened her system and she couldn't do the same job --but because her daughter was serving Mother Russia, she was given something less physically taxing.

 

 

I think she meant the fate of the world. Elizabeth's mother is as much a hardliner as she is. She doesn't care about money and conveniences.

 

Many parents love their religion and ideology and I don't know why you think this is a bad things we've actually never seen P and E ne awful parents. Remember when Elizabeth pierced Paige's ear?

 

 

Yes, one of the the traits of prestige TV for me, as I may have said before, is it often depends on acknowledging that adults have competing interests even though the standard societal idea now is that you put your kid above everything and this is what fulfills you. But the whole world is run by adults who often do have other things on their mind. Kimmie's dad is in the same job and it has, unbenknownst to him, put her in danger too. It also seems to have left her adrift and alone. 

 

There's a point where the job definitely effects the parenting, but for me it's hard to judge parenting just in terms of the circumstances in which kids live. There are so many people who might grow up in less than ideal situations--even dangerous ones--or have parents that are passionately committed to things that take up a lot of their time and are stressful. and yet have great parents. Or at least have parents they love fiercely, respect and who gave them a good start in life. Just for me personally, I definitely prefer interesting, if flawed, parents to the ones who are just doing everything right and focused on their kids.

 

It's only recently that Paige has started to see her parents as these strange, foreign creatures--an extreme version of what many adolescents feel when they start to see their parents as real people with flaws. When the show started she found them more eye-rolling embarrassing and than emotionally damaging. A lot of her story is about Paige being desperate to define herself for herself and be what she considers a good person (making a difference in the world, being part of something bigger than herself) rather than escaping a terrible home situation--she doesn't see how much that makes her like Elizabeth but she also doesn't really want to see it right now. And Philip can't be her ally in her annoyance at her mother because he's her mother's creature--she sees him siding with Elizabeth against herself (even at times when he's doing the opposite.)

 

To me, btw, it's always seemed kind of sad and Elizabeth like that her search for her own identity led straight to her adopting all the values of the new place/family she found. It's a realistic phase for her to go through, but it doesn't seem like the last stop to her maturity.

[lucindabelle]

I wasn't being snarky. I disagree profoundly that you "only have the right" to bring up your children in your own religion if it's safe to do so. the suggestion that Jews would emigrate to Nazi Germany is historically inaccurate. Jews all around the world KNEW what was happening. My own father fought in the Second World War and told me how thrilled everyone was when the U.S. finally entered the war. The news was out in the Jewish presses for a decade. And sorry, Jews, and many other religions (loads of Catholic martyrs) simply don't agree with your conviction that they should e pragmatic if persecuted and give up their kids. Apologies if you knew all this already but this is fairly recent history to me and I don't like to see it used to make a point about fictional characters. . I'd have loads of cousins right now. i mean Yom Ha Shoah JUSt Happened.. I'm white and would never dream of telling black people how they ought to feel about passing, for example. I know "Jews and the Holocaust" was just a stray remark, but I hope you understand that to a Jewish person who'd ahce a large family if not for he Holocaust, it's upsetting. This is not ancient history to us and its not even over..

What you call an "innocent third party" I'd call members of my tribe. You get born into Judaism and re Hitler, he didn't give a fig what you believed in any case and in fact converting wouldn't have helped. You still weren't aryan.

Bringing is back on track, I think p &he feel that way about their own ideology, it's as deep as religion..l at least it is for Elizabeth. And merely having it doesn't make her a bad mother. . I don't think being committed to your faith makes you a "bad parent." I haven't seen any actual evidence of bad parenting from P &E except their having a dangerous ideology which to me doesn't make them bad parents. The two things are separate.

Heck I wouldn't even say Nazis were bad parents. I'm sure it varied case by case.

Edited April 24, 2015 by lucindabelle

[Bannon]

What's interesting is that the showrunners mentioned this could be something P&E would use--like he saw it as an advantage. Philip has also established a close friendship with Stan, so it doesn't have to be a Stan/Henry thing.

