S05.E02: Pests

[SlackerInc]

17 minutes ago, ChromaKelly said:

I'm a couple years younger than Paige and was still getting the save yourself messages. No one's parents were like go ahead, have sex.

Mine were!  A little later, but still in the '80s.

[JyDanzig]

42 minutes ago, RedHawk said:

For date signifiers we had St. Patrick's Day decorations at the Bennigan's restaurant and that holiday was a Saturday in 1984. So we're either in mid or early March, or possibly Feb 29 as poster ajsnaves suggested above (1984 was a leap year).  I laughed to myself that maybe Bennigan's decor is ALWAYS St. Patrick's Day, at the least they're likely to start the celebrations right after the new year begins, and ramp it up more after Valentine's Day.

I wondered the same thing ("was that just how Bennigan's always looked?"), but I do think those were supposed to be St. Patrick's decorations.

I feel a little nuts being so bothered by the weather mismatch this season, but this goes to that point: when you're asking the audience to pay as deep attention as this show does, with the timeline communicated by minor details of background set dressing and incidental lines of dialogue, you can't also pack the frame with the gorgeous fall foliage of February.

Not to mention, the story so far feels like it would have actually been better served with a time jump to fall 1984.  As a general rule, I think that, between seasons of a TV show, you should let a decent chunk of time pass for your characters, unless there's a compelling story reason not to.  But a lot of time has passed for your audience, and they'll be processing it as if they're catching up on characters who have been off elsewhere for awhile.  Don't fight that, unless you really have to (though maybe later in the season will reveal a good reason they couldn't do the time jump)  But so far, every one of these stories could have been on a low simmer for a few months, and we could still be seeing the same events now.  The Tuan story would even be enhanced by a time jump -- that's what P&E were doing summer/early fall, setting that whole thing up.

[JennyMominFL]

So Kelly Au Coin said on twitter that his wig was going to be in this episode, but not him. I think Matthew Rhys was wearing Kelly's wig

[DoubleUTeeEff]

Who were Stan and Aderholt watching at the end of the episode?

[sistermagpie]

26 minutes ago, Tetraneutron said:

I'm still confused by Tuan. It doesn't make sense that the USSR went around recruiting random children adopted by nice Seattle liberals to change their identities and go deep undercover for a country they had no affiliation with.

Who says they recruited him as a child, though? Hans was recruited as an adult. And Tuan is not deep undercover any more than Hans was. Everyone knows that Tuan is Vietnamese from Vietnam. 

 

24 minutes ago, ChromaKelly said:

 

I'm already nervous for Oleg. I don't want anything to happen to him. I don't think the message was actually from Stan. The CIA was invoking Stan's name as a way in.
Where does the show film? That was way too hilly for St. Clair County, IL. It's very flat. I don't mind the not-so-accurate seasons but the fall foliage was too obvious to ignore. 
How old is Paige?

 

The show films in Brooklyn and thereabouts and Paige is 16.

20 minutes ago, SunnyBeBe said:

WHY DID TUAN not understand Russian?  If someone like The Center trained him, why would he not even understand Russian?  Hmmm.....more questions. 

Why would he understand Russian? He's Vietnamese. He speaks that and English. None of the other non-Russian people P&E work with speak Russian. They don't need to speak it either.

 

10 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

Why are people assuming the Center trained him?  P&E have been collecting assets from all over the world and country for decades.  

Right, being "trained by the Centre" doesn't mean being trained in Russia by any means. None of those types of assets have been shown being taught to speak Russian.

Quote

Not to mention, the story so far feels like it would have actually been better served with a time jump to fall 1984.  As a general rule, I think that, between seasons of a TV show, you should let a decent chunk of time pass for your characters, unless there's a compelling story reason not to.

Totally disagree and I don't think too many shows go by this rule. They base the time on whatever next thing has to happen. So there were natural breaks of months between 1 and 2 (Elizabeth recuperating), and 2 and 3 (Philip and Elizabeth dragging their feet on Paige so Gabriel is brought in to start the season). Why have a time jump after Paige told Pastor Tim the secret? We had to see exactly how that played out. And if there was a jump this year Paige would have had to be going out with Matthew for months and her PTSD would already have been noticed so we'd miss the point of all that. They go by story, that's the compelling reason. Especially since nobody assumes nowadays that people are going to be watching a show week by week with a break between seasons. It's too expensive to change the weather so it's simpler to just have a rule of not using it as a primary source of time. 

[SunnyBeBe]

33 minutes ago, Tetraneutron said:

At first, that as the plan as Claudia described it. Paige would be raised to see America as the enemy and the USSR as her homeland, get a sensitive job in the CIA or similar, and destroy America from the inside. On paper she's perfect. Smart. serious, ideologically compatible (they hope - she belongs to a liberal church, as responsive to the idea of her parents as civil rights activists), responsible, perceptive enough to figure out something was wrong with her parents. So now it's a question of getting her to be tough like P and E were as kids and not a soft useless whiny blob like Pacha. Thus the making her work Pastor Tim and teaching her how to fight and exposing her to just enough of their lives that she's forced to make a choice but not so much she's scared off. The point isn't she'll ever be digging graves, but that such things don't horrify her or make her sleep in her closet. 

Getting her into the CIA is the relatively easy part. Getting her to want to be a spy and put her life and her loved ones's lives at risk for the country she grew up seeing as the enemy is the hard part. 

I thought Stan's motivation was a combination of genuinely not wanting the US to hurt Oleg after he put himself at risk to do something genuinely good for America, and that if the US starts digging too deep into Oleg, Stan is deeply. deeply, fucked for everything he and Oleg did concerning Nina. He came really close to spying for the Soviets and he did an extralegal operation with Oleg to help Nina. He does NOT want his bosses to know about this. 

