S05.E10: Darkroom

[SusanSunflower]

well then nevermind. 

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, SusanSunflower said:

well then nevermind. 

Did my comment sound dismissive or something?  It wasn't meant to be. 

[Roseanna]

On ‎20‎.‎10‎.‎2017 at 6:24 AM, SusanSunflower said:

Whatever Pastor Tim thinks/thought about Paige and her situation, it mostly came from listening to Paige drama-queening to him -- and that P&E should realize this and ask her about it.  

If you've ever been in the unenviable position of listening to a friend vent about a boy/girl friend they either just dumped or was dumped by -- only to find they have reconciled a week or two later -- many things things can be said passionately only to be disavowed when things cool down. 

The writing is usually better that this ... and it's important because as a pastor, PT may be mandatory reporter ... which should scare everyone when he's equating what was done to Paige with child sexual abuse. ... and if he's seen child sexual abuse and how it destroys families (even when the perpetrator is not a family member), it's a stupid equivalence ... 

It used to be fairly common practice (until I think the 1960's) to not tell children they had been adopted ... some children on learning the truth were deeply shaken, angry and wounded (part of why the practice was stopped) ... I have no idea the incidence of "permanent damage" to ability to trust forever and ever ... 

Such things are "reality altering" but -- as with so many things in life -- some people accept the "new reality" and others take much longer and are much angrier, sadder and grudge holding... refusing to get over anything ever ... 

 

On ‎20‎.‎10‎.‎2017 at 11:47 PM, sistermagpie said:

I don't think Paige has drama queened to him much for a long time. When she was really complaining it was before she knew the secret and was complaining about her parents not treating her like a grown up. She seemed to clam up a lot after she told him the actual secret. The stuff in his diary doesn't sound like he's reacting to stuff Paige is saying or doing. It could just be him musing about how terrible what they did is--and maybe think that Paige seeming okay with it now is a bad sign. He might want her to do more drama queening, really.

We haven't seen lately much Paige with Pastor Tim but mostly Paige has told to her parents about the meetings. On the basis of the last scene between Paige and Pastor Tim, I find his interpretation quite strange. Paige was a little bit "down" but wasn't that normal in her age (or in any age)?

Also, I don't understand how Pastor Tim can anticipate that Paige can't cope - nobody can really know who can and who can't. It's not about hard experineces are, some people simply have more mental resources and/or happen to meet people to help them. 

Regarding that Paige can't know about what is right and wrong, it's true she *has* a childish views. But isn't Pastor Tim at least partly responsible for that?   

[Roseanna]

On ‎20‎.‎10‎.‎2017 at 6:24 AM, SusanSunflower said:

Shouldn't Paige (the brainiac) be jealous of Henry?  I would be, in fact, I am for her.  

 

On ‎20‎.‎10‎.‎2017 at 11:47 PM, sistermagpie said:

If Paige wanted to try for a scholarship at some boarding school nothing was stopping her from doing it or from asking about it. She had no interest in that. She wanted to know what was up with her parents--and I think in her way she likes it that way. In some ways I'm sure she envies Henry's careful life, but in other ways she's an insider in the family and he's not. She's in on the real stuff.

I find it odd that a teenager like Paige is so keen to be at home with parents and to be an insider. It should have rather her than Henry who wants to move and study elsewhere. 

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Roseanna said:

Also, I don't understand how Pastor Tim can anticipate that Paige can't cope - nobody can really know who can and who can't. It's not about hard experineces are, some people simply have more mental resources and/or happen to meet people to help them. 

Regarding that Paige can't know about what is right and wrong, it's true she *has* a childish views. But isn't Pastor Tim at least partly responsible for that?   

The funny thing is to me it seems almost like the opposite--he thought Paige was more mature when she had even more black-and-white and simple views. It seemed to me that in his diary he wasn't really reacting to Paige seeming specifically upset but more that she was no longer confident the way she was in the past. Like when he asked if she prayed and she said sometimes. Like she probably does seem more troubled, less sure of things, but that's pretty normal as you grow up and face more complicated situations. It's like a joke that teenagers think they know everything and everything seems so simple to them.

