Tusk to Tchaikovsky: Re-watching the Americans

[Roseanna]

11 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Martha was a secretary who honestly believed in her vows of marriage.  By the time she knew Philip was KGB and definitely working against her country, it was too late.  She nearly fled when she found out about Taffet, and hell yes, if she was going to betray her husband, it should have been when she found out Gene was murdered, I give her a pass at fleeing the safe house, turning him in was too late then, the FBI was already trying to arrest her.

Martha, unlike Stan, had no spy training, or FBI training really.  She was expertly manipulated by one of the very best KGB agents there was.

So, Martha, all along, faced jail, and possibly accessory to murder charges as well as treason charges, which, she could be executed for by the way.  Until the very last moments she believed she was leaving with her husband.  Is love a better excuse than Stan had?  At least it IS an excuse, vows, marriage, love.  What was Stan's?

Stan, on the other hand, was a full FBI AGENT.  He had seen up close and personal the "work" and the blood of the spies he let go.  He was better trained, and was a law enforcement officer.  Yes, I think he is more culpable than a stupid, besotted woman, for all of those reasons and more.

Although Martha was "only" a secretary, she worked in the FBI, so she must have warned about the importance of secrecy. And unless she was as naive as Paige although twenty years older, she must have read basic information about the KGB. 

I can't undestand how "the marriage vows" can mean a lisence to to treat other people immorally. Which Martha did at least when she, although horrified, accepted Gene's murder.

On the other hand, I undertand that different people have different values and that they act according to them - and then face the consequeces. To me, Martha and Stan were equal when they made their choices.

Actually, Stan only suspected what crimes P&E had done whereas Martha knew for sure what she crimes had done for "Clark" and that he had murdered Gene.

I don't think it was too late. As Martha could have helped a KGB officer to be caught, she had a good chance to make a deal and get an immunity. 

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

 

Martha had so so many chances. The moment Clark gave her the pen was also, imo, a moment where we saw where Martha's priorities lay.

I would actually add another thing with Stan, which is that I think in that moment he saw letting the Jennings go as just not needing them punished, which is a different situation than Martha. If she had told on Clark, for instance, when he gave her the pen the FBI might have captured 2 or more Illegals who were actively working against the US. When Stan let the Jennings go they were already burnt and on their way out--he gave up anything they might have squeezed out of them, but wasn't stopping their operations. Martha began actively spying for the KGB.

Although I guess we should also note that if Renee is also a spy then Stan actually did get to capture a working spy thanks to the garage scene.

Yes, Martha had many choices also before she learned that "Clark" wasn't working for the security of the FBI. But she could have changed her mind as Nina did. 

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

 

She was being expertly handled by a superb KGB spy, and she thought she was married to him.  Hadn't Philip just played her the doctored tape since she actually was saying she didn't want to do any more snooping on her coworkers, she didn't feel right about it,  (even though she still believed Clark's job  was to protect them and the agency.)

There is a ton more the FBI could learn from them, from the operations they were successful at, to cooperating Americans, to what the KGB had in mind next, to possibly trading them for one of their own.  Aside from everything else, in this country Stan purports to hold so dear?  Cops are not judges and juries.  It is not up to him to violate the constitution or his sworn duty and oaths.  He may not have been stopping those twos operations, but he could have stopped others, and future operations and capture people who were betraying their country as well.  He could have closed the books on several cases.  He could have given the families of the FBI officers and all the others Elizabeth and Philip killed justice.  He could have done his duty.

Honestly, Stan deserves to go to jail, which is probably his future anyway.

Stan's days at the FBI, and possibly as a free man are over.  Either he wisely confesses, or Paige rats him out by mistake.

It's true that Martha was manipulated, but she also chose to let herself to be manipulated by going to "Clark" for explanation when the pen was found and she met Walter Taffet, instead of chosing to contact her lawyer.

The intel whom Elizabeth manipulated refused to cooperate with her when he understood that she used immoral methods unlike his businessman father. It's true that he had only a short sexual relationship with Elizabeth who wasn't so a skilled manipulated than Philip but the basic difference was that he listened to his conscience whereas Martha sacrified all for the illusion of love. 

As for Stan, I think that his choices (except that he didn't want to be a traitor for Nina) as well as conversation with Renee in the end of the of S5 explain his decision. He wasn't a "company man" at heart but a lone wolf and on the top of it, burned-out by his work which meant essentially manipulating people from the other side to endanger themselves in order to get information from them. Aderholt could do this kind of work because he didn't take it personally, but Nina, Philip and Oleg had changed Stan to a man to whom love and friendship mattered most.

Most of all, this wasn't a show where FBI agents are heroes who fight againts the evil KGB but the writers wanted to show that both sides used same immoral methods and how it made both P&E and Stan burned-out. And the writers also clearly valued individual choices based on individual values above mere loyalty to the organization.

I must confess, though, that I expected a tragic outcome. "Never seeing your kids" wasn't that.

But I accept the writers's choice. Once Stan decided to meet P&E alone and they refused to obey him, he had three options: to let them leave, to shoot them or make them obey by threatening Paige.     

[sistermagpie]

8 hours ago, Umbelina said:

She said it's not like that, (meaning sexual) he's like a little brother to me, and I think she said like family.  WHO to though?  Maybe another woman at the Residentura, and then after his murder she was more emphatic about how she felt about him.  It was more than Stan losing Amador, whom he barely knew, that's for sure.

I agree with that. I think to me the phrase in this context sounded like they had a different relationship but yes, I do think Nina definitely had a protective older sister vibe with Vlad--more than Stan and Amador. I think she probably was talking to the woman at the Rezidentura. She knew Vlad had a crush on her and that just made Nina more protective. The Nina/Vlad stuff came across as natural where as with Amador you could practically see the writers straining to create some friendship between them in the ep where he died. A friendship that didn't fit the many scenes we'd seen between the two of them. They just never hit the right note with them.

It could have worked. They could have created a dynamic where Stan thought Amador was kind of ridiculous but had affection for him and felt responsible for the way Amador looked up to him, but that wasn't what we saw, imo.

8 hours ago, Umbelina said:

She was being expertly handled by a superb KGB spy, and she thought she was married to him.  Hadn't Philip just played her the doctored tape since she actually was saying she didn't want to do any more snooping on her coworkers, she didn't feel right about it,  (even though she still believed Clark's job  was to protect them and the agency.)

Expertly handled, yes, but I think part of the handling was Clark accurately seeing who she was. He was always able to push her a little more or quiet her doubts.

8 hours ago, Umbelina said:

There is a ton more the FBI could learn from them, from the operations they were successful at, to cooperating Americans, to what the KGB had in mind next, to possibly trading them for one of their own.  Aside from everything else, in this country Stan purports to hold so dear?  Cops are not judges and juries.  It is not up to him to violate the constitution or his sworn duty and oaths.  He may not have been stopping those twos operations, but he could have stopped others, and future operations and capture people who were betraying their country as well.  He could have closed the books on several cases.  He could have given the families of the FBI officers and all the others Elizabeth and Philip killed justice.  He could have done his duty.

Honestly, Stan deserves to go to jail, which is probably his future anyway.

Stan's days at the FBI, and possibly as a free man are over.  Either he wisely confesses, or Paige rats him out by mistake.

I was thinking just along the lines of how Stan might have seen it rather than objectively. This is the guy who went to Gaad's actual widow for agreement that it wasn't worth it to find out who actually killed him or get justice. It's absolutely not his right to be judge and jury, but sometimes he himself seems to think it is.

4 hours ago, Roseanna said:

As for Stan, I think that his choices (except that he didn't want to be a traitor for Nina) as well as conversation with Renee in the end of the of S5 explain his decision. He wasn't a "company man" at heart but a lone wolf and on the top of it, burned-out by his work which meant essentially manipulating people from the other side to endanger themselves in order to get information from them. Aderholt could do this kind of work because he didn't take it personally, but Nina, Philip and Oleg had changed Stan to a man to whom love and friendship mattered most.

But I accept the writers's choice. Once Stan decided to meet P&E alone and they refused to obey him, he had three options: to let them leave, to shoot them or make them obey by threatening Paige.     

That's basically how I saw it.

Objectively I think he would be held to a higher standard of loyalty, of course, because he's an FBI agent and Martha a secretary. Even if Martha, too, would have been made to understand how important loyalty was in her job. As an agent greater trust would be placed in Stan. I'm sure the people who worked with him would have an easier time with the secretary duped by a KGB hottie than one of their own brothers-in-arms making the decision that these KGB agents who've killed a bunch of their men etc. ought to be freed because he really likes them personally. (I think something like this happened with Kim Philby as well, with somebody basically letting him run, but in that case I think the agency itself thought it was better for them because of the embarrassment? That wasn't true in this case.) None of those guys would have trusted Martha the same way they'd trust Stan. It would confirm their impression that they're superior as well. With Stan they wouldn't even be able to chalk it up to an ethical issue like with Renhull or Oleg or Philip. It's just personal. And Stan gets really personal really fast!

But when it comes down to it, they're both traitors. Martha's lower status might help her, especially since she essentially started spying while thinking (or at least having the cover story that she thought) she was working for the DOJ, but we know she actively chose to spy after she knew the truth.

[Roseanna]

28 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

I was thinking just along the lines of how Stan might have seen it rather than objectively. This is the guy who went to Gaad's actual widow for agreement that it wasn't worth it to find out who actually killed him or get justice. It's absolutely not his right to be judge and jury, but sometimes he himself seems to think it is.

It wasn't about justice. Stan had realized how wrong and futile revenge on the third party was when he had killed Vlad in revenge.

Now the question was if it was right, after the KGB had killed Gaad, to blackmail Oleg who had selflessly helped to get William caught (and became a traitor from the POV of the KGB). Well, of course it wasn't morally right, but such deeds are often necessary in the context of the "big picture". 

On the other hand, Amador's death show that if you only react to the events without knowing if your adversarity had done them on purpose, things can escalate and lead to the confrontation that nobody wants. If Stan had just acted without caring a bit who would lead the USSR, as if it would be the same for the US, he would have been a robot.  