I'm still confused by Tuan. It doesn't make sense that the USSR went around recruiting random children adopted by nice Seattle liberals to change their identities and go deep undercover for a country they had no affiliation with. Philip and Elizabeth were chosen from the worst parts of the USSR and trained intensively for years. While there are Americans (like Gregory) who would support the USSR/communism in general and choose to spy on their homeland, none of them were children. Especially since the whole theme about weak American children and tough non-American children is leading me to think Tuan IS as young as he looks. I'm curious where they go with him but I like there's a character on the show even more hardcore than Elizabeth. 

Also, anyone think it's kind of funny that the people the Soviet agents (or whatever Tuan is) see as soft and weak are the ones born and raised in the USSR and love it, while the Americans are the tough ones? How does that play into how P and (especially) E see the world? 

Oh yes! I hadn't thought about that angle.  True, but, I wonder how the Soviets could prove it happened. So many of the players, like Gaad and Nina are dead now.   But, it would still cause a big question mark on Stan's reputation.  

[tennisgurl]

With Oleg in Moscow, does that mean we will get to run into Arkady or Martha at some point? I guess I could see Arkady showing up again, as he still probably works for the government in some capacity, but Martha? Could be harder, but I would love it if they bumped into each other at some point*

*I actually tweeted Alison Wright and Costa Ronin about them doing a scene together during last season, and they both re-tweeted me and said it was a great idea and they would love to do a scene together! It was awesome. Basically made my year. They have both liked a few of my tweets (as did Annet Mahebdru) and seem super nice*

[stagmania]

47 minutes ago, RedHawk said:

I'm annoyed by the Paige-Matthew storyline. It's so boring to use the old "forbid the relationship and it will grow stronger" trope. Maybe my credulity is strained because unfortunately I don't see anything attractive about Matthew (the character, not the actor himself) and their sudden "puppy love" just doesn't work for me. And why don't they go on actual dates if they're so into each other -- why hang at Stan's ALL the time? Ok, it's only been like 4 weeks (so 4 Saturday nights) since their interest in each other intensified, but the show simply isn't selling me on this relationship being so important to Paige. I guess I'm supposed to see it standing in for all the other free choices she thinks will no longer be hers. Maybe my ultimate problem is I find this teenage drama completely uncompelling in a show where the writing has otherwise been so excellent. 

I don't think we're supposed to believe that Paige has some great passion for Matthew. He's just there at a time when she's incredibly stressed and anxious and looking for a distraction, and he has the bonus quality of being an easy way to rebel against her parents. She didn't even seem to be thinking about sex with him until Elizabeth warned her against it. Big tactical error on Elizabeth's part.

41 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

I like Mathew and Paige mostly because I find it amusing that Paige is waylaying a couple of super spies in such simple and American ways.  First she finds religion then she finds love.  She has been the one person they haven't been able to mind game.  Hell she's been mind gaming them.

You almost have to feel sorry for those murderous duplicitous Russian spies.  Almost.

This is what I like about the story. It's the every day concerns that are making their jobs so much harder and probably going to bring them down. The Centre's directive for officers to procreate have deeper long term ramifications and consequences than they seem to have considered.

[TV Anonymous]

Looking at the way Elizabeth was training Paige, I wonder. How do Elizabeth and Phillip keep their skills up to date? Surely they need physical training to keep their strength and stamina, martial arts training to enable them to fight anytime and of course weapons qualification. How do they do all of that without their children finding out, and between missions and running a functioning travel agency?

And regarding Stan's new squeeze, it is Andrea from The Walking Dead. She can not be just anybody.

[henripootel]

34 minutes ago, Gabrielle Tracy said:

Maybe she's a Swedish spy like Phillip was in Season 1?  (or was it 2?)

Doubtful.  While we certainly spied on our allies and they on us, I'm pretty sure we limited ourselves to intercepts and a bit of false flagging.  Recruiting agents, real penetration, moles - this was and is considered unbecoming for allies, which is why everybody hated the French and distrusted them.

I think Stan's gym friend is gonna be GRU, which means that they're a rival organization for the KGB.  If they have access to the KGB's records and Phillip's and the rezidentura reports (including Nina's), they'll probably have enough to compromise Stan, certain enough to stick an agent on him.  Even if Phillip wants them to back off, there's pretty much no way for Gabriel to get them to do so, so Phillip's just gonna have to watch Stan come apart.  That will be interesting, if heart-rending.

And the reason I think Andrea isn't from some other country - they just wouldn't have access to the records that'd show how vulnerable Stan is.  Only the Soviets know that and no way they're telling anybody else, not with Stan so close to the Jennings. 

Edited March 15, 2017 by henripootel

[SlackerInc]

5 minutes ago, TV Anonymous said:

And regarding Stan's new squeeze, it is Andrea from The Walking Dead. She can not be just anybody.

I commented on this only an hour ago, but this thread has gotten so red-hot it's a ways back on the previous page, so ICYMI:

Quote

But looking at her filmography, she hasn't done anything the past couple years except a guest appearance on one episode of Chicago Fire.  So I could easily imagine her just being cast to be an ordinary, non-spy girlfriend, similar to the last one.  Obviously she could also be more, but I just don't think it's as sure a thing as many are making it out to be.  (Wasn't Stan the one who hit her up for conversation, rather than vice versa?)

[sistermagpie]

5 minutes ago, TV Anonymous said:

And regarding Stan's new squeeze, it is Andrea from The Walking Dead. She can not be just anybody.

But she can be not just anybody without being a spy of any sort. The last beautiful woman Stan went out with spotted Philip and Sandra together and got Stan to almost beat him up. Regular people are just as dangerous on this show as spies--often more so. Stan having somebody outside the spy world to talk to could be far more of a threat than some complicated Russian in-fighting over Stan or Paige.

[scrb]

Stan doesn't want to see Oleg hurt but he also can't have the CIA find out that what brought him and Oleg together in the first place was Nina and trying to save her.

That is how they came to respect each other.