So I thought in his diary it was less about Paige seeming emotionally distraught and him just thinking about the situation for himself. To him, the fact that her parents lied to her and now need her to lie for them is the thing that makes it impossible for her to know right from wrong the way she did when she could judge everybody in a more removed way. Like if she was thinking her parents were having affairs she could know that was wrong even if she still loved her parents. Now she's in a situation where she's obviously more confused because her parents aren't just having affairs for selfish reasons, they've gotten into this mess trying to help others.

3 hours ago, Roseanna said:

I find it odd that a teenager like Paige is so keen to be at home with parents and to be an insider. It should have rather her than Henry who wants to move and study elsewhere. 

Back in season 2 she was saying she couldn't wait to get out of there! But I guess in their own ways they're both trying to get into the adult world. Henry focused on Stan because he seemed like a cooler guy, but that was in part because he took his parents at face value. His focus on boarding school sounds like it's about him wanting to see the world and plan a future, but it also seems very much tied to wanting to be the person Chris would want to go out with without really thinking everything through beyond that. Whatever his current obsession is at any given time, he tends to be completely focused on it.

It does kind of fit with what seems to be the way both kids have seen adulthood. Paige threw herself into political activism and world events and that's what her parents represent. Even when she was in the church group she seemed less interested in the social aspects of it and more into the politics. I wouldn't be surprised if Elizabeth was the same way as a kid. Henry's type of kid seems more usual to me--he gets his ideas about what's cool from pop culture and his friends. Both kids, when they got to this age, started trying out being different people. With Stan Henry's laid-back and bro-ey, with Chris and her dad he's the super ambitious 80s Alex P. Keaton type. His family annoys him because there he's just Henry. For Paige, nothing's more dramatic than things at home with her parents. (And she's somewhat right since it's the focus of the show.)

Edited October 22, 2017 by sistermagpie

[Roseanna]

3 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

The funny thing is to me it seems almost like the opposite--he thought Paige was more mature when she had even more black-and-white and simple views. It seemed to me that in his diary he wasn't really reacting to Paige seeming specifically upset but more that she was no longer confident the way she was in the past. Like when he asked if she prayed and she said sometimes. Like she probably does seem more troubled, less sure of things, but that's pretty normal as you grow up and face more complicated situations. It's like a joke that teenagers think they know everything and everything seems so simple to them.

So I thought in his diary it was less about Paige seeming emotionally distraught and him just thinking about the situation for himself. To him, the fact that her parents lied to her and now need her to lie for them is the thing that makes it impossible for her to know right from wrong the way she did when she could judge everybody in a more removed way. Like if she was thinking her parents were having affairs she could know that was wrong even if she still loved her parents. Now she's in a situation where she's obviously more confused because her parents aren't just having affairs for selfish reasons, they've gotten into this mess trying to help others.

An interesting interpretation. Could it be that Pastor Tim is also a bit jealous when he is no more Number One in Paige's life, an authority she used to confide and trust in?

[sistermagpie]

6 minutes ago, Roseanna said:

An interesting interpretation. Could it be that Pastor Tim is also a bit jealous when he is no more Number One in Paige's life, an authority she used to confide and trust in?

I do actually think that's part of it. That might sound too extreme, as if the guy is such an ego maniac and all he cares about is being worshiped himself, and I don't think he's that selfish. But from the start he did seem to enjoy his easy influence over Paige, and her parents' reaction to it, and how well he thought he was helping her when her parents couldn't really get it. Without that part of his personality I'd find it harder to believe the way that he's behaved since then--not only not turning the Jennings in but wanting talks where they all re-group about the situation or he thinks he and Paige should find out exactly what her parents do and decide if they have to do something about it.

It's not that he's so possessive of Paige herself that he can't stand not being #1, exactly--especially now that he has his own kid. But given everything up until now I do think it's in keeping with his personality that he'd feel that she had slipped away from him and not like that. I imagine he can tell that she's no longer as open with him as she once was. From his pov, too, he doesn't know what's going on with Paige and her parents. For all he knows Paige's relationship with them is just like it was before, where she found them confusing and felt they treated her like a kid, except now she had to keep their secret and didn't have Pastor Tim and God on her side to make up for it. He doesn't know that she's gotten to know her parents better, that she actually does know more now about what they do, that she's starting to understand them in terms of the kids they once were etc. Like when she said her mom was going to the soup kitchen because she thought they should do it together he gave her Marx, assuming his parents hadn't explained anything about that to her. He was right about that part, but really he was wrong--Elizabeth was going to the soup kitchen with Paige because she was afraid to be there alone after the near-mugging.