[Roseanna]

18 hours ago, Umbelina said:

She FELL IN LOVE with Gregory, she didn't just have sex with him.  She laughed about her fake relationship with Philip with Gregory.  12 years is a LONG time.  Yes they shared devotion to a cause, but that enhanced their love, it certainly wasn't all there was to it.

After Philip murdered Timochev she saw Philip in a new way, obviously, I agree that she began to fall in love with Philip for all the logical, romantic reasons, including her experiences with him as partner and co-parent.

None of that means she didn't love Gregory first, or that it was less than real love.  People change, and when she saw Philip in a new light, she ended her love affair with Gregory and started one with Philip.

I don't deny that Elizabeth was in love with Gregory, but what kind of love it really was? It lasted 12 years but they had only some casual, stolen moments together - it was like being on holiday, never having meet real problems that each relationship has.

Obviously Elizabeth needed such a relationship that could get her relax and feel herself loved, but something important must have been missing, otherwise Elizabeth wouldn't have fallen for Philip. 

We met Gregory only after Elizabeth broke the relationship with him after which he didn't behave well. We never saw what kind of man he was before, but obviously he wanted Elizabeth be like she used to whereas Philip challenged her.   

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, Roseanna said:

It wasn't about justice. Stan had realized how wrong and futile revenge on the third party was when he had killed Vlad in revenge.

But it wasn't just about revenge either. The FBI weren't going after Oleg for revenge, they were using him to spy on  the KGB, which was their job. They were hoping to find out what happened to Gaad, and also have a source in the KGB. Stan was talking to the guy's widow and saying she should give him her blessing to not work a source in the KGB who might know what happened to her husband because he was a good guy. As if she'd have the same pov on this than he did. Stan's pov on the situation made perfect sense, but him going to Gaad's widow for backup was weird.

2 hours ago, Roseanna said:

On the other hand, Amador's death show that if you only react to the events without knowing if your adversarity had done them on purpose, things can escalate and lead to the confrontation that nobody wants. If Stan had just acted without caring a bit who would lead the USSR, as if it would be the same for the US, he would have been a robot.  

I'm not remembering this clearly so I might be off about what I'm saying, but Stan would have no idea whether the KGB killed Gaad on purpose or not. He was only focused on Oleg, who he knew personally. He, imo, felt shitty about repaying Oleg's sacrifice in giving up William with blackmail. That's very much in Stan's character--and I can sympathize with the logic there too. I didn't want Oleg punished for what he did either. But Stan going to Gaad's wife to validate this feeling of his, to me, shows even more how he's mixing the personal and professional and wanting to judge things. That's why I was comparing it to him thinking that Jennings didn't need to be captured.

[Umbelina]

9 hours ago, Roseanna said:

As for Stan, I think that his choices (except that he didn't want to be a traitor for Nina) as well as conversation with Renee in the end of the of S5 explain his decision. He wasn't a "company man" at heart but a lone wolf and on the top of it, burned-out by his work which meant essentially manipulating people from the other side to endanger themselves in order to get information from them. Aderholt could do this kind of work because he didn't take it personally, but Nina, Philip and Oleg had changed Stan to a man to whom love and friendship mattered most.

Or, they changed him into a criminal who ignored his sworn oaths and decided his own feelings mattered more than the law he swore to uphold, or justice for the many, many families still wanting answers and grieving the loss of their friends, loved ones, and family members.

It's all a matter of point of view.

Law officers becoming also judge and jury is a very evil slippery slope, and we have laws against that in the USA for valid and extremely important reasons, ALL of which Stan would be well aware of, having been extremely well trained.

It's against everything the USA is supposed to stand for, but Stan decided he was a special snowflake, and he was God like, and able to ignore his vows, his training, and the constitution of the United States, and designate himself and his feelings above the law, and above all of the many people who deserved justice.  Not to mention, he failed to prevent future crimes by not taking them in and debriefing them both about operations of the KGB on American soil.

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

I agree with that. I think to me the phrase in this context sounded like they had a different relationship but yes, I do think Nina definitely had a protective older sister vibe with Vlad--more than Stan and Amador. I think she probably was talking to the woman at the Rezidentura. She knew Vlad had a crush on her and that just made Nina more protective. The Nina/Vlad stuff came across as natural where as with Amador you could practically see the writers straining to create some friendship between them in the ep where he died. A friendship that didn't fit the many scenes we'd seen between the two of them. They just never hit the right note with them.

It could have worked. They could have created a dynamic where Stan thought Amador was kind of ridiculous but had affection for him and felt responsible for the way Amador looked up to him, but that wasn't what we saw, imo.

Yes.

There is also the simple dynamic that the Residentura "family" was really all they had on foreign soil.  Any spy organization operating in a hostile country just naturally becomes closer, they are, almost completely, all they have.  It would be the same situation in a CIA office in the USSR.  Those people DO become your family, almost everyone else near you is suspect.

I completely agree that the relationship between Stan and Amador didn't really justify (in a screen sense) Stan's decision to murder Vlad.  Another rogue spy action, breaking even more laws.  Stan really should be arrested and jailed for his crimes against the USA laws. 

Should Martha?  Of course!  She would have been.  Philip rescued her, and I think a big reason for that was that Martha had "seen" him without disguise.  Did he want one less ruined life or death on his hands?  Probably.  Still, had Martha been taken into custody, his op was blown.  It would not have taken long for Martha to spill her guts, realize she'd been duped.  Her cooperation may have resulted in less time in jail, and I seriously doubt she would face execution.  Or, they could have thrown her in jail for life.

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Objectively I think he would be held to a higher standard of loyalty, of course, because he's an FBI agent and Martha a secretary. Even if Martha, too, would have been made to understand how important loyalty was in her job. As an agent greater trust would be placed in Stan. I'm sure the people who worked with him would have an easier time with the secretary duped by a KGB hottie than one of their own brothers-in-arms making the decision that these KGB agents who've killed a bunch of their men etc. ought to be freed because he really likes them personally. (I think something like this happened with Kim Philby as well, with somebody basically letting him run, but in that case I think the agency itself thought it was better for them because of the embarrassment?

I think with Philby and other spies caught in that era, they gave them long ropes, hoping to catch their handlers, see who they were running, and in general trying to bust up entire rings, not just one spy.  They knew about other now famous spies years before they actually arrested them, for those reasons.

Yes, Martha's training would be completely different.  She would have taken a loyalty oath of course, but she wouldn't, for example, be extensively trained on separation of powers, legal responsibilities of arresting officers,  the constitutional responsibilities, such as judge and juries deciding the fate of criminals/spies, not the cop's. 

Martha had no power to arrest or shoot, Stan had that power, and that duty to the FBI, to the USA, and to the many victims.  Stan was well aware of his complete dereliction of duty and law breaking. 

In some ways, Martha was torn between vows.  She vowed to both the FBI/USA and to Clark in marriage.  She was a fool, and she was duped, and in love.

Both criminals?  Of course.  Martha though, in a lesser way, because she had an expert KGB officer doing a full court press on her, and for the most part, only found out things after the fact.   Stan, knowing many of the facts, with no marriage vows, or really much interaction with either of them in years?  Let them go.  Honestly, if the show hadn't decided to have Elizabeth go full out mass murderer in that short season, kill two military men, Stan's agents, and, with Philip, mow down 3 FBI officers practically the day before?

Stan's decision would have been slightly, not much, but slightly more believable.

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

But when it comes down to it, they're both traitors. Martha's lower status might help her, especially since she essentially started spying while thinking (or at least having the cover story that she thought) she was working for the DOJ, but we know she actively chose to spy after she knew the truth.

She never knew they were KGB though, and she certainly didn't know about all the murders Stan knew about.

I agree, both criminals, both traitors, and both should be in jail.

Stan though?  Far more blame and guilt falls at his feet, from the solo murder of Vlad, to stealing top secret information even though he eventually decided not to turn it over, to his complete and utter failure of duty at the end.  He is supposed to fight for the victims and to uphold the laws of the land.  Martha was supposed to type letters and file shit.

3 hours ago, Roseanna said:

I don't deny that Elizabeth was in love with Gregory, but what kind of love it really was? It lasted 12 years but they had only some casual, stolen moments together - it was like being on holiday, never having meet real problems that each relationship has.

Obviously Elizabeth needed such a relationship that could get her relax and feel herself loved, but something important must have been missing, otherwise Elizabeth wouldn't have fallen for Philip. 

We met Gregory only after Elizabeth broke the relationship with him after which he didn't behave well. We never saw what kind of man he was before, but obviously he wanted Elizabeth be like she used to whereas Philip challenged her.   

I thought Gregory behaved as anyone in love for twelve years would behave.  He repeated Elizabeth's own words about Philip back to her.  He thought she was making a mistake, and he was trying to remind her of their love.  Was it desperate in some ways?  Yes, that's how someone in love for so long can feel, desperate, and because he truly KNEW her for so very long, wanting to tell her all she's felt up until that moment of "It's over."

As for the rest of it?  We don't know how much time they spent together, my guess is it was pretty frequent.  They were very comfortable with each other, the sex (mostly afterglow scenes) seemed loving, friendly, funny, and real to me.  We saw several flashbacks, but I agree that they didn't go into depth.

Yes, they thought the same way about the world as well, which probably added to their attraction, but I don't think that was the only attraction. 

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

But it wasn't just about revenge either. The FBI weren't going after Oleg for revenge, they were using him to spy on  the KGB, which was their job. They were hoping to find out what happened to Gaad, and also have a source in the KGB. Stan was talking to the guy's widow and saying she should give him her blessing to not work a source in the KGB who might know what happened to her husband because he was a good guy. As if she'd have the same pov on this than he did. Stan's pov on the situation made perfect sense, but him going to Gaad's widow for backup was weird.

It's almost like Stan was asking her "you want me to kill the people responsible if I find them?"  Stan had a real murderous, vigilante streak, dangerous in someone sworn to uphold the law in the top cop field. 