 

One thing I was thinking about Henry is he's very much often characterized as being like his father or paralleling him just as Paige and Elizabeth are. That makes for a more subtle characterization in both cases, of course. And one of the ways they're the same is they both are naturally pretty closed-mouthed about giving away personal info and stuff about their family. Paige started unburdening herself to Pastor Tim right away about all her suspicions and her parents' behavior but I don't think Henry would even if he noticed.

 

More interestingly, there's Henry's porn stash. We saw early in the season where Paige came across his picture of Sandra and he was furious at her and instinctively lied. Later see he created a much better hiding place for it. Henry, unlike Paige, thinks secrets are normal. He's not bothered by lying to cover up for people for the right reasons. Hell, the kid assaulted someone with a bottle and didn't feel the need to unburden himself about it, despite being a little worried he might have seriously injured the guy. This kid's a secret keeper.

 

He's also an American who likes the idea of Stan as an FBI agent. I'm just really starting to think it would be interesting now to see how Henry reacts to the truth differently than Paige. Also in this ep we got another subtle parallel with Philip when he runs into Sandra, who we know Henry has a secret crush on. I don't think Philip is going to have an affair with Sandra (that would be so terrible and stupid) but it does seem like a nice little subtle connection between them.

 

We do not know that this ever happened.

 

Yeah, but that can also be setting her up for a change. As the showrunners have said, Philip evolves and has been throughout the show. Elizabeth's evolution is more about a series of cracks. They planted a seed with Betty, for instance. And Elizabeth at the end of this ep is clearly clueless as well as committed. It's not just that she cares more about what Reagan is saying and sees that as a bigger threat than the ones inside her home, it's that she doesn't see the threats inside her home. But she presumably will. She does tend to sometimes swing back and forth, for instance, especially when she's meeting with an old authority figure. When she met Gabriel again she immediately started pulling away from Philip ("Things are different now...well, they WERE different...") before later softening a bit. Here she's just seen her mother, reminding her of how she was tossed into this life, and her mother again justified herself and Elizabeth automatically agreed with her. Yet the fact that she was so preemptively defensive of her mother to both Paige and Philip seemed to me to indicate some doubts. She was practically saying to both of them that she didn't seem like she loved Elizabeth but she totally did.

 

Huh? There's no trickery going on. Philip and Elizabeth both said she's alive, and he killed Gene because of it. No reason to kill Gene if Martha's dead.

 

I think she meant the fate of the world. Elizabeth's mother is as much a hardliner as she is. She doesn't care about money and conveniences.

 

Yes, one of the the traits of prestige TV for me, as I may have said before, is it often depends on acknowledging that adults have competing interests even though the standard societal idea now is that you put your kid above everything and this is what fulfills you. But the whole world is run by adults who often do have other things on their mind. Kimmie's dad is in the same job and it has, unbenknownst to him, put her in danger too. It also seems to have left her adrift and alone. 

 

There's a point where the job definitely effects the parenting, but for me it's hard to judge parenting just in terms of the circumstances in which kids live. There are so many people who might grow up in less than ideal situations--even dangerous ones--or have parents that are passionately committed to things that take up a lot of their time and are stressful. and yet have great parents. Or at least have parents they love fiercely, respect and who gave them a good start in life. Just for me personally, I definitely prefer interesting, if flawed, parents to the ones who are just doing everything right and focused on their kids.

 

It's only recently that Paige has started to see her parents as these strange, foreign creatures--an extreme version of what many adolescents feel when they start to see their parents as real people with flaws. When the show started she found them more eye-rolling embarrassing and than emotionally damaging. A lot of her story is about Paige being desperate to define herself for herself and be what she considers a good person (making a difference in the world, being part of something bigger than herself) rather than escaping a terrible home situation--she doesn't see how much that makes her like Elizabeth but she also doesn't really want to see it right now. And Philip can't be her ally in her annoyance at her mother because he's her mother's creature--she sees him siding with Elizabeth against herself (even at times when he's doing the opposite.)

