Tusk to Tchaikovsky: Re-watching the Americans

[Erin9]

We’re just not going to agree on any of this.  Not defecting, not Philip’s relationship with Elizabeth, not his feelings for his country, not his motivations. 

It wasn’t USA vs USSR, but it was for both the world and his country. He said so. BOTH mattered. To him and to Oleg. That was the whole season. It’s what made it so good. It was about what kind of world and country they wanted. And what they were willing to sacrifice for it.

I can say Philip did this for his country because he made it more than clear that  determined his actions. Yes- he wanted fewer nukes. Benefits the world. He also made it clear that he liked what Gorbachev was doing- that was worth protecting. He liked the openness. He liked the changes. He flat out said so.  He cared. He’s not arguing with Elizabeth about home because he doesn’t care. He said he cared who the leader of his country was. And- as he said to Elizabeth- he put their country first- above her. He meant all of that imo. As usual with Philip- he’s capable of caring about more than one thing. 

Arkady didn’t pick Philip because he only cared about the world and not about his country’s future.  He picked him because he did care that much about all of it.  Like himself. Like Oleg. He didn’t carefully read Philip’s file and say- here’s a guy who doesn’t care about home anymore. That’s the man to hang this on. He’s the man I want to spy on his wife and stop a coup. He knew he cared about all of it. 

But- we are clearly not going to see Philip the same way. 

[Umbelina]

Arkady picked Philip because Philip had a reputation of not "just following orders" so he thought his mind might be open to this.  He also picked him because he was perfectly placed to spy on Elizabeth, thus the Coup's actions in the USA.

Yes, we disagree that Philip thought the USSR was better than the USA.  He saw issues with both, and AS HE SAID "at least the electricity works" etc.  We also disagree that he had fond memories of home.  He didn't.  First he was in a Gulag town, starving, hated because his father was a guard, lied to, freezing.  His childhood STILL gives him nightmares.  Then he was picked for the KGB, where he had food and it was warm and he had clothes because THEY WERE TRYING TO MAKE IT LIKE THE USA.  Ha.

Even there though?  He was forced to have sex with very old men and women, and with other strangers, his mind was very fucked up by all of that, and by "making it real."  When asked?  He said he missed "the snow" and mentioned icicle fights.  Both of those things are easily available in the USA.

Edited August 11, 2018 by Umbelina

[Erin9]

 I never said he thought the USSR was better than the USA. Yes- he had issues with both countries. That’s obvious imo. Never said he had fond memories of home either. None of those things are my arguments one way or the other. Those are not and have not been my arguments regarding Philip. 

I hardly see Philip not always following orders as the only reason Arkady chose Philip. He’s not picking a man for a mission this important who didn’t care about home anymore.  That defies logic imo. 

I am saying Philip cared about the future of his country, which he explicitly stated was the case. Whether anyone thinks he should care about its fate or not, he did imo. 

[sistermagpie]

4 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Yes, we disagree that Philip thought the USSR was better than the USA.  He saw issues with both, and AS HE SAID "at least the electricity works" etc.  We also disagree that he had fond memories of home.  He didn't.  First he was in a Gulag town, starving, hated because his father was a guard, lied to, freezing.  His childhood STILL gives him nightmares. 

 

4 hours ago, Erin9 said:

 I never said he thought the USSR was better than the USA. Yes- he had issues with both countries. That’s obvious imo. Never said he had fond memories of home either. None of those things are my arguments one way or the other. Those are not and have not been my arguments regarding Philip. 

We don't have a lot of examples of childhood memories for Philip but I would never say that he's presented as someone haunted by memories of home as some hell he's terrified of being thrown back into. Going by the little we have he seems to have bad memories from home, and also neutral ones, and also ones that seem pleasant enough. But more to the point, those memories of home aren't ever presented in the context of him rejecting the country or being desperate to stay away--plenty of people love their country despite personally wretched childhoods. (Even the GULAG stuff isn't presented in that context since he's figuring out his father was a guard years later.) He lobbies to return to Russia with the kids in S4 and 5, never expresses any fears for the kids being brought to a terrible place, just a different one. If a character's supposed to consider themselves to have escaped a place and be afraid of having to go back, they'd have to show that and they show something totally different. (I think that's maybe what Erin's saying here too, that it's not much connected to this issue.) 

WRT to the Oleg thing I agree with Erin that that whole plot is more focused on the direction of the USSR than on nuclear disarmament and that it would be strange for Arkady to think he should entrust this mission who doesn't care about the direction of the country. He goes to Philip explicitly for the same reason he goes to Oleg.

If the idea was that Philip didn't care much about the USSR but was worried about nuclear war they'd have structured the story and all the scenes that way and they don't. Oleg's first pitch to Philip is completely about the positive progress in the USSR and the future of their country. Philip goes to see Oleg again when he brings up that subject and Elizabeth talks like a hardliner who opposes change. When he and Oleg meet again they start out with a brief exchange about the US where Oleg says he thinks peace is possible and that this might be their best chance at it--refusing to deal in good faith with the US is part of the larger issue of the direction of the USSR for both sides, true. But when Philip asks for more information it's for clarification on what's going on in the USSR and Oleg again talks about the progress with the other side opposing it. Elizabeth's own final choice, which is presented to her by Philip, also isn't, that I remember, centered on America's nukes. It would have been simple enough to make that the central issue but that's not what the show does.

Edited August 12, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Erin9]

On 8/11/2018 at 7:54 PM, sistermagpie said:

 

We don't have a lot of examples of childhood memories for Philip but I would never say that he's presented as someone haunted by memories of home as some hell he's terrified of being thrown back into. Going by the little we have he seems to have bad memories from home, and also neutral ones, and also ones that seem pleasant enough. But more to the point, those memories of home aren't ever presented in the context of him rejecting the country or being desperate to stay away--plenty of people love their country despite personally wretched childhoods. (Even the GULAG stuff isn't presented in that context since he's figuring out his father was a guard years later.) He lobbies to return to Russia with the kids in S4 and 5, never expresses any fears for the kids being brought to a terrible place, just a different one. If a character's supposed to consider themselves to have escaped a place and be afraid of having to go back, they'd have to show that and they show something totally different. (I think that's maybe what Erin's saying here too, that it's not much connected to this issue.) 

WRT to the Oleg thing I agree with Erin that that whole plot is more focused on the direction of the USSR than on nuclear disarmament and that it would be strange for Arkady to think he should entrust this mission who doesn't care about the direction of the country. He goes to Philip explicitly for the same reason he goes to Oleg.

If the idea was that Philip didn't care much about the USSR but was worried about nuclear war they'd have structured the story and all the scenes that way and they don't. Oleg's first pitch to Philip is completely about the positive progress in the USSR and the future of their country. Philip goes to see Oleg again when he brings up that subject and Elizabeth talks like a hardliner who opposes change. When he and Oleg meet again they start out with a brief exchange about the US where Oleg says he thinks peace is possible and that this might be their best chance at it--refusing to deal in good faith with the US is part of the larger issue of the direction of the USSR for both sides, true. But when Philip asks for more information it's for clarification on what's going on in the USSR and Oleg again talks about the progress with the other side opposing it. Elizabeth's own final choice, which is presented to her by Philip, also isn't, that I remember, centered on America's nukes. It would have been simple enough to make that the central issue but that's not what the show does.

 

I would basically agree with this. 

I find it difficult to comment too much on Philip’s feelings on the USSR vs the US because he didn’t say too much on the subject. We know he had issues with both countries. We know he understandably liked some of the amenities in the US. But he didn’t give a compare/contrast list of his feelings. 

Philip simply didn’t say much about his past. And even less about how he felt about it. It’s difficult to draw too many conclusions on a subject he didn’t dwell on. It was difficult. That is certain.

But- he neither came across as proud of having a really tough life (ie Elizabeth or Claudia), nor bitter, angry, hateful like going home would be a fate worse than death ( that would be Alexei- who wouldn’t return for his son). He seemed more matter of fact about it to me. It was what it was. 

I don’t think he was haunted by it. His flashbacks in S5 were centered around the truth about his father more than anything. 

He didn’t have a tone of horror about himself or his kids going to Russia. It would be an adjustment, he knew. The real issue was whether it was their home, where they belonged imo- not whether it was an okay place to live at all. 

FWIW- the happiest I ever saw Philip was in Russia with Irina. That doesn’t mean I think he loved her more or anything- simply that he clearly had happy memories of home. I think there were more. An impoverished childhood doesn’t mean there weren’t good times, happy moments. But again- he didn’t say much; so there isn’t much to say. 

I would agree that the S6 conversation was primarily about what the future of the USSR  would be: for Philip, Claudia, Elizabeth, Oleg, and  Arkady. The conversation was not centered around nukes. It was about home. 

Mostly though- my feeling is this: much about this show can be left for interpretation. However, the fact that Philip was motivated by and cared about his country’s future is to me very explicit. He repeatedly expressed that it mattered to him in the dialogue in S6. Why he cares or if he should care is a different matter. But he did care. 

Edited August 13, 2018 by Erin9

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, Erin9 said:

FWIW- the happiest I ever saw Philip was in Russia with Irina. That doesn’t mean I think he loved her more or anything- simply that he clearly had happy memories of home. I think there were more. An impoverished childhood doesn’t mean there weren’t good times, happy moments. But again- he didn’t say much; so there isn’t much to say. 

 

Also happiness is relative. His life was probably a lot like the lives of other people he knew. As he said to Paige, there were things in his hometown that he liked, there were things that were hard, but people there didn't think about whether they liked their hometown the way an American kid would grow up wishing they were born somewhere else.

2 hours ago, Erin9 said:

I don’t think he was haunted by it. His flashbacks in S5 were centered around the truth about his father more than anything. 

 

Right, that's more what I was thinking. The times when he's having a flashback there always a context to it that isn't about trying to get away from it. When he's remembering killing those kids he's feeling guilty and questioning the way he learned to deal with things. When he brings it to EST he changes the details so he can still bring it up and talk about that issue--that he hurt (really killed) another kid. The flashbacks in S5 are wondering about his father. Even the last one in S6 seems more about reflecting what he said to Stan about not always having to grow. Just having a sandwich for dinner is enough because he used to beg for scraps stuck to a bowl. Of course the world of scraps was Russia and the US is where he's got sandwiches, but in his flashback with Irina he seems excited about the life he's planning in the USSR. Even though as an adult he's explicitly aware of his kids having had a better life than he did--both materially and in terms of what they had to go through. 

[scartact]

4 hours ago, Erin9 said:

I find it difficult to comment too much on Philip’s feelings on the USSR vs the US because he didn’t say too much on the subject. We know he had issues with both countries. We know he understandably liked some of the amenities in the US. But he didn’t give a compare/contrast list of his feelings. 

As you're all having this conversation, the only thing I can think is that there's a particular kind of Diasporic narrative (if the subject of Phil & Liz's immigration to the U.S. can be described as such, which the creators have loosely used as a reference point for Phil & Liz's relationship to home and country) that emerges to me when the subject of Philip's complex feelings surrounding the USSR and the US are taken into account. I haven't started any sort of rewatch on the show yet (where I believe I've said I have a stated interest in analyzing aspects of the show as an immigrant narrative), but my understanding of Philip is that he is never wholly settled, nor feels wholly accepted in either country, which is a very real feeling.

He definitely better assimilates to the US than Elizabeth does, but by season 6 with his failing business we see that the life Philip wishes he could live is not a reality (no matter how much he shuffles in his cowboy boots), and to me there's something about that that on some level vaguely parallels the arc of his relationship to the USSR and being a weapon of the KGB.

Anyway, these are just my half-formed thoughts on the subject, so never mind me! I would love to keep on reading more about peoples' respective rewatches.

[kokapetl]

When Philip and Elizabeth left the USSR, it was the mid sixties, and things were going pretty well there. That’s the Soviet Union that Philip and Elizabeth would have remembered and cherished. America was scared of the potential that country had, and people seriously thought it’s trajectory threatened to eclipse the United States.  Plus, their jobs as spies exposed them to the shady, sleazy and just plain repulsive side of America’s government. Philip would never equate America’s wealth with virtue.

And this is probably a day too late, but Gregory and Elizabeth’s relationship had clearly been off the boil for quite some time. He was only contacted because Robert’s message from beyond the grave and subsequent storyline took place in Philadelphia, and Gregory was their cultivated asset in the area.

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, scartact said:

I haven't started any sort of rewatch on the show yet (where I believe I've said I have a stated interest in analyzing aspects of the show as an immigrant narrative), but my understanding of Philip is that he is never wholly settled, nor feels wholly accepted in either country, which is a very real feeling.

I definitely thought that was the idea. Another thing I liked in the finale was how their last exchange about the USSR mirrors what they say when they get to the US, without being a real parallel. When they get to the US Philip says it's "brighter" than he'd imagined, that reading about you can't prepare you for the reality and Elizabeth answers by saying there's a weakness in the people there she can feel. Iow, Philip is a little unsure how the place feels to him and Elizabeth just says how they're going to relate to it. He's soaking in the feeling of the place, she's determining how she'll deal with it. In START Philip, back in the USSR, says, "It feels strange" and Elizabeth says they'll get used to it.

That's not directly related to what you're describing but I really do think that's the way Philip is supposed to feel, not belonging in either place completely. (That is, he won't feel completely belonging in the USSR after the show ends.) It also seems to me to reflect how his character always seems very isolated despite being the personable one. It's probably another reason he's so devoted to Elizabeth, someone he says once with confidence actually knows him. In The Colonel I think I remember Elizabeth saying the kids "understand" Philip in ways they don't here, but in some ways I think the kids might understand him less--they just don't know it.

[scartact]

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

That's not directly related to what you're describing but I really do think that's the way Philip is supposed to feel, not belonging in either place completely. (That is, he won't feel completely belonging in the USSR after the show ends.) It also seems to me to reflect how his character always seems very isolated despite being the personable one. It's probably another reason he's so devoted to Elizabeth, someone he says once with confidence actually knows him.

I couldn't quite articulate it when I wrote my initial post, but I do find Philip to be actually quite longing and incredibly lonely. And to me, this is connected to the idea that often Philip is more abstract in his way of being in contrast to Elizabeth's concreteness. An essentializing perspective on both is that Philip is grey while Elizabeth is black and white, but I don't necessarily buy that this always holds true throughout the series. It's more of that's their default and/or typical pattern and way of existing, thus when the narrative allows each of them to be the other way, it can be very surprising.

I do think very generally, the only thing he truly finds confidence in is his family and that is his greatest character motivation, which is inherently from a person-based perspective. And of course, this is in contrast to Elizabeth, who is ideology-based and arguably more place-based (though Tuan served as a critique to that because much more slowly and incrementally, she moves toward Philip's way of being), thus her greatest character motivation is the cause. But I always fundamentally go back to that one moment where Philip is trying to share with Elizabeth that all of it matters to him (I can't remember where that happened - season 3 maybe?). The rub is that Philip, for better or worse, can't compartmentalize as well as Elizabeth can (which I remember talking about once in the Liz thread haha).

As for Paige and Henry "understanding" Philip, I always think of it more as Philip understands them better than Elizabeth does, especially from a culturally assimilative perspective. But I don't fully recall if Elizabeth asserted it as the kids "understanding" him better, or him understanding them better (slight, but significant semantic difference!).

But all this to say is that I do think there's a relationship to Philip's way of being (his abstractness, his isolation/deep loneliness) and how he locates himself to either country. There certainly is a desire and a want to be part of, but there are ways that it's also just out of his reach, for both the USSR and US.

[Umbelina]

14 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Also happiness is relative. His life was probably a lot like the lives of other people he knew. As he said to Paige, there were things in his hometown that he liked, there were things that were hard, but people there didn't think about whether they liked their hometown the way an American kid would grow up wishing they were born somewhere else.

What did he say he liked other than snow and icicles?  Things in a Gulag town in Siberia, when his father dies when he's young, and he's blocked everything out for years, to the point of joining EST to TRY TO REMEMBER are a little bit worse than "hard."  Personally, I do think Philip would consider how his life may have been different if they had heat and enough to eat, and if he wasn't getting the crap beat out of him daily, or he didn't have to go to work as a child, and then have his boss not pay him the agreed wages?   He never even mentioned his own brother.   Whether that would be imagining growing up like Henry or Paige, or simply the relative luxury, though poor, that Elizabeth enjoyed is hard to say.  Since he can't remember his, it was so horrible, I'd imagine those thoughts of "what if?" crossed his mind.

When the KGB snapped him up (and oh how I wish we at least got to see SOMETHING about that!) he entered a world with many American comforts, since they were training them to BE Americans.  He also had to undergo "sex training" and as a young boy/man have sex with strangers, very old, very young, either sex, and subvert that repulsion into "making it real" which honestly, had to seriously fuck him up.  The old saying is true, a woman COULD "just lie there" or at least fake enthusiasm and orgasm,  but poor young Philip had to screw with his own mind to get it up.  I honestly can't imagine how horrible that was and remained.

12 hours ago, scartact said:

I haven't started any sort of rewatch on the show yet (where I believe I've said I have a stated interest in analyzing aspects of the show as an immigrant narrative), but my understanding of Philip is that he is never wholly settled, nor feels wholly accepted in either country, which is a very real feeling.