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

I'm not remembering this clearly so I might be off about what I'm saying, but Stan would have no idea whether the KGB killed Gaad on purpose or not. He was only focused on Oleg, who he knew personally. He, imo, felt shitty about repaying Oleg's sacrifice in giving up William with blackmail. That's very much in Stan's character--and I can sympathize with the logic there too. I didn't want Oleg punished for what he did either. But Stan going to Gaad's wife to validate this feeling of his, to me, shows even more how he's mixing the personal and professional and wanting to judge things. That's why I was comparing it to him thinking that Jennings didn't need to be captured.

Good points.

Yes, Stan wanted to be both judge and jury far too often, and in the end, he did it again. 

It doesn't really matter how many personal reasons he had though, or even how talented he was with reading people, or his hunches.  When you have a cop behaving that way, they need to be fired, or in Stan's case, jailed.  Or change our constitution and completely forget the bill of rights, and due process, and our laws.

Which, IMO, he will be, and soon.

ETA

Meanwhile, on the show, it's nearly Christmas.  Just put yourselves in the shoes of the victims.

At least one of those FBI agents probably had a wife and kids.  The presents are under the tree, some marked "daddy" or "for my beloved husband."  Maybe that family had a tradition of watching a particular movie while dad made his special hot chocolate with candy canes.  They are suffering, and will, every Christmas from now on, because that's when daddy, or a husband, left this world forever.  The mother is coping with funeral arrangements, and devastated children watching their friends make snowmen and wrap gifts, while they go to their father/husband's funeral.

That murdered sailor, shit head that he was, had parents and friends, the General probably had grandchildren, those factory people murdered in the dark had families and friends as well. 

That little boy of the Teacups will remember red at Christmas, the blood of his mother and sub-dad he walked through, after seeing their mutilated bodies.  He may be in a center this Christmas, he may be with strangers, traumatized and lonely, and scared.

Stan robbed all of them, at least of the peace of mind of knowing their loved ones murderers were caught.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Umbelina

[sistermagpie]

1 hour ago, Umbelina said:

Should Martha?  Of course!  She would have been.  Philip rescued her, and I think a big reason for that was that Martha had "seen" him without disguise.  Did he want one less ruined life or death on his hands?  Probably.  Still, had Martha been taken into custody, his op was blown.  It would not have taken long for Martha to spill her guts, realize she'd been duped.  Her cooperation may have resulted in less time in jail, and I seriously doubt she would face execution.  Or, they could have thrown her in jail for life.

Yes, in Philip's case he never considered letting her get arrested as an option. Others did, but that was only before they knew she'd seen him. Once they found that out the had same pov as he did. There were two choices: kill her or get her out where the FBI couldn't get at her. Philip even acknowledges to Elizabeth that he understands if Martha won't come with them she'll have to be killed.

1 hour ago, Umbelina said:

Martha had no power to arrest or shoot, Stan had that power, and that duty to the FBI, to the USA, and to the many victims.  Stan was well aware of his complete dereliction of duty and law breaking. 

And the FBI wasn't relying on Martha for their own lives in the same way they would Stan. At least that's how it seems to me, that as fellow officers who might be in dangerous situations they have that bond of relying on each other that way.

There's a contrast here too, I think, to Oleg. Even though Arkady knows what Oleg did, he still feels confident about giving him an incredibly important mission because of Oleg's reasoning. That's exactly the kind of thing Stan's actions don't inspire.

1 hour ago, Umbelina said:

We saw several flashbacks, but I agree that they didn't go into depth.

Just fwiw, we never saw any flashbacks of Elizabeth and Gregory.

1 hour ago, Umbelina said:

Yes, Stan wanted to be both judge and jury far too often, and in the end, he did it again. 

Yes, it seemed really natural to him to judge things based on how he felt about them. Gaad's plan to kidnap Arkady is also off the books, but it's based on FBI solidarity (which doesn't move Stan--he says no). I would even say that almost from the beginning it didn't seem like Stan saw the Nina operation as being an FBI one so much as being his responsibility. He doesn't hand over Echo, but he very quickly starts considering it and later has that whole operation just to try to save her. Nina was meant to be a long-term KGB mole, which would have been great. Then Stan pretty early on starts sleeping with her, which leads to him lobbying to pull her out for no practical reason. Then he kills Vlad. Compare that to Philip who sleeps with Martha and develops protective feelings for her, but keeps her loyal and working for him even after she finds out who he is and then yanks her out away from the FBI's clutches just as the FBI starts to seriously suspect her.

If the FBI had just sent a different agent into that Farmer's Market things would probably be very different!

 

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

That little boy of the Teacups will remember red at Christmas, the blood of his mother and sub-dad he walked through, after seeing their mutilated bodies.  He may be in a center this Christmas, he may be with strangers, traumatized and lonely, and scared.

There again it seems like Stan focuses on that person because Gennadi's death represented a person failure for Stan. And not one that he thought would be made better by bringing the murderers to justice. He was wrong in thinking that Philip did it, but he had the actual murderer too, Elizabeth.

[Umbelina]

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

4 hours ago, Umbelina said:

We saw several flashbacks, but I agree that they didn't go into depth.

Just fwiw, we never saw any flashbacks of Elizabeth and Gregory.

Was that really only art the end that we saw those?  The cuddling and laughing?  I know we did see them talk about their relationship several times though, and part of that was when Gregory was trying to remind her of what they had, and things she had said about Philip not being the one for her.  ???

I thought she had a few flashbacks while deciding rather or not to let Gregory kill himself?

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

I would even say that almost from the beginning it didn't seem like Stan saw the Nina operation as being an FBI one so much as being his responsibility. He doesn't hand over Echo, but he very quickly starts considering it and later has that whole operation just to try to save her. Nina was meant to be a long-term KGB mole, which would have been great. Then Stan pretty early on starts sleeping with her, which leads to him lobbying to pull her out for no practical reason. Then he kills Vlad. Compare that to Philip who sleeps with Martha and develops protective feelings for her, but keeps her loyal and working for him even after she finds out who he is and then yanks her out away from the FBI's clutches just as the FBI starts to seriously suspect her.

If the FBI had just sent a different agent into that Farmer's Market things would probably be very different!

Seriously!  If they'd given it to Amador, (wasn't Amador with him during the original surveillance?)  He probably would have fucked her, but he wouldn't, IMO, have ever taken his eye off the ball, or thought he was falling in love with a KGB agent.  He had enough experience with women to take her and leave her, and keep the job going.  Hell, he might not even had bothered to spy on Martha, and he'd still be alive.  ;)

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

There again it seems like Stan focuses on that person because Gennadi's death represented a person failure for Stan. And not one that he thought would be made better by bringing the murderers to justice. He was wrong in thinking that Philip did it, but he had the actual murderer too, Elizabeth.

I thought he at least mentioned the kid, he was certainly sickened by the scene.  Both of them were spies for him, but aside from that, they were people he knew, and they were working for the USA.

That should have been enough, but add in a General and a sailor, also serving their country, and then three FBI agents?  Please.  What were they thinking to increase the murdering so much while planning for Stan to let them go? 

If they were trying to say, "Stan is a horrible cop with delusions of being God, and no loyalty to his oaths or country or constitution."  Good job!  I've defended Stan for years in his thread, but damn.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Umbelina

[sistermagpie]

19 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Was that really only art the end that we saw those?  The cuddling and laughing?  I know we did see them talk about their relationship several times though, and part of that was when Gregory was trying to remind her of what they had, and things she had said about Philip not being the one for her.  ???

I thought she had a few flashbacks while deciding rather or not to let Gregory kill himself?

Not that I remember. The only Elizabeth flashbacks post-US I remember were with Philip, Paige, Zhukov and Leanne. All her actually scenes with Gregory were present-day. They have the scene where they talk and laugh right before he kills himself, either before and after they have sex--I think that's the scene where they actually make references to specific memories, but I don't remember what they were. A good-bye evening as if they're back together. In the last ep Elizabeth has a dream where she's smoking in bed with Gregory and he points to her stomach and she realizes she's pregnant ETA: I misremembered this part, he puts his hand on her pregnant stomach and shakes his head and she says she doesn't want the kid anyway, but that one's not a flashback.

I haven't rewatched Only You lately so I don't remember how the discussion of him killing himself in the street went. He might have just sprung that on her in the moment before Philip showed up?

19 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Seriously!  If they'd given it to Amador, (wasn't Amador with him during the original surveillance?)  He probably would have fucked her, but he wouldn't, IMO, have ever taken his eye off the ball, or thought he was falling in love with a KGB agent.  He had enough experience with women to take her and leave her, and keep the job going.  Hell, he might not even had bothered to spy on Martha, and he'd still be alive.  ;)

Exactly. Or Amador might not have slept with her at all--maybe if she really came onto him strong, but Stan actually calls her up, drunk and vulnerable and Nina sees the opportunity practically being shoved at her. Stan literally calls her after leaving a bar where Amador was encouraging him to sleep with some woman there, like he's taking Amador's advice but knows it's Nina he wants. Such a bad idea. It's like a total rookie move, especially given what Nina looks like. 

19 hours ago, Umbelina said:

I thought he at least mentioned the kid, he was certainly sickened by the scene.  Both of them were spies for him, but aside from that, they were people he knew, and they were working for the USA.

Oh yes, he did mention the kid. But I meant that I thought the reason Stan was so very upset by the whole thing was that the whole family was his responsibility. So it wasn't just that the kid had this horrific experience, it was that this specific horrific experience was, he thought, his responsibility. (Maybe pick an apartment without an easy access fire escape with no guard on it next time?)

Edited December 17, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Roseanna]

12 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Or, they changed him into a criminal who ignored his sworn oaths and decided his own feelings mattered more than the law he swore to uphold, or justice for the many, many families still wanting answers and grieving the loss of their friends, loved ones, and family members.

It's all a matter of point of view.

Law officers becoming also judge and jury is a very evil slippery slope, and we have laws against that in the USA for valid and extremely important reasons, ALL of which Stan would be well aware of, having been extremely well trained.

It's against everything the USA is supposed to stand for, but Stan decided he was a special snowflake, and he was God like, and able to ignore his vows, his training, and the constitution of the United States, and designate himself and his feelings above the law, and above all of the many people who deserved justice.  Not to mention, he failed to prevent future crimes by not taking them in and debriefing them both about operations of the KGB on American soil.