 

To me, btw, it's always seemed kind of sad and Elizabeth like that her search for her own identity led straight to her adopting all the values of the new place/family she found. It's a realistic phase for her to go through, but it doesn't seem like the last stop to her maturity.

I really do appreciate your nuance, but how much risk does the child need to be exposed to in order for you to agree that the parenting is poor? I suspect that if a parent really, really, believed that refusing a blood tranfusion after serious accident was a high ideological/religious priority, compared to accepting that medical treatment which would reliably save the parent's or child's life, you would agree that the parenting is poor. In this show we see parents who have been a split second away from life imprisonment, and and who have exposed their children to murderous people, in order to pursue their ideology. How much danger are you allowed to expose an innocent third party to, in pursuit of your ideology, without doing so becoming unethical? Is there any limit whatsoever? If you really, really, believe, can you expose those third parties to whatever risk you wish?

[soapfaninnc]

I consider Elizabeth a lousy parent because she refuses to see her daughter - particularly - as a human being of her own - with her own ideas of what is right and wrong and seems to be determined to direct Paige's path instead of letting her find her own.  A parent living through a child is not a good parent - at least in my experience. 

 

 

[Bannon]

I wasn't being snarky. I disagree profoundly that you "only have the right" to bring up your children in your own religion if it's safe to do so. the suggestion that Jews would emigrate to Nazi Germany is historically inaccurate. Jews all around the world KNEW what was happening. My own father fought in the Second World War and told me how thrilled everyone was when the U.S. finally entered the war. The news was out in the Jewish presses for a decade. And sorry, Jews, and many other religions (loads of Catholic martyrs) simply don't agree with your conviction that they should e pragmatic if persecuted and give up their kids. Apologies if you knew all this already but this is fairly recent history to me and I don't like to see it used to make a point about fictional characters. It's really a sore point and I seriously do think thatnon-Jews should refrain from telling Jews how they ought toe. But how any of this is relevant to this show I do not get. This is pretty recent history to me... I'd have loads of cousins right now. i mean Yom Ha Shoah JUSt Happened. This is not some thing in a history book to me. A little sensitivity would be in order here. I'm white and would never dream of telling lack people how they ought to feel about passing, for example. I know "Jews and the Holocaust" was just a stray remark, but I hope you understand that to a Jewish person who'd ahce a large family if not for he Holocaust, it's really upsetting.

What you call an "innocent third party" I'd call members of my tribe. You get born into Judaism and re Hitler, he didn't give a fig what you believed in any case and in fact converting wouldn't have helped. You still weren't aryan.

Bringing is back on track, I think p &he feel that way about their own ideology, it's as deep as religion..l at least it is for Elizabeth. And merely having it doesn't make her a bad mother. . I don't think being committed to your faith makes you a "bad parent." I haven't seen any actual evidence of bad parenting from P &E except their having a dangerous ideology which to me doesn't make them bad parents. The two things are separate.

Heck I wouldn't even say Nazis were bad parents. I'm sure it varied case by case.

I didn't say it was historically accurate. I said that a forced conversion was not a good analogy to what Elizabeth and Phillip were doing. I said a better analogy would be two people who decided to bring their children to a country, while concealing their ideology, in which the children would be exposed to great risk, if the parents ideology would be discovered. I said this because it is 100% accurate.

 

Yes, I understand that many people, in many religions, think it is ethical to expose other human beings to great physical danger, out of a desire to adhere to a Faith. I differ. I don't think it is ethical to place other human beings at great physical risk, without their informed consent (and children by definition cannot give informed consent)  because you are deeply committed to an ideology or Faith. Nobody's feelings about the ideas they have, no matter how heartfelt, trumps another human beings' safety. 