He definitely better assimilates to the US than Elizabeth does, but by season 6 with his failing business we see that the life Philip wishes he could live is not a reality (no matter how much he shuffles in his cowboy boots), and to me there's something about that that on some level vaguely parallels the arc of his relationship to the USSR and being a weapon of the KGB.

I think we see so many times with Philip where he criticizes both the USSR and the USA.  Actually, I think he was a realist, and saw both countries for what they were, at least he had a much clearer picture than the brainwashed Elizabeth.  "Why can't we grow enough wheat?"  "Why didn't they test the submarine part, why can't we make our own?"  His attentiveness to William describing the deplorable conditions for scientists in the USSR, can't even get lids to fit.  Listening to the Russian defector talk about just how very bad things are "back home" interested him too, he tried to bring it up with Elizabeth, but of course she shut it down. 

The show ignored most news and books about Russia, but I can't imagine, for example, that Philip NEVER read Solzhenitsyn.  He grew up in a place just as the books describe.  I can see Elizabeth pointedly ignoring the films of the bread lines, and comments of those who defected or escaped, or books that didn't portray the USSR in glowing terms, but it's honestly hard for me to imagine Philip would.  Especially a book about Gulags, set in places just like he grew up, and was trying so desperately hard to remember.

That's the other thing though, about his failing at his job.  If he were truly OUT of the KGB (in other words, if he didn't have to maintain that Travel Agency for Elizabeth's cover) he could have easily chosen to do something else, or even go back to school.  The USA wasn't the USSR, you weren't assigned a job and stuck there for life, or if lucky, promoted in the same industry.  Basically, he was still working for the KGB, not being truly free to choose a job for himself.  His "failure" at capitalism doesn't equate to "he would fail in the work aspect of the USA."  He never got a chance to choose.  Aside from that, people can fail at one job and go on to do great in a different career.

11 hours ago, kokapetl said:

And this is probably a day too late, but Gregory and Elizabeth’s relationship had clearly been off the boil for quite some time. He was only contacted because Robert’s message from beyond the grave and subsequent storyline took place in Philadelphia, and Gregory was their cultivated asset in the area.

Then why the scene where she goes to him and won't make fun of Philip with him anymore, and then breaks it off?  He was obviously expecting to talk as they always did, and make love as they usually did, and was very surprised that she was at all interested in switching to Philip, which to him must have seemed (from the look on his face, and his words) unbelievable at least.

I just have such a hard time with "things were already long over with Gregory" ideas when to me, that's not what the show said.  Or showed.  It was a complicated idea I think, the idea that after many years of pretending, and living and working together, a woman (Elizabeth) could suddenly see her roommate/coworker with different eyes, and begin to love him.  It's maybe a hard sell to think that Elizabeth could have loved Gregory so deeply and so long, and then just be blindsided practically with the probably astonishing idea that, hmmm, I have this terrific man, Philip, right here, and he just gave up his dream of defecting because Timochev HURT me when I was a young.  Philip loving her that much jogged something in her, opened her eyes, or made the scales fall from them, and made her reconsider. 

Also, she had reported on Philip to the KGB, and she knew what that might mean for him, prison or death.  So if she had feelings for him at all, why would she ever do that?

It was only then that she broke it off with Gregory.  Also I have to say, I was shocked by the reveal that Elizabeth lied to Philip about Gregory for well over a decade.  I thought she'd at least be honest with him since Philip also had to work with Gregory, and because, you really should be honest with your spy partner, for safety's sake if nothing else.  As someone who has been cheated on, I will say, the lies and embarrassment (for example, Philip now realizing how Gregory probably saw him all those years, a cuckold, a fool) hurt far more than the idea that two people had sex.

Gregory was used often in operations, but I got the definite impression that Elizabeth and Gregory certainly didn't only meet up when she needed him for that.  There were enough flashbacks of laying around in bed with him, and his ease with her, and the fact the neighborhood guys all knew her implied, to me anyway, that she was there pretty regularly.

5 hours ago, scartact said:

couldn't quite articulate it when I wrote my initial post, but I do find Philip to be actually quite longing and incredibly lonely. And to me, this is connected to the idea that often Philip is more abstract in his way of being in contrast to Elizabeth's concreteness. An essentializing perspective on both is that Philip is grey while Elizabeth is black and white, but I don't necessarily buy that this always holds true throughout the series. It's more of that's their default and/or typical pattern and way of existing, thus when the narrative allows each of them to be the other way, it can be very surprising.

I think that's true.  I think of it more as Philip has an open mind, and Elizabeth's was closed to any possible thing that could make her feel like her (traitor*) father's blood was a part of her.  She was determined to remove that stain from her family.  I think that was really the key to Elizabeth's remarkable ability to continue to support what was an obviously flawed system with no chance of ever actually realizing either equality, the end of hunger, respect for all regardless of the work they did, OR world peace.

5 hours ago, scartact said:

But all this to say is that I do think there's a relationship to Philip's way of being (his abstractness, his isolation/deep loneliness) and how he locates himself to either country. There certainly is a desire and a want to be part of, but there are ways that it's also just out of his reach, for both the USSR and US.

Yes, I so agree!  He was so lonely.  Elizabeth had Gregory, and she could be truthful with him, and she also had a besotted puppy dog Philip on her back burner.  Philip only had a distant, dutiful, cold Elizabeth, she was the only one he could ever be honest with.  It took a huge toll on him, having to lie to everyone all the time, his kids, his friend Stan, his "wife" Martha.  When Elizabeth decided to give him a chance at an actual love relationship, he grabbed on with both hands, it was all he had.  Even after Paige knew, he was shut out of her life for the most part, not allowed, or not willing to be completely honest with her about the horror of a life she was entering.

* "Traitor" as defined by Stalin in WWII that is, which may have only meant he surrendered while out of bullets and facing Nazi Panzer division, while in command of a bunch of 11 year olds armed with sticks.  Any surrender was considered treason.  You would be shot if you even tried to hide in that circumstance, so I always kind of wondered about her poor father.

Edited August 14, 2018 by Umbelina
added clarity

[kokapetl]

Using numbered points could really help define the limits of the argument. Such as:

1. Elizabeth and Gregory are soul mates.
2. Philip hates the USSR.
3. Soviet technology and manufacturing is defined through jar lid threads. 
4. And absolutely not through it’s very successful space program. 

[sistermagpie]

10 hours ago, Umbelina said:

What did he say he liked other than snow and icicles? 

I wasn't talking about him listing things that he liked, I was just looking at all the stuff we get about his past and it doesn't seem like all his memories are terrible at all. He's happy in his flashback with Irina, his comments about cold and icicles seem linked in those scenes to nostalgia rather than a fondness for things at low temperatures. His memories of his dad coming home with stuff aren't all particularly nightmarish, just neutral, like when he's sitting at the table playing with a plane it looks like somebody made for him. Or when he and his father are playing together like they're flying. He seems fond of his mother when he talks about her being tough and not at all negative about his job making rakes in general outside of the greedy manager incident. Getting pots to lick from the communal kitchen doesn't seem particularly painful for him either. He doesn't seem automatically troubled when asked about his childhood or anything.

So basically it just doesn't seem like whatever memory we're seeing or hearing about is ever in context of Philip thinking of the USSR as a terrible place that he escaped and is afraid of returning to. He lobbies to return there in S 4 and 5 and never talks about needing to keep the kids away from there. So why would I think wanting to stay away from the USSR was a motivation for him? Especially when he's the one onscreen wanting to live there?

15 hours ago, scartact said:

As for Paige and Henry "understanding" Philip, I always think of it more as Philip understands them better than Elizabeth does, especially from a culturally assimilative perspective. But I don't fully recall if Elizabeth asserted it as the kids "understanding" him better, or him understanding them better (slight, but significant semantic difference!).

 

Yes, I agree--it is more than he understands them, which I think he does. In the last season especially I think Philip's seeing pretty clearly a lot of what's going on with the kids when Elizabeth's never been more in denial about them. She's cut herself off from Henry and barely knows how to find her way back and it seems like almost everything she says and thinks about Paige is about what she desperately wants her to be but she isn't. 

I believe she says to Philip about the kids, "You're the one they want. The one they understand." Which fits a lot of what I see with Elizabeth where she wants her kids to understand her more than the other way around. She feels like she's so right about things but isn't able to communicate it either because of orders or because they're so different. I think she prefers seeing it in those terms. Maybe especially here where she's saying the kids want him more than her. But of course the words she's choosing are mostly motivated by what Elizabeth thinks and needs in that moment, not necessarily a description of reality one way or the other.

But I feel like with Philip the understanding the kids have might ultimately seem to be that much more of a lie because of that. They both know Elizabeth is weird. They know they don't know. Paige and Elizabeth seem to cling to things they recognize as being alike in each other only to discover things they thought would therefore also be understood aren't. Henry's insightful enough to see that Elizabeth is sad, but has no clue to the reason. 

Philip's better at inhabiting the role of suburban dad so it feels to me like he would be far more of a mystery when the truth was revealed. At least to Henry. Paige seems to have found a way to keep a lot of Philip in that box even after knowing he's a spy. (This is, after all, someone who seemed to be able to even be a Soviet spy herself without grasping what she was doing.) In some ways maybe Henry learning the truth will make him say, "That explains it..." about things concerning both his parents, but I feel like it would also open even more questions about Philip than with Elizabeth. Plus Henry probably felt like he'd lost a large part of Elizabeth already by S6 while he felt close to the father he now knows didn't truly exist.

15 hours ago, scartact said:

I do think very generally, the only thing he truly finds confidence in is his family and that is his greatest character motivation, which is inherently from a person-based perspective. And of course, this is in contrast to Elizabeth, who is ideology-based and arguably more place-based (though Tuan served as a critique to that because much more slowly and incrementally, she moves toward Philip's way of being),

Also despite Elizabeth more aggressively defining herself as place-based, Philip's flashbacks (and even occasional lines) are more connected to place. They're more sensory while Elizabeth's tend to be very focused on what's being said with the background not being as noticeable except in that flashback with the horse. (A flashback where I read one theory the background is slightly distorted by memory anyway, interestingly enough.)

Which doesn't have any particular good meaning, but I think it fits that state of longing and belonging/not-belonging. Plus I think Philip often just lacks the words to describe what he's feeling while Elizabeth often filters her feelings through ideas she approves of, if that makes sense. And in general I think she's maybe more able to describe her feelings intellectually in general, like she's able to do in Gregory. Philip really struggles more when articulating his feelings. 

15 hours ago, scartact said:

But all this to say is that I do think there's a relationship to Philip's way of being (his abstractness, his isolation/deep loneliness) and how he locates himself to either country. There certainly is a desire and a want to be part of, but there are ways that it's also just out of his reach, for both the USSR and US.

I agree--something I think might be reflected in different ways with the kids as well. But in general I imagine that one of the things that must draw him to Elizabeth, even though it's also a source of problems, is how confidently she proclaims and feels herself part of things and has everyone agree to it. He assimilates more to the US, but that's in large part because she so aggressively identifies with the USSR that she feels part of it even when she's not there. 

And of course that makes her eager to deny anything that would make her doubt the thing that she's part of where Philip is a natural doubter. I really do think they're drawn to the thing in the other person that's so unlike themselves.

That's also reflected in the compartmentalization, I think. She feels so well-defined to herself that she feels she knows when she's not being herself. Philip's personality is refracted across many roles with each one having a mixture of the true person and true desire and lies. That also goes back to the Gregory situation. Both of them seem to acknowledge that a large part of it was that Gregory reflected who Elizabeth truly was, so that being with him was the only time she was able to be herself. He's there to remind her who she really is. But through the years parts of her cover life do become hers so the situation's reversed, even without her being aware of it--people aren't always aware of incremental changes as they're happening. Plus it's not something she'd have to think about since they're not always together. She wouldn't analyze too deeply if she was finding more reasons she couldn't sneak off to see him, or wasn't as grateful for a reason she had to see him, etc. In season 6 it felt to me like Elizabeth was always "on" except when she was with Philip (and ironically...Henry).

[Umbelina]

1 hour ago, kokapetl said:

Using numbered points could really help define the limits of the argument. Such as:

1. Elizabeth and Gregory are soul mates.
2. Philip hates the USSR.
3. Soviet technology and manufacturing is defined through jar lid threads. 
4. And absolutely not through it’s very successful space program. 

Ha!

1.  I don't think anyone has said that, and certainly not me.  I think they loved each other and enjoyed each other, and Gregory was the closest thing to a lover/best friend Elizabeth had for at least 14 years, possibly 16.  "Soul mate?"  No.  Real love?  Yes.  They share respect, ideals, and probably some excellent sex and pot, and that's pretty damn good.

2.  I didn't say that either.  I think he had a clear view of the USSR, unlike Elizabeth.  I think Philip saw the issues with both countries, but as he said, at least in the USA the electricity works all the time, and there is enough food.  I need to find that exact quote.  He, in other words, wasn't blind to the issues of either country, he saw them.  It's not about hate/love/patriotism for him, it's more "real."  Which country provides the best life, which country is least likely to blow up the cities with nukes (both, but the USA did it.)  I think he was far beyond love or hate for any country.

3.  No, not just that.  The show gave many examples of the mess that was the USSR, and we know it collapses shortly after they return.  Oleg's story of corruption/shortages/privileges with food.  They can't produce enough wheat, or at least get it to the stores as bread.  The Russian husband's stories.  The idiotic use of the submarine part without even bothering to test it.  The bread lines we ALL know about, so certainly Philip would know.  The disastrous situation with so many things, such as the collective farms, the shared bathrooms/kitchens/apartments.  And yes, scientists without enough working equipment to safely handle the bioweapons they were stealing.  There were many stories on the show talking about the issues in the USSR.

4.  As William said, they had brilliant people, but the system usually didn't allow them to safely achieve anything.  Their space program was excellent, but that didn't keep the electricity on, or stock food shelves. 

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes, I agree--it is more than he understands them, which I think he does. In the last season especially I think Philip's seeing pretty clearly a lot of what's going on with the kids when Elizabeth's never been more in denial about them. She's cut herself off from Henry and barely knows how to find her way back and it seems like almost everything she says and thinks about Paige is about what she desperately wants her to be but she isn't. 

I believe she says to Philip about the kids, "You're the one they want. The one they understand." Which fits a lot of what I see with Elizabeth where she wants her kids to understand her more than the other way around. She feels like she's so right about things but isn't able to communicate it either because of orders or because they're so different. I think she prefers seeing it in those terms. Maybe especially here where she's saying the kids want him more than her. But of course the words she's choosing are mostly motivated by what Elizabeth thinks and needs in that moment, not necessarily a description of reality one way or the other.

But I feel like with Philip the understanding the kids have might ultimately seem to be that much more of a lie because of that. They both know Elizabeth is weird. They know they don't know. Paige and Elizabeth seem to cling to things they recognize as being alike in each other only to discover things they thought would therefore also be understood aren't. Henry's insightful enough to see that Elizabeth is sad, but has no clue to the reason. 

Philip's better at inhabiting the role of suburban dad so it feels to me like he would be far more of a mystery when the truth was revealed. At least to Henry. Paige seems to have found a way to keep a lot of Philip in that box even after knowing he's a spy. (This is, after all, someone who seemed to be able to even be a Soviet spy herself without grasping what she was doing.) In some ways maybe Henry learning the truth will make him say, "That explains it..." about things concerning both his parents, but I feel like it would also open even more questions about Philip than with Elizabeth. Plus Henry probably felt like he'd lost a large part of Elizabeth already by S6 while he felt close to the father he now knows didn't truly exist.

Also despite Elizabeth more aggressively defining herself as place-based, Philip's flashbacks (and even occasional lines) are more connected to place. They're more sensory while Elizabeth's tend to be very focused on what's being said with the background not being as noticeable except in that flashback with the horse. (A flashback where I read one theory the background is slightly distorted by memory anyway, interestingly enough.)

 

 

I agree. 

I also think the first genuine interest she had in one of her children was when she realized she could make a mini me.  Much as you say later about Gregory being "like her" was also true in her relationship with Paige.  As Paige became "more like her" Elizabeth's interest blossomed.  In some way, Elizabeth only really understood herself, and even that was limited.  It was easier for her to relate to and bond with people who seemed to be similar to her.  Even with Young Hee, it was that she was also from a different country that started their bond. 

I'm not saying she had no interest in her children, of course she did, and of course she, in her way, cared about them.  What I'm trying to say is that Paige's following in her mother's footsteps in the KGB was the first intense spark of connection for Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth is really a very basic person, she's not a deep thinker, she's a soldier.  She's a very good soldier, she follows orders, she does whatever is needed to accomplish her tasks, she is loyal to her country to the point of denial.  She can murder like a robot and rarely feels guilt or even reflection about it.  Philip was really her only humanizing factor, the only time she kinda/sorta allowed herself to think a bit, to approach the idea of true honesty (with herself.)  I know they tried to do that with Young Hee, but to me it was only partially successful, and of course she was lying to Young Hee. 

I think Elizabeth lucked out by having Philip in her life.  He was really perfect for her, in every way.  I wish I felt that way about Philip having Elizabeth, but I really don't.  I think he would have been much happier with someone else, and leading a very different kind of life.