I understand your opinion, and even agree with it irl, but this is fiction in which imo we have an ability to see things from the different perspective and even sympathize people who don't act according our values. We can enjoy reading Anna Karenina without being unfaithful irl.         

12 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Meanwhile, on the show, it's nearly Christmas.  Just put yourselves in the shoes of the victims.

At least one of those FBI agents probably had a wife and kids.  The presents are under the tree, some marked "daddy" or "for my beloved husband."  Maybe that family had a tradition of watching a particular movie while dad made his special hot chocolate with candy canes.  They are suffering, and will, every Christmas from now on, because that's when daddy, or a husband, left this world forever.  The mother is coping with funeral arrangements, and devastated children watching their friends make snowmen and wrap gifts, while they go to their father/husband's funeral.

That murdered sailor, shit head that he was, had parents and friends, the General probably had grandchildren, those factory people murdered in the dark had families and friends as well. 

That little boy of the Teacups will remember red at Christmas, the blood of his mother and sub-dad he walked through, after seeing their mutilated bodies.  He may be in a center this Christmas, he may be with strangers, traumatized and lonely, and scared.

Stan robbed all of them, at least of the peace of mind of knowing their loved ones murderers were caught.

What about the victims of the contras Larrich taught? Or Tuan's family?   

[Umbelina]

8 hours ago, Roseanna said:

I understand your opinion, and even agree with it irl, but this is fiction in which imo we have an ability to see things from the different perspective and even sympathize people who don't act according our values. We can enjoy reading Anna Karenina without being unfaithful irl.         

What about the victims of the contras Larrich taught? Or Tuan's family?   

This show's writers bragged, many times, that this show was based in reality, and how hard they worked not to include things that hadn't or couldn't happen in the world of spies.  Obviously they let all that go in season five and six, for example, the single "guard" standing several floors below and quite a distance from the Teacups, in a building with multiple access points.  We've seen FBI protective custody before, there is a team, at least one is in the room at all time, there are shifts of TEAMS that do that (the scientists who were blown up.)  This show was of course, fiction, but fiction based on logic and reality until the last two seasons.  The exception to that was having embedded spies do their own break ins and killings, which they admitted would not happen.  There were other KGB teams for that kind of thing, embedded spies were for recruitment, passing information via dead drops, etc.  They were far too valuable to risk in the other stuff.

Stan had nothing to do with Larrick.  If the show in season 5 had been written better the FBI would have caught Tuan and Philip and Elizabeth, since everyone associated with that family would be watched. 

No where am I saying the USA is innocent of crimes or wrong doing.   Stan deciding not to run Oleg because of his conscience is one thing, and very different, he was not an illegal, and he had not killed anyone.  That was a spy to spy thing, and happened on both sides during the cold war. 

If Stan wanted to protest actions by the USA he had several options, as all do.  First up though, resign from his position and oath to uphold the constitution if he's decided to break the laws he's sworn to uphold.

I am saying that one man isn't cop, judge, and jury, in this country.  Stan wasn't saving the world from a crime when he let Philip and Elizabeth and the accessory to several murders, their daughter Paige, go.  He wasn't being an Oleg, who believed his country could not handle that bio weapon, and that it was dangerous for them to have it.  He had no altruistic justification or "saving the world" motivation for letting murderers and spies go, especially since they had value to his country, in learning about operations and possible future plans and priorities, as well as, as I said, giving closure to the hundreds of family members of their victims.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Umbelina

[Roseanna]

On ‎16‎.‎12‎.‎2018 at 10:01 PM, Umbelina said:

I think with Philby and other spies caught in that era, they gave them long ropes, hoping to catch their handlers, see who they were running, and in general trying to bust up entire rings, not just one spy.  They knew about other now famous spies years before they actually arrested them, for those reasons.

I have understood that the background of Philby and other Cambridge spies wasn't properly searched for (meaning their political opions in Cambridge) and they weren't suspected for a long time because they were members of the Establishment. After there were suspicions, the interrogations were badly handled and, without any proper following up, they were as good as let to flee.

It's noteworthy that when traitors from the working class got 25 years in jail, Anthony Blunt could keep his position near the Queen after his confession and if Margaret Thatcher hadn't exposed him in the House of Commons, he could have sued people who called him a spy for libel which made the authors on the subject to write very carefully.  

[sistermagpie]

11 hours ago, Roseanna said:

I have understood that the background of Philby and other Cambridge spies wasn't properly searched for (meaning their political opions in Cambridge) and they weren't suspected for a long time because they were members of the Establishment. After there were suspicions, the interrogations were badly handled and, without any proper following up, they were as good as let to flee.

Yes, it seemed they were basically protected because they were upper class with families like the rest of the people in MI-6. MI-5 was made of more middle class people and they and the US agencies kept saying the guy was a spy. (Unfortunately I think the head of the CIA at the time was an anglophile who'd gone to Oxford and might as well have been one of the MI-6 guys.) He was considered "one of us" so he was protected. It was like the upper class refusing to listen to the people who weren't of their set.

But I could swear I read his actual escape was kind of protected too. In the recent bio of him I think his friend talks about his last meeting with him and he sort of let him go like Stan did--but it was also a strategic decision because the MI-6 didn't want the embarrassment of him being caught and on trial, something like that. But I don't remember the details. It certainly wasn't exactly like on The Americans.

Funny aside, I once did a Spies and Spycatchers walk in London and the guide said that one time on the tour he had an old guy who still insisted Philby wasn't a spy. Which is very strange. When pressed the guy's final defense was, "DAMMIT man, he was in my CLUB!"

[CherithCutestory]

On 12/16/2018 at 5:56 AM, Roseanna said:

I can't undestand how "the marriage vows" can mean a lisence to to treat other people immorally. Which Martha did at least when she, although horrified, accepted Gene's murder.

 

Yes. I have absolutely no sympathy for Martha after Gene. She grieved him for about four seconds and then was like "thank you for telling me." THANK YOU! She never wavered in being Team Clark even when someone she knew and liked was dying a gruesome death at his hands. I'm sorry but Martha was a really shitty person. She only ever cared about Martha and Clark. Honestly, on the rewatch I just wanted her to go away. 

And she totally knew Clark's story was off on some level way before she was caught. When they found that pen she was frantic. If she had seriously thought it was for the FBI she would have believed she would be fine. She knew and didn't care. Because she liked sleeping with her "husband." 

Even Elizabeth, a hardened killer who believes her cause will make the world a better place to her very core, sometimes felt tortured by guilt about the things she did. She was near hysterical and begging for Philip to understand why it had to happen when Lucia died. She hated everything about what she was did to Young-he and Don and she wasn't murdering anyone there. She was nearly in catatonic shock after she had to kill Lisa ("did you put my cigarrette down" is one of my favorite line readings.) 

I'm not putting Elizabeth up as some kind of pillar of virtue here . Just the opposite. If even Elizabeth is showing more long-term guilt and emotion over the consequences of her actions than you there is something very off about you. 

I get that she had few options and she was manipulated. I did feel awful for her the first time. But, in the end, she was just a very shallow person. 

On 12/19/2018 at 4:27 PM, sistermagpie said:

But I could swear I read his actual escape was kind of protected too. In the recent bio of him I think his friend talks about his last meeting with him and he sort of let him go like Stan did--but it was also a strategic decision because the MI-6 didn't want the embarrassment of him being caught and on trial, something like that. But I don't remember the details. It certainly wasn't exactly like on The Americans.

 

I believe that was in A Spy Among Friends. There is lots of speculation that Nicholas Elliot just let him go after confronting him. And Philby himself came to believe that. But, personally, I think that's assuming too much of Elliot and MI-6. The defection was more embarrassing than a trial would have been. I think they just genuinely never believed he'd flee even after all they discovered.

 But we'll never know. 

On 12/16/2018 at 3:01 PM, Umbelina said:

I don't deny that Elizabeth was in love with Gregory, but what kind of love it really was? It lasted 12 years but they had only some casual, stolen moments together - it was like being on holiday, never having meet real problems that each relationship has.

Obviously Elizabeth needed such a relationship that could get her relax and feel herself loved, but something important must have been missing, otherwise Elizabeth wouldn't have fallen for Philip. 

 

I think Elizabeth pretty much straight up admits this though, right? She was 22, she'd never had a boyfriend, never had a particularly positive sexual interaction and she met this passionate man. It was a first love of two idealistic kids. It went on so long precisely for the reasons you say. They only had the sex and the passionate talks and the laughter. Not the washing dishes or raising kids. Reality never intruded until the end. But when Elizabeth was explaining it to Philip she seemed very aware that it was a first love not a love of my life thing. 

Edited December 21, 2018 by CherithCutestory

[sistermagpie]

43 minutes ago, CherithCutestory said:

I believe that was in A Spy Among Friends. There is lots of speculation that Nicholas Elliot just let him go after confronting him. And Philby himself came to believe that. But, personally, I think that's assuming too much of Elliot and MI-6. The defection was more embarrassing than a trial would have been. I think they just genuinely never believed he'd flee even after all they discovered.

Yes! That is where I read that. But this alternate reading sounds just as strong. They let him go on for so long it's hard to believe they suddenly started reading him correctly.

44 minutes ago, CherithCutestory said:

And she totally knew Clark's story was off on some level way before she was caught. When they found that pen she was frantic. If she had seriously thought it was for the FBI she would have believed she would be fine. She knew and didn't care. Because she liked sleeping with her "husband." 

Rewatching Safe House she seems to almost be sending up a flag there that she already knows there's something afoot. Or maybe not that strong...but she literally says to him that she's in love with him and will do anything for him. Anything. She just needs to know that this  is real. This is after she's already started snooping for him without him really pushing for it. He just sets up a situation where he's her man and needs her help. At this point he's still presenting as a DOJ guy, but it's still more eager and proactive about getting documents etc. for him than many would be. She says she's been waiting for him her whole life and she means it. This is it for her.

[Umbelina]

5 hours ago, CherithCutestory said:

And she totally knew Clark's story was off on some level way before she was caught. When they found that pen she was frantic. If she had seriously thought it was for the FBI she would have believed she would be fine. She knew and didn't care. Because she liked sleeping with her "husband." 