[JyDanzig]

27 minutes ago, JyDanzig said:

Not to mention, the story so far feels like it would have actually been better served with a time jump to fall 1984.  As a general rule, I think that, between seasons of a TV show, you should let a decent chunk of time pass for your characters, unless there's a compelling story reason not to.  But a lot of time has passed for your audience, and they'll be processing it as if they're catching up on characters who have been off elsewhere for awhile.  Don't fight that, unless you really have to (though maybe later in the season will reveal a good reason they couldn't do the time jump)  But so far, every one of these stories could have been on a low simmer for a few months, and we could still be seeing the same events now.  The Tuan story would even be enhanced by a time jump -- that's what P&E were doing summer/early fall, setting that whole thing up.

 

13 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Totally disagree and I don't think too many shows go by this rule. They base the time on whatever next thing has to happen. So there were natural breaks of months between 1 and 2 (Elizabeth recuperating), and 2 and 3 (Philip and Elizabeth dragging their feet on Paige so Gabriel is brought in to start the season). Why have a time jump after Paige told Pastor Tim the secret? We had to see exactly how that played out. And if there was a jump this year Paige would have had to be going out with Matthew for months and her PTSD would already have been noticed so we'd miss the point of all that. They go by story, that's the compelling reason. Especially since nobody assumes nowadays that people are going to be watching a show week by week with a break between seasons. It's too expensive to change the weather so it's simpler to just have a rule of not using it as a primary source of time.

 

I agree that the timeline from season 3 finale through season 4 finale was well justified, I wouldn't have wanted them to do anything differently there (they also did a good job of camouflaging any inconsistent weather last year).  Unlike the Pastor Tim revelation, I just don't think what we've seen of the Matthew/Paige PTSD thing required immediate follow-up, and I actually think it's more resonant if there has been a time jump.  They wouldn't have to have been dating for months, she could have been trying to stay away from him but keep getting drawn back.  Also, teen relationships can have looooong buildups.  P&E certainly have enough other things going on that they could have missed PTSD symptoms that Paige is hiding.

There was also something I loved about the near-perpetual winter of the first few seasons.  It may not have been a purposeful choice, it was probably just when the show was ordered and ready to go and then that's the production schedule they were on, but I always thought they made that work so beautifully.  The coldness of the season really suited the whole feeling of the show, each year starting in fall and descending into a bleaker winter as the episodes wore on.  Season 4 had excellent dramatic reasons to discard that.  This season so far doesn't seem to.  But, I'm reserving final judgment: usually when I'm skeptical of something on The Americans, they win me over in the end.

[sistermagpie]

Just now, JyDanzig said:

Unlike the Pastor Tim revelation, I just don't think what we've seen of the Matthew/Paige PTSD thing required immediate follow-up, and I actually think it's more resonant if there has been a time jump.

I think we saw in the episode what the reason was: they see these things developing this way, not simmering unnoticed for months. Paige very clearly is not trying to stay away from Matthew and being drawn back. They want her character to do just the opposite. The FBI wants to jump on Oleg immediately. It seems like they've been very specific about it time-wise with everyone having just started down the path they were set on at the end of S4 with no need for a break. Plus there might be other reasons they want things to still be in early 1984. I just think an arbitrary time jump is going to be dead last on their list of priorities for writing the story, especially in 2017 when you don't assume people are going to be watching weekly season to season.

[Dev F]

1 hour ago, shura said:

Well, maybe Tuan just means "What do you mean, 'if it doesn't hold'? I thought we were all professionals here. What kind of bullshit operation is this?" And Philip hesitates and says nothing because Tuan got him there?

I think Philip hesitates because that's not what he meant. And Tuan quickly realizes -- oh, you're not worried about your cover not holding up, you're worried how I'm gonna hold up.

42 minutes ago, Chaos Theory said:

Why are people assuming the Center trained him?  P&E have been collecting assets from all over the world and country for decades.  They could have been introduced to Tuan by a friend of a friend and trained him themselves. Hell he could be untrained or be from one of the splinter groups like that girl from South America.  We haven't been given enough information but I doubt the Center trained him.   At best someone from the Center might have sent him to someone to train.

Yeah, I think people are getting the impression that Tuan is a deep-cover operative like Philip and Elizabeth, but it seems much more likely that he's just one of their agents who knows he's an agent, like Gregory or Charles Duluth.

In the real world, agents would be doing most of the stuff P&E do themselves, and even in the show we've seen agents like Gregory running their own surveillance ops and the like, so it's not like it would be odd for them to use an asset in this way.

38 minutes ago, JyDanzig said:

But so far, every one of these stories could have been on a low simmer for a few months, and we could still be seeing the same events now.  The Tuan story would even be enhanced by a time jump -- that's what P&E were doing summer/early fall, setting that whole thing up.

Well, there's one storyline that wouldn't have worked: I doubt that Lassa fever survives for months in a decomposing body buried in the ground.

[jjj]

I was completely expecting Stan's new "girlfriend" to show up in a final scene with Phillip. So, count me in with those who think there is more to her appearance than being a gym friend. 

I forget why Stan is not still being extorted by the KGB/Rezidentura after his involvement with Nina blew up.  I'll have to go back to those episodes.  I do miss the Rezidentura scenes from the earlier seasons, and I guess that the Moscow scenes have taken their place. 

I thought it was a real turning point when Elizabeth sat in the car and burst out with "I'm sick of treating her like a teenager."  Paige moved several notches along the continuum between teenager and trainee, and when E/Ph came to her room, it was for a training session instead of what normally would have been a very fraught love/sex talk with a teenager. 

I just read an old in-depth article in VOX about all the prep work that goes into each episode, and the showrunners have a big calendar on the wall with dates of events during the time frame of the episodes.  They know it is mid-winter, but I guess there comes a point where you have to choose between only shooting scenes in warehouses or resigning yourself to have out-of-season foliage.  I'm glad they get to the actual outdoors sometimes. 