About Philip's life at home, in the drab and dark, sparsely furnished hovel?  His father brought home bloody boots. Yes there was a toy wood plane, also crutches, filth, and extreme poverty.  His boss (as a working child) tried to stiff him on wages.  The kids in town beat him up and stole from him.  He struggled to think of a "dish" he liked as a kid when Paige asked, "she made a soup I liked once."  Probably because somehow she got her hands on a bit of meat. 

I am so pissed that the writers showed us so much of Elizabeth's childhood, but only endlessly teased about Philip's.  She was the focus of the show, but his history, and his current issues about it, were SO much more interesting.  They wanted to show us why she was a robot soldier who didn't think, but I think they accomplished that early on.  With Philip?  We never got any answers.

Edited August 14, 2018 by Umbelina

[scartact]

37 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Paige seems to have found a way to keep a lot of Philip in that box even after knowing he's a spy. (This is, after all, someone who seemed to be able to even be a Soviet spy herself without grasping what she was doing.)

This has shades of Elizabeth in Paige's compartmentalization of Philip, no? But yes, indeed it was super silly for Paige to have delineated between what she and Elizabeth do in contrast to Philip because he's "retired," so it definitely made that scene where Philip fights Paige even more disconcerting, because from her perspective, her father's gone soft, but Philip is as tough as ever (as we saw over the last five seasons prior to his retirement). Plus, unless I'm misremembering, was that moment the first time we saw Philip fight post-retirement? If so, that also speaks not just to Paige not realizing Philip is still a very strong, but it reminds us as the audience too that Philip didn't necessarily lose his years of training (in the event that we were somehow wondering, since he was "retired" and all).

 

59 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Also despite Elizabeth more aggressively defining herself as place-based, Philip's flashbacks (and even occasional lines) are more connected to place. They're more sensory while Elizabeth's tend to be very focused on what's being said with the background not being as noticeable except in that flashback with the horse. (A flashback where I read one theory the background is slightly distorted by memory anyway, interestingly enough.)

Which doesn't have any particular good meaning, but I think it fits that state of longing and belonging/not-belonging. Plus I think Philip often just lacks the words to describe what he's feeling while Elizabeth often filters her feelings through ideas she approves of, if that makes sense. And in general I think she's maybe more able to describe her feelings intellectually in general, like she's able to do in Gregory. Philip really struggles more when articulating his feelings. 

Well, I do think this falls back into Philip's abstraction vs. Elizabeth's concreteness. She's more place-based in that she can very much particularize and locate, while Philip often feels and intuits. The flashbacks follow the through-line of who their characters are. But yes, I also feel that Philip feels more, and thus cannot always describe, while Elizabeth intellectualizes more and will thus more often have the words. To be honest, I really do love this point of distinction between both characters and that this provides a source of natural tension and conflict for both of them, but it doesn't subtract from their marriage and relationship to each other.

 

42 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

And of course that makes her eager to deny anything that would make her doubt the thing that she's part of where Philip is a natural doubter. I really do think they're drawn to the thing in the other person that's so unlike themselves.

Yes, definitely! Philip is drawn to the stability of her idealism that his inclination toward doubt never provides him. There's definitely security in that. I'm not sure if this is a reaching parallel, but I recall during the initial run of The X-Files, Duchovny said that Scully is Mulder's human credentials (googled and found the original quote on Tumblr), and I wonder if on some level we can make that same reach of Philip for Elizabeth. I know folks find Elizabeth very harsh and inhuman in some ways, but Philip gives her something she cannot always give herself (like during the Young Hee operation, where he tells her it's okay for her to have apprehensions and feelings around it; using his natural doubt to push Elizabeth to question the kinds of things she's pushed to do in season 6).

 

26 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

I'm not saying she had no interest in her children, of course she did, and of course she, in her way, cared about them.  What I'm trying to say is that Paige's following in her mother's footsteps in the KGB was the first intense spark of connection for Elizabeth. 

I definitely believe Elizabeth loved her children, but she totally projected onto them! To go into my half-baked reading of immigrant parent/Diasporic narratives, I think what this exemplifies is Elizabeth conceptualizes success for her children, not necessarily through tropes of the American Dream, but through this idea that they would learn to take on her ideology as theirs. This recalls the Pilot where, back when Phil and Liz seemed to have sworn to each other that their children would never get pulled into spying, she tells Philip that they can be raised to be socialists.

 

On a random note, I've been thinking about how there's reviews and think pieces out there that will say, "At the heart of X Show, it is about [insert broad concept/idea]" (for example, many critics often talked about how the show is about about spying, but is actually about marriage), and I've always taken on the stance that the show is much more emotionally compelled and grounded by the marriage and family dynamic, hence why all the payoffs were emotional, rather than plot-driven (if the family is the emotional center, I think the espionage can be viewed as the "plot" center). And this is why I'm more or less fascinated by this notion of a reinterpretation of the show as an underlying and covert immigrant narrative, because I honestly do see it in so many ways (and I'm not the only one who has that reading; I always think of Mindy Kaling's tweet about the show, which also has a small back and forth with her and Joel Fields about this). But anyway, that's enough for now of my pending dissertation topic for this show!

[Umbelina]

 

This was such an important scene in the story of Philip and Elizabeth.  "It never really happened that way for us, did it?"  Philip:  "No."  Elizabeth apologizes and wishes that it had, then says, "but I feel like it's happening NOW."

That's why I don't think they had anything before she broke up with Gregory (well that, and other scenes)

Yay!  Found the quote!

He sounds pretty damn sincere here, and no, I don't think that ever changed.  He stayed in the KGB because of Elizabeth.  He left for the USSR because they were blown, hunted, too late to try defecting, plus all the dead FBI agents.

 

Oh @sistermagpie, this is the flying scene you mean!  I honestly don't remember even seeing this one. 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Umbelina

[sistermagpie]

6 hours ago, Umbelina said:

I also think the first genuine interest she had in one of her children was when she realized she could make a mini me.  Much as you say later about Gregory being "like her" was also true in her relationship with Paige.  As Paige became "more like her" Elizabeth's interest blossomed.  In some way, Elizabeth only really understood herself, and even that was limited.  It was easier for her to relate to and bond with people who seemed to be similar to her.  Even with Young Hee, it was that she was also from a different country that started their bond. 

Yeah, I feel like this is really explicit with her. She really had a hard time relating to people if she didn't have some specific thing that she acknowledged about herself--usually in a good way. Young Hee definitely fit. So did that Ben guy once she knew he was actually growing wheat to help people. And I think once she had a way in she maybe had a tendency to even imagine the person even more like her than they were. That's one one of the reasons I find Betty in Electric Sheep so ridiculous. She practically ticks down a list of stuff that Elizabeth can relate to just so Elizabeth can feel bad about killing her. She feels more like a figment of Elizabeth's imagination than a person to me.

6 hours ago, Umbelina said:

About Philip's life at home, in the drab and dark, sparsely furnished hovel?  His father brought home bloody boots. Yes there was a toy wood plane, also crutches, filth, and extreme poverty.  His boss (as a working child) tried to stiff him on wages.  The kids in town beat him up and stole from him.  He struggled to think of a "dish" he liked as a kid when Paige asked, "she made a soup I liked once."  Probably because somehow she got her hands on a bit of meat. 

But imo that's more just objectively looking at his life and seeing it as relatively bad. It's not the same as the show presenting these things as something Philip's motivated by that makes him want to avoid the USSR forever. Those memories don't seem particular bad ones for him. The blood on the boots seems important because it's a clue about his father's job more than something that's repulsive to him even now and he wasn't looking at his surroundings through the eyes of a middle class American.

We know that he sees the amenities--like in the scene you mention where he says, "What's so bad about (living in) the US? The food's pretty good, the electricity works...etc." He knows the life he lives in the US is more than he could have dreamt of as a child. But he doesn't seem primarily motivated by a fear of losing it or a desire to keep himself or his kids away from his home country. He's totally fine with that possibility. He's willing to defect to keep the family together in the pilot, obviously. He doesn't feel like it would be traitorous to retire to the US instead of the USSR, but he chooses other things over that. (A lot of guys wouldn't have killed Timoshev like he does.) It seems like S6 was kind of playing out the dreams we hear about in S1--Elizabeth gets to just focus on spying, Philip gets to retire, and it seems like it clarifies things for them. Not just, imo, because of external pressures like overwork or business troubles. Philip's mostly out then and refuses to get back in on Elizabeth's terms, but he does get back into the game on his own.

I agree the show just wasn't interested in giving Philip the kind of context they did for Elizabeth and I really wish they would have. It's not like they'd have to spell it out that clearly or hit us over the head with it. I don't think he's as straightforward as Elizabeth where it's easy to have a flashback of a conversation that signposts some idea that Philip lives by, but they could have had some personal interaction somewhere that was illuminating, even if it was more abstract. With the introduction of the brother they might as well have been sticking their tongue out at us!

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

That's why I don't think they had anything before she broke up with Gregory (well that, and other scenes)

I don't think anyone disputes that nothing happened with Philip before the pilot. The end of the pilot, really. It's that things had changed with Gregory before anything happened with Philip and before she actually broke up with Gregory. It's never a love triangle.

5 hours ago, scartact said:

This has shades of Elizabeth in Paige's compartmentalization of Philip, no? But yes, indeed it was super silly for Paige to have delineated between what she and Elizabeth do in contrast to Philip because he's "retired," so it definitely made that scene where Philip fights Paige even more disconcerting, because from her perspective, her father's gone soft, but Philip is as tough as ever (as we saw over the last five seasons prior to his retirement). Plus, unless I'm misremembering, was that moment the first time we saw Philip fight post-retirement? If so, that also speaks not just to Paige not realizing Philip is still a very strong, but it reminds us as the audience too that Philip didn't necessarily lose his years of training (in the event that we were somehow wondering, since he was "retired" and all).

I wonder if it's also significant that Paige never saw Philip fight either way. She saw Elizabeth kill someone and asked if Dad learned that too, but she never saw Philip in action. It seems like her view of her father was always that he was the soft one. She was never afraid of him--even after the Bible ripping she punished him by not talking to him. She was frustrated when he seemed to be on her mother's side and nearly the only time she was actively supportive of him was when she was using it against Elizabeth. (Like in S6 when she asks if her dad knows that he "married a whore" and then later greets her parents at her parents by accusing her mother of bringing her dad as back up or whatever.) Despite knowing that Philip was a spy for many years she lectures him about how the Colonel might have died. (Perhaps this is also a way of denying the softness in herself since she originally ran to him after it happened.) It's as if she can never quite picture Philip being a badass like her and her mom because he's not one at home and she's never seen him work. Might as well just imagine him maybe just talking to people sometimes or something.

I always felt like Paige, like Elizabeth maybe, was the type of person who respected people who made her prove herself. Philip's love was too unconditional for her to respect. Elizabeth was the one she was in competition with and the one who seemed tougher. It really makes me wonder exactly what conclusions Paige drew from that fight. How differently did she see Philip afterwards? They really don't have any significant interactions afterwards.

ETA: Umbelina:

Quote

this is the flying scene you mean!  I honestly don't remember even seeing this one. 

Yes, that's the one. That one makes me think of Henry, actually, in a way that relates to this convo. Iirc, Philip thinks of that after he's found out his father was a guard. So he's thinking about his own memories of him, and the guy being affectionate at home, but wondering if there could have been another side to him. As he says to Elizabeth, he never knew his own family.
 

5 hours ago, scartact said:

Well, I do think this falls back into Philip's abstraction vs. Elizabeth's concreteness. She's more place-based in that she can very much particularize and locate, while Philip often feels and intuits. The flashbacks follow the through-line of who their characters are. But yes, I also feel that Philip feels more, and thus cannot always describe, while Elizabeth intellectualizes more and will thus more often have the words. To be honest, I really do love this point of distinction between both characters and that this provides a source of natural tension and conflict for both of them, but it doesn't subtract from their marriage and relationship to each other.

Yes--and also how both sides can also lead to something else. Elizabeth isn't so intellectual that she can't manipulate feelings and Philip's intuition often leads to good strategy. And of course it's also reflected in the things they choose that can make them healthier, things that are basically lessons in the other person's way. EST is a place where you analyze experiences and how you feel about them to understand what you want. (It's therapy.) While Elizabeth does art therapy that encourages her to stop analyzing things from outside and put herself "into" the art and therefore the world.

This conversation, for instance, made me realize that while Elizabeth is able to express her feelings about Gregory very well and could probably also articulate why she kept it secret etc. even, I don't think Philip could have really explained at the time why he slept with Irina or maybe even why he lied about it. It's not like he seems to sleep with her out of any wave of affection or desire.

5 hours ago, scartact said:

Yes, definitely! Philip is drawn to the stability of her idealism that his inclination toward doubt never provides him. There's definitely security in that. I'm not sure if this is a reaching parallel, but I recall during the initial run of The X-Files, Duchovny said that Scully is Mulder's human credentials (googled and found the original quote on Tumblr), and I wonder if on some level we can make that same reach of Philip for Elizabeth. I know folks find Elizabeth very harsh and inhuman in some ways, but Philip gives her something she cannot always give herself (like during the Young Hee operation, where he tells her it's okay for her to have apprehensions and feelings around it; using his natural doubt to push Elizabeth to question the kinds of things she's pushed to do in season 6).

Totally remember that X-Files quote! But yes, I think there are a lot of things that Philip does get from Elizabeth, even if it might have been easier for him if he could get it for someone else. I think it's sometimes hard to tell what he's getting from her since on one hand there's so many ways she's difficult and on the other hand it's easy to just get distracted by her being beautiful, but I do think there are things about her that are genuinely important for him. The sincere faith, her ability to have strong relationships as herself. I think her sincerity as well--we rarely if ever see Philip making himself into the person he thinks she wants him to be. Maybe because she was so resistant to him early on he gave up.

I also do think that Elizabeth is often soft and comforting with him, but that he appreciates her toughness as well. (The one thing Philip ever says about his mother, is that she was tough. But where Elizabeth seems a bit defensive of her own mother's toughness at times and sometimes seems to question her love, Philip seems openly affectionate about his own tough mother.)

5 hours ago, scartact said:

I definitely believe Elizabeth loved her children, but she totally projected onto them! To go into my half-baked reading of immigrant parent/Diasporic narratives, I think what this exemplifies is Elizabeth conceptualizes success for her children, not necessarily through tropes of the American Dream, but through this idea that they would learn to take on her ideology as theirs. This recalls the Pilot where, back when Phil and Liz seemed to have sworn to each other that their children would never get pulled into spying, she tells Philip that they can be raised to be socialists.

Absolutely. And not only does Elizabeth see it as her job to make her kids a success by the standards she was raised with instead of the ones of their own country, we know that Elizabeth gave herself a definition of success that was narrow even for Russia. I was thinking, for instance, of when they're watching Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears and Claudia says that Elizabeth might have been one of those "silly girls" in the movie and Elizabeth's reaction seems so ambiguous. Would she have liked to have been one of them? Do they make her feel disconnected to the country instead of tied to it? (She does seem to reach back to it when saying what her life might have been in the final scene.)

Philip, of course, also rents a Russian movie. One that I haven't seen but that seems like a comedy a bit critical of modern Soviet life. But this conversation makes me remember how he seems to put it in the VCR and then sit back and open his eyes like he's letting it wash over him. LOL.

Edited August 15, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Umbelina]

4 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Those memories don't seem particular bad ones for him.

Again, I keep going back to HE BLOCKED THEM.  He worked for most of the series on trying to remember his childhood.  He remembered the murder, so that wasn't it.

6 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

I agree the show just wasn't interested in giving Philip the kind of context they did for Elizabeth and I really wish they would have. It's not like they'd have to spell it out that clearly or hit us over the head with it. I don't think he's as straightforward as Elizabeth where it's easy to have a flashback of a conversation that signposts some idea that Philip lives by, but they could have had some personal interaction somewhere that was illuminating, even if it was more abstract. With the introduction of the brother they might as well have been sticking their tongue out at us!

They really didn't give a shit about Philip much.  It was Elizabeth's story, edgy you know, have a woman in a couple be the real bad ass, dedicated, loyal soldier. 

Her story was also simple, and not unusual for it's time.  They had an apartment to themselves in a city.  They weren't sharing a stove with 5 other families.  Her dad the "traitor" as her motivating force.  Her mother telling her only to depend on herself.

Contrast that with Philip's story, which is BY FAR more interesting, and would have been so compelling.  Instead they threw out some easy clues to a complicated and horrifying childhood, and then dropped it.  Then they brought his brother back to get rid of the pointless Misha story (and hello, how the hell did a kid with one language even make it to DC?  How did he know his dad wasn't a travel agent in San Francisco or NYC?)  STUPID story, incomplete, like all of Philip's stories.  Even his baby momma story was so limited and so lame.

8 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

I always felt like Paige, like Elizabeth maybe, was the type of person who respected people who made her prove herself. Philip's love was too unconditional for her to respect. Elizabeth was the one she was in competition with and the one who seemed tougher. It really makes me wonder exactly what conclusions Paige drew from that fight. How differently did she see Philip afterwards? They really don't have any significant interactions afterwards.

Again, it was Philip, so they didn't bother.  SUCH a mistake, and it's why Keri just got that award and not Mathew, she had all the juicy stuff to play, she got the complete treatment.