The moment she KNEW, because Mr. Taffett came in to investigate, in other words, to do Philip's job. 

I think before he arrived, she just didn't want her boss to know she was spying on him.

Also, something went wrong with the quoting up there, that was not my quote about Elizabeth and Gregory, and I don't think that at all.  I believe it was Roseanna's quote.

[Roseanna]

7 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

Also, something went wrong with the quoting up there, that was not my quote about Elizabeth and Gregory, and I don't think that at all.  I believe it was Roseanna's quote.

Yes, it was mine. Thank you for correcting.

[Roseanna]

On ‎21‎.‎12‎.‎2018 at 5:07 AM, CherithCutestory said:

Yes. I have absolutely no sympathy for Martha after Gene. She grieved him for about four seconds and then was like "thank you for telling me." THANK YOU! She never wavered in being Team Clark even when someone she knew and liked was dying a gruesome death at his hands. I'm sorry but Martha was a really shitty person. She only ever cared about Martha and Clark. Honestly, on the rewatch I just wanted her to go away. 

And she totally knew Clark's story was off on some level way before she was caught. When they found that pen she was frantic. If she had seriously thought it was for the FBI she would have believed she would be fine. She knew and didn't care. Because she liked sleeping with her "husband." 

Even Elizabeth, a hardened killer who believes her cause will make the world a better place to her very core, sometimes felt tortured by guilt about the things she did. She was near hysterical and begging for Philip to understand why it had to happen when Lucia died. She hated everything about what she was did to Young-he and Don and she wasn't murdering anyone there. She was nearly in catatonic shock after she had to kill Lisa ("did you put my cigarrette down" is one of my favorite line readings.) 

I'm not putting Elizabeth up as some kind of pillar of virtue here . Just the opposite. If even Elizabeth is showing more long-term guilt and emotion over the consequences of her actions than you there is something very off about you. 

I get that she had few options and she was manipulated. I did feel awful for her the first time. But, in the end, she was just a very shallow person. 

 

I don't hate Martha although I am not so enthusiastivc about her as some here. Irl I wouldn't probably like her, but she is a fascinating character, especially when one compares her and her values with other characters and their values (what love means to them and what they are ready to do for love) which is done in the same time with on the other hand with Elizabeth and Philip, on the other hand with Nina and Stan, but also later (f.ex. Philip's refusal to do anything for Elizabeth in S6).    

On ‎21‎.‎12‎.‎2018 at 5:55 AM, sistermagpie said:

Rewatching Safe House she seems to almost be sending up a flag there that she already knows there's something afoot. Or maybe not that strong...but she literally says to him that she's in love with him and will do anything for him. Anything. She just needs to know that this  is real. This is after she's already started snooping for him without him really pushing for it. He just sets up a situation where he's her man and needs her help. At this point he's still presenting as a DOJ guy, but it's still more eager and proactive about getting documents etc. for him than many would be. She says she's been waiting for him her whole life and she means it. This is it for her.

Yes, we talked about this earlier. It's noteworthy that she doesn't ask him if this is real, or look after his behavior to prove it, before she makes her declaration to do anything for his. She surrends completely of her own free will, or rather based on her need to love be loved. 

Edited December 24, 2018 by Roseanna
correcting clerical error

[sistermagpie]

I just watched Safe House again. I always remember it as the one with Elizabeth and Philip and the dying Amador, but it’s really Stan’s episode. It's one I'd point to to understand his character and really foreshadows up his actions at the end. Great plotty stuff going on in this one that's all character-based as well.

The first scene is the Jennings telling the kids they’re separating. It’s always been a pet peeve of mine when people say that the Jennings aren’t really a family, that they don’t really care about their kids or vice versa, that they kids are constantly abandoned and raised themselves or each other and their real parents are whatever adult is nice to them, but the first season spends a lot of time establishing them as a normal family,  The kids aren’t even especially independent, except as their personalities happen to go that way.

Elizabeth leads the convo, trying to offer cheerful absolutes and sureness, telling the kids that when they grow up they’ll understand etc. Philip just says he doesn’t know about anything he doesn’t actually know. Elizabeth’s mood (or at least the mood she’s showing) is different from everyone else’s.

This ep really kicks off the Paige vs. Elizabeth stuff we’ll see throughout. I’ve in the past been surprised when anyone’s suggested that Paige doesn’t stand up for herself because she always did, especially with Elizabeth and especially when it came to relationships. In the opening scene Elizabeth starts to introduce the idea of the separation and Paige mistakenly thinks they’re having a baby. Her reaction to this is to tell them they’re “too old” and reference a girl in her class whose mother had a baby and it was weird, and that mother was “way younger” than Elizabeth. I just thought it was an interesting quirk for her to be rude that way.  (Also funny given we know that the two actors will be doing this for real a couple of years after this scene was filmed.) It’s not an unusual reaction from a teenager, but it’s not universal either. She does seem to always have conservative ideas about how things should be--she's not one to just roll with it or love love in whatever shape.

I think she’s genuinely upset at the idea that her parents’ relationship—and thus love—could just be over. Perhaps she’s most hard on Elizabeth in part because she’s the one acting like it’s a good thing and saying stuff like “It’s for the best” without explaining why that would be. The audience knows what she means, but the kids hardly care that Elizabeth will feel more secure if she just focuses on spreading Communism. Regardless, I think the separation makes Paige focus on her parents more than ever, which leads to her suspicions being even stronger and quicker than they might have been. This is where her parents first throw her for a loop by not being the people she thought she could depend they were.

In the first season the kids are closer than they’ll be later on as teens (which might have happened anyway given how different they are), but throughout the show Paige is never so protective of Henry as when she’s confronting her parents. Elizabeth tells Philip that Paige slept in Henry’s room the night he left and that could easily be read as part of the “super tight siblings comforting each other when abandoned by terrible spy parents!” but it actually reads more to me as Paige staging a protest to make that point, especially since the actual story of the episode is Elizabeth vs. Paige with Henry never wanting to talk to anybody. Each kid is dealing with the separation on their own in their own way.

Henry's way is to withdraw, which he'll continue doing until he's in another state.

Paige also a couple of times in the ep unwittingly addresses Elizabeth’s real thoughts. Like in the opening she says to Elizabeth that you “can’t just stop loving someone” which is, of course, exactly what Elizabeth is hoping she can do. She later tells Elizabeth that what she wants is for things to go back to the way they were before, which is again what Elizabeth is trying to do.

Elizabeth brings home a wok, seemingly not predicting that this will come across as if she’s kicked her husband out because she wants to be a single woman again. One who makes Chinese food in a wok! This kicks off the first of several confrontations Elizabeth and Paige will have over that kitchen island. Here, as in Jennings, Elizabeth, Paige is not buying what Elizabeth is selling.

This ep also mirrors Jennings, Elizabeth in how Paige tries to side with Philip to be against Elizabeth (“This is your fault; you’re always too hard on dad” / “No wonder Dad can’t stand to be in the same room with you…does Dad know he married a whore?”) and then is disappointed when he’s not on her side (“Why are you defending her?” / “Nobody cared, INCLUDING your father.”) I think part of it is that Elizabeth is so obviously the planet with the heaviest gravity that everyone else must therefore orbit Paige naturally wants to be able to just see her as being responsible for the world changing.

In trying to talk to Henry Elizabeth finds herself repeating Philip’s argument of the previous ep, even though it’s hilariously inappropriate: It’s a modern world now, so they don’t have to be married. Her own parents would never have even considered getting divorced but times have changed. Amazingly, it seems changing attitudes and a rising divorce rate are not a comfort to Henry. Paige can be a challenge for Elizabeth, but one Elizabeth knows how to try to meet. Henry’s incomplete (he didn’t have anything else to say) report on the American Revolution might sum their relationship from Elizabeth’s pov in S6: America won. (Not that that is necessarily correct.)

This ep also kicks things up with Martha, who uses a tactic on Clark that he usually uses on her. She declares she in love with him and has been waiting for him her whole life and will do anything for him. But she needs to know this is real, and Clark needs to prove that by staying the night. He’s rewarded in the morning with Martha telling him about the plot to kill a KGB agent, which he runs out to report and therefore knows about when he injures Amador. Iow, a lot in the episode comes down to romantic impulses messing everything up the espionage ones.

Which brings us to the Stan/Amador story. To look at Amador first, even at first airing there was a lot of criticism at how this ep seems to try to convince us Stan personally cared about Amador in ways he clearly didn’t. I’m really not even sure what to make of the two flashbacks, both of which focus on the main thing Amador seemed to be about, in his own words, chasing pussy. Frankly, it seems like Stan himself is trying to convince himself he personally cared about Amador with those flashbacks. We don't learn much that changes how Amador appeared before.

When Stan goes to his house and listens to his answering machine there’s no big surprises there—he’s got messages from women he’s slept with and one from his mom that tells us he’s got family close-by. He’s not really the “lone wolf” he refers to himself as earlier. (He does have a picture of himself with Stan in a frame which might make Stan guilty—like that hug from Gennadi.) Amador’s not cheating on Martha now since they’re broken up, but he is constantly encouraging Stan to cheat and sleeping around and bragging about it while trying to scare off any guy who’s interested in Martha. Nice!

In the first flashback Amador says his work is his life, except for chasing women. In the second he explains that he chases women because he was presumably a virgin until Vietnam, at which point he realized that life is short and there were worse things than death, like shame. Stan asks him, understandably, what those things have to do with his being a womanizer and he gives a non-answer and then cracks up. Stan laughs too—a rare thing for Stan, and it seems forced. I just do not believe Amador was making Stan crack up much, especially not with yet another thing about chasing women. It also seems to confirm that whatever real feelings Amador probably does have about his time in Vietnam, all his pontificating is bullshit. So I don’t get why Stan is choosing to remember these conversations when psyching himself up to be Amador’s white knight. If this is the best he's got...let's just say we hope Stan won't be giving the eulogy.

What we get about Stan here seems to me way more important because of what it shows about him and for how it parallels his actions in START.