What he wrote in his diary does, to me, also fit the pov of someone who gives kids a moral framework for a living and sees Paige as possibly no longer being able to follow it and so just being lost. Back in s3 the Tims and Paige planned that ambush about the baptism. Now Paige is planning to manipulate the Tims' entire family life and he doesn't even know it.

[SusanSunflower]

... just a belated thought  -- it occurs to me -- not knowing when those diary entries were made (no I'm not going to rewatch) that Pastor Tim may be rationalizing having strong-armed the family  ... hence the over-the-top "child abuse" analogy... because he recognizes that he abused his position in ways that might well be appropriate in a child abuse case (although there are myriad reasons why mandatory reporting laws exist and why they do not always exempt clergy. ) My memory is that Robert Hanssen (nortorious spy convicted of espionage, also a devout a Roman Catholic said he had discussed his espionage on several occasions with his clergy -- they never turned him in either. (He was arrested in 1994 after DECADES of selling secrets to the KGB).  

I don't think that Pastor Tim's interest in Paige was "personal" so much as he was a symbol of his successful ministry ... a devout follower who could be profiled and who would testify to his "good job" as an inspirational leader, because he was ambitious and wanted that sort of a reliable acolyte.  I'm not (and have never been) religious so I don't know, but what I've observed is that "cults of personality" around a leader are not only common but are even encouraged as proof of successful ministry ... see Justin Bieber's high praise for his pastor ... blech ... ... watch your parking meters, indeed. 

Edited October 22, 2017 by SusanSunflower

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, SusanSunflower said:

I don't think that Pastor Tim's interest in Paige was "personal" so much as he was a symbol of his successful ministry ... a devout follower who could be profiled and who would testify to his "good job" as an inspirational leader, because he was ambitious and wanted that sort of a reliable acolyte.  I'm not (and have never been) religious so I don't know, but what I've observed is that "cults of personality" around a leader are not only common but are even encouraged as proof of successful ministry ... see Justin Bieber's high praise for his pastor ... blech ... ... watch your parking meters, indeed. 

I agree--I think that's exactly what she's a symbol of. Especially given the extra plus that she hadn't even been religious before wandering into his church and she had these atheist parents he could work on too. I can't tell if the show wanted to imply a cult of personality at that church, but they definitely did it. I think that was a big reason people tended to see Pastor Tim as creepy. Everything about that church seemed to come straight out of Tim himself. For instance, his linking Paige's baptism to his approval of her politics that he shared. There seemed to be nobody else who even worked at the place besides him.

2 hours ago, SusanSunflower said:

... just a belated thought  -- it occurs to me -- not knowing when those diary entries were made (no I'm not going to rewatch) that Pastor Tim may be rationalizing having strong-armed the family  ... hence the over-the-top "child abuse" analogy... because he recognizes that he abused his position in ways that might well be appropriate in a child abuse case (although there are myriad reasons why mandatory reporting laws exist and why they do not always exempt clergy. )

I never thought of it that way but that makes a lot of sense. He might not want to think about how he himself meddled in the situation specifically to get Paige's parents to bring her into the secret. Of course he probably thought the secret was nothing, just her parents seeming mysterious, but while he's not to blame for the situation Paige's parents created he can't really completely take himself out of it. He obviously did have some plan for how he was going to affect this family and this wasn't it.

[SusanSunflower]

... and then there's his wife ...  Pastor Tim might have intended to mentor Paige (as Chris and his parents have been mentoring Henry) into the whole high school graduation/college prep process, but I think the chill of Mrs. Tim and that tape and that whole missing in Ethiopia drama precludes some resumption of the former naive pastor/congregant trust  ... seriously ... let them just be gone. 

Still, Henry found some adult/parent surrogates to get excited about his future while Paige's mentors got sacrificed (like so much) to the family secrets.  Much too familiar a story, IMHO, where the drudge gets left largely forgotten in the dust (yes, I'm projecting).  She deserves better ... even if it involves the KGB wants to finance her education in some advanced computer science program, etc.  I don't want her to end up being drafted into being Elizabeth's mini-me. 

"Wanting to help people" is not enough to get most people through the hard science classes of most career-focused college health care curricula.  Paige is (and has been) so underwritten and so dull.  I hate for her future to be determined by having -- once upon a time -- asked some awkward questions. 