 

 

 

 

, 

[sistermagpie]

I really do appreciate your nuance, but how much risk does the child need to be exposed to in order for you to agree that the parenting is poor?

 

 

 

It's more that I tend to define the act of parenting as the way you interact with your children rather than whether or not you do something that might put them in danger. I might judge the person for doing a bad thing there, and think it was irresponsible or a betrayal of their children, but they're just sort of separate things in my mind. Maybe it's semantics, but it's why I have no trouble seeing the Jennings as often being good parents. I tend to think that's the way people often see it. You have a life, you have a career, you have a passion, you have children. People don't necessarily stop the former for the latter. They just consider both things parts of their lives. Or in the case of something like this they might see it as right in the long run. I think that's definitely the way Elizabeth sees it. She doesn't see it as irresponsible that she's raising Paige in this lie. She thinks it's her duty as a parent to teach Paige that people of worth sacrifice to make the world better, even if it puts them in danger. 

 

Philip, I think, wanted to make the world better, and I think simply compartmentalized. He honestly believed he could be a good parent in terms of being loving etc. while also doing his job. Only as he got older did he start to see that his choice might actually put his kids in the line of fire--and when he learned they were considered property of the cause as well, he really saw his mistake. I suspect a lot of people do that, though. Philip just keeps trying to protect *more* people.

 

For instance, to use WWII again, someone like Elizabeth might join the French Resistance or harbor a Jewish family telling her children that this was the right thing to do despite the fact that it put her children in danger. Someone like Philip might also join the French Resistance or harbor a Jewish family but hope to minimize the children's involvement, even if he's kidding himself. In both cases they'd be putting their kids in danger by their actions, but would think it was the right thing to do.

Edited April 24, 2015 by sistermagpie

[JennyMominFL]

These analogies to Jews in the Holocaust is making me very uncomfortable. Using genocide to make a point seems in poor taste

[Bannon]

It's more that I tend to define the act of parenting as the way you interact with your children rather than whether or not you do something that might put them in danger. I might judge the person for doing a bad thing there, and think it was irresponsible or a betrayal of their children, but they're just sort of separate things in my mind. Maybe it's semantics, but it's why I have no trouble seeing the Jennings as often being good parents. I tend to think that's the way people often see it. You have a life, you have a career, you have a passion, you have children. People don't necessarily stop the former for the latter. They just consider both things parts of their lives. Or in the case of something like this they might see it as right in the long run. I think that's definitely the way Elizabeth sees it. She doesn't see it as irresponsible that she's raising Paige in this lie. She thinks it's her duty as a parent to teach Paige that people of worth sacrifice to make the world better, even if it puts them in danger. 

 

Philip, I think, wanted to make the world better, and I think simply compartmentalized. He honestly believed he could be a good parent in terms of being loving etc. while also doing his job. Only as he got older did he start to see that his choice might actually put his kids in the line of fire--and when he learned they were considered property of the cause as well, he really saw his mistake. I suspect a lot of people do that, though. Philip just keeps trying to protect *more* people.

 

For instance, to use WWII again, someone like Elizabeth might join the French Resistance or harbor a Jewish family telling her children that this was the right thing to do despite the fact that it put her children in danger. Someone like Philip might also join the French Resistance or harbor a Jewish family but hope to minimize the children's involvement, even if he's kidding himself. In both cases they'd be putting their kids in danger by their actions, but would think it was the right thing to do.

See, I think you are a really , really bad parent, if you take such leave of empirical observation that you cannot discern why refusing the blood transfusion is unacceptable, or why the United States in 1983 is really nothing like Nazi occupied France. You can be a wonderful parent in every other way, but if you cannot discern why you absolutely cannot strap your child to the luggage rack of your station wagon with three worn out bungee cords, as you go down the freeway, despite the fact that you really need to use the interior of the wagon to transport the sensitive equpiment that you need for your job, then you are a crappy parent. 

Edited April 24, 2015 by Bannon

[Penman61]

Father and son might have the same tastes.