The events of the ep are: Stan has an FBI barbecue at his house where Amador suggests Stan should sleep with his hot neighbor (Elizabeth) and Gaad announces a plan to snatch Arkady as revenge for the agents killed in the explosion. The agents all sign on except Stan. When Amador doesn’t come into work the next day Stan decides he’s been kidnapped by the KGB. He tells Gaad, who says they don’t know that, but he’s having people look for him. Stan goes to Amador’s apartment and listens to his messages. After a flashback, he meets with Nina and gets abusive, demanding she find out where Amador is. He takes over the kidnapping plot, ignoring an abort signal to snatch Vlad, to whom he gives a long speech about hunting that’s meant to threaten him into giving up Amador. When Amador is found dead, Stan has his second flashback, then returns to Vlad and shoots him in revenge.

As an aside, this was the first time I really listened carefully to Stan’s monologue about the soft mouth. I felt like if I’d been Vlad at the moment Stan says, “I understand why you’re scared. I have you in my soft mouth…” I would have said, “Oh! Wait, so you’re the dog in this metaphor? I just assumed you were the hunter. I mean, I knew I was the duck but okay, so you’re the dog and the hunter is like, the FBI in general. Okay, cool story, bro.”

So at the barbecue Stan refuses to participate in Gaad’s plan. He says it’s because it’s not authorized but we all know Stan’s not a stickler for orders. If he was, he wouldn’t go from one extreme to the other based solely on Amador not being at work. To me it seemed like Stan simply wasn’t as passionately angry about the deaths of these other agents as the others. (He was left out of the scene when the deaths were reported earlier.) Not enough to want to potentially make things bad for Nina. The flashbacks to me seems like they represent Stan trying to psych himself up to feel a protective attachment to Amador. Each flashback precedes him taking some drastic action—the first is followed by his confrontation with Nina, the second the murder of Vlad.

He’s becomes convinced Amador is kidnapped by the KGB despite not having much evidence. One might be tempted to see this as one of those moments where Stan is the one with the right instincts here, evidence be damned. But I think it’s important to remember that in fact Stan is wrong. He thinks Amador’s been captured in an official op by the KGB, one run out of the Rezidentura. In reality I think we’re meant to see Philip’s interpretation of the situation as correct: jealous guy stalking his ex (turns out Philip didn’t know Amador and Martha were a couple) didn’t know who he was dealing with. Somebody once tried to convince me Amador was actually being a good agent here and he was suspicious of Martha, not stalking her, but there’s no reason he’d think that and more importantly, if that’s what he was doing he’d be terrible agent for the way he went about it.

Of course once Amador was found the shit would have hit the fan anyway—Stan’s not responsible for the counter-hit the FBI does etc. But all the stuff he does with the Rezidentura is pointless and has big consequences for his personal relationships. Nina at this point has been blackmailed by the FBI/Stan into working for them. Stan then made it clear he also wanted to sleep with her and while she’s obviously got her own reasons for doing so, so it’s not non-consensual, it’s an abuse of Stan’s position to do it. Plus, once he starts sleeping with Nina he starts asking for her to be exfiltrated. Iow, he’s fine with the FBI losing the most important source they’ve had for years (one so important FBI agents could be fooled into thinking the president himself called to congratulate them on it) because he wants to protect her personally.

Now his mind is on failing to protect Amador, who as his partner was his responsibility, and he turns against Nina, getting abusive and threatening. Nina has no idea who Amador is or what happened to him, nor does she have any way of finding out at that point. (This is another thing that’s pretty consistent with Stan, that he tends to assume all Russians are his Russians and are connected to the thing he knows about.) Up until now he’s always presented himself as Nina’s protector and granted she’s used that to her advantage, but he’s throwing that away on something she can’t help with. It doesn’t come across to me as a strategic thing either. It plays as emotional to me.

Then he joins the kidnapping, not for the same reasons as everyone else, but to find Amador. When they get an abort signal because Arkady isn’t there, Stan orders Vlad snatched instead. Vlad knows nothing either. Stan calls Arkady and threatens him. Arkady also knows nothing. Arkady takes it all in stride, and tells Nina to find out who the guy is (he’s Stan Beeman’s partner, motherfucker!).

When discussing Amador’s potential kidnapping, Stan says they must take Arkady alive because otherwise they’ll kill Amador. Gaad replies that if Amador is talks, he might give up Nina. Iow, Stan’s thinking about his partner, Gaad’s thinking about the FBI source. When Amador is discovered Stan declares that Amador did not give Nina up. Again, he’s right that Amador didn’t give anything up, at least not until they couldn't stop it and he could use it to taunt them, but he was never asked about Nina. (Btw, it's weird the way Gaad just says everybody talks. Why would he think that, exactly?)

Amador’s line in the flashback about shame being worse than death seems like it would explain why he wasn’t the type to give up info, but that flashback happens after Stan’s declaration and it felt to me like Stan was adamant about it to show loyalty to dead Amador. Gaad says this is risking Nina’s life and Stan says his own too, but Nina really seems like the one who would be in greater danger and Stan seems to resent her because of the whole business. It's like he suddenly fine with using Nina as a chess piece even more than Gaad is because now Amador's top priority and if Stan lost him Nina's kind of responsible.

The situation seems designed to plot the coordinates of Stan’s priorities. It’s saving and avenging his partner. Not the needs of the FBI (their source or the dead agents), not Nina as a girlfriend or a source. Stan’s been accused of acting as judge and jury and that’s pretty much what he’s doing here as well. What the FBI or his superiors think never lines up with what he does, unless by accident. (Gaad gives in to Stan rather than vice versa.) He sees the whole thing as a personal quest while other characters--Gaad, Elizabeth and Philip--balance the personal and professional.  I guess that's the one thing that really links him to Amador since there is some parallels in both of them using their status as FBI agents to threaten people in ways that come back to bite them. Stan threatens Nina and Vlad, but they know nothing and his actions will lead to problems. Amador thinks he's threatening an ordinary citizen who's anything but.

Edited December 24, 2018 by sistermagpie

[Umbelina]

Nice analysis.

This show made Noah Emmerich do a hell of a lot of heavy lifting, with very little back support, or even believable reasons to do it.

Lucky for us, he was more than up to the tasks.  I think he's pretty underrated, but I hope I'm wrong, because he is amazing.  Thanks for the reminder about another of the times Stan had to make a nonsense story "real."  He may not have had KGB training, but that actor is good at making anything feel real.

(although honestly, it stretched credibility to the max several times, the fault of the writers though, not Noah.)

[Roseanna]

10 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

In the first flashback Amador says his work is his life, except for chasing women. In the second he explains that he chases women because he was presumably a virgin until Vietnam, at which point he realized that life is short and there were worse things than death, like shame. Stan asks him, understandably, how those things have to do with his being a womanizer and he gives a non-answer and then cracks up. 

 

Quote

When discussing Amador’s potential kidnapping, Stan says they must take Arkady alive because otherwise they’ll kill Amador. Gaad replies that if Amador is talks, he might give up Nina. Iow, Stan’s thinking about his partner, Gaad’s thinking about the FBI source. When Amador is discovered Stan declares that Amador did not give Nina up. Again, he’s right that Amador didn’t give anything up, at least not until they couldn't stop it and he could use it to taunt them, but he was never asked about Nina. (Btw, it's weird the way Gaad just says everybody talks. Why would he think that, exactly?)

It's true that almost everybody talks, Gaad is simply realistic. The Resistance didn't expected only that the imprisoned members would keep silent a short time so that harm caused would be as little as possible.

Actually, we never learned if Amador would have showed himself worth his boasting (one can never know beforehand such a thing) because he died before Philip started to torture him. 

Edited December 24, 2018 by Roseanna
did more clearly

[sistermagpie]

1 hour ago, Roseanna said:

It's true that almost everybody talks, Gaad is simply realistic. The Resistance didn't expected only that the imprisoned members would keep silent a short time so that harm caused would be as little as possible.

It just seemed surprising to me because they're having this conversation over his dead body and physically he's been stabbed and then taken care of. A tox screen would show he'd been given morphine, so he wasn't in that much pain. He wasn't tortured or anything, and he was only with them for a relatively short time.

I mean, I do think Gaad is absolutely right to consider it their first possibility. He has to assume he talked to prepare for that. Stan's got really no reason to be so sure of Amador in extreme situations. But still, not everybody talks in every situation. Philip didn't talk in Trust Me.

[Roseanna]

After Stan has killed Vlad but before Arkady make Nina take the oath Nina confesses to Arkady, there is an interesting phase in the relationship between Nina and Arkady. On other hand, when Arkady tells Nina that they have a bug in Caspar Weinberger's home, Nina doesn't tell this super revelation to Stan, but on the other hand when Stan tries to end the affair and go back to his wife, Nina easily seduces him back.

[sistermagpie]

Don't know why this came into my head today, but I realized there's some interesting foreshadowing moments of the ending I hadn't thought about.

With Philip he has lots of times when he's confronted with fathers being separated from their families so that's an obvious foreshadowing and one Philip obviously fears. But I was thinking about the scene in Comrades with Jared. Philip leaves the room with the corpses inside and passes Jared in the hallway. At this point we don't know Jared was the murderer, but Philip recognizes him in passing. He thinks he's about to walk into a horror show and deals with that by starting to run as soon as he gets into the stairs, leaving Jared's screams behind. So it's not just Philip slipping away knowing he's leaving a 16-year-old to face the destruction of his family, but he's very aware of the screams he can't comfort and wants to run away from.

With Elizabeth there's the scene where she returns to Young-Hee's house. Elizabeth doesn't have Philip's history or fear of being separated from her family, but the one time she does face remorse regarding family is with Young-Hee where she comes to like the family and then probably destroys them. When she goes back to the house other people are living there. It's not even like the kids are there and one of them looks sad or whatever. Whatever happened to them, Elizabeth's perception is showing the family being gone. (Them having moved doesn't really bode well for the reality.)

It just struck me it's like Elizabeth's situation in the finale where she leaves her own house. She remembers how she never wanted a family, tried to keep a distance from it emotionally, but now has destroyed it and can't return to it. Their house, too, is somebody else's now.

It just seems like a good reflection of how both characters are motivated throughout the show and how they seem to frame their actions to themselves.