Also, it just made Paige look pathetically stupid, or rather, more stupid, a twelve year old might act the way Paige did, screaming secrets when Henry could hear, never opening a book or newspaper, not following up on operations she was directly involved with by checking the newspapers.  Just bizarre.  Hell, even a twelve year old would.  It's almost as if she's brain damage she so childish.

9 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

This conversation, for instance, made me realize that while Elizabeth is able to express her feelings about Gregory very well and could probably also articulate why she kept it secret etc. even, I don't think Philip could have really explained at the time why he slept with Irina or maybe even why he lied about it. It's not like he seems to sleep with her out of any wave of affection or desire.

Another example of Elizabeth getting whole stories and treatments while Philip wasn't. 

Elizabeth and Philip were barely together, big fight before he left.  Irina was someone who KNEW him, and had loved him, who cared about him, who sacrificed for him.  I totally get why he slept with her.  As we were talking about before?  Philip was deeply, deeply lonely.

He lied, because he actually has bothered to know Elizabeth.  She's not a person of subtleties.  She WOULD be pissed, she could withdraw, and he barely had begun to get some affection from her.  Just like the whole lying thing.  It's fine for Elizabeth to lie, but she's deeply offended if someone lies to her.  Philip was in an bad spot, either answer could ruin everything he'd hoped for since he met her in KGB camp.

23 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Philip, of course, also rents a Russian movie. One that I haven't seen but that seems like a comedy a bit critical of modern Soviet life. But this conversation makes me remember how he seems to put it in the VCR and then sit back and open his eyes like he's letting it wash over him. LOL.

http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/heres-the-story-behind-that-russian-movie-on-the-americans.html

Quote

Okay, but what’s with the shopping spree and screening of the Russian film The Garage (Гараж)? A little digging reveals the Eldar Ryazanov–directed comedy is about a woman who takes on her garage collective after they’ve voted out the least well-connected members. When it was released in 1980, it was seen as a satire about a party member taking on the entire corrupt Soviet system — and promptly banned by President Leonid Brezhnev. Does the film that Elizabeth walks in on Philip watching — as she tells him The Center is trying torpedo the summit, and she wants to talk to his contact — provide clues to her destiny? We got Weisberg and Fields to spill a few state secrets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garage_(1980_film)

Or, you can actually watch it here, it's kind of an interesting choice, but I seriously doubt Philip knew it had been banned at home, or that it was controversial at all.  https://sovietmoviesonline.com/comedy/66-garazh.html

Quote

The members of a Soviet cooperative have pooled their money to have a badly needed parking garage built. But it turns out that the garage will have four fewer spaces than planned. In brutal Soviet style, the four least-well connected members are evicted from the cooperative in a mock vote, losing their entire investment. But one member, Malayeva, does the unthinkable. As if taking on the entire corrupt Soviet system, she quixotically locks down the meeting room and throws away the key. Chaos reigns through the night until the privileged are forced to negotiate for the first time in their lives. A madcap, rollicking, biting satire that Brezhnev banned.

[sistermagpie]

4 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

Again, I keep going back to HE BLOCKED THEM.  He worked for most of the series on trying to remember his childhood.  He remembered the murder, so that wasn't it.

I'm not actually sure that's what he was supposed to be doing, exactly. I mean, I do think that his being at EST and trying to understand himself and think more about his past maybe brings up these memories that he never questioned or thought about. It does, after all, lead him to a sort of secret of his childhood that's directly relevant to him. But I don't know if that's the same thing as repressing these memories because they're traumatic or that, more importantly, this leads him to be determined to never go back to the USSR. Because whether he considers these memories traumatic, or if they're just something that he's only now ready to think about and understand about his past, they don't lead him to greater worry about the kids or himself and the USSR. Finding out the truth about his father is the thing that leads him to bring Paige to Gabriel and they come in the same season when he seems happy to be planning a return there with his family. It seems more like he's moving in the opposite direction as the series goes on. That in the beginning he was happy to just cut himself off and be the cover story and the then he reconnected with his past and was more whole.

13 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

How did he know his dad wasn't a travel agent in San Francisco or NYC?)  STUPID story, incomplete, like all of Philip's stories.  Even his baby momma story was so limited and so lame.

And confusing--I personally still don't really understand how Irina's life was ever supposed to work. Also I can't remember if it was here or elsewhere but I know someone who had some knowledge of both countries at the time found it really hard to believe that Mischa could have navigated the US as well as he did. Like even if he spoke English better they thought it would have been so so hard, and he basically handles it like a kid coming from Iowa.

16 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

Or, you can actually watch it here, it's kind of an interesting choice, but I seriously doubt Philip knew it had been banned at home, or that it was controversial at all.  https://sovietmoviesonline.com/comedy/66-garazh.html

I assumed he just chose it on a whim without knowing much about it--but that Claudia would have been much more careful about what movie she would bring for Paige and Elizabeth. Even if it wasn't banned she wouldn't be going for that. Or sitting through it for long if they accidentally rented it. (Paige would comment that the movie reminded her of when she learned to parallel park and that the Strong Woman reminded her of Elizabeth because she's so feminist!)

[Erin9]

I’m not so sure Philip blocked his childhood out in general so much as he simply didn’t remember it all or hasn’t really thought about it in a long time. It was a long time ago. I think he remembered the basics just fine. It’s not like he forgot his family or that they grew up impoverished or Irina. He certainly remembered his dad died at age 6. They don’t seem repressed to me. And it didn’t seem to make him afraid to go home. He seemed okay with that to me. He knew life would be easier for his kids if they could stick with what they knew, but he didn’t seem to think it was a bad place to go back to. 

I think @sistermagpie is right about Philip connecting with his past over the course of the series, which makes him a more complete person. I think he really tried to let go of the past for a long time- since he was literally living a different life. And found that didn’t work. He seemed to gradually think more about home as the series progressed. Even though he tried out being Philip in S6, in some ways he’d already moved past that.  If that makes sense. 

I think it’s interesting that both play out their “dreams” from S1 and don’t care for them after all. Of course- both had changed a lot since the S1 Pilot too. Philip isn’t really the All American capitalist. Nor can he disappear into America and just leave his own country fully behind. (If he could- Oleg would have gotten nowhere with him.) Elizabeth got to be just the spy. And no one was happy.

I’m not sure Philip’s life would have been radically happier or different with a different wife. Too many variables really to know for sure. Of course- this depends on your POV of Philip and the marriage to begin with. Philip still would have been a spy in America, struggled with the usefulness of the job, been married to a woman he was assigned to. They might or might not have fallen in love. They might have been truly incompatible. They might or might not have had an overly curious kid like Paige. Who knows....

I get why Philip slept with Irina. I think he could have articulated it too. He had just found out Elizabeth had been informing on him for years. He was angry, felt betrayed. This was on top of the Gregory bombshell. He sees his first love who KNEW him, called him by his real name. She still cared for him. Philip, to me, clearly was still very fond of Irina. They said they’d been looking forward to seeing each other, and I don’t doubt it. I like the story. It wasn’t completely well thought out, but I like it. He lied because he knew Elizabeth would be angry- and she would have been imo. 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Erin9

[Umbelina]

47 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

I mean, I do think that his being at EST and trying to understand himself and think more about his past maybe brings up these memories that he never questioned or thought about. It does, after all, lead him to a sort of secret of his childhood that's directly relevant to him. But I don't know if that's the same thing as repressing these memories because they're traumatic or that, more importantly, this leads him to be determined to never go back to the USSR.

Last thing first.  I never said Philip was determined to never go back to the USSR.  What I did say is that I feel he preferred the USA, for obvious reasons.

No, he didn't just talk about it at EST, he tried to talk to Elizabeth about it, he even touched on it with Martha.  It was bothering him that he could not remember it, just little flashes. 

He was old enough to remember, so my assumption that he's blocked it isn't really a leap.

47 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

And confusing--I personally still don't really understand how Irina's life was ever supposed to work. Also I can't remember if it was here or elsewhere but I know someone who had some knowledge of both countries at the time found it really hard to believe that Mischa could have navigated the US as well as he did. Like even if he spoke English better they thought it would have been so so hard, and he basically handles it like a kid coming from Iowa.

More crappy writing of season 5.  Yes, not just the language but the customs, the money, the transportation, but more than that, how the HELL did he so quickly escape the Soviet Union, when many at that time tried, and many died?  Also, his remaining family would have certainly been punished had he escaped.  Oh, and I think Gabe is full of shit, because I don't believe "all will be fine" if he'd just return right then.

Also, after ALL of that?  WHY would he return?  Why not tell Gabe to suck his dick and head to an embassy and ask for asylum?  After all, the USSR put him in a mental hospital and he would have rotted there if not for his father's connections.  Why?  Because he said the war was wrong, which, it was.  They usually are.

47 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

I assumed he just chose it on a whim without knowing much about it--but that Claudia would have been much more careful about what movie she would bring for Paige and Elizabeth. Even if it wasn't banned she wouldn't be going for that. Or sitting through it for long if they accidentally rented it. (Paige would comment that the movie reminded her of when she learned to parallel park and that the Strong Woman reminded her of Elizabeth because she's so feminist!)

Maybe, but he rented it in an American store so it may have had a blurb on it about "banned in the USSR" or telling what it was about.  Or of course, he could read the Russian blurb.  Either way, one woman's stand against a corrupt system was pretty on the nose.  There are several different versions of cover art, not sure which he chose, or rather, that the producers chose.

20 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

I get why Philip slept with Irina. I think he could have articulated it too. He had just found out Elizabeth had been informing on him for years. He was angry, felt betrayed. This was on top of the Gregory bombshell. He sees his first love who KNEW him, called him by his real name. She still cared for him. Philip, to me, clearly was still very fond of Irina. They said they’d been looking forward to seeing each other, and I don’t doubt it. I like the story. It wasn’t completely well thought out, but I like it. He lied because he knew Elizabeth would be angry- and she would have been imo. 

Absolutely.  She would have been angry either way though.

The story worked, it just wasn't fleshed out the way Elizabeth's are. 

• Meet cute at bus stop or whatever
• Next scene she's saying goodbye, celebrating with his promotion
• Then the future when she admits she was pregnant, and those scenes were all very good, the operation, all of it.

20 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

I think it’s interesting that both play out their “dreams” from S1 and don’t care for them after all. Philip isn’t really the All American capitalist. Nor can he disappear into America and just leave his own country fully behind. (If he could- Oleg would have gotten nowhere with him.) Elizabeth got to be just the spy. And no one was happy. 

Except Philip really didn't get the chance at the American dream.  He was in a KGB chosen job, supporting Elizabeth's cover.  The American dream didn't include covering for a KGB wife, and in America the KGB doesn't choose your job for you.

Philip could have been a teacher, or a Hockey Coach, or put those great math skills to use in any number of occupations.  He wasn't a "failure" at Capitalism, he failed in one job.  It happens, we learn, we move on.  Philip had many skills, had he been allowed to choose his job, I'm sure he would have succeeded.  In Philip's dream, Elizabeth would be living life normally as well, not murdering people and coming home at 4AM to smoke.

Oleg wouldn't have been able to find him, he'd be in deep cover somewhere, probably in a fly over state.  One thing the FBI did VERY well is hide people.  Irina's mistake was running on her own, she should have defected, but she really couldn't, since that could have somehow jeopardized Philip's cover.

 

ETA

Did we ever even find out if Philip's mother was dead?  If so, how she died?  I know we never found out how his father died.  How did his brother get out of Siberia?  It wasn't exactly a place where migration or moving around was a "thing."  Why didn't Philip ever contact this brother, if he was so curious about his past, and it was driving him crazy?  I imagine he will be pretty sad when he finds out how his brother lives. 

We know everything about Elizabeth, but almost nothing about Philip.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Umbelina
n

[Erin9]

I don’t think Philip failed at capitalism either. But I don’t think he was overly enthused by his experience with it. But- Philip would have literally had to have been Henry to ever have had the opportunity to do exactly what he wanted- or even think about it. I don’t think Philip played what if that far though- not sure he really thought about what else he might have done. 

Even if he had really wanted to go to the FBI- and I don’t think he did in the end-  he was never going to get to do anything he wanted. The options would always be limited. 

His play at being a travel agent was about as close as he could get to trying out being an average American within the parameters of the life he had. 

In this show the FBI didn’t hide people that well. Sofia and Gennadi would say otherwise. Timoshev wasn’t well handled. Or Anton- he wasn’t in hiding, I know. But he wasn’t super protected either. 

My point about Oleg is that Philip chose not to leave his past behind when Oleg found him. Philip was playing the average American part as best he could- but he still wasn’t American at the end of the day. Obviously Oleg wouldn’t have found him- much less gone looking for him- had Philip defected or disappeared prior to S6. But Philip didn’t want to do that imo. 

We don’t know about his mother. But I suspect she’s dead. She wasn’t at the family dinner with Philip’s brother’s family. Honestly? I just like knowing Philip has a son and a brother to go home to. I may not know as much as I want to about him, but I like knowing that. 

[Umbelina]

Oh, he really wanted to go.  He risked begging Elizabeth, someone who could have easily turned him in, at that moment, they didn't have their relationship, not really.  His hatred of the requirements of his job was a series long theme, he hated the KGB so much that he eventually kinda-sorta got out.  They still ruled his life though, because family was the most important thing to him, or rather, Elizabeth was.  Also, he was still stuck in the KGB cover job.

It was odd that the show "hide" the bad teeth woman and her boyfriend so poorly, usually they stayed relatively true to life about spy things, other than with Philip and Elizabeth of course.  They needed Elizabeth to have impactful murders on her incredible season 6 murder spree though.  (still don't understand that choice) and to have people Stan knew die, for the garage scene.

In reality, hiding people was one of the best skills the FBI had (has?)  It may be different in the digital age, and in the "work together" fiction of spying agencies here now because of the 9-11 fiasco.  I've, as you know, read many spy books, and several of them have commented on that being a great skill of the FBI.  In contrast to that ONE skill, most spy books think of the FBI as a leaky, insecure mess, at least as far as any international operations they might be legally required to be a part of. 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Umbelina

[scartact]

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

And of course it's also reflected in the things they choose that can make them healthier, things that are basically lessons in the other person's way. EST is a place where you analyze experiences and how you feel about them to understand what you want. (It's therapy.) While Elizabeth does art therapy that encourages her to stop analyzing things from outside and put herself "into" the art and therefore the world.

Oh, I didn't notice that, but now that you've pointed it out, I really love those details side-by-side. Philip needed a space to concretize and verbalize through EST, while Elizabeth needed a space to be wholly intuitive and not always have the words.

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Totally remember that X-Files quote! But yes, I think there are a lot of things that Philip does get from Elizabeth, even if it might have been easier for him if he could get it for someone else. I think it's sometimes hard to tell what he's getting from her since on one hand there's so many ways she's difficult and on the other hand it's easy to just get distracted by her being beautiful, but I do think there are things about her that are genuinely important for him. The sincere faith, her ability to have strong relationships as herself. I think her sincerity as well--we rarely if ever see Philip making himself into the person he thinks she wants him to be. Maybe because she was so resistant to him early on he gave up.

I also do think that Elizabeth is often soft and comforting with him, but that he appreciates her toughness as well. (The one thing Philip ever says about his mother, is that she was tough. But where Elizabeth seems a bit defensive of her own mother's toughness at times and sometimes seems to question her love, Philip seems openly affectionate about his own tough mother.)

Not to reference another Philip and Elizabeth (let alone another television show after already namedropping The X-Files) but... I recently binged The Crown and there's a fantastic scene in season 1 where that Elizabeth tells her Philip that though it's quite possible marriage to someone else would have been easier than her marriage to Philip, the only person she's ever loved is him. That sentiment kinda reminds me of this Philip (whoa is it difficult to talk about two separate couples who share the same names simultaneously) and how, hey, it probably really would have been easier for him to haven fallen in love with someone like Martha (for instance; not necessarily Martha though, but really I'm thinking about the kind of temperament Martha had), who is more emotionally adept and vulnerable with him in ways that Elizabeth does not always afford him, but be that as it may, he loves her, whatever the indefinable spark for him that he actually tells Gabriel.

Part of me thinks that because it's often easier to empathize with Philip, it's easier for folks to see what he gives Elizabeth, but yes, I definitely see a lot of how her seemingly unshakeable faith, her certainty, and her strength are factors into why Philip is drawn to Elizabeth. I mean, regardless of whatever kinds of labels we attach to it, we are told within the show that for Philip above all else, it seems that he just felt it in a way that ultimately made sense to him the way that Elizabeth eventually learned to understand him for it to make sense to her.

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Claudia says that Elizabeth might have been one of those "silly girls" in the movie and Elizabeth's reaction seems so ambiguous. Would she have liked to have been one of them? Do they make her feel disconnected to the country instead of tied to it? (She does seem to reach back to it when saying what her life might have been in the final scene.)

Can anyone ever imagine Elizabeth being a "silly girl"? It's kind of an amusing thought!

[sistermagpie]

13 hours ago, Umbelina said:

No, he didn't just talk about it at EST, he tried to talk to Elizabeth about it, he even touched on it with Martha.  It was bothering him that he could not remember it, just little flashes. 