Edited October 23, 2017 by SusanSunflower

[sistermagpie]

46 minutes ago, SusanSunflower said:

... and then there's his wife ...  Pastor Tim might have intended to mentor Paige (as Chris and his parents have been mentoring Henry) into the whole high school graduation/college prep process, but I think the chill of Mrs. Tim and that tape and that whole missing in Ethiopia drama precludes some resumption of the former naive pastor/congregant trust  ... seriously ... let them just be gone. 

Well, we don't know what kind of mentoring is going on with Henry. The father went to this school, Chris is going, Henry maybe wants to be like Chris and her father is willing to talk to the kid and write him a letter to his alma mater. We don't know that the guy's specifically excited about Henry's future the way his parents are. Sounds like he's pretty excited about his prep school too. Henry might not be particularly interested in spending time with Chris's father beyond that being a good thing in Chris's eyes. Paige might have outgrown Pastor Tim as a mentor by now in a more natural way even without her life being crap because of the secret but everything's relative. Elizabeth's mentor seems to have looked the other way while another potential mentor raped her and she had no parent to turn to, so Paige is doing pretty well there. And Henry basically thinks he should get whatever he wants in life so he's fine.

I mean, I agree--I don't want Paige to be a mini-me Elizabeth either. It is troubling to think of Elizabeth becoming her only role model. But it's understandable to me that the person her mother really is is fascinating enough to her to keep her interest. Paige has really always been focused on her parents even when she was into Pastor Tim. I think she still has a chance of having a life outside of being a spy.

Edited October 23, 2017 by sistermagpie

[Roseanna]

Thank you, SusanSunflower and Sistermagie, for shedding light on Pastor Tim's character. 

[sistermagpie]

I was on a plane last night and some Americans eps were offered to watch and I watched this one. I noticed that in Pastor Tim's talk with Paige he makes a point of saying he doesn't have any doubt at all that Paige will be fine and that almost seems like exactly the thing he does have. It really leaves him no wiggle room since in the diary that's exactly what he's full of. If he'd just presented her as somebody who could be fine it would be different. By saying he has no doubts he's making it clear he's not being honest. Unlike her father who's telling her that she doesn't have to be anything--and is sort of trying to give Henry the same chance by constantly repeating that he's "just a kid" (iow, he isn't defined by what he thinks he wants right now). When Elizabeth says it's good that Paige is starting to see Tim for "what he is" she's probably projecting her own ideas about "who he is" but she's also right. I mean, Elizabeth probably means that she thinks Paige has figured out that Pastor Tim is a judgmental prick, but what she is seeing is that he's not what he presents himself as 100%.

Which also made me see how when Philip said that Pastor Tim didn't know her, it was speaking to something Paige had been worried about, the idea that nobody could really know her if she was lying. Elizabeth had told her (correctly) that everyone holds things back, but here Philip was making it a genuinely positive thing. Pastor Tim can't possibly know her so well that he can say whether she knows right from wrong. It's actually a good thing to people not being the way she sometimes seemed to want.

[Roseanna]

On ‎31‎.‎10‎.‎2017 at 3:39 AM, sistermagpie said:

Pastor Tim can't possibly know her so well that he can say whether she knows right from wrong. 

Actually, as we have seen, Paige does know that it's wrong to make people starve and it's right to feed people. If she knew that her parents had seduced, betrayed and murdered people, there is no doubt that she would think it's wrong.

However, the problem is that in the spy world it's accepted to do wrong for the good cause. Both sides are equally sure that their cause is right. P&E and Stan are two halves of the same apple.

As for Paige, she had to chose between two good causes: her country or her family. She can't be loyal to both but must betray the former or the latter. Which means that doing good she is in the same time doing wrong.

It's natural that this is too much to a teenager like Paige. But it's shows the utter hypocrisy and hallowness of Pastor Tim that he seems to understand nothing of this and simply looks at the matter from above.      

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, Roseanna said:

It's natural that this is too much to a teenager like Paige. But it's shows the utter hypocrisy and hallowness of Pastor Tim that he seems to understand nothing of this and simply looks at the matter from above.      