[sistermagpie]

Just finished re-watching Only You and here are my long thoughts!

Stan basically gets a pat on the head from Gaad for his murder of Vlad, who the FBI seems to have dumped to make it look like a mugging. Indulging Stan the maverick kind of came back to bite Gaad later on.

The scene where Stan shows up at Philip’s motel is still funny. I like how Philip’s visibly more nervous before Stan starts talking about the murder Philip committed, because at least then Philip has an idea of why he’s there. Stan makes a joke about how he wouldn’t be a good FBI agent if he couldn’t track down Philip living under his own name at a local motel but the real answer is that Elizabeth told Sandra, which is kind of funny given that Stan and Philip are the two that are actually friends.

Stan talks about how depressing Philip’s motel room is, a comment that comes across differently now that we’ve seen flashbacks of the home where Philip lived as a child. By comparison Philip’s living in a palace. Stan’s claim that Amador was such a good guy compared to him is also relative—from what we saw Amador spent all his free time trying to get laid with short breaks to encourage Stan to cheat on his wife. There’s a later scene where Stan is looking at Amador’s desk and for a second I thought it was Stan’s desk and he had a picture of Amador on it and I thought c’mon guys, trying a little hard to retcon a relationship there. LOL.

This scene where Philip pretends to have not killed Amador is followed by Stan lying to Nina that he didn’t kill Vlad. Both men listen to someone who cared about the other person describe the dead man as better than them by comparison.

This is the ep where Curtis gets captured—watching him chased I couldn’t help but think about Philip’s later chase by the FBI in S6. (Curtis hadn’t worked out his escape route as well.) It’s the ep where Stan gets Curtis to turn on Gregory by appealing to his patriotism, though we know in the end Stan himself will to a degree choose the “fucking Russians” over the “goddamn Americans.” The investigation in this ep is fun, though. Oh, and Stan here also says that if Curtis was working for the Russians and he knew it, that’s treason. That would also apply to Paige.

Btw, wrt to Curtis, is there some sort of dress code required for girls who date drug dealers? When the FBI breaks into Curtis’ apartment he slips out the window nearly fully-dressed but of course there’s a woman in the color in the room screaming where only a pair of panties. Seems like there’s always a topless WoC screaming when cops come in. Just once it would be nice if the dealer’s girlfriend was, like, sitting at the kitchen table doing homework for night school.

A bigger foreshadowing in this ep: Philip drops by the house, ostensibly to drive the kids to school, but also to tell Elizabeth about Amador’s ring being found and to get in her face a little. When Henry, who had earlier been dragging their feet, says he can be ready very quickly and runs off Philip sends him off by saying, “Go go go!”

“Go, go go!” is, iirc, the last thing Philip will ever say to Henry when he talks to him on the phone and Henry tells him he’s in the middle of a ping pong tournament. The line’s not just a coincidence since it completely sums up Philip’s philosophy of parenting, which is to be like the dad teaching a kid to ride a two-wheeler: Keep your hand on the bike to balance him until he’s got it and then cheer him on as he rides away from you. In the first scene he’s encouraging Henry to show Philip how efficiently he can get himself ready; in the second he’s telling him to forget about Philip and get back to his life. Elizabeth, in this same kitchen scene, was parenting reigning Paige in with an eye toward the past, comparing Paige’s behavior to her own at that age.

The scene, imo, really shows how Paige got knocked sideways by the revelation about her parents. Back when she thought she was just an ordinary kid pushing back against parents who didn’t get it she was much more sure of herself. In this scene she gets in her best shot ever at Elizabeth. When Elizabeth shows irritation about the kids making the morning routine difficult Paige mutters that Elizabeth was the one who wanted it this way. This hits Elizabeth right in her self-image. She sees a lot or her life as being without choice full of things she had to do, yet here’s Paige referring to the separation as something Elizabeth wanted for herself. When Philip shows up she gives him a lecture about not coming over unannounced when the kids are getting used to “new routines” but even that’s undermined when he gives her the news about the ring, reminding her that she’s supposed to be dealing with Philip less emotionally now.

This irritation is a contrast to the Beeman marriage. Stan’s first stop when feeling emotional about Amador wasn’t Sandra, but Philip, however he later tells Sandra they found the killer. Yet the little he says really just underlines how impossible things are for Sandra. He tells her the world is “darker” than she thinks, that he hasn't told her everything, but when she points out she didn’t ask him to do that and doesn’t need it—in fact this attitude is exactly what’s making his family unhappy—he claims this is what you have to do to have a happy family, like he's doing it for her. When Sandra suggests leaving with just the family the scene ends before Stan even gives an answer. There’s no suspense he’ll stay yes, it’s just underlining how he would never do that. The Jennings are sniping at each other because they’re still invested in each other. Sandra can’t really get much reaction from Stan.

But this ep is really Gregory’s ep.  The elephant in the room here is that the show at this point had only 2 non-white characters, one recurring and one only semi-recurring, and by the end of this ep they’re both dead. Still, one thing I really admire about the ep is that unlike Amador’s death which to me seems like such a fridging (when a character dies just so another character—in this case Stan—can react to it), Gregory’s death is all about him. We don’t get a backstory or flashbacks or much in his pov, but there’s still a clear arc for him giving us an idea of what he’s choosing. The ep plays like the end of his story rather than just an event that affects the main characters. (Its main importance for the Jennings is Philip letting Gregory die on his own terms because Elizabeth asks him, which is important, but it doesn’t steal focus from Gregory’s death.)

At the start of the ep Gregory gets a call from Elizabeth and meets her in a bar. This is one of the scenes on the show where Elizabeth annoys me, because she tells Gregory Philip moved out and that he “told her so,” validating his claim that their relationship was fake and not her etc. Elizabeth’s feeling uniquely isolated (explaining she’s telling Gregory this because who else is she going to tell?) and burdened dealing with the kids and Philip who still all insist on being visibly dissatisfied with the new arrangements, yet throughout she’s the person whose personal feelings people think about the most. Philip, Gregory and Claudia (who smokes in this ep, an activity that has very specific associations on the show, many of which are also associated with Gregory) all express concern for her personally. Someone back on the TWOP boards once described Gregory as a character who existed “solely to blow smoke up Elizabeth’s ass” and while I wouldn’t reduce him to that...I always remembered it.

So Elizabeth tells Gregory about her situation and he sees her as potentially coming back to him, but if she had thought she might get back with him here, in the moment she pulls back.  I think that scene might be there both so that Elizabeth can see that she can’t go back to finding comfort with Gregory away from her family and to show Gregory that that. Gregory leaves, telling Elizabeth he’ll wait—for her, presumably, as well as the signal.

Elizabeth then meets with Philip and Claudia to discuss his future. Philip and Elizabeth disagree about Gregory, but are also both right about him. Elizabeth is right in saying he’d never betray them, but Philip is right in knowing he’s not going to want to go to Moscow. Elizabeth thinks Gregory would like it there just as she’ll later think Paige will. In both cases she seems to think anyone “like her” can’t be all that attached to the US or uninterested in Russia.

Btw, it really sucks to be Philip in this ep. He's never done anything to Elizabeth or Gregory or their relationship, but he's got to feel like he's been cast as the villain in it throughout this ep.

Elizabeth also says that Gregory has done something harder than any of them have had to do in betraying his country. In Gregory’s case this might be true, but again, Elizabeth is projecting. Plenty of their sources think there’s things harder than working for a foreign government. Paige is never shown struggling with this aspect of her work, even when listening to Stan’s Thanksgiving speech, and seems to have only the most shallow understanding of the USSR even after she’s working for it. Both Gregory and Paige find it much easier to commit treason than to leave the country they know and move to a foreign one like the Illegals did (and will also do again at the end of the show when they return to a USSR they haven’t lived in for decades).

After this scene Gregory and Elizabeth meet again and she tries to convince him to leave. Gregory grasps at a few straws that reveal some innocence on his part—he claims the KGB would do whatever Elizabeth asks, as if he thinks the KGB is as enthralled with her as he is. It’s Philip, not the KGB, who grants Elizabeth’s request because it’s her asking, and Elizabeth no doubt notes the difference.

In desperation, Gregory asks Elizabeth to just run away with him. It parallels the Beeman scene, but seems even less of a possibility. I don’t know how much hope Gregory really had that Elizabeth would ever run away with him, but I think her reaction makes it clear she’s not tempted by the idea of a life that starts with only Gregory. That reaction is what sends him out of the car for good and I think it inspires his later decision. I don’t mean he’s killing himself because he’s lost Elizabeth, but I think it encourages him to see his life as defined by the Cause because there is nothing else at this point.

Later he tells Claudia he never wanted much, just to live for something and now he’s done that. But I think his idea to run away with Elizabeth does show that he could imagine a life based just around love, if he had it. He had a fantasy, at least, that Elizabeth would be enough to sustain a life on the run where the Cause would not be enough to sustain a life in Moscow.

In his good-bye night with Elizabeth he tells her not to go back to Philip, saying he would soften her up. She should find someone to love her for being so “strong.” Strong in this case seems to mean the same thing Elizabeth seems to take it to mean—putting the Cause above people and family. Cutting herself off from them. I can’t help but hear him making sure she won’t love anyone more than him. And also think of Elizabeth also seeming to turn feelings of rejection into an admiration of strength and commitment to the Cause—an attitude that must ring especially hollow to her at the end of the show when Gregory becomes more and more openly associated with living death and suicide. (And when that behavior inspires actual revulsion in people she cares about.)

Ultimately, of course, Gregory wants to choose his own mode of death (and shoot cops in the process). When Philip arrives Elizabeth’s trying to be “strong,” threatening to shoot Gregory. It’s when Philip arrives and is ready to do it himself that Elizabeth actually takes Gregory’s side. I can see several reasons why Elizabeth would want to avoid having Philip kill Gregory, but it still seems right that Philip’s arrival would make Elizabeth able to back Gregory’s plan where she wasn’t before.