Edited March 15, 2017 by jjj

[stagmania]

This weather fixation some of you have is rough. :)  

I mentioned it last week, but I'll repeat it again: climate change has been majorly messing with our seasons, so this is only going to get worse as the season progresses. They filmed through fall/winter, but we've had straight up spring weather for many of those weeks, with random spurts of real winter thrown in by way of sudden blizzards. As a result, trees and plants are blooming when they're not supposed to be and everything's out of whack. There's really no amount of planning in the world that will get around that.

[benteen]

Color me surprised that ole Loose Lips Stan didn't tell Philip exactly what his problems were at work.

[RedFiat]

8 hours ago, Kokapetl said:

She's way too hot for Stan. But so was his wife. Perhaps Stan is not quite as ugly as Noah Emmerich.  

 

And Nina was the hottest.  The Russians sure know Stan's weakness. 

Edited March 15, 2017 by RedFiat

[SunnyBeBe]

1 hour ago, DoubleUTeeEff said:

Who were Stan and Aderholt watching at the end of the episode?

Good question.  At first I thought it was the new Russian family.  Maybe, it's just some random assignment. 

[Paloma]

3 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

They also kind of told her they have sex for their job. Paige didn't notice that part but it's not like P&E seem ashamed of that part of it!

I didn't pick up on this at all but guess it makes sense--why else would they need to know this "technique"? But the discussion seemed so vague to me that, if I were Paige, I wouldn't understand why they were telling me this.

[gwhh]

I was re-watching the lady KGB fight club training in the Jennings garage.  How big is there garage?  I mean it looks like an airport hanger from that scene!   

[SlackerInc]

47 minutes ago, SunnyBeBe said:

Good question.  At first I thought it was the new Russian family.  Maybe, it's just some random assignment. 

I think it's just a random assignment, giving Stan and his partner a chance to have a conversation somewhere other than the office for some variety.  Also, since every active case we saw them working last season is over with for now, it makes sense to show them being assigned to do something, not just milling around the office.

[tennisgurl]

Also, Stan really has an issue when it comes to getting too close to his assets. As far as we know, there was the Nina, who he had an affair with, and considered spilling information to, and Oleg, who he become friends with and is now trying to protect even after he's gone back home. I don't know how he was when he undercover with with skinheads, but maybe keep Stan away from the Russians for awhile. He is not great at keep feelings out of it!

[DrSpaceman73]

Quote

 

 

5 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

Right.  But the thing he said to Philip when they were clearing out the gutters was confusingly written.  Philip expressed concern that Tuan's cover might not hold up to close scrutiny, and in response Tuan said "I'm like one of them.  Do you know what the Communists did to my country?"  Which I guess is Tuan explaining how he would deflect suspicion, by insisting he is anticommunist?  But how would that help, if his actual cover had been blown?  And "one of" whom, exactly?  That definitely could have been written more clearly.

I wouldn't be so sure.  Remember, Stan had a girlfriend before, and she got quite a bit of screen time for a while but then just faded away, with no significant impact on the overall arc of the series.

His comment about "Do you know what the Communists did to my country?"  is what confused me, as if he is actually anti-communist, in which case, why is he helping them?  I didn't make the connection he mentioned it just to use as a cover if he is found out or discovered. 

That whole story I just find confusing though.  I know generally they are trying to get in that family's house for something, but beyond that, it seems odd, vague. 

[kay1864]

3 hours ago, Bannon said:

Sad Sack Stan waving around a sixpack, practically screaming "Won't somebody talk to me!", or sprinting across the street like a 14 year old to tell his bestie about the girl he has a crush on  

Does anyone else get the sense that Philip often has to improvise his responses to Stan, to appear more American? ("You asked her out this time? (beat) What is wrong with you?  You gotta declare, Stan!") It's quite possibly the first time he's dealt with "buddy that has a crush", since he didn't go through a normal high school (or at least not an American one).  So he has to (in an instant) rely on both his Soviet training on American behavior and his observations made to date while in the US.

Maybe I'm reading too much into Matthew Rhys' performance, but to me there's always a subtle hint of Philip's responses being devised / evaluated on the spot, rather than coming naturally (as they would do most American adult males).  Certainly the case when he's in disguise, but even this one with Stan.

[sistermagpie]

6 minutes ago, DrSpaceman73 said:

That whole story I just find confusing though.  I know generally they are trying to get in that family's house for something, but beyond that, it seems odd, vague. 

They were a little clearer about it in this ep. Elizabeth verified that they were trying to use Alexei to figure out what the US government was doing with grain shipments. 

2 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

Maybe I'm reading too much into Matthew Rhys' performance, but to me there's always a subtle hint of Philip's responses being devised / evaluated on the spot, rather than coming naturally (as they would do most American adult males).  Certainly the case when he's in disguise, but even this one with Stan.

I think that's definitely there with Stan--though I think it's also part of his natural personality. You can often see him checking with Stan whenever he says something, like he's paying close attention to Stan's reaction. I think it's sometimes his natural personality--like when Stan was talking about EST and thought it was stupid obviously Philip was actually intrigued by it and wasn't saying so because he got that Stan didn't like it. He does that sort of thing with Elizabeth too.

There's also that great moment where Stan offers him the caviar and asks if he ever had it. You can see Philip take just a second to think "Would Philip Jennings have ever eaten caviar?" and then he answers yes, he had it at a reception and it was too salty. (Then later we see he actually likes it.)

Here I do think he probably does feel like he's feeling his way with the bro-talk. I feel like there's a subtle connection there to Henry. We saw last week and last season that when Henry is with Stan he's developed this bro-y personality where he greets him with a big "Heyyyy, Staaan!" I noticed it particularly last week because it seemed like he turned it on after he walked in. 

Granted, there's probably not a big difference in a lot of this dating stuff in Russia. I'm sure you have to declare there too. But he probably is always feeling his way for exactly the way Stan wants him to react. Really in many ways Philip's probably holding back. 