Yes, and I think that's partly what Philip is getting at too. He's talking about Paige as if a person knows right or wrong or not in all circumstances. But really in life people face plenty of situations where it's not clear, or where you can disagree. Philip knows that the things they do are wrong, but he also doesn't feel right about abandoning his country if doing wrong will actually help them. That's a genuine moral question--do you protect your own soul even if it means others suffering etc.

Of course, people could see Pastor Tim as not knowing right from wrong either since he, too, has decided to keep Paige's secret. He's decided that preserving the comfort of this girl is more important than alerting his country's government to these two enemy spies. Plus as an adult who doesn't have Paige's need to see her parents as good people (and her experience living with her parents where they are good people) he's got more reason to know they're doing truly bad things.

[Plums]

21 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Of course, people could see Pastor Tim as not knowing right from wrong either since he, too, has decided to keep Paige's secret. He's decided that preserving the comfort of this girl is more important than alerting his country's government to these two enemy spies. Plus as an adult who doesn't have Paige's need to see her parents as good people (and her experience living with her parents where they are good people) he's got more reason to know they're doing truly bad things.

Pastor Tim is an interesting character to me. Like, he could see the psychological damage done to Paige because of her parents secret- he probably picked up on how unhappy she was in all those months when she was forced to spend so much of her time with him and Alice, but you get the impression from him that what was really worrying for him about her was he could tell she was moving away from Christianity. We forget sometimes that this dude is an evangelical pastor. He derives his moral compass from a very specific faith. There was that scene where he kind of probed Paige on if she was praying, with this concerned look and tone to him, and Paige basically says not so much. So he's worried for her soul on that level. 

There's such a complex mix of knowledge and naivete to Tim and Alice. They're removed enough from the situation and adults who know better enough to understand that Philip and Elizabeth being Russian spies means they're probably involved in some extremely shady shit, but they also allow themselves to be placated by the maybe-Priest because they have a very left wing take on global issues, their personal politics are probably much more in line with socialism than capitalism, Marx's views on organized religion and Soviet religious suppression notwithstanding. They also obviously understood that they could be in danger from having this knowledge, such that Alice would immediately suspect the Jenningses have arranged for him to "disappear" when Tim goes missing in a communist country. Yet they don't seem to have ever grasped just how much danger they were in, or how lucky they were to not get killed immediately. Alice feels safe enough to blackmail them. Tim wonders if P&E are monsters, thinks they're capable of monstrousness, yet he doesn't wonder how he's been allowed go around knowing about this pair of deep cover Soviet operatives. 

What's even more interesting to me after this episode is that P&E genuinely go to him for advice after seeing what he really thinks of them and what they've done to their daughter, lol.  

[sistermagpie]

1 hour ago, Plums said:

Pastor Tim is an interesting character to me. Like, he could see the psychological damage done to Paige because of her parents secret- he probably picked up on how unhappy she was in all those months when she was forced to spend so much of her time with him and Alice, but you get the impression from him that what was really worrying for him about her was he could tell she was moving away from Christianity. We forget sometimes that this dude is an evangelical pastor. He derives his moral compass from a very specific faith. There was that scene where he kind of probed Paige on if she was praying, with this concerned look and tone to him, and Paige basically says not so much. So he's worried for her soul on that level. 

 

I think I seriously offended some people by always seeing a connection between Tim and Elizabeth as recruiters.  They felt that since Tim was openly a pastor and Christianity wasn't bad he couldn't be said to be ever trying to manipulate her in any way the way Elizabeth (post reveal to Paige) was. It wasn't because I was trying to make them moral equivalents but I really did think it was important that Tim was close to Paige in the context of her joining his church. Even in his last scene he says Elizabeth and Philip aren't members of the church and there's so many levels of meaning in that statement, both practical and spiritual. I do think he's concerned that she's not praying--and not just because he's worried she's lost a source of comfort. This sort of thing is a big part of the show. There's no reason religion would be left out of it when nothing else was.

I did always think he was introduced as somebody who had a bit of an ego. He had to be in order to be the one they knew would keep the secret. He had to feel comfortable making that choice himself. I almost wish he'd been shown more trying to convert them after he knew the truth because he used to want to do that. I almost wonder why instead of seeing them like a white whale he was called to convert he seemed to rather back off. Especially in that ep where Elizabeth's really coming on strong to him (after he comes back from Ethiopia) and he completely turns down a chance to witness to her in a really odd way that made him not feel like a pastor at all. It's where he tells Elizabeth that all that matters is how we treat each other.