 

But none of those things had to do with not remembering anything. He was talking about the incident with the bullies and wondering how that had shaped him as a person--but he'd remembered it even before he went to EST. I thought he was trying to work out his feelings about it. When he has those flashbacks in S5 they do seem more like intrusive flashbacks, but I don't think that was because they were memories he'd repressed in a traumatic sense. 

For instance, given what he later learns his scene with Paige in S4 could read a bit differently. She asks if his mother was a good cook and he has to think about it--and he knows why, because he knows they barely had food to cook. She asks what his father did for work and he says he was a logger, mentions the forests around Tobolsk, Then she asks if he liked it there. He says there were things there that he liked but his father worked very hard and when he came home... (I think the pause is here) he was...tired. 

So it's possible that even then him saying "When he came home..." sparked the same type memories as in S5 where he's specifically remembering his father coming home with stuff. That's the thing that made him suspect his father had a different job. So the memory wouldn't necessarily be suppressed, but it raised a question in his mind that he had always dealt with by just not thinking about it. Until S5 when he actually concentrates on it. It's like Paige asking why he meets clients at night or Henry deciding not to question his travel agent parents being on call like brain surgeons.

13 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Except Philip really didn't get the chance at the American dream.  He was in a KGB chosen job, supporting Elizabeth's cover.  The American dream didn't include covering for a KGB wife, and in America the KGB doesn't choose your job for you.

 

But it's not like Philip had a specific job he wanted in the US. A factory worker who can afford house payments is living the American Dream even if he finds his job boring. It's financial security and success.

In S1 he's talking about keeping the life he has as Philip Jennings and not spying, which he in large part is doing in S6. Just as Elizabeth is pretty close to a situation where she's just a spy without much of a fake cover. She's still living as Elizabeth Jennings in the suburbs, but she's pretty close to her whole life being spying. The problems they have with the life, imo, aren't just about superficial things that could be adjusted. It's not that Philip realizes that he actually wants to be working for the KGB (or that he'd rather be a teacher than a travel agent or whatever), but he learns that he wants to feel like he's really helping people just like Elizabeth does. When Oleg dumps a threat to Russia, specifically, in his lap it turns out he'd risk it all for it. 

13 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Did we ever even find out if Philip's mother was dead?  If so, how she died?  I know we never found out how his father died.  How did his brother get out of Siberia?  It wasn't exactly a place where migration or moving around was a "thing."  Why didn't Philip ever contact this brother, if he was so curious about his past, and it was driving him crazy?  I imagine he will be pretty sad when he finds out how his brother lives. 

 

We don't know any of these things. We can't even trust that his mother's not alive somewhere. I'm not clear why he'd be sad to find out how his brother lived. He seemed to be doing fine to me.

12 hours ago, Erin9 said:

I don’t think Philip failed at capitalism either.

Yeah, I don't think the issue with Philip was that he felt like a failure, either. I think he felt bad about feeling like he'd let people down (trying to grow the business for more money), but he didn't discover that he was a character who defined himself through business and financial success. His dream wasn't being an entrepreneur, even if of course he'd have rather succeeded better at it. 

12 hours ago, Erin9 said:

His play at being a travel agent was about as close as he could get to trying out being an average American within the parameters of the life he had. 

 

And that's the reality for plenty of Americans too. For years it would have been easy for him to imagine that Philip Jennings actual life was the life he wanted. Turned out it wasn't, quite. Doesn't mean he wanted to go back to killing people, but I think it clarified that he had more than two choices. When he imagined a life without spying he didn't have some other career his heart was set on. I think the Travel Agency was what normal life looked like in his head at that point. He was pretty burnt out on caring about everything all the time, so he had to stop to figure out how he really felt.

12 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Oh, he really wanted to go.  He risked begging Elizabeth, someone who could have easily turned him in, at that moment, they didn't have their relationship, not really.

But then he threw the request away despite Elizabeth telling him to go ahead and do it.  (Plenty of guys who loved Elizabeth would have not even thought to do that but it fits with Philip's character and things he does elsewhere.) I think it's complicated--that even Philip doesn't quite know exactly what he feels until he's facing the choice and knows what to do. (EST!) That's why the last season seems so important to me, that he's presented with this idea that the future of his country is at stake and he needs to not just spy but spy on his wife to help it. Likewise Philip sees defection as a reasonable choice in the pilot, but when Timoshev confesses he raped Elizabeth Philip kills him without any hesitation. He grows to hate his job more and more, but that's set up over and over against the idea that it can help his country, not against Elizabeth's love for him. Especially in S6 when he's spying on her because he sees her as the potential threat to the USSR. Although he proves he'll sacrifice himself to protect and support Elizabeth personally, he doesn't go back to KGB soldier to improve his marriage, even when Elizabeth seems to demand exactly that. But he also doesn't stay out of it to protect his American life. He spies for Oleg and not for Elizabeth because the person isn't the thing the decision turns on. 

10 hours ago, scartact said:

Part of me thinks that because it's often easier to empathize with Philip, it's easier for folks to see what he gives Elizabeth, but yes, I definitely see a lot of how her seemingly unshakeable faith, her certainty, and her strength are factors into why Philip is drawn to Elizabeth. I mean, regardless of whatever kinds of labels we attach to it, we are told within the show that for Philip above all else, it seems that he just felt it in a way that ultimately made sense to him the way that Elizabeth eventually learned to understand him for it to make sense to her.

Yes, and the fact that they're in an arranged marriage also makes it very easy to just think he imprinted on her because she was the one who was there. Like maybe he'd have loved anybody the same way--it's not like with Elizabeth where she rejects him for someone else for many years. But there's a lot of times, for instance, where viewers would contrast her with Martha and I saw him much preferring Elizabeth. I think there was even maybe something freeing to him in Elizabeth's toughness. This is a guy who really did seem to fear he was a monster (for good reason) and Elizabeth was a person who looked that part of him in the eye without being turned off or wanting to exploit it. Plus I think he honestly often enjoyed her company and she his. 

10 hours ago, scartact said:

Can anyone ever imagine Elizabeth being a "silly girl"? It's kind of an amusing thought!

IKR? From what we know it seems like even as a kid she was never that. Though I think she can be shyly silly at times, in an experimental way.

[Umbelina]

So, I started watching season 1 again last night.

How perfect was TUSK?  I mean, start to finish, what a great premier episode!

I'd forgotten that Philip talks to Elizabeth in bed about defecting first, then tries very hard to convince her in the garage, full press speech there about all the reasons they should defect, and quite a long monologue.  THEN, he decides to just do it without her, and he takes the gag and the straight jacket off Timochev and is on his way out the door with him, to take him to Stan and defect right then.  He was doing it, but Elizabeth comes into the garage from the house door, and the whole "he raped me scene" and fight and then murder happens.

So, not only did Philip quite seriously WANT to defect, he was defecting, in spite of Elizabeth's protests.

Also, it was nice to see my recollections were correct about Elizabeth seeing Philip in a romantic way after he killed her rapist, and gave up his desire to defect in the same moments.  Earlier, he tries to kiss her neck, and she stops him.  Right after they dump Timochev's dead body into the water though?  She climbs on top of him in the car, and In The Air Tonight comes on.

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord

Well if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand
I've seen your face before my friend, but I don't know if you know who I am
Well I was there and I saw what you did, I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies

And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord

Well I remember, I remember, don't worry, how could I ever forget
It's the first time, the last time we ever met
But I know the reason why you keep your silence up, oh no you don't fool me
Well the hurt doesn't show, but the pain still grows
It's no stranger to you and me

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord

I can feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord
Well I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord

Which is so freaking perfect!  Philip has waited for this moment, and in some ways, though Elizabeth didn't know it, maybe she was too.

I have to get going here, but the third episode is as I remember it as well, only even BETTER.  Gregory talking to Philip, and both actors just nailed that so well!  Elizabeth's reactions are also amazing,  Damn, I loved this show so much.  "Gregory" the 3rd episode, is so well written and so well acted.  I just cringed for how much that hurt Philip, and how all of them were hurting really.

Also, I still hate Claudia for killing her agents wife.

ETA

Philip mentions the number of years Gregory and Elizabeth were a couple and together, in love.  15.  So no more guessing there.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Umbelina

[Umbelina]

19 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

But it's not like Philip had a specific job he wanted in the US. A factory worker who can afford house payments is living the American Dream even if he finds his job boring. It's financial security and success.

He didn't think that way, or allow himself too.  He wasn't truly free, and he had NO CHOICE, so why waste his time dreaming of other jobs.  As long as Elizabeth stayed in the KGB, it was impossible.

 

19 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

The problems they have with the life, imo, aren't just about superficial things that could be adjusted. It's not that Philip realizes that he actually wants to be working for the KGB (or that he'd rather be a teacher than a travel agent or whatever), but he learns that he wants to feel like he's really helping people just like Elizabeth does.

He specifically talks about a lot of this in Tusk, about not having to murder people.  He HATES the KGB.  Are you honestly implying there is no way Philip could help people or make a difference without being a KGB spy?  Yes, he helped Oleg, and yes, that made him feel good, and he liked helping the world, OF COURSE.  There were many other ways he could have done those things had Elizabeth allowed him to defect.

Also, the Travel Agency was a complete success for over 17 years, he did capitalism just fine.  He made one error, and many successful business people have had significant bumps in their roads as well.

I've already discussed the fact that the travel agency was not an option for him, and that I think it's a straw argument to say that just because he expanded too fast there he is and always would be a failure in business in the USA.  Had he the options to choose his profession, his life?  He would and COULD make different decisions.  He didn't.  He almost did, but Elizabeth stopped it.

19 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

But none of those things had to do with not remembering anything.

We disagree.

I'm rewatching now, I'll mention the specifics when they come up during my rewatch.  His lack of being able to remember haunted him.  Gabe admitting to him that his father was a KGB prison guard cleared a few things up for him.

Basically though, the writers didn't give a shit, never really told Philip's story, so what we each got out of it is understandably different.  I'll mention the things/clues I saw/felt when I see them again.

Edited August 15, 2018 by Umbelina

[sistermagpie]

25 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

Philip, in TUSK, mentions the number of years Gregory and Elizabeth were a couple and together, in love.  15.  So no more guessing there.

I think you're misunderstanding what people are saying about Elizabeth and Gregory. There's no disagreement that Elizabeth and Philip were never a couple until he kills Timoshev or that Gregory was Elizabeth's boyfriend that she has been actively lying about for 15 or so years. I don't think there's any other way to read it. Philip doesn't know about Gregory until Gregory tells him in that episode. Elizabeth has just broken up with Gregory days before. I guess they don't outright say that Philip and Elizabeth weren't a couple before the end of the pilot (just because there's really no reason for the characters to say that to each other) but everything in the show, imo, makes it very clear that that's the case. That's the reason the show starts when it does, because it's the moment the romantic relationship starts.

When people talk about Elizabeth and Gregory being over, they don't mean that they were no longer together as a couple. 

[Umbelina]

13 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

I think you're misunderstanding what people are saying about Elizabeth and Gregory. There's no disagreement that Elizabeth and Philip were never a couple until he kills Timoshev or that Gregory was Elizabeth's boyfriend that she has been actively lying about for 15 or so years. I don't think there's any other way to read it. Philip doesn't know about Gregory until Gregory tells him in that episode. Elizabeth has just broken up with Gregory days before. I guess they don't outright say that Philip and Elizabeth weren't a couple before the end of the pilot (just because there's really no reason for the characters to say that to each other) but everything in the show, imo, makes it very clear that that's the case. That's the reason the show starts when it does, because it's the moment the romantic relationship starts.

When people talk about Elizabeth and Gregory being over, they don't mean that they were no longer together as a couple. 

I don't think I am.  Earlier in the thread it was certainly said repeatedly that Elizabeth and Philip had a real marriage before, and someone even said that Timochev wasn't the incident that started their actual relationship.  Also, it was said that Elizabeth had never been serious about Gregory, and that she'd been pulling away from him and towards Philip for years.

Anyway, nice to have an actual time frame of when the Elizabeth/Gregory love began, most of us agree about when it ended.  I don't have to type "14-17" years anymore!.

[Erin9]

4 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

I don't think I am.  Earlier in the thread it was certainly said repeatedly that Elizabeth and Philip had a real marriage before, and someone even said that Timochev wasn't the incident that started their actual relationship.  Also, it was said that Elizabeth had never been serious about Gregory, and that she'd been pulling away from him and towards Philip for years.

Anyway, nice to have an actual time frame of when the Elizabeth/Gregory love began, most of us agree about when it ended.  I don't have to type "14-17" years anymore!.

Well,  the closest I came to saying any of that is saying Elizabeth had likely been unknowingly pulling away from Gregory as she changed over the years. And I stand by that. She was not who she had been when she met Gregory by the Pilot. 

I don’t recall anyone disputing the length of the E/G Relationship, that the marriage wasn’t real until Timoshev- it changed over the years- but romantic no, or that E wasn’t serious about Gregory. 

But- then- in my mind....Philip wasn’t just dying to defect all the time and only didn’t because of his obsession with Elizabeth. Doesn’t fit his character at all imo. 

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Umbelina said:

He didn't think that way, or allow himself too.  He wasn't truly free, and he had NO CHOICE, so why waste his time dreaming of other jobs.  As long as Elizabeth stayed in the KGB, it was impossible.

 

Why he wasn't thinking about it is irrelevant, though. He talked about just being Philip Jennings and that's what he's doing in S6. For years those were two sides of his life with the "helping the world" part always being doing things for the KGB. When he just has a life where he's running a business he can calm down and think about the parts of his KGB life that were actually him--he did want to help people. One reason he hated the job was that not only was he doing terrible things all the justifications for them always fell apart. But of course he could help people plenty of other ways than killing people for the KGB.

3 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Also, the Travel Agency was a complete success for over 17 years, he did capitalism just fine.  He made one error, and many successful business people have had significant bumps in their roads as well.

 

I agree. I don't think he failed at capitalism or at America. It seems like the point was that he recognized business wasn't something he really liked enough to be passionate about it. He was perfectly fine--happier--with a smaller business that gave him everything he needed. 

3 hours ago, Umbelina said:

I'm rewatching now, I'll mention the specifics when they come up during my rewatch.  His lack of being able to remember haunted him.  Gabe admitting to him that his father was a KGB prison guard cleared a few things up for him.

 

I honestly don't remember him ever saying a thing about not remembering anything. It seemed like the issue was that he was trying to understand things he did remember. It seems he actually might have been lied to on the subject, in fact. Or at least it was kept secret from him. His father died when he was very young, after all, so he'd naturally forget or not understand a lot just naturally.

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

I don't think I am.  Earlier in the thread it was certainly said repeatedly that Elizabeth and Philip had a real marriage before, and someone even said that Timochev wasn't the incident that started their actual relationship.  Also, it was said that Elizabeth had never been serious about Gregory, and that she'd been pulling away from him and towards Philip for years.

 

None of that means that Gregory and Elizabeth weren't still a couple all that time. I think those relationships absolutely had been evolving in different directions over the years. That's why Elizabeth is ready to break up with Gregory once she starts getting together with Philip and why she's ready to try to get together with Philip when he kills Timoshev. Philip and Elizabeth's marriage was real in the sense that they were a family and raising children together, but they weren't romantically a couple until the pilot. That life was real before Philip killed Timoshev. Elizabeth's ready to let Gregory go in S1E3 and that seems like something it would have taken her a while to come to, not something she'd have gotten to in a moment.

15 hours ago, scartact said:

Part of me thinks that because it's often easier to empathize with Philip, it's easier for folks to see what he gives Elizabeth, but yes, I definitely see a lot of how her seemingly unshakeable faith, her certainty, and her strength are factors into why Philip is drawn to Elizabeth. I mean, regardless of whatever kinds of labels we attach to it, we are told within the show that for Philip above all else, it seems that he just felt it in a way that ultimately made sense to him the way that Elizabeth eventually learned to understand him for it to make sense to her.

Something else came to my mind about this, that the two of them I think have interesting parallel moments in S6 where they look at their spouse and imply that they've become something repulsive--something that is not them. For Elizabeth it's when Philip says he's trying to get Elizabeth to act like a human being. He's always accepted that she puts duty first, but he's never doubted that she was also a person with morals he agreed with outside of that too. But he's looking at her behavior in S6 and seeing her acting like a robot who's lost humanity.

Likewise Philip holds firm on his decision to not kidnap Kimmy despite Elizabeth calling him a whore or whatever. But when they're talking on the phone about her needing help with Harvest and Philip throws out the idea of her coming home because there'll be "other clients" she says something like, "What's happened to you?" I think that's her moment where she sees Philip losing something fundamental to him, because the Philip she knows doesn't leave a fellow Illegal to be killed or captured rather than disrupt his life. 

In both cases I think they listen to the other person not because they don't want to lose the other person but because they respect the other person's view and understanding of them. In both cases it's the other person who has the clearer view of who they are. And we know the other person is right--Elizabeth has already been struggling with her feelings about Erika and Philip's already involved in a dangerous plot with Oleg. But they've both appeared to have moved to far to the extremes that make them different and it's not right for either of them. 

Edited August 15, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Erin9]

The only thing I’d add about Philip helping Elizabeth with Harvest is that when he suggested her coming home- he was responding to her basically saying she thought she was going to die. He didn’t want her to die for nothing. She’d never been that hopeless before. He knew- and she knew- that him helping her,  while helpful, the mission was likely to fail anyway. 