Oh, I also always give little extra weight to stuff like Stan saying "She knows more about sports than you do!" We know Philip follows sports so I don't think Philip's sports knowledge is actually lacking, but I feel like Philip himself is instinctively sensitive about stuff like that. Last season there was a moment where they were playing trivial pursuit and Philip got an answer wrong--but his answer was very believably American--and I couldn't help think Stan had an advantage. 

[Tetraneutron]

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Who says they recruited him as a child, though? Hans was recruited as an adult. And Tuan is not deep undercover any more than Hans was. Everyone knows that Tuan is Vietnamese from Vietnam. 

They can't exactly hide that he's (ethnically) Vietnamese. And unless you think he was lying to Philip, he says he came to America as a child as one of the boat people. He's believable as a teenager now, there was no way he was an adult years ago when he was placed in foster care unless he has some rare genetic aging disorder. What - did the Soviets target Vietnamese refugees the way they targeted politically-active African-Americans and ended up with Gregory? Or South Africans against apartheid like Hans? Seems odd, because they'd be trying to recruit children. And Tuan is deep undercover, since his papers are false and he's pretending to be a high school student. 

2 hours ago, stagmania said:

I don't think we're supposed to believe that Paige has some great passion for Matthew. He's just there at a time when she's incredibly stressed and anxious and looking for a distraction, and he has the bonus quality of being an easy way to rebel against her parents. She didn't even seem to be thinking about sex with him until Elizabeth warned her against it. Big tactical error on Elizabeth's part.

This is what I like about the story. It's the every day concerns that are making their jobs so much harder and probably going to bring them down. The Centre's directive for officers to procreate have deeper long term ramifications and consequences than they seem to have considered.

That's been the primary driver of the show. Elizabeth is a true believer but the conflict lies in her family being just as important as her ideology. How much is she willing to sacrifice to further the cause? How much does she really believe in it when her daughter's well-being is what's at stake and are the kids she's raising Russian or American. For that matter is she? Is Philip? 

That's what the sex anxiety was about. Paige is old enough to have real feelings for a boy. Feelings for the all-American son of an FBI agent. She might develop an emotional attachment to him of the sort kids don't develop with anyone besides family - but Paige isn't a kid any more. Right now P and E are keeping her in line based entirely on her loyalty to them as her parents. That isn't going to work forever. Which is why they're teaching her to compartmentalize. 

[sistermagpie]

Just now, Tetraneutron said:

They can't exactly hide that he's (ethnically) Vietnamese. And unless you think he was lying to Philip, he says he came to America as a child as one of the boat people

He's not pretending to be American-born Vietnamese either, was my point. He talks about being born in Vietnam. (Though I agree there are Americans who would always wonder if he was foreign just because of his race, which is why there would be little point to a program like that in Vietnam even if they wanted one.)

When he came to America and when he was recruited are two different things. He could have come to the US as a child and been recruited in the US after he grew up. I'm not saying he was an adult when he was in foster care. I assumed that his experience in foster care partly led to his choosing this life, not that he was already undercover in foster care.

2 minutes ago, Tetraneutron said:

What - did the Soviets target Vietnamese refugees the way they targeted politically-active African-Americans and ended up with Gregory? Or South Africans against apartheid like Hans? Seems odd, because they'd be trying to recruit children. And Tuan is deep undercover, since his papers are false and he's pretending to be a high school student.

I think they recruit anybody who seems willing. If he showed an interest in Communism they'd notice him. Seems like a guy like Tuan would send up all sorts of signals the Soviets would notice.

I was using "deep undercover" to mean a foreign-born person coming to the US as an adult having been trained to pass as an American. Tuan's undercover now, yes. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. But he's also using his real non-American-born backstory, or something close to it. Lucia had a fake story too--she pretended to be from Costa Rica. 

8 minutes ago, Tetraneutron said:

How much does she really believe in it when her daughter's well-being is what's at stake and are the kids she's raising Russian or American. For that matter is she? Is Philip? 

I thought it was interesting that the finger gesture was supposed to make her think about "where she came from." I expected Paige to say, "I come from right here."

[Paloma]

39 minutes ago, Tetraneutron said:

Right now P and E are keeping her in line based entirely on her loyalty to them as her parents. That isn't going to work forever.

This is one of my biggest issues with the Paige storyline. Based on my experience raising a teenage daughter in the 1990s (which I don't think was that different from raising one in the 1980s), Paige's loyalty to her parents and lack of rebellion are hard to believe. Not that there weren't/aren't plenty of "good girl" teenagers, but most of them go through at least a short period of surly attitude if not outright refusal to accept parental rules. Paige has shown only the mildest version of this, and I would expect much more attitude/rebellion given what she has learned about her parents. OTOH, I don't want to watch another whiny, rebellious teenager. Really I just wish they would focus more on the adults rather than letting this show become primarily about Paige. I would even welcome more focus on Henry, because his absence is becoming ridiculous and it would be interesting to see how they dealt with him finding out their secret.

[SlackerInc]

Joe and Joel and their associates on the show answered two of our burning questions on the Insider podcast this week.  One is on a fairly mundane issue, but I still get to say "I told you so": the bugs were not mosquitoes, but midges.  Google shows that a "wheat midge" is a thing, and it can decimate wheat crops.  However, the guy they interviewed said they used a YouTube video from Scotland to replicate the swarm we saw with CGI, and Wikipedia says "Highland midges" only live in Scotland and Wales, and are bloodsuckers.  The images of wheat midges look different, so that's an awful lot of care taken to painstakingly reproduce the look of the wrong kind of midge, if you ask me.

The other thing answers a question many are asking about Tuan, but I will spoiler-bar that one just to be safe:

Tuan, they say,

Spoiler

is actually a "Vietnamese version of an illegal, just like Philip and Elizabeth".  That really surprised me, as I agreed with the arguments about how it made sense for him to be a legit boat person and then get recruited once here, like Gregory.  But no, apparently that's not the case!