2 hours ago, Plums said:

There's such a complex mix of knowledge and naivete to Tim and Alice.

Definitely--and in a somewhat believable way. Alice seems less naive than Tim, but I think even her accusing them of disappearing him was about her having her first experience with the world being a scary place and needing some simple explanation that people like Elizabeth and Philip wouldn't think existed.

[Plums]

28 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

I think I seriously offended some people by always seeing a connection between Tim and Elizabeth as recruiters.

I mean, the show is pretty blatant about it. Wasn't Elizabeth's "they get them when they're young" rant the same episode, or thereabouts, where Nina waxes nostalgic about being a Young Pioneer? 

32 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

I did always think he was introduced as somebody who had a bit of an ego. He had to be in order to be the one they knew would keep the secret. He had to feel comfortable making that choice himself. I almost wish he'd been shown more trying to convert them after he knew the truth because he used to want to do that. I almost wonder why instead of seeing them like a white whale he was called to convert he seemed to rather back off. Especially in that ep where Elizabeth's really coming on strong to him (after he comes back from Ethiopia) and he completely turns down a chance to witness to her in a really odd way that made him not feel like a pastor at all. It's where he tells Elizabeth that all that matters is how we treat each other.

Yeah, when we get our first good glimpse of him, he's at dinner with the family talking up his anti-war protest stories from college. 

I think one of the main reasons why he backed off from any serious attempt to witness to them is because he understood on some level that they were dangerous and didn't want to be any more entangled with these people than he had to be. I wouldn't be surprised if, after he found out the truth, he remembered that confrontation with Philip and broke out in a cold sweat. He's probably sorry he ever encouraged Paige to demand the truth from them and got himself mixed up in that business. That's not to say he isn't a good person who is gonna want to help whoever needs it, but considering the shit he unexpectedly had to deal with for converting the daughter of spies, I can see him wanting to keep the spies themselves at as much a distance as he was able to. On the other hand, he's not gonna turn people away who seek his counsel. He does tell Elizabeth he would pray in her situation, but he's not gonna push it when she asks him what she should do as an atheist.

[sistermagpie]

5 hours ago, Plums said:

I mean, the show is pretty blatant about it. Wasn't Elizabeth's "they get them when they're young" rant the same episode, or thereabouts, where Nina waxes nostalgic about being a Young Pioneer? 

I know! I think at least one person I talked to was more comfortable seeing that as a comment on Elizabeth's beliefs without it going the other way. But obviously the show made a strong choice in having Paige so quickly and eagerly embrace an entire worldview that she never had before. Especially with the focus not on other kids in the group, which might say something else, but Pastor Tim having all the answers for her.

5 hours ago, Plums said:

Yeah, when we get our first good glimpse of him, he's at dinner with the family talking up his anti-war protest stories from college. 

LOL. He's so insufferable in that scene. There's a great screencap of Philip looking over at him like he just so wants to punch him in the face. He totally takes over the dinner table as if it's the Tim show while Paige hangs on his every word. Even Alice knows to just sit beside him and occasionally say something to back him up.

 

5 hours ago, Plums said:

I think one of the main reasons why he backed off from any serious attempt to witness to them is because he understood on some level that they were dangerous and didn't want to be any more entangled with these people than he had to be. I wouldn't be surprised if, after he found out the truth, he remembered that confrontation with Philip and broke out in a cold sweat. He's probably sorry he ever encouraged Paige to demand the truth from them and got himself mixed up in that business. That's not to say he isn't a good person who is gonna want to help whoever needs it, but considering the shit he unexpectedly had to deal with for converting the daughter of spies, I can see him wanting to keep the spies themselves at as much a distance as he was able to. On the other hand, he's not gonna turn people away who seek his counsel. He does tell Elizabeth he would pray in her situation, but he's not gonna push it when she asks him what she should do as an atheist.

I remember Kelly Aucoin put  picture of himself on Twitter before S4. He was wearing a shaggy wig and a loud sweater and holding the phone going, "Uh...." with the hashtag "shouldaletitring

I like to think that Alice probably sat him down and encouraged him to have as little to do with them as possible too. Like if he did have any thoughts that it was his duty to try to witness to them Alice would have weighed in on the side of his responsibility to the rest of the church etc. Especially after they had the baby I suspect he really regretted the whole thing happening. Paige wasn't his special project in life but she sort of became that when she dumped this secret on them. I wonder if when she started hanging out with him all the time if they thought she was clinging to them out of fear or if they suspected anything else going on, especially since it seems like Tim definitely recognized her waning interest in God.