Stan picked up something being off about Philip because Philip was that worried this mission would just end in total disaster. Even with him.  As it was, they were fortunate it didn’t. And it’s mostly because P/E are that good.

I get Elizabeth asking what happened to him, but still- this mission was basically suicide. They both knew it. They got asked the impossible. It could very easily have ended with 3 dead illegals, rather than the one. Or an arrest if they didn’t commit suicide by cop first. Or Elizabeth took the cyanide. 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Erin9

[sistermagpie]

49 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

The only thing I’d add about Philip helping Elizabeth with Harvest is that when he suggested her coming home- he was responding to her basically saying she thought she was going to die. He didn’t want her to die for nothing. She’d never been that hopeless before. He knew- and she knew- that him helping her,  while helpful, the mission was likely to fail anyway. 

Stan picked up something being off about Philip because Philip was that worried this mission would just end in total disaster. Even with him.  As it was, they were fortunate it didn’t. And it’s mostly because P/E are that good.

I get Elizabeth asking what happened to him, but still- this mission was basically suicide. They both knew it. They got asked the impossible. It could very easily have ended with 3 dead illegals, rather than the one. Or an arrest if they didn’t commit suicide by cop first. Or Elizabeth took the cyanide. 

Reading this I can't help but think about how much it contrasts with Paige's attitude about the whole thing. She wants to go with Elizabeth just because it's her thing now that she and Mom do this together. Of course she doesn't know the details, but that seems to be in part because she never knows the details. Both because Elizabeth isn't reading her in on everything and because she really doesn't seem that interested. This kind of mission makes it so clear that Paige has no business being anywhere near it, but she thinks of herself as central to the operation. The contrast between her and Marilyn is huge. Even after Marilyn dies Paige still seems completely out of it, happy to go back to thinking people dying doesn't happen often (despite knowing about 2 deaths in the past couple of months) and worried about whether she'll be alone forever. 

But I think what you're saying here is a big reason why Philip asks Elizabeth to come home. It would be great if she could choose to not do a mission because she will probably die (and frankly, if she died she'd probably be identified so Philip would be caught), but this is exactly the thing Elizabeth can't do. It's so far from her understanding of both herself and Philip that she can't believe he's suggesting she just let Harvest go. They both know what choice they're making here, whether or not they survive it. Elizabeth will always be the person who has to do this sort of thing and Philip will always be the person who does what he does. But it's like he has to put that decision in her hands again, just to remind him how it's never going to happen for them. He's William. 

[scartact]

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes, and the fact that they're in an arranged marriage also makes it very easy to just think he imprinted on her because she was the one who was there. Like maybe he'd have loved anybody the same way--it's not like with Elizabeth where she rejects him for someone else for many years. But there's a lot of times, for instance, where viewers would contrast her with Martha and I saw him much preferring Elizabeth. I think there was even maybe something freeing to him in Elizabeth's toughness. This is a guy who really did seem to fear he was a monster (for good reason) and Elizabeth was a person who looked that part of him in the eye without being turned off or wanting to exploit it. Plus I think he honestly often enjoyed her company and she his. 

I appreciate this read and the idea that Philip can still be seen as human in Elizabeth's eyes, even though he's done these incredibly horrendous things (I mean, so has she, but again with the compartmentalizing and all of that!), but she also imbues it with the confidence of what it means for them and their country. It's not unreasonable that the Center particularly enjoyed their investment in pairing Philip and Elizabeth together as a highly effective team for years prior to them making their marriage real in part because of their self-regulation, in that Philip's commitment was filtered through Elizabeth, and hers to the Cause, and so as long as Elizabeth maintained her duty and commitment, then they wouldn't have to worry as much about Philip. So of course, in season 1, when Elizabeth starts to really fall for Philip, Claudia is used as a proxy for the Center being all, "Let's put an end to that," because it made Elizabeth less committed to the Cause and more to Philip (and their family).

 

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

In both cases I think they listen to the other person not because they don't want to lose the other person but because they respect the other person's view and understanding of them. In both cases it's the other person who has the clearer view of who they are. And we know the other person is right--Elizabeth has already been struggling with her feelings about Erika and Elizabeth's already involved in a dangerous plot with Oleg. But they've both appeared to have moved to far to the extremes that make them different and it's not right for either of them. 

Yes! That's a great catch and I love that; they both incrementally move toward one another (or I suppose, compromise) in that regard for the other person because they do truly love one another and this is why I tend to flat out disagree with  You're making me want to get to my rewatch a little faster (but life is making it difficult for that to happen right now).

 

1 hour ago, Erin9 said:

Well,  the closest I came to saying any of that is saying Elizabeth had likely been unknowingly pulling away from Gregory as she changed over the years. And I stand by that. She was not who she had been when she met Gregory by the Pilot. 

I don’t recall anyone disputing the length of the E/G Relationship, that the marriage wasn’t real until Timoshev- it changed over the years- but romantic no, or that E wasn’t serious about Gregory. 

But- then- in my mind....Philip wasn’t just dying to defect all the time and only didn’t because of his obsession with Elizabeth. Doesn’t fit his character at all imo. 

I'm rusty on watching those first few episodes closely, but I was somewhat under the impression that Elizabeth was not very regularly with Gregory the way she may have been much earlier on in her marriage to Philip and I do agree with a read that suggests while Gregory was her first love, by the eponymous episode her relationship to him had significantly shifted and changed. Were there suggestions of how regularly they had really seen each other up to then?

I also don't think Philip was always necessarily thinking to defect at the drop of a hat (though I do argue defection was probably always an undercurrent for him), otherwise he would have left with Irina! His defection was moreso pinned on the caveat that Elizabeth would defect with him and they would take the children, otherwise he woulda left with Irina when he was presented the opportunity in season 1! Which makes me realize... they also brought in Irina to present Philip with that exact opportunity to defect under different circumstances, but he's steadfast in that if he defected, it would have to be with Elizabeth and the kids; he maintains this this even in Chloramphenicol in that conversation with William as Elizabeth was sick.

[sistermagpie]

36 minutes ago, scartact said:

Were there suggestions of how regularly they had really seen each other up to then?

The only hint we get is Gregory saying, "I missed your face, Elizabeth" when she shows up in Gregory, indicating that they didn't see each other so very recently. She seems a little reluctant to go see him then too, presumably because she's started this with Philip by then and probably knew that she'd have to break it off the next time she saw Gregory. Either she hadn't worked up to going to see him on her own or she was putting it off until she had a professional reason to do so. Two weeks after Timoshev's death she's not ready it, at least, it seems, but she can put it off.

It seems like they have a relationship where it doesn't matter when she saw him last, it's just romantic whenever she shows up. At times she no doubt showed up *just* for that, to get away from her cover life etc. I don't think Gregory starts talking about how her domestic life "isn't her" because that's his nature but because when they started out it was all about her true self. She chose him romantically on her own and hid it from the Centre and Philip. Then she had kids and, as Gregory himself says, that made her cover life even more of a lie. But by Gregory they establish that they're apart enough that they can say they've missed each other and that's not unusual. It also seems kind of significant that the language of their breakup is about them as a couple. There's plenty of subtext, especially on Gregory's side, about that, but it's not the language he uses. I think it reflects some of the ways Elizabeth tries to negotiate her relationship with Philip in S1 but he refuses it. (I wonder if that's also going on a bit in the kitchen scene when Elizabeth admits that Gregory was passionate about her personally.)

[Umbelina]

3 hours ago, Erin9 said:

But- then- in my mind....Philip wasn’t just dying to defect all the time and only didn’t because of his obsession with Elizabeth. Doesn’t fit his character at all imo. 

Philip was literally WALKING OUT THE DOOR TO DEFECT in the very first episode.  He needed Timochev alive to do that.  He wasn't just thinking about it, he tried more than a few times to talk Elizabeth into it, then he made the decision to just do it, right then.

Elizabeth, in my strong opinion, was the ONLY reason he didn't defect throughout the entire run of the series.  I'll be watching more and note other times, but it's the way the series began, and it continued, but was more hopeless and less effort on his part because Elizabeth wouldn't consider it.

1 hour ago, scartact said:

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes, and the fact that they're in an arranged marriage also makes it very easy to just think he imprinted on her because she was the one who was there. Like maybe he'd have loved anybody the same way--it's not like with Elizabeth where she rejects him for someone else for many years.

That was the other scene I wanted to mention and totally forgot to, in TUSK.  Those two never stood a chance.  When they are introduced, from the first moment, they are strictly ordered to be "Elizabeth from Chicago" and "Philip from whereever."  They were not even allowed to share their real names with one another.  They started out with nothing but lies, and you can't build love on lies, and fake, completely made up pasts. 

In retrospect, it made it so clear why they never, or at least Elizabeth never could love him.  She didn't know him, not really, and she couldn't tell him about her true non-spying self either.  Near the end of TUSK Elizabeth tells him her real name, and begins to talk about her parents and home.  That was also a huge moment, because she not only defied orders there, some part of her knew that this "love" beginning feeling could not be sustained on lies.

So, for Elizabeth, Gregory was her first true love, and a huge part of that, aside from sexual attraction, and shared philosophical and political beliefs, and bravery, and looks, she could be her TRUE self with him, probably the only time she really was allowed to be herself.

Would she have fallen for Philip had they been given that chance?  They had two years or so together at KGB school before they even came to the USA.  Maybe so.

1 hour ago, scartact said:

So of course, in season 1, when Elizabeth starts to really fall for Philip, Claudia is used as a proxy for the Center being all, "Let's put an end to that," because it made Elizabeth less committed to the Cause and more to Philip (and their family).

Oh definitely!  Elizabeth was the perfect soldier, and they wanted to keep her that way.  Of course, the fact that Elizabeth had "reported on him several times through the years" that she wasn't sure of his loyalty or commitment played into that as well.  On top of everything else, the KGB had a mole, they HAD to suspect Philip, since there was already a worrisome file on him because of Elizabeth.  (Of course, the mole was Nina.)

1 hour ago, scartact said:

I also don't think Philip was always necessarily thinking to defect at the drop of a hat (though I do argue defection was probably always an undercurrent for him), otherwise he would have left with Irina!

He didn't want Irina, and her plan was stupid.  She wasn't defecting, she was running.  Again, Philip was walking out the door to defect with Timochev.  He wasn't thinking of doing it, he was DOING it, and the only thing that stopped him was realizing Elizabeth had been raped.

He loved Elizabeth, he says/thought that he would be able to cut the deal for them both with Stan.  (!)  He wasn't even giving her a few hours head start to run.

1 hour ago, scartact said:

I'm rusty on watching those first few episodes closely, but I was somewhat under the impression that Elizabeth was not very regularly with Gregory the way she may have been much earlier on in her marriage to Philip and I do agree with a read that suggests while Gregory was her first love, by the eponymous episode her relationship to him had significantly shifted and changed. Were there suggestions of how regularly they had really seen each other up to then?

They really don't mention frequency, but in the discussion between Philip and Elizabeth, and between Philip and Gregory, and of course between Gregory and Elizabeth, the part that mattered was the intensity, the love, the "knowing" and appreciating each other for who they truly were.

I said earlier that Philip was so lonely, as one would be when the have to lie to everyone ALL of the time.  The part I'd somehow overlooked was that Philip and Elizabeth also had to lie to each other, they never had the chance to be honest or completely real with each other.

It explains Elizabeth's love for Gregory even more when you think about it like that.  HE was the only person SHE could be completely herself with, it must have been such a tremendous relief and gift.  Philip had no one.

That's also why Elizabeth's dialogue that begins with "My name was Nadezhda..." was so huge.  They were finally able to be honest with one another, and that was a way to make those love feelings bloom, solidify, become real.

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

It seems like they have a relationship where it doesn't matter when she saw him last, it's just romantic whenever she shows up. At times she no doubt showed up *just* for that, to get away from her cover life etc. I don't think Gregory starts talking about how her domestic life "isn't her" because that's his nature but because when they started out it was all about her true self. She chose him romantically on her own and hid it from the Centre and Philip. Then she had kids and, as Gregory himself says, that made her cover life even more of a lie. But by Gregory they establish that they're apart enough that they can say they've missed each other and that's not unusual. It also seems kind of significant that the language of their breakup is about them as a couple. There's plenty of subtext, especially on Gregory's side, about that, but it's not the language he uses. I think it reflects some of the ways Elizabeth tries to negotiate her relationship with Philip in S1 but he refuses it. (I wonder if that's also going on a bit in the kitchen scene when Elizabeth admits that Gregory was passionate about her personally.)

I think I kind of covered it above.

I think that Gregory and Elizabeth's feelings were very real, and she saw him when ever she could, and if that was a few days or a month later, it didn't matter.  She was an incredibly busy woman, KGB job, the Travel Agency job, being a mother, and God knows that woman had a lot of laundry to do and salads to make, ferrying the kids around.

It kind of reminds me of a couple of really close friends of mine, whom I love.  Our lives get busy or slow, I move around a lot, so I don't live in the same town as any of them right now, but we get on the phone, or we meet, and it's RIGHT BACK there, it doesn't go away when it's real, time and distance matter, but they don't end it.

I also realize that's why Gregory had to die in the show.  At the very least, Gregory would always remain Elizabeth's best friend, the love itself would continue but morph into platonic, but on her part, she was oddly kind of a romantic about "only one man/love at a time" so it would have been extremely problematic for the show and for her, since Gregory continued to love her. 

It actually could have been very compelling, but that wasn't the story the show wanted to tell, and I'm OK with that.  How DO you "stay friends" with a coworker you've been in love with for 15 years, after your new love (Philip) knows about it all.  Elizabeth had a lot of jealousy and trust issues anyway, Kimmie, Annaleise, even poor Martha all bugged her.  So she would easily understand, especially because of all the lies she told Philip, how he would struggle to accept ANY kind of on-going, job or friendship, relationship with Gregory.

So, he had a pretty spectacular death instead.  I also loved him refusing to go to the USSR, because it made Elizabeth at least face, for a while, what a disaster that would be for a black man, especially an American black man, it was one of the few times she seemed to think of her country honestly, without the rose-colored glasses.

Even then, Philip loved her so much that he helped her let Gregory die in his own fashion, against orders.  Elizabeth trusted Gregory to do exactly what he said he would do, not be captured, and that was enough for Philip.

[Erin9]

2 hours ago, scartact said:

I appreciate this read and the idea that Philip can still be seen as human in Elizabeth's eyes, even though he's done these incredibly horrendous things (I mean, so has she, but again with the compartmentalizing and all of that!), but she also imbues it with the confidence of what it means for them and their country. It's not unreasonable that the Center particularly enjoyed their investment in pairing Philip and Elizabeth together as a highly effective team for years prior to them making their marriage real in part because of their self-regulation, in that Philip's commitment was filtered through Elizabeth, and hers to the Cause, and so as long as Elizabeth maintained her duty and commitment, then they wouldn't have to worry as much about Philip. So of course, in season 1, when Elizabeth starts to really fall for Philip, Claudia is used as a proxy for the Center being all, "Let's put an end to that," because it made Elizabeth less committed to the Cause and more to Philip (and their family).

 

Yes! That's a great catch and I love that; they both incrementally move toward one another (or I suppose, compromise) in that regard for the other person because they do truly love one another and this is why I tend to flat out disagree with  You're making me want to get to my rewatch a little faster (but life is making it difficult for that to happen right now).

 

I'm rusty on watching those first few episodes closely, but I was somewhat under the impression that Elizabeth was not very regularly with Gregory the way she may have been much earlier on in her marriage to Philip and I do agree with a read that suggests while Gregory was her first love, by the eponymous episode her relationship to him had significantly shifted and changed. Were there suggestions of how regularly they had really seen each other up to then?

I also don't think Philip was always necessarily thinking to defect at the drop of a hat (though I do argue defection was probably always an undercurrent for him), otherwise he would have left with Irina! His defection was moreso pinned on the caveat that Elizabeth would defect with him and they would take the children, otherwise he woulda left with Irina when he was presented the opportunity in season 1! Which makes me realize... they also brought in Irina to present Philip with that exact opportunity to defect under different circumstances, but he's steadfast in that if he defected, it would have to be with Elizabeth and the kids; he maintains this this even in Chloramphenicol in that conversation with William as Elizabeth was sick.

Well Philip said he willing to defect without Elizabeth in the Pilot. So- had he wanted to before the Pilot or after- he could have imo. In the Pilot, he killed  Timoshev and opted out. And a rather big motivation at the time was fear anyway- fear of Stan. I think defection had far less appeal once he determined Stan wasn’t onto them. 

He was also willing to do what he thought was best, regardless of her opinion or the consequences to either one of them on other occasions. Beyond the Pilot. That was all S6. So, I think if he’d have really wanted it, things would have been said/handled differently. 

The usefulness of spying/general burnout was Philip’s running issue imo. He liked the idea of normal life too. That’s not the same as defecting imo. 

Regarding S1: Philip wasn’t going to run away without his children, anymore I think, than Elizabeth would have. Irina and Gregory made similar suggestions to P and E about running away-and neither went for it. Additionally- P and E love other. So, they’re not interested in running off with their exes, regardless of the fact they’re not getting along at the time. And E would have had to quit spying. Lol 

I have my doubts E/G saw each other that frequently. There wouldn’t have been time. Elizabeth had a very busy life. And Gregory didn’t live down the street. 