[Cosmosgravitation]

Maybe it is my own fallible perceptions, but it seems common for spy dramas to include a teenage girl in on the espionage.  24 did it with Kim Bauer, Homeland did it with Dana Brody, and now here we have Paige.  Not sure why, it seems unpopular with the audience.  

And of the two Jennings children, Henry has always seemed more suited to spy work, but maybe that is exactly why the writers decided on Paige.   Elizabeth might think Paige has the makings of a kick-ass spy, but from what I've seen she doesn't.  Maybe the payoff will be that Paige screws up and endangers everything.   

At least this season's Paige seems more interesting than last season's bible thumping Paige.  

I hope there is something more going on with Henry than "he likes video games and is at the arcade". 

[TimWil]

6 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

He's not resentful towards the communist. He was being sarcastic about that. He's not only working with the USSR, he's more of a hardliner than P&E.

I don't think he's more of a hardliner than Elizabeth. Nobody is on this show. His ideology is no doubt skewed to an extreme but it's quite different to Elizabeth's due to his age and life experience so far.

And perhaps there's some significance to his sister coming for a visit and she's been living in South Africa? 

Edited March 15, 2017 by TimWil

[JyDanzig]

2 hours ago, DrSpaceman73 said:

His comment about "Do you know what the Communists did to my country?"  is what confused me, as if he is actually anti-communist, in which case, why is he helping them?  I didn't make the connection he mentioned it just to use as a cover if he is found out or discovered.

The only reason I understood this when he said it was because I had the closed captioning on, and that line was in quotation marks.  In the moment I thought "that would have been baffling if the CC was off."

4 hours ago, Dev F said:

Well, there's one storyline that wouldn't have worked: I doubt that Lassa fever survives for months in a decomposing body buried in the ground.

Ha, good point!  I was speaking in terms of emotional arcs, and thinking of the plot points as being more fungible, but you're right, that was a great sequence and probably a crucial long term plot point.

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

I just think an arbitrary time jump is going to be dead last on their list of priorities for writing the story, especially in 2017 when you don't assume people are going to be watching weekly season to season.

I think this weather thing bothers me so much because I work in entertainment and I've had to actually deal with this.  We are shooting winter, but it's really not, so we need to pick a location with no trees, or do camera setups that hide the trees, or digitally alter the trees in post, or adjust the shooting schedule so the exteriors are done later, or whatever.  A weather disconnect is not an unfixable problem, it's not like child actors aging faster than the show's timeline.  It's a problem with myriad potential solutions, and I've had to directly participate in the work of solving it.  So I get professionally annoyed when I see other production teams that didn't even try.

It's not that they had to do a time jump.  It's that if they weren't going to do one, they then had to do the additional work of preventing FALL from filling the screen the whole time, which is completely doable.

But, like I said, the show always wins me over in the end.  I'm going to try to turn this part of my brain off next week.  (It'll probably only half-work at best, but I'll try)

Edited March 15, 2017 by JyDanzig

[sistermagpie]

Quote

doubt he's more of a hardliner than Elizabeth. His ideology is no doubt skewed to an extreme but it's different to Elizabeth's.

I was mostly referring to his reactions to Akexei and Pasha, which are far more hostile than Elizabeth's. 

I find yhe answer to that Twan question far more annoying than the non cremated body or the weather.

Edited March 15, 2017 by sistermagpie

[Bannon]

2 hours ago, kay1864 said:

Does anyone else get the sense that Philip often has to improvise his responses to Stan, to appear more American? ("You asked her out this time? (beat) What is wrong with you?  You gotta declare, Stan!") It's quite possibly the first time he's dealt with "buddy that has a crush", since he didn't go through a normal high school (or at least not an American one).  So he has to (in an instant) rely on both his Soviet training on American behavior and his observations made to date while in the US.

Maybe I'm reading too much into Matthew Rhys' performance, but to me there's always a subtle hint of Philip's responses being devised / evaluated on the spot, rather than coming naturally (as they would do most American adult males).  Certainly the case when he's in disguise, but even this one with Stan.

I dunno. To me, Stan's character has been so poorly executed, from a promising pilot, that I really don't know how to evaluate the other characters' reactions to him. If the Stan we see now had a different backstory from the Stan we were introduced to, it would make a lot more sense to me.  Stan, given his bio, should, in my view have a lot more sociopathic, A-hole, tendencies. That's the sort of American law enforcement officer who does deep undercover work for an extended period of time (as Stan has supposed to have done) and is good at it, as Stan is supposed to have been. It's how you survive immersed among Mafia and Aryan Brotherhood types, and those traits were there before you take such a job. They don't go away when you aren't undercover any longer. Go look at the interviews with the real life FBI agent portrayed in "Donnie Brascoe". He isn't one to mourn the loss of a marriage, or to feel too badly about somebody he befriended while working getting killed. It's just business.

Edited March 15, 2017 by Bannon

[zibnchy]

6 hours ago, SlackerInc said:

7 hours ago, Kathemy said:

I wasn't confused by the scene at all. The "you know what the communists did to my country" line was clear sarcasm.

Some people were, as we can see in comments, genuinely confused by this as to which side he was on.  I was not.  It was already too clearly established before that, IMO.

I'm one of the confused. I think it will all make sense later. I have faith in the creators of this show and the fact that there are so many of us who are confused leads me to think the scene was confusing on purpose. I assume it will all make sense later.

I have tried to cut Elizabeth some slack in regards to her parenting skills, or lack thereof, but she really is a terrible mother. Paige is a child and she has been made privy to a secret so huge that she, literally, has her parent's lives in her hands. The fact that she hasn't cracked up completely is a miracle. If I was P&E I'd be way, way less worried about Matthew and way more worried about the first time Paige gets drunk with her friends and the conversation turns to whose family is the Worst. "You think your mom is bad, mine is a Russian spy and let me tell you about this one time she killed a guy in front of me. That was soooo embarrassing!"