I do feel like that plays into what he wrote in his diary. On one level he can just be talking about the situation itself being so damaging that it might screw anyone up. But if Paige had remained more like the tearful girl on the phone, or had come to him to talk about her parents a lot (not about stuff she'd learned about what they were doing but things like wondering what life was like for them as kids or whatever) he might have felt more confident about her future and his choice. His life happens to change a lot right after this happens--I'd actually wondered early on at why he didn't have kids since that's so common with a minister and his wife and the show drew attention to it when he compares having a kid to being a minister. But having a baby would be another thing that would change his priorities.

[Roseanna]

20 hours ago, Plums said:

but you get the impression from him that what was really worrying for him about her was he could tell she was moving away from Christianity. We forget sometimes that this dude is an evangelical pastor. He derives his moral compass from a very specific faith. There was that scene where he kind of probed Paige on if she was praying, with this concerned look and tone to him, and Paige basically says not so much. So he's worried for her soul on that level. 

But what did Pastor Tim teach to Paige about praying? Did he say that praying would miraculously make all Paige's problems go away or that when praying Paige should search for God's will, not her own?

I can't see Paige ever was particularly religious. She told how good her baptism made her feel, but Lutheratism teaches that it's not your feelings that matter but God's mercy which you just must trust in even if you don't feel nothing particular. Therefore I think that, quite apart of what P&E did, religion was to Paige only a phase she abandoned when it no longer made her feel good and/or she realized that Pastor Tim wasn't perfect (which she did first when he told her secret to his wife and again when he wrote to his diary a different opinion to her than he talked to her). 

Also, when Elizabeth took Paige to meet her grandmother, and Elizabeth was devasted that her mother was dying, Paige went away in order to pray instead of comforting her mother or at least staying with her. She could have prayed in silence but instead she made a demonstration of it by kneeling. Paige is a teenager, so I don't blame her. But the truth is, she put her own feelings first and that's hardly a Christian way to behave imo.

[Roseanna]

21 hours ago, Plums said:

Marx's views on organized religion

Marx's opinion about religion isn't in fact only negative: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." One can't even deny that when he wrote in the 19th century, religion was used to keep poor people accept their lot for ever.  

As for Pastor Tim, I think it was odd that he gave Marx's Capital to Paige. First, because it's no book for teenagers. I doubt if one procent of adult Communists has read it. Second, and more importantly, if he was really concerned about Paige's soul, why not give her some religious book?  

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Roseanna said:

But what did Pastor Tim teach to Paige about praying? Did he say that praying would miraculously make all Paige's problems go away or that when praying Paige should search for God's will, not her own?

 

I guess we don't really know--we never see him explain it. But I agree that it never seemed to me that Paige was portrayed as trying to put God's will above her own, or that she prayed to know his will etc. 

But I admit it always seemed like something the show itself just wasn't really good at it. I wasn't sure if Paige didn't come across like a very religious teenager to me because she wasn't supposed to really be into that part or because the writers weren't really getting that part right. Paige became very loud and performative about her new political beliefs but barely said a word about God. Even Jesus was spoken about like a role model for social activism rather than a divinity.

The scene in Germany did always seem particularly good to me, the way it now only showed something about what Paige was feeling at the time, but how it commented on how these things can work. Paige's response to Elizabeth's mother dying--a woman to whom Paige herself doesn't feel any connection--is to strike a pose and pray for Elizabeth's mother while Elizabeth herself sits next to her, shut out by everything about Paige's body language. Paige's prayer separates her and her mother.

In another scene we see the opposite, where Philip, as Jim, uses a fake prayer to "talk to God" in front of Kimmy. He's really talking to Kimmy and Kimmy responds by reaching out to him and praying too, really speaking to Jim. Her prayer even surprises Philip, I think, because he's touched by how compassionate Kimmy is. It brings them together, which is what they both want in the scene. Paige, in that moment in the bathroom, seems to be pulling away from her mother. She's defining herself as connected to Pastor Tim and not her mother.