IIRC Philip is talking about spying not defecting when talking to William. He’d like to be done spying. He and William are both burned out. They’d like to be normal. William himself was a patriot to the end- despite his doubts. He killed himself so he didn’t betray anyone. Philip is meant to parallel William imo.

And yet- when Philip is given the chance to go home and be totally done with spying, even he can’t destroy the Breeland tape. I think Philip, like William, was pretty complicated and couldn’t let go as easily he wanted to. He wanted it to be that simple, just be done with it, but it wasn’t. Just like he couldn’t walk away when Oleg came to him for help. Cutting the cord was easier to say for him than ultimately fully do. 

I do think Philip later realized he’d like to do something normal, but more meaningful than travel agenting. 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Erin9

[Erin9]

3 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Reading this I can't help but think about how much it contrasts with Paige's attitude about the whole thing. She wants to go with Elizabeth just because it's her thing now that she and Mom do this together. Of course she doesn't know the details, but that seems to be in part because she never knows the details. Both because Elizabeth isn't reading her in on everything and because she really doesn't seem that interested. This kind of mission makes it so clear that Paige has no business being anywhere near it, but she thinks of herself as central to the operation. The contrast between her and Marilyn is huge. Even after Marilyn dies Paige still seems completely out of it, happy to go back to thinking people dying doesn't happen often (despite knowing about 2 deaths in the past couple of months) and worried about whether she'll be alone forever. 

But I think what you're saying here is a big reason why Philip asks Elizabeth to come home. It would be great if she could choose to not do a mission because she will probably die (and frankly, if she died she'd probably be identified so Philip would be caught), but this is exactly the thing Elizabeth can't do. It's so far from her understanding of both herself and Philip that she can't believe he's suggesting she just let Harvest go. They both know what choice they're making here, whether or not they survive it. Elizabeth will always be the person who has to do this sort of thing and Philip will always be the person who does what he does. But it's like he has to put that decision in her hands again, just to remind him how it's never going to happen for them. He's William. 

Yes- Elizabeth thinks him asking her to drop it is more proof he doesn’t care about home.  We know he still cares. It’s that he sees this as destroying them all. He sees it as a pointless sacrifice. Why give up everything for what you believe to be a virtual suicide mission?  He’s suggesting using discretion in her jobs. Thinking about it! Save herself for other clients who need her. 

I kinda wish Philip had pointedly said that- how totally screwed they all are if she gets herself caught/killed. We know it. They know it. But I wish it had been said. It wasn’t a minor issue. And while that’s always a risk, something can always go wrong, it was clear this was easily about the most deadly mission they’d knowingly undertaken. But E couldn’t let it go, and P was unwilling to not try and help save her because he loved her. He probably did at least save her life by being there. At least it wasn’t all for nothing for him....

Edited August 15, 2018 by Erin9

[Umbelina]

1 hour ago, Erin9 said:

Well Philip said he willing to defect without Elizabeth in the Pilot.

Actually, he didn't give her any warning, and he said that he was going to make the deal for them both.  In a way, he was kind of forcing her hand.  He wasn't planning on losing her, and certainly not his children.  He seemed to think she wouldn't have any choice.

Which, had she not happened to walk into the garage would have happened.  He'd already removed all restraints from Timochev, and told him he was making a deal.

It's odd though, because no way would Elizabeth share information with the USA, so she WOULD have been jailed, and she would have been hostile.  They would have probably just swapped her in a spy trade eventually. 

I think Philip seemed to think that his betrayal would be enough to release them together in protective custody, but seriously?  She would have killed him or escaped at that point, so it wasn't well thought out on his part AT ALL.

He didn't care or even think that much though, he just wanted OUT of the KGB and their horrible life.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Umbelina

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Would she have fallen for Philip had they been given that chance?  They had two years or so together at KGB school before they even came to the USA.  Maybe so.

Can't say for sure, but I think even if they'd really known each other she wouldn't have fallen for her until later in life. I feel like as a young woman she'd always have seen him as suspect.

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

So, he had a pretty spectacular death instead.  I also loved him refusing to go to the USSR, because it made Elizabeth at least face, for a while, what a disaster that would be for a black man, especially an American black man, it was one of the few times she seemed to think of her country honestly, without the rose-colored glasses.

I don't know if she really had to face that particular issue. It's not like anybody brings up race when it comes to Gregory not going to the USSR. If that was his real reason for not wanting to go you'd think Elizabeth would address it directly to at least try to keep him alive.

2 hours ago, Erin9 said:

Well Philip said he willing to defect without Elizabeth in the Pilot. So- had he wanted to before the Pilot or after- he could have imo. In the Pilot, he killed  Timoshev and opted out. And a rather big motivation at the time was fear anyway- fear of Stan. I think defection had far less appeal once he determined Stan wasn’t onto them. 

He tells her he's going to Stan with Timoshev and she doesn't have to talk to the FBI if she doesn't want to but she will be with the family, period. (Philip seems to be living in a dream world with his ideas for how this defection can work, but otoh Elizabeth even then doesn't kill him for it so she's more comfortable with defection than one would later think too.) Elizabeth fights Timoshev. Timoshev all but confesses what happened. Elizabeth says to go ahead and take him to the Americans.

Plenty of men would have simply offered Elizabeth sympathy but kept Timoshev alive and defected. Or even done something to punish him without killing him. Try to have it both ways. Philip immediately decides to fuck defection because this guy needs to die. I think he was happy with the choice he made and didn't revisit it any time he was suffering from the work. Or see and resent Elizabeth as the thing that's keeping him from living his best life. Not even when he's angry at her.

2 hours ago, Erin9 said:

I have my doubts E/G saw each other that frequently. There wouldn’t have been time. Elizabeth had a very busy life. And Gregory didn’t live down the street. 

Yeah, I feel like the "I miss your face" is saying that they don't see each other all the time. They no doubt saw each other more in the past, particularly before she had kids and when the relationship with Gregory was new. He doesn't seem to see it as a new or unusual thing that they've been apart long enough to greet each other by saying they missed each other. We've seen her very invested in a life that he tells her is fake. That says something about their involvement with each other. He's not the confidante anymore.

2 hours ago, Erin9 said:

And yet- when Philip is given the chance to go home and be totally done with spying, even he can’t destroy the Breeland tape. I think Philip, like William, was pretty complicated and couldn’t let go as easily he wanted to. He wanted it to be that simple, just be done with it, but it wasn’t. Just like he couldn’t walk away when Oleg came to him for help. Cutting the cord was easier to say for him than ultimately fully do. 

This is also something I think about wrt whether or not he regrets defecting. Because I think there's different types of regret. There are actions on the show that Philip regrets imo. But I think this goes back to EST. I know nothing about EST in reality, but on the show it seems like a big part of it is getting people to know themselves and make authentic choices. That image of instinctively moving forward in a dark room. The choice you make in a vacuum where it's just who you are. I think some of the stuff in EST is even a little more layered than it seems. If it starts off with "Even if the KGB forced you to do something, you still did it" but I think underneath it's also "they're not actually forcing you, you're making choices, so you need to figure out what they are and own them."

When Elizabeth's there she hates the guy saying "You love your cage." The cage is the stuff you do because of outside pressure--what's expected, what society wants, it's about the role your playing or your responsibilities. One thing that's funny in Gregory is that Gregory's telling Elizabeth who she really is, that her choice of Philip isn't really her, but really it's one of the choices in her life that isn't connected to outside pressure. There's nobody who needs her to be in love with Philip and many people representing authority who don't want her to be. Claudia, too, from their first meeting is praising her as a spy and dropping the fact that she was at Stalingrad--she might as well be revealing herself as an actual Saint to Elizabeth. They're not shy about telling Elizabeth what she should do and who she really is--a KGB tool. In S6 Philip basically points out that the cage is open so her decisions are her own.

Philip starts off often making plenty of decisions on his own based on the job he has to do. When he starts being more reluctant he gets talked into things because it's for the good of the country, it won't be too bad, etc. I think that culminates with the Kimmy kidnapping idea. He sees himself going into that pattern again where he doesn't feel right about what he's doing, but lets somebody convince him it's right. Then when it blows up in his face--like when he finds out there's no terrible wheat attack or that the bioweapon was for murdering Afghanis and not defense, I think he regrets his actions. He's like Chief Brody in Jaws when he feels responsibility for someone dying because he let other people persuade him to allow swimming against his own instincts. Philip starts going down that road again, then snaps out of it and doesn't do it.

But I see a distinction between that and choices he makes that might have bad consequences but are still a true representation of who he is. Like when he says to Stan that he wishes Stan stayed in EST because he'd know what to do in that crucial moment in the garage. I think killing Timoshev is a defining moment for Philip that he can't really regret because to regret it would be to wish he was someone else, which is pointless. I don't think he can really imagine doing something else. So I can't really see him truly regretting any of the choices that bring him to where he is in the finale. It's not that he wouldn't have regrets or things he wished he'd handled differently, but I don't think he could really regret those most defining decisions because that's who he was. By the time he started questioning what he was doing he'd already gotten himself into a mess and even then it's not like he woke up, shook off everything he was or cared about before and knew what he wanted to do and why.

Edited August 16, 2018 by sistermagpie

[scartact]

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Elizabeth, in my strong opinion, was the ONLY reason he didn't defect throughout the entire run of the series.  I'll be watching more and note other times, but it's the way the series began, and it continued, but was more hopeless and less effort on his part because Elizabeth wouldn't consider it.

Oh, absolutely. There's an interview Matthew Rhys did with Alan Sepinwall back in 2015 I think and Sepinwall asks if Elizabeth were to just suddenly ask Philip to defect, would Philip do it? And Rhys was like, in a heartbeat. The absolute only reason Philip stayed in a job that made him feel hopeless and monstrous is because he did not want to leave without Elizabeth. I always had a thought that the final character arc for Elizabeth would possibly be a situation in which she's asked very blatantly to choose between Philip or the Cause, though I suppose arguably the show shifted that final season to be about whether she could choose her humanity or the Cause (but that's only a half-thought, so I'm uncertain if I fully by that).

3 hours ago, Umbelina said:

He loved Elizabeth, he says/thought that he would be able to cut the deal for them both with Stan.  (!)  He wasn't even giving her a few hours head start to run.

I haven't seen the Pilot as recently as you have, but when Elizabeth catches Philip with Timochev, doesn't he imply that he's making the choice for everyone and that Elizabeth would learn to get used to it, therefore implying that if he turned in Timochev to Stan, he would effectively defect for both of them? Or am I misremembering/misreading?

3 hours ago, Umbelina said:

That's also why Elizabeth's dialogue that begins with "My name was Nadezhda..." was so huge.  They were finally able to be honest with one another, and that was a way to make those love feelings bloom, solidify, become real.

I definitely agree with this and it connects to your earlier point about when they're first introduced to each other how staunchly Philip and Elizabeth kept up the pretense of being those two people, rather than Nadezhda and Mikhail. I don't know if I would necessarily couch Elizabeth's relationship with Gregory in terms of her being her "true self" or not, but rather Gregory represents some kind of alternate life (the way I suppose Irina is kinda supposed to with Philip? But whatever; Irina was never as well-written as Gregory in my opinion) where Elizabeth doesn't have children and she's in love with someone who loves what she does with that same level of idealism and fervency.

I think you are making me wonder what the show could have looked like if they had kept Gregory on, but yes I definitely agree that that wasn't the story the really wanted to tell because he would always be the literal third presence in the room. I like where they place him though, as someone who will always be incredibly important to Elizabeth, which makes me want to reflect more on that final dream sequence in the series finale, but that feels like a thought for another day from me!

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

 

3 hours ago, Umbelina said:

So, he had a pretty spectacular death instead.  I also loved him refusing to go to the USSR, because it made Elizabeth at least face, for a while, what a disaster that would be for a black man, especially an American black man, it was one of the few times she seemed to think of her country honestly, without the rose-colored glasses.

I don't know if she really had to face that particular issue. It's not like anybody brings up race when it comes to Gregory not going to the USSR. If that was his real reason for not wanting to go you'd think Elizabeth would address it directly to at least try to keep him alive.

Well, to be blunt, I don't think this show wanted to fully contend with the implications of a Black man defecting to the USSR, because I mean, I would very much wonder what that would have translated to in his experiences. He sure would stick out like a sore thumb. It was hopeful conjecturing on Liz's part, without her necessarily taking up a more critical stance on a Black person moving to the USSR and blending in vs. a White person moving to the USSR and blending in. I think they kinda vaguely gesture to it when Gregory is like, "Can you imagine me in Russia?" but his incredulity is ambiguous enough that for me, there's not enough evidence to necessarily support a race-based reading of that scene, nor is there necessarily enough evidence to deny that as a possible reading too.

 

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

When Elizabeth's there she hates the guy saying "You love your cage." The cage is the stuff you do because of outside pressure--what's expected, what society wants, it's about the role your playing or your responsibilities.

I was just thinking about that scene in one of my earlier posts and I wanted to reference it, but wasn't necessarily sure where I was going with it. Anyway, I think about that moment a lot and the monologue that EST guy is saying primarily because it makes me think about how on one level this guy is telling Elizabeth directly (and us by proxy) that she loves her cage, and she does not realize it at all. And we can probably agree with it to an extent because Elizabeth puts herself in increasingly compromising positions all the time, and very often puts it where she needs to, and then just moves the fuck on. But on another level, she could be processing it as her thinking about Philip and what kinds of cages he loves, and how she also sees EST as a cage that he loves too, because EST tells you that you don't get it, and so you have to wind up buying in more and more. She denies her cage, but sees Philip's (supposed) cage.

On another level, this also makes me think about what kinds of cages does Philip (unknowingly) love? Anyway, not the point of what you were talking about in the greater context of your post on Philip (an analysis I quite like), but just funny that you brought it up, because I was thinking about it today. It's weirdly one of my favorite EST moments.

[sistermagpie]

17 hours ago, scartact said:

I think you are making me wonder what the show could have looked like if they had kept Gregory on, but yes I definitely agree that that wasn't the story the really wanted to tell because he would always be the literal third presence in the room. I like where they place him though, as someone who will always be incredibly important to Elizabeth, which makes me want to reflect more on that final dream sequence in the series finale, but that feels like a thought for another day from me!

Also I feel like he'd be overkill. Elizabeth already always has somebody who wants to talk to her and listen to her and encourage her, and despite what the showrunners say she's not actually that reticent about talking to people about her feelings about these things. (In season 6 when she's ostensibly cut herself off from the world she's got Claudia, Philip, Erika and Father Andre all offering her some kind of personal encouragement and care--without her giving much back.

By S3E1 Gregory's spent 15 years having a relationship with her that does not acknowledge her domestic stuff isn't real, it's just a cover for her true self. Having him around would either just give him a similar role as Claudia (but without an actual connection to the USSR) or else they'd have to make that relationship evolve as well and at that point the show becomes Elizabeth Jennings and her love life triangle which nobody was interested in. He makes more sense as exactly what he is: someone who represents the way she wanted love to work in her life--a subset of her love for the Cause that was based on a shared commitment. One could only exist on the fringes of a life where she embraced her family.

Plus the show did have Gregory and Irina continue to exist through what they stood for. The couple could still be jealous of them despite them being gone. Plus on Elizabeth's side there's the Centre and Claudia still encouraging her to put the Cause first with Gregory the martyr as a symbol. On Philip's there's an actual son to represent that family life that's not a cover. This despite the fact that the relationships were firmly over and not a real temptation for the person.

17 hours ago, scartact said:

Well, to be blunt, I don't think this show wanted to fully contend with the implications of a Black man defecting to the USSR, because I mean, I would very much wonder what that would have translated to in his experiences. He sure would stick out like a sore thumb. It was hopeful conjecturing on Liz's part, without her necessarily taking up a more critical stance on a Black person moving to the USSR and blending in vs. a White person moving to the USSR and blending in. I think they kinda vaguely gesture to it when Gregory is like, "Can you imagine me in Russia?" but his incredulity is ambiguous enough that for me, there's not enough evidence to necessarily support a race-based reading of that scene, nor is there necessarily enough evidence to deny that as a possible reading too.

I think whatever the reality, I could totally believe that Elizabeth believes in the USSR's claims about itself as not being racist. Imo there's nothing in either his line-reading or her reply to his line that implies that subject. He actually doesn't say, "Can you really see me there?" He says, "Moscow, Elizabeth? Can you really see me there?" And then she starts talking about an adjustment period. No awkward acknowledgement, even a silent one, of the huge implications of the other meaning. That when Gregory said he and Elizabeth both knew that it wasn't "about race" when they met while working for MLK he meant that he'd accept the racism.

By contrast there's the later Aderholdt scene where he's asked if he thinks any of the other men resent him because he's...new. There's a conversation where they don't say they're talking about race but everyone knows they're talking about race.

17 hours ago, scartact said:

But on another level, she could be processing it as her thinking about Philip and what kinds of cages he loves, and how she also sees EST as a cage that he loves too, because EST tells you that you don't get it, and so you have to wind up buying in more and more. She denies her cage, but sees Philip's (supposed) cage.