Why did P&E have Henry? Wasn't one child enough to reinforce the fiction of happy, little American family. Couldn't the Center have gotten them a Tuan of their very own if they needed another kid?

I was expecting the "secret trick" Elizabeth told Paige about to be something a little more exciting than "rub your fingers together and think about us" although the thought of Paige rubbing her fingers together and thinking about her parents after sex is quite hilarious. But, still, that's it?!

I need to see proof that Martha is still alive.

[Ellaria]

19 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Paige's  story is beginning to bug me in that Dana Brody way.  Yes, I do think they've been more inclusive and this story is about a family as much as it is about spying, if not more...  Still, it's very much looking like Paige is going to be the one to bring them all down.  While the backstory has been sufficient to allow that to happen (the whole KGB insisting they recruit/train her) and after all the FBI lives across the street with a rather convenient teenage boy?  If that is the eventual outcome?

Blech.

Dana Brody...ack...don't remind me. I am tired of "Paige Land" so I hope that she isn't the one to bring them down. I was wondering if this season would backpedal a bit from this storyline but she and her somewhat-understandable-angst seem front and center.

2 hours ago, Paloma said:

OTOH, I don't want to watch another whiny, rebellious teenager. Really I just wish they would focus more on the adults rather than letting this show become primarily about Paige. I would even welcome more focus on Henry, because his absence is becoming ridiculous and it would be interesting to see how they dealt with him finding out their secret.

1 hour ago, Cosmosgravitation said:

And of the two Jennings children, Henry has always seemed more suited to spy work, but maybe that is exactly why the writers decided on Paige.   Elizabeth might think Paige has the makings of a kick-ass spy, but from what I've seen she doesn't.  Maybe the payoff will be that Paige screws up and endangers everything.   

At least this season's Paige seems more interesting than last season's bible thumping Paige.  

I hope there is something more going on with Henry than "he likes video games and is at the arcade". 

Agree about Henry. A show of this quality should have a better plan than simply having him show up at dinner time. Perhaps they can send him off to boarding school and never return. (Kind of like what they did with Richie Cunningham's older brother.)

48 minutes ago, zibnchy said:

I have tried to cut Elizabeth some slack in regards to her parenting skills, or lack thereof, but she really is a terrible mother. Paige is a child and she has been made privy to a secret so huge that she, literally, has her parent's lives in her hands. The fact that she hasn't cracked up completely is a miracle. If I was P&E I'd be way, way less worried about Matthew and way more worried about the first time Paige gets drunk with her friends and the conversation turns to whose family is the Worst. "You think your mom is bad, mine is a Russian spy and let me tell you about this one time she killed a guy in front of me. That was soooo embarrassing!"

Same here. Drunk conversations are a more likely way to blow the lid off this secret. So far, I'm a little disappointed in this season but we have a long way to go.

Glad that Stan has found a lady friend although I wouldn't trust Andrea/Renee as far as I could throw her. He needs to ditch those yellow gym shorts 'cause they aren't doing him any favors. Nice to see Aderholt who clearly is the brains in that partnership.

Two random observations:

• Phillip needs to do household chores at the "pretend" house as well as at his own house?! Yikes!
• The green leather chairs in the FBI conference room are hideous.

Edited March 15, 2017 by Ellaria Sand

[SlackerInc]

1 hour ago, JyDanzig said:

I think this weather thing bothers me so much because I work in entertainment and I've had to actually deal with this.  We are shooting winter, but it's really not, so we need to pick a location with no trees, or do camera setups that hide the trees, or digitally alter the trees in post, or adjust the shooting schedule so the exteriors are done later, or whatever.  A weather disconnect is not an unfixable problem, it's not like child actors aging faster than the show's timeline.  It's a problem with myriad potential solutions, and I've had to directly participate in the work of solving it.  So I get professionally annoyed when I see other production teams that didn't even try.

Yeah, although I'm not as bothered by it as some, I think it's a fair criticism.  Especially on a show where they are so meticulous about other things, like having the exact right TV show on to fit the date and time.  And with the hole they dug, they dug it* for real and then made an exact copy (including roots and CGI'd falling dirt) to film interior scenes on a stage.  It seems odd to spend so much money ($100K) and time getting that just right but then saying "fuck it" when it comes to the seasons.

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

I find yhe answer to that Twan question far more annoying than the non cremated body or the weather.

Can you flesh that out?  Feel free to use spoiler bars, obviously, if you agree that I was right to use them to begin with.

*More accurately, when I say "it" I should say "them".  They had, I think, three stages of hole and had to copy them all to shoot scenes with actors inside on a soundstage.  They dug out the full size first, then put nested boxes inside that so they could fill it all with dirt and use heavy equipment to pull the boxes out one at a time, creating the larger and larger hole.

Edited March 15, 2017 by SlackerInc

[scrb]

Just listened to the podcast for this ep.

They're not specifically saying there were Vietnamese illegals.  But they thought it would be interesting for P&E to be like a parent to a kid who grew up under the same difficult circumstances in the aftermath of a war as P&E did, in contrast to P&E's own kids.

For the greenhouse scenes, they filmed in Red Hook, which is apparently upstate NY.  They filmed before the the first frost, for whatever logistics reasons, hence the lack of snow.  They actually grew a lot of wheat for these scenes, did it for months.

Let's see if there's a payoff, sounds like they might have gotten a bigger budget and how they spent it doesn't seem to be necessarily great choices, like the hole digging.

[jjj]

I had the same thought about Phillip doing maintenance at two houses when I saw him cleaning the gutters.  But that may be the greatest cover in the series.  I mean, only an homeowner would be cleaning the gutters on the house.

I don't think anyone has commented on the weirdest comment of the episode for me:  Phillip saying "I think William would have liked that we took the sample from his body."  Everyone else looked kind of stunned, I thought.  And ironic that William, who did not have a partner in life, ended up with one in death. 