I'm not sure I like where this is headed.

 

On a much more comfortable note, now that Paige has let the cat out of the bag, I really hope the show is heading to Elizabeth being ordered to kill Paige.  That would be the most intense dramatic expression of the fundamental conflict inherent in Elizabeth's ideology: Are you for the State or for yourself & family?  If you love the State, you must be willing to give up everything for it.  Anything.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Penman61

[Bannon]

These analogies to Jews in the Holocaust is making me very uncomfortable. Using genocide to make a point seems in poor taste

This is a show where the protagonists are working to support a regime that murdered many dozens of millions of innocent people within a few decades, and a regime which allied itself with the Nazis, when it saw strategic advantage in doing so. It is a show that accurately depicts the protagonists opposition being in alliance with a murderous.apartheid regime. It's grim, girm, material, which lends itself to explorations of when extreme behavior may be ethically defensible. 

Edited April 24, 2015 by Bannon

[sistermagpie]

On a much more comfortable note, now that Paige has let the cat out of the bag, I really hope the show is heading to Elizabeth being ordered to kill Paige.  That would be the most intense dramatic expression of the fundamental conflict inherent in Elizabeth's ideology: Are you for the State or for yourself & family?  If you love the State, you must be willing to give up everything for it.  Anything.

 

 

There would be no reason for the KGB to order Elizabeth to do any such thing, so why would it happen? If they wanted Paige killed they'd do it themselves. The showrunners have happily said that neither Philip nor Elizabeth would ever kill their children so it's a non-issue. The KGB isn't Yaweh (hee-Paige's choice of leader) ordering Abraham to kill his son to prove his obedience.

 

See, I think you are a really , really bad parent, if you take such leave of empirical observation that you cannot discern why refusing the blood transfusion is unacceptable, or why the United States in 1983 is really nothing like Nazi occupied France.

 

 

For me it's more that there's just nothing to talk about in this case. I mean, if we're talking about Philip and Elizabeth as parents and just say "they're terrible parents because they're really Soviet spies" then you stop at the premise and have nothing to say about the show and where they interact. You don't get any of the nuts and bolts of raising children because you stop at their situation.

 

Wouldn't Nazi occupied France be more dangerous than the US in 1983 and therefore those parents be even worse?

Edited April 24, 2015 by sistermagpie

[millennium]

From Wikipedia:

 

Godwin's Law (or Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies)[1][2] is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1"[2][3]—​ that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism. Despite being described as universal regarding the subject of the discussion, Godwin's law is more likely to be applicable to social topics (including politics, law, religion, etc.).

 

and

 

There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[3] than others.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.[8] This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law.

[Bannon]

There would be no reason for the KGB to order Elizabeth to do any such thing, so why would it happen? If they wanted Paige killed they'd do it themselves. The showrunners have happily said that neither Philip nor Elizabeth would ever kill their children so it's a non-issue. The KGB isn't Yaweh (Paige's choice of leader) ordering Abraham to kill his son to prove his obedience.

 

For me it's more that there's just nothing to talk about in this case. I mean, if we're talking about Philip and Elizabeth as parents and just say "they're terrible parents because they're really Soviet spies" then you stop at the premise and have nothing to say about the show and where they interact. You don't get any of the nuts and bolts of raising children because you stop at their situation.

 

Wouldn't Nazi occupied France be more dangerous than the US in 1983 and therefore those parents be even worse?

Yes, if someone willingly brought their children to Nazi occupied France, or purposely chose Nazi occupied France as the place to have their children born, as they worked against the Nazis, that would be worse. If they already were there, and getting out was plenty dangerous, then it is more nuanced. Elizabeth and Phillip's behavior is awful as parents because they chose to become parents with the knowledge that their children woud be at great risk, because they chose to live secretly in the U.S., to pursue their ideology. The ethical response to the KGB telling them that they were expected to have children once they infiltrated the U.S. would have been, "No, I won't do that, because those children can't lend consent to be exposed to great danger, due to my decision to be a spy. If you now want to send me to the gulag, have at it. If this means I can't be a spy, so be it."