It's like when Elizabeth rants about Christianity in ways that play as funny to the audience because of how obviously she can't see that she might as well be describing her own faith. Actually that also makes me think of what she says about Paige starting to see what Pastor Tim really is or something like that when they're looking at his diary. In the end Paige tells Elizabeth that she's finally seen who Elizabeth really is.

17 hours ago, scartact said:

On another level, this also makes me think about what kinds of cages does Philip (unknowingly) love? Anyway, not the point of what you were talking about in the greater context of your post on Philip (an analysis I quite like), but just funny that you brought it up, because I was thinking about it today. It's weirdly one of my favorite EST moments.

Honestly? I think Elizabeth is the cage he loves. I didn't think about it that way until you just said this, but I do think so. He'll oppose her when he thinks he's right, but I think he absolutely sees her as some kind of...I don't know what to call it, but, for instance, I genuinely think that he likes having her there shaming him into loyalty to home because he doesn't truly want to lose it. Without her he wouldn't only have defected, he might have just disappeared into a series of reactionary personas created for other people, if that makes sense. I think he loves her demanding things from him, even if some of those demands are too much and loves caring about her. Nothing else really keeps him weighted to the earth--including the kids who he sees as something he's supposed to let go of.  He's more solid (as opposed to ghost-like) with her than anyone.

I think he also does feel a certain responsibility to others so he wouldn't feel comfortable just being that "asshole who only thinks of himself" or however he describes it over the phone. But I don't know if that's what would really be the cage. I feel like Elizabeth represents that idea to him too.

Edited August 16, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Umbelina]

1 hour ago, scartact said:

I don't know if I would necessarily couch Elizabeth's relationship with Gregory in terms of her being her "true self" or not

She actually says exactly that when she's talking to Philip and explaining her relationship with Gregory a few episodes later.  She says Gregory was the only one she could be honest with, and talk to as her real self.  I'll have to go back and get that quote.  It's funny, because I watched that one again tonight, so before I made that post.  (obviously I've watched it before)

ETA

It's the speech that begins with something like "I was seventeen..."  She also mentions Gregory's passions, for the cause, for her, says he didn't want anything from her, they shared the same dreams or goals.

1 hour ago, scartact said:

I haven't seen the Pilot as recently as you have, but when Elizabeth catches Philip with Timochev, doesn't he imply that he's making the choice for everyone and that Elizabeth would learn to get used to it, therefore implying that if he turned in Timochev to Stan, he would effectively defect for both of them? Or am I misremembering/misreading?

Yes, exactly.  That's what I was trying to say, or thought I did say.  Either way, he wanted out so badly, he really didn't think it through, or even give her an hour to escape.  It was pre-pussy-whipped Philip in season one, he still made some of his own decisions.

1 hour ago, scartact said:

Well, to be blunt, I don't think this show wanted to fully contend with the implications of a Black man defecting to the USSR, because I mean, I would very much wonder what that would have translated to in his experiences. He sure would stick out like a sore thumb. It was hopeful conjecturing on Liz's part, without her necessarily taking up a more critical stance on a Black person moving to the USSR and blending in vs. a White person moving to the USSR and blending in. I think they kinda vaguely gesture to it when Gregory is like, "Can you imagine me in Russia?" but his incredulity is ambiguous enough that for me, there's not enough evidence to necessarily support a race-based reading of that scene, nor is there necessarily enough evidence to deny that as a possible reading too.

Oh, I think it was most definitely about race, and racism in the USSR.  His face!  Also, later the show does address that exact topic when the South African black man talks about the racism he experienced while training in Moscow.  At least in the USA, Gregory had other black people and coping mechanisms established to deal with USA racism.

It never even occurred to me that anyone would see that scene as meaning anything else, and I didn't feel they "shied away" from it at all.

1 hour ago, scartact said:

On another level, this also makes me think about what kinds of cages does Philip (unknowingly) love?

Elizabeth is and always has been his cage.  She's what's held him back from living the kind of life he wanted to, or rather his "love" for her.  He repeatedly chose to stay in that cage, ruining his life really.

 

19 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

By S3E1 Gregory's spent 15 years having a relationship with her that does not acknowledge her domestic stuff isn't real, it's just a cover for her true self.

It was 15 years in season 1, so even if the love side didn't exist, they still had a "relationship" just a different kind, very close friends who KNOW each other, and trusted colleagues, but more than a 15 year one, right?  I agree they didn't want to do love triangles, on top of spying.

19 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

It's like when Elizabeth rants about Christianity in ways that play as funny to the audience because of how obviously she can't see that she might as well be describing her own faith.

Yes, both Paige and Elizabeth did share a fanaticism trait, and a refusal to examine themselves or their latest or only cults.

@sistermagpie

Ha!  We agree about Elizabeth being Philip's cage!  For slightly different reasons, but I completely agree.  (I had already typed that before your message appeared.)

I don't even really think the KGB was Elizabeth's most basic cage.  I think her's was making up for her father being a traitor, so she became fanatically dedicated to be the most loyal, worthy, hardworking, life-risking Soviet possible, even if it made everyone around her miserable, or ruined lives, or ended them.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Umbelina

[Erin9]

I see Philip liking the idea of disappearing into America more than actually handing information over to the Americans. It fits someone who still cares about home better. Someone who never can quite let it go, even when he wants to. 

I do agree Elizabeth helped keep Philip focused or grounded, if you will. He liked that about her though. He didn’t see it as a bad thing. He probably did need that to some extent. Philip could become someone else- anyone really- very easily. He’s that adaptable. 

But I don’t think he regretted her or the major choices he made. When he felt strongly enough about things- he did them. 

[Umbelina]

I thought I'd comment on Trust Me, the episode where Claudia has Philip beaten up, and Elizabeth abducted because Claudia thinks Philip could be the mole, and where idiot Paige hitchhikes and nearly gets herself and Henry killed, but Henry saves the day.  It's the episode that leads to the reunion episode with Irina, and probably the reason why he does sleep with her.

ANYWAY

I remember at the time how tense that whole episode was to watch, because, of course, we didn't know that Philip and Elizabeth hadn't been captured/caught by the Americans, and we didn't know how Paige's idiocy would end either, but it was obvious she was in danger of probably rape and murder, and Henry could die as well.  So, at the time, it was a very good episode in most ways, especially the endings to all of those stories.

• I adored the talk between Paige and Henry when they were finally safely home.  Perfection.  I loved Henry for most of the series, and that was a defining moment for him.  After all of that intelligent bravery, "I had an accident."  Awww, just loved him.
• Elizabeth beating up Granny, what's not to love?  Later, after threatening to kill her, Granny ice cold eyes saying "Better luck next time."
• Philip realizing Elizabeth not only betrayed and lied to him for years with Gregory, but that she also had reported on him "several times" to the fucking KGB.
• The car accident was surprising and also so sensible and perfect to explain their injuries and absence, I thought that was very clever.

On rewatch though, and I've rewatched it before, it's not an episode I enjoy.  I am so frustrated with Paige, which I was the first time as well, but since I already know how it ends, it doesn't really hold me, just somehow annoys me.  As far as the garage scenes, kind of ditto, it's not real, and it's happening because of unwise decisions, in this case Elizabeth's.  Also, the whole necklace thing to give Martha to make up for Philip standing her up (he's kidnapped as he gets off the phone with her setting up a coffee date to find out what she knows about the mole) didn't really play for me either.  I think Elizabeth was awfully bitchy about it, for someone who just admitted she tattled on Philip to the KGB, which is why they were both terrified/beat up.  IF they cut a scene where that necklace represented something meaningful between them?  Probably for the best, but maybe not.  That whole scene seemed out of place or a disconnect for me in some way.

It did set up the next show though.

[sistermagpie]

15 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Oh, I think it was most definitely about race, and racism in the USSR.  His face!  Also, later the show does address that exact topic when the South African black man talks about the racism he experienced while training in Moscow.  At least in the USA, Gregory had other black people and coping mechanisms established to deal with USA racism.

It never even occurred to me that anyone would see that scene as meaning anything else, and I didn't feel they "shied away" from it at all.

I think not having a single person bring it up at all and the only evidence being Gregory's face (even if it is the face of a black man) and an assumption that all viewers will associate Moscow with racism counts as shying away from it. Even if that's what Derek Luke is playing, Gregory is apparently not going to bring it up to Elizabeth (and Claudia, Elizabeth and Philip are too delicate to approach how this problem might be handled on their own too, so they'll talk about general adjustment too). You'd think two people who met in the Civil Rights movement and are connected through a passion for social justice would be less awkward about the elephant in the car with them. Have they never addressed the racism in Elizabeth's beloved USSR, the country whose agenda Gregory's devoted his life to advancing? Pastor Tim doesn't mind being blunt about the anti-Semitism (even if he mostly makes it an issue of religion). 

I mean, race is very much an unspoken issue in Gregory and Elizabeth's relationship onscreen but I'm not so sure Elizabeth's so sensitive to that subject that she's seeing it the way Gregory would have to see it. Ultimately Elizabeth is not American (and she's white) and Gregory is not Russian so I don't know how much I'd trust them to know everything about this stuff in both cultures. To me it actually seems like it's one of many subjects that they avoid in their curated time together.

15 hours ago, Umbelina said:

I don't even really think the KGB was Elizabeth's most basic cage.  I think her's was making up for her father being a traitor, so she became fanatically dedicated to be the most loyal, worthy, hardworking, life-risking Soviet possible, even if it made everyone around her miserable, or ruined lives, or ended them.

Yes, the KGB was just one version of it. She actively sought out and was drawn to people who gave her that same message--Claudia and Gregory being two people who saw things the same way in that sense, for instance. But not only them. She didn't grow up idolizing the KGB.

15 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Elizabeth is and always has been his cage.  She's what's held him back from living the kind of life he wanted to, or rather his "love" for her.  He repeatedly chose to stay in that cage, ruining his life really.

 

That's why to me it seems like part of his development is accepting that this *is* the life he wants to live given the choices he has open to him. It's not like Elizabeth is only like this 20% of the time and he puts up with it for the other 80%. He doesn't seem to be waiting for her to turn into somebody else. There's ways that he wants to temper the way she is and keep her from just allowing herself to be used however, but even that to me seems like he's protecting something of value he sees in her.

This is who she is and who she's always been and this is the person he fell in love with, the choice in his life he doesn't doubt. When he joins a spy plot he easily sees this as something Elizabeth would have done. 

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

I think Elizabeth was awfully bitchy about it, for someone who just admitted she tattled on Philip to the KGB, which is why they were both terrified/beat up.  IF they cut a scene where that necklace represented something meaningful between them?  Probably for the best, but maybe not.  That whole scene seemed out of place or a disconnect for me in some way.

Elizabeth is amazingly self-righteous in that episode--I think she spends the season learning she's not going to get to set all the rules. No wonder she's so furious at Philip for lying to her and making her feel stupid after she has to appeal to him the week before. 

But I like the way the lines are drawn in this season, including this ep. Philip does learn not to lie to Elizabeth. Even if it takes him a while in S6 he does tell her the truth freely. And Elizabeth never again crosses the line of reporting on him to the KGB although she still flirts with that dynamic. After Philip tells her the truth in S6 she doesn't tell anyone about it, especially Claudia. 

But here not only does Elizabeth not apologize for tattling on Philip she blames *him* for them getting beaten up. That's her big apology. (Might as well a "sorry I didn't kill you"--a line to Granny she might revisit after the show's over...) She doesn't have much practice dealing with someone with fundamental differences of opinion on this stuff.

Edited August 16, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Umbelina]

If Elizabeth was learning she didn't get to set the all the rules, then that's a lesson she certainly never learned, and neither did Philip.

Also, obviously I meant the expression on Gregory's face, not his actual face.  As has been pointed out repeatedly since the bare-words finale?  The show didn't need words to get everything across, or rely on them.

If they did?  They were certainly provided in the S. Africa episode.

Gregory read, he had books, he probably knew more about the realities of the present Soviet Union than Elizabeth or Philip did.  He was aware, hell I was aware, and by the time I was 12, if not before.

Elizabeth was his cage, and he didn't want to get out of it.  Just like EST said.  Philip may have thought he loved her, but that's not love.  Love isn't that unhealthy, it doesn't force you to live your life being miserable all the time, and it certainly doesn't require you to lie to every person you meet, or murder anyone you are told to murder.  Loving means actually caring about a person, in a way, the only woman who ever did show love to Philip was Irina.  She cared more about him than herself, so she didn't spoil his dream by admitting she was pregnant.

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Umbelina said:

If Elizabeth was learning she didn't get to set the all the rules, then that's a lesson she certainly never learned, and neither did Philip.

I think the end of S1 definitively says it did. Elizabeth didn't get to use the Cause to set the boundaries of the relationship. She had to ask Philip to come home on his terms. She didn't call all the shots in their relationship just because they didn't defect. Elizabeth had really strong beliefs about defection and what they were doing and Philip respects that. It was easier for him to not defect than it would have been for her to defect.

4 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Also, obviously I meant the expression on Gregory's face, not his actual face.  As has been pointed out repeatedly since the bare-words finale?  The show didn't need words to get everything across, or rely on them.

That's what I meant too. Of course an actor can convey something with an expression but here we're talking about multiple conversations about convincing Gregory to go to Moscow and why Gregory might not want to go to Moscow with people bringing up multiple points with him and with each other, yet the whole reason he doesn't want to go has to lie in the actor's expression when he says one line that the camera doesn't even linger on? A line where even his intonation is a bit counter-intuitive? And there's good reason for people to actually talk about it? I would never say that that one line couldn't possibly have anything to do with race, but I wouldn't give the show credit for much dealing with the subject in that episode or with that character. The episode with the SA characters brings the subject up in multiple ways using things said and unsaid, facial expressions and performances etc. It doesn't change the way Gregory plays to me. Honestly, it actually seems to me that this is something Gregory's consciously put aside for the relationship.

4 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Elizabeth was his cage, and he didn't want to get out of it.  Just like EST said.  Philip may have thought he loved her, but that's not love.  Love isn't that unhealthy, it doesn't force you to live your life being miserable all the time, and it certainly doesn't require you to lie to every person you meet, or murder anyone you are told to murder.  Loving means actually caring about a person, in a way, the only woman who ever did show love to Philip was Irina.  She cared more about him than herself, so she didn't spoil his dream by admitting she was pregnant.

Love doesn't really have one definition. Nothing in the Jennings relationship says to me that their understanding of it is that unusual or toxic. They don't abuse each other, they care for each other. I can easily see why Philip would prefer his lifetime of experience with Elizabeth to his lifetime of experience with Irina. Whether I think Philip should love Irina all the more for deciding to lie to him and secretly have a baby she'd later dramatically reveal, or shouldn't love Elizabeth for continuing to believe their job is incredibly important, I personally see Irina and Philip loving each other as teenagers and then being adults who just met and didn't have a big connection beyond the past. Irina's invested their relationship with more and more significance over the years than Philip has. I see Elizabeth and Philip being very damaged people who love each other, can be good for each other, with values that complement each other more than they oppose them. I also see Philip going through an evolution that is mostly about himself and not Elizabeth.

What I got from EST is that a cage bad when it's a thing you use to make your decisions for you rather than making them yourself.  In S6 Philip is absolutely thinking for himself. Elizabeth clearly is not making his decisions for him. The one time he's tempted to let her do that he stops himself. (Stops himself and stops the operation--if Elizabeth was setting the rules, that would definitely be against them.) He's not giving that to her. His choices are him freely choosing for himself. He chooses Oleg over Elizabeth the spy. He chooses Elizabeth the woman over other people.

It's exactly what he says to Elizabeth--she has to make her own choices, not say she has to do something because she was ordered to by the Centre. Philip can't do that with Elizabeth either. He's not doing a thing because Elizabeth says it's important. Both of them are in a position in S6 where they can't rely on their "cages" and have to make choices based on what they themselves think is right. They both choose to stop the coup for different but non-conflicting reasons.

[Umbelina]

Yeah, keep murdering or support me murdering, mostly innocent people by the way, and I'll love you.  Not unhealthy at all.

[Umbelina]

Continuing on to season 2, and trying to force myself to watch the Paige scenes now, I had to skip over Elizabeth using that poor sailor.  It's not that it wasn't superbly done on her part, and he was wonderful in his role, so wonderful in fact it just kind of made me very sad for him.  I don't know why, he got out of it with his life which is more than most could say, since they are dead and can't talk.

I enjoyed the Mossad agent story though, (you got to know when to hold 'em) and the actor who played Anton was at his very best in the scene with Philip in the car, begging for his life, and to be with his son.  Mathew Rhys seems to bring out the best in so many actors, as does Keri.  Do I think Israel would do that?  Probably, to save so many they might sacrifice one, and the timing works out historically.  Still...sigh.

When I rewatched during season 5, I think I enjoyed it all more.  Oddly, I remember really loving season 2 then, but this time I kind of loved season 1 much more.  I might skip the rest of 2 for now, and move on to season 3 and 4, my favorites of the entire run.

Nope!  Just realized that Oleg is finally starting to play a bigger role!  Ha, can't skip that part, and the beginnings of his relationships with Nina and Stan!  Supporting players really shine in this season, including Arkady and Martha of course.  I so loved the Elizabeth and Martha getting drunk scenes too.  So, sticking it out through season 2 for the lovely gems we got.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Umbelina