I am very happy not to be seeing Pastor Tim.  But I assume he will be back at some point.  E/Ph are right to be worried about Paige confiding in Matthew -- even after being told she could tell NO ONE about the spy stuff at the end of Season Three, she immediately spilled the news to Pastor Tim.  And Paige seems to want an audience for her unhappiness.

[SlackerInc]

4 minutes ago, scrb said:

Just listened to the podcast for this ep.

They're not specifically saying there were Vietnamese illegals.

Spoiler

I think you misunderstood their statements.  And I suppose you think I misunderstood.  My understanding of what they said was, essentially, "There weren't Vietnamese illegals in real life, as far as we know, but Tuan is our idea of what an illegal from that country would be like if that did happen."

 Here's a partial transcript (my specialty):

Quote

 

JUNE THOMAS: Another sort of "is this real" question: Talk about how a young agent like Tuan would have been recruited.  I mean, we hear he came from Vietnam as a boat person; we hear he spent five years with a family in Seattle.  So he obviously did come over young.  Would he have been a plant all the time from the Vietnamese government?  How did that work?  And was that real?

Spoiler

 

JOE/JOEL: That was our story, is that he is the version of a Vietnamese illegal.

JUNE THOMAS: Are there examples of such agents, or is that--

JOE/JOEL: Not that we can talk about. (LAUGHTER)

JOE/JOEL (the other one): We don't know.  There are plenty of examples of the kind of, sister intelligence services to the KGB loaning them officers to use for their purposes, so that's what that was based on, more than any knowledge of...As far as I know, there were not Vietnamese illegals in the United States.

 

 

[quirkygal]

Henry and the mailbot are hanging out together playing war games on the dial up bulletin boards (pre cursor of the public net with dial up access) 

That's my theory and I'm sticking with it.

[RedHawk]

I was especially impressed by Keri and Matthew R's acting in the scene where Gabriel told them that perhaps the U.S. was doing something to damage or poison the wheat/grain that would be sent to the USSR. Their faces showed how shocked they were, and then they both managed to somehow look younger, like they went immediately to their memories of childhood hunger and the terrible scarcity of food and how truly sick and horrible it would be for a rich country to poison a shipment of grain to a needy country, even if it that country was an enemy. 

I then saw in their reaction their loyalty to their country and to their fellow citizens, and that they will do anything to make sure that poisoned grain would not get to their country. I also saw how well Gabriel played on their memories and deepest fears of deprivation. 

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, zibnchy said:

Why did P&E have Henry? Wasn't one child enough to reinforce the fiction of happy, little American family. Couldn't the Center have gotten them a Tuan of their very own if they needed another kid?

Two was better so they had two. We had a flashback to Elizabeth deciding to go ahead with the pregnancy.

2 hours ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Agree about Henry. A show of this quality should have a better plan than simply having him show up at dinner time. Perhaps they can send him off to boarding school and never return. (Kind of like what they did with Richie Cunningham's older brother.)

i don't think they've done that bad a job with Henry. People talk about him as if the parents always ignore him, but there's a reason people are interested to see more of him. He's had a lot less screentime than Paige but his personality's been pretty consistent and interesting--and very different from Paige. I think these next two seasons he'll have a real story.

1 hour ago, SlackerInc said:

Can you flesh that out?  Feel free to use spoiler bars, obviously, if you agree that I was right to use them to begin with.

 

1 hour ago, scrb said:

They're not specifically saying there were Vietnamese illegals.  But they thought it would be interesting for P&E to be like a parent to a kid who grew up under the same difficult circumstances in the aftermath of a war as P&E did, in contrast to P&E's own kids.

This second quote answers the first question and that's a relief. Tuan himself told Philip here--and there's no reason for him to lie to Philip in private--that he spent 5 years in foster care with a US family who was taking care of a "boat person." So he doesn't have the kind of cover they do. That would be like P&E showing up in the US and spending years calling themselves recent immigrants from the USSR before they started pretending to be native-born people. Tuan would have a family and whoever he met in those 5 years who know him as non-native born, and here he's telling people he was born in Vietnam. So he's not like P&E with that all-American cover. He is like them in that he's doing this kind of work, he's creating a character to work with them while actually working for Vietnamese intelligence. He is "a version" of what P&E are doing, but he didn't go through training to be completely American in fake American villages or whatever in Vietnam. The Vietnamese version has a slight accent and people who know him as an immigrant. Those years in foster care as a recent arrival are his cover.

1 hour ago, jjj said:

And Paige seems to want an audience for her unhappiness.

LOL! That is the best sum-up of Paige ever. Like her whole life is that.

And that's why Henry gets less screen time.

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

The Americans Bug Out Over A Vulnerable Food Supply

As wheat takes its rightful place at the center of a suspense plot, Paige gets more stressed.

[crgirl412]

16 hours ago, Kokapetl said:

She's way too hot for Stan. But so was his wife. Perhaps Stan is not quite as ugly as Noah Emmerich.  

I laughed when Tuan took the Bennigans leftovers.  

He wouldn't be taking leftovers home in the USSR, I'll bet!!  First it's Bennigan's leftovers then he'll want a sports car!  He's going to get like Philip and "like it too much."  

[henripootel]

16 minutes ago, crgirl412 said:

First it's Bennigan's leftovers then he'll want a sports car! 

Was it a Bennigans?  I coulda sworn is was a The Old Spaghetti Factory, even the overall decor was reminiscent.  And I remember thinking the same thing these guys did the first time I ate there; jesus that's a lot of food.  I think their locations were all out west so it couldn't be them.

Am I the only one who's surprised Tuan has access to high value assets like the Jennings?  I guess somebody has to train him but the Centre is putting a lot of trust in a pretty young guy, and Phillip and Elizabeth regularly get super-high value missions.  Just seems odd.

[gwhh]

Maybe the KGB working on Henry with a honey pot trap like they did with Jared.  Would explain his absences this season. 

Edited March 16, 2017 by gwhh