But she will later say that praying didn't help her deal with her parents' revelations. She needs to talk to Pastor Tim the person and that gives him the opportunity to let her down. 

[Roseanna]

On ‎9‎.‎7‎.‎2018 at 10:22 PM, Plums said:

I think one of the main reasons why he backed off from any serious attempt to witness to them is because he understood on some level that they were dangerous and didn't want to be any more entangled with these people than he had to be. I wouldn't be surprised if, after he found out the truth, he remembered that confrontation with Philip and broke out in a cold sweat. He's probably sorry he ever encouraged Paige to demand the truth from them and got himself mixed up in that business. That's not to say he isn't a good person who is gonna want to help whoever needs it, but considering the shit he unexpectedly had to deal with for converting the daughter of spies, I can see him wanting to keep the spies themselves at as much a distance as he was able to. On the other hand, he's not gonna turn people away who seek his counsel. He does tell Elizabeth he would pray in her situation, but he's not gonna push it when she asks him what she should do as an atheist.

I don't understand this reasoning. If had Pastor Tim really regarded P&E dangerous, he would have all reasons to report on them. He would have been an utter fool not to. Why would he endanger not only himself but also his wife and baby daughter? 

But he doesn't know about murders, unlike the watchers. Therefore I believe that he is capable to convince himself that P&E are just collecting information about the things where Pastor Tim agrees with them that the US is wrong, f.ex. about contras.

Pastor Tim is evidently one of those many whose motive to help others is to make himself as well as others to feel good. But in this case, if he informs on P&E, he does his patriotic duty but Paige loses her parents, but if he doesn't inform, the US can be in danger and Paige (according to his diary) can't differ between good and bad and is lost forever. Whichever he does, Paige will not feel good and therefore Pastor Tim can't feel good.

Actually, that P&E are spies, doesn't make this problem more difficult than others a pastor has to deal. Life is complicated. 

[Plums]

4 hours ago, Roseanna said:

I don't understand this reasoning. If had Pastor Tim really regarded P&E dangerous, he would have all reasons to report on them. He would have been an utter fool not to. Why would he endanger not only himself but also his wife and baby daughter? 

The key is "on some level". When he first found out and talked to them, he said "I know what spies do" when they condescendingly gave him the song and dance to convince him they wouldn't hurt a fly and "spies, lol, Is that the word Paige used?". He let himself go along with it because it he didn't really want to hurt Paige and was looking to be convinced not to turn them in, or he would have done it when he first found out. It was easier for him to just imagine them as communists loyal to Russia and The Cause, talking to willing sources or whatever, but he knew on a deeper level it was probably bullshit and that they were dangerous. Humans are complicated. 

[Roseanna]

2 hours ago, Plums said:

The key is "on some level". When he first found out and talked to them, he said "I know what spies do" when they condescendingly gave him the song and dance to convince him they wouldn't hurt a fly and "spies, lol, Is that the word Paige used?". He let himself go along with it because it he didn't really want to hurt Paige and was looking to be convinced not to turn them in, or he would have done it when he first found out. It was easier for him to just imagine them as communists loyal to Russia and The Cause, talking to willing sources or whatever, but he knew on a deeper level it was probably bullshit and that they were dangerous. Humans are complicated. 

It may be. However, not all spies are dangerous. They can be very useful also to "us", because without the correct information the other side can make decisions that are dangerous to our side. This was seen in the early episode about Reagan's assassination. 

Most of all, irl illegals aren't assassins. Generally, every job had their own special persons.    

[Plums]

1 hour ago, Roseanna said:

Most of all, irl illegals aren't assassins. Generally, every job had their own special persons.    

yes, but it was clearly established in the universe of this show that this was not the case, so talking about what illegals are like irl is a moot point. 

[Roseanna]

1 minute ago, Plums said:

yes, but it was clearly established in the universe of this show that this was not the case, so talking about what illegals are like irl is a moot point. 

But Paige and Pastor Tim evidently thought P&E were like spies irl.   

[Plums]

10 minutes ago, Roseanna said:

But Paige and Pastor Tim evidently thought P&E were like spies irl.   

No, Paige and Pastor Tim thought spies were spies and that their jobs involved morally dubious actions and maybe hurting people, and they let themselves be convinced that the work P&E did was fairly innocuous by P&E themselves for their own peace of mind, but the truth stayed there in the back of their minds regardless.