From Wikipedia:

 

 

 

 

and

We are having a discussion about people in a show who are involved in an ideological battle that was borne out of WWII. Nazis are integral to the story.

[Bannon]

There would be no reason for the KGB to order Elizabeth to do any such thing, so why would it happen? If they wanted Paige killed they'd do it themselves. The showrunners have happily said that neither Philip nor Elizabeth would ever kill their children so it's a non-issue. The KGB isn't Yaweh (hee-Paige's choice of leader) ordering Abraham to kill his son to prove his obedience.

 

For me it's more that there's just nothing to talk about in this case. I mean, if we're talking about Philip and Elizabeth as parents and just say "they're terrible parents because they're really Soviet spies" then you stop at the premise and have nothing to say about the show and where they interact. You don't get any of the nuts and bolts of raising children because you stop at their situation.

 

Wouldn't Nazi occupied France be more dangerous than the US in 1983 and therefore those parents be even worse?

Why isn't there anything to say about the show, if you begin with the premise that you are a crappy parent if you deliberately have children while living illegally as a spy in another country? The way crappy parents rationalize their behavior can be quite interesting, and the contrast with other somewhat less crappy parents can be interesting. The way a crappy parent can come to the realization that he or she is a crappy parent, and what needs to change if he or she wants to be a better parent can be interesting. Phillip is going through this now, it seems clear, and it is about the most interesting thing in the show.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Bannon

[Former Nun]

As I said in that other thread, my moral code is such that I absolutely would turn in my parents if I found out they did something awful, and I'd expect them to do the same to me. I was raised to believe that right is right and wrong is wrong, and personal relationships don't change that.

 

 

I hope that at 15 (as Page) I have the intelligence and experience to consider first what would happen to me and to Henry if I turn in my parents.  I have no relatives in the U.S.  My parents have no close friends.  In light of the scandal that will occur, am I really welcome in Pastor Tim's home?  Will he and Alice raise me and Henry? My parents will be executed...but I still have my ethics and morals.  What now?

[soapfaninnc]

There would be no reason for the KGB to order Elizabeth to do any such thing, so why would it happen? If they wanted Paige killed they'd do it themselves. The showrunners have happily said that neither Philip nor Elizabeth would ever kill their children so it's a non-issue. The KGB isn't Yaweh (hee-Paige's choice of leader) ordering Abraham to kill his son to prove his obedience.

 

 

Aren't they? The Center is asking for their daughter's life. Not to kill her - worse - to make her give her life over to their service just because she was born to two of their spies. I fail to see much of a difference. Paige will not have a life of her own if the Center gets its way and Elizabeth is all for it. She refuses to see that Paige might be jailed, or killed, or have to honey trap someone to survive. And Paige doesn't really have a choice - despite what Old Dracula keeps saying. She is going to be forced to work for the Center - turn in her parents - or die. 

 

Me? I'd rather be dead that be given over to a life of involuntary servitude to a 'cause' I have zero ties to.  It would be like me being required to fight for the South in the Civil war just because I happened to be born and have lived here my whole life when I believe the South was completely in the wrong about their beloved 'cause'. 

Edited April 24, 2015 by soapfaninnc

[John S]

I hope that at 15 (as Page) I have the intelligence and experience to consider first what would happen to me and to Henry if I turn in my parents.  I have no relatives in the U.S.  My parents have no close friends.  In light of the scandal that will occur, am I really welcome in Pastor Tim's home?  Will he and Alice raise me and Henry? My parents will be executed...but I still have my ethics and morals.  What now?

Paige isn't thinking that. When on the phone, the FIRST thing that she said is that her parents are liars. THAT was the gist of her message. The fact that her parents aren't Americans was an "Oh By The Way". She just can't get over the fact that about 95% of everything that her parents have told her has been a lie.