There’s probably a whole other analysis to be done comparing Gregory to Martha, who also loses he great love but does choose to go to Moscow. Or a comparison of the characters who do choose suicide (Gregory and William) vs. those who don’t. For me the main feeling about the two suicides is that they are people who just feel like they’ve run out of road—that their story is over. Martha just feels like she’s alone again and instinctively moves forward like she did before. Claudia really does seem to see fighting as life. In S6 I think Elizabeth pretends she’s ready for suicide but even in her numbness she’s actually furious about it and does want to live and is desperate for someone to throw her a life preserver.

Just finished re-watching Only You and here are my long thoughts!

Stan basically gets a pat on the head from Gaad for his murder of Vlad, who the FBI seems to have dumped to make it look like a mugging. Indulging Stan the maverick kind of came back to bite Gaad later on.

The scene where Stan shows up at Philip’s motel is still funny. I like how Philip’s visibly more nervous before Stan starts talking about the murder Philip committed, because at least then Philip has an idea of why he’s there. Stan makes a joke about how he wouldn’t be a good FBI agent if he couldn’t track down Philip living under his own name at a local motel but the real answer is that Elizabeth told Sandra, which is kind of funny given that Stan and Philip are the two that are actually friends.

Stan talks about how depressing Philip’s motel room is, a comment that comes across differently now that we’ve seen flashbacks of the home where Philip lived as a child. By comparison Philip’s living in a palace. Stan’s claim that Amador was such a good guy compared to him is also relative—from what we saw Amador spent all his free time trying to get laid with short breaks to encourage Stan to cheat on his wife. There’s a later scene where Stan is looking at Amador’s desk and for a second I thought it was Stan’s desk and he had a picture of Amador on it and I thought c’mon guys, trying a little hard to retcon a relationship there. LOL.

This scene where Philip pretends to have not killed Amador is followed by Stan lying to Nina that he didn’t kill Vlad. Both men listen to someone who cared about the other person describe the dead man as better than them by comparison.

This is the ep where Curtis gets captured—watching him chased I couldn’t help but think about Philip’s later chase by the FBI in S6. (Curtis hadn’t worked out his escape route as well.) It’s the ep where Stan gets Curtis to turn on Gregory by appealing to his patriotism, though we know in the end Stan himself will to a degree choose the “fucking Russians” over the “goddamn Americans.” The investigation in this ep is fun, though. Oh, and Stan here also says that if Curtis was working for the Russians and he knew it, that’s treason. That would also apply to Paige.

Btw, wrt to Curtis, is there some sort of dress code required for girls who date drug dealers? When the FBI breaks into Curtis’ apartment he slips out the window nearly fully-dressed but of course there’s a woman in the color in the room screaming where only a pair of panties. Seems like there’s always a topless WoC screaming when cops come in. Just once it would be nice if the dealer’s girlfriend was, like, sitting at the kitchen table doing homework for night school.

A bigger foreshadowing in this ep: Philip drops by the house, ostensibly to drive the kids to school, but also to tell Elizabeth about Amador’s ring being found and to get in her face a little. When Henry, who had earlier been dragging their feet, says he can be ready very quickly and runs off Philip sends him off by saying, “Go go go!”

“Go, go go!” is, iirc, the last thing Philip will ever say to Henry when he talks to him on the phone and Henry tells him he’s in the middle of a ping pong tournament. The line’s not just a coincidence since it completely sums up Philip’s philosophy of parenting, which is to be like the dad teaching a kid to ride a two-wheeler: Keep your hand on the bike to balance him until he’s got it and then cheer him on as he rides away from you. In the first scene he’s encouraging Henry to show Philip how efficiently he can get himself ready; in the second he’s telling him to forget about Philip and get back to his life. Elizabeth, in this same kitchen scene, was parenting reigning Paige in with an eye toward the past, comparing Paige’s behavior to her own at that age.

The scene, imo, really shows how Paige got knocked sideways by the revelation about her parents. Back when she thought she was just an ordinary kid pushing back against parents who didn’t get it she was much more sure of herself. In this scene she gets in her best shot ever at Elizabeth. When Elizabeth shows irritation about the kids making the morning routine difficult Paige mutters that Elizabeth was the one who wanted it this way. This hits Elizabeth right in her self-image. She sees a lot or her life as being without choice full of things she had to do, yet here’s Paige referring to the separation as something Elizabeth wanted for herself. When Philip shows up she gives him a lecture about not coming over unannounced when the kids are getting used to “new routines” but even that’s undermined when he gives her the news about the ring, reminding her that she’s supposed to be dealing with Philip less emotionally now.

This irritation is a contrast to the Beeman marriage. Stan’s first stop when feeling emotional about Amador wasn’t Sandra, but Philip, however he later tells Sandra they found the killer. Yet the little he says really just underlines how impossible things are for Sandra. He tells her the world is “darker” than she thinks, that he hasn't told her everything, but when she points out she didn’t ask him to do that and doesn’t need it—in fact this attitude is exactly what’s making his family unhappy—he claims this is what you have to do to have a happy family, like he's doing it for her. When Sandra suggests leaving with just the family the scene ends before Stan even gives an answer. There’s no suspense he’ll stay yes, it’s just underlining how he would never do that. The Jennings are sniping at each other because they’re still invested in each other. Sandra can’t really get much reaction from Stan.

But this ep is really Gregory’s ep.  The elephant in the room here is that the show at this point had only 2 non-white characters, one recurring and one only semi-recurring, and by the end of this ep they’re both dead. Still, one thing I really admire about the ep is that unlike Amador’s death which to me seems like such a fridging (when a character dies just so another character—in this case Stan—can react to it), Gregory’s death is all about him. We don’t get a backstory or flashbacks or much in his pov, but there’s still a clear arc for him giving us an idea of what he’s choosing. The ep plays like the end of his story rather than just an event that affects the main characters. (Its main importance for the Jennings is Philip letting Gregory die on his own terms because Elizabeth asks him, which is important, but it doesn’t steal focus from Gregory’s death.)

At the start of the ep Gregory gets a call from Elizabeth and meets her in a bar. This is one of the scenes on the show where Elizabeth annoys me, because she tells Gregory Philip moved out and that he “told her so,” validating his claim that their relationship was fake and not her etc. Elizabeth’s feeling uniquely isolated (explaining she’s telling Gregory this because who else is she going to tell?) and burdened dealing with the kids and Philip who still all insist on being visibly dissatisfied with the new arrangements, yet throughout she’s the person whose personal feelings people think about the most. Philip, Gregory and Claudia (who smokes in this ep, an activity that has very specific associations on the show, many of which are also associated with Gregory) all express concern for her personally. Someone back on the TWOP boards once described Gregory as a character who existed “solely to blow smoke up Elizabeth’s ass” and while I wouldn’t reduce him to that...I always remembered it.

So Elizabeth tells Gregory about her situation and he sees her as potentially coming back to him, but if she had thought she might get back with him here, in the moment she pulls back.  I think that scene might be there both so that Elizabeth can see that she can’t go back to finding comfort with Gregory away from her family and to show Gregory that that. Gregory leaves, telling Elizabeth he’ll wait—for her, presumably, as well as the signal.

Elizabeth then meets with Philip and Claudia to discuss his future. Philip and Elizabeth disagree about Gregory, but are also both right about him. Elizabeth is right in saying he’d never betray them, but Philip is right in knowing he’s not going to want to go to Moscow. Elizabeth thinks Gregory would like it there just as she’ll later think Paige will. In both cases she seems to think anyone “like her” can’t be all that attached to the US or uninterested in Russia.

Btw, it really sucks to be Philip in this ep. He's never done anything to Elizabeth or Gregory or their relationship, but he's got to feel like he's been cast as the villain in it throughout this ep.

Elizabeth also says that Gregory has done something harder than any of them have had to do in betraying his country. In Gregory’s case this might be true, but again, Elizabeth is projecting. Plenty of their sources think there’s things harder than working for a foreign government. Paige is never shown struggling with this aspect of her work, even when listening to Stan’s Thanksgiving speech, and seems to have only the most shallow understanding of the USSR even after she’s working for it. Both Gregory and Paige find it much easier to commit treason than to leave the country they know and move to a foreign one like the Illegals did (and will also do again at the end of the show when they return to a USSR they haven’t lived in for decades).

After this scene Gregory and Elizabeth meet again and she tries to convince him to leave. Gregory grasps at a few straws that reveal some innocence on his part—he claims the KGB would do whatever Elizabeth asks, as if he thinks the KGB is as enthralled with her as he is. It’s Philip, not the KGB, who grants Elizabeth’s request because it’s her asking, and Elizabeth no doubt notes the difference.

In desperation, Gregory asks Elizabeth to just run away with him. It parallels the Beeman scene, but seems even less of a possibility. I don’t know how much hope Gregory really had that Elizabeth would ever run away with him, but I think her reaction makes it clear she’s not tempted by the idea of a life that starts with only Gregory. That reaction is what sends him out of the car for good and I think it inspires his later decision. I don’t mean he’s killing himself because he’s lost Elizabeth, but I think it encourages him to see his life as defined by the Cause because there is nothing else at this point.

Later he tells Claudia he never wanted much, just to live for something and now he’s done that. But I think his idea to run away with Elizabeth does show that he could imagine a life based just around love, if he had it. He had a fantasy, at least, that Elizabeth would be enough to sustain a life on the run where the Cause would not be enough to sustain a life in Moscow.

In his good-bye night with Elizabeth he tells her not to go back to Philip, saying he would soften her up. She should find someone to love her for being so “strong.” Strong in this case seems to mean the same thing Elizabeth seems to take it to mean—putting the Cause above people and family. Cutting herself off from them. I can’t help but hear him making sure she won’t love anyone more than him. And also think of Elizabeth also seeming to turn feelings of rejection into an admiration of strength and commitment to the Cause—an attitude that must ring especially hollow to her at the end of the show when Gregory becomes more and more openly associated with living death and suicide. (And when that behavior inspires actual revulsion in people she cares about.)

Ultimately, of course, Gregory wants to choose his own mode of death (and shoot cops in the process). When Philip arrives Elizabeth’s trying to be “strong,” threatening to shoot Gregory. It’s when Philip arrives and is ready to do it himself that Elizabeth actually takes Gregory’s side. I can see several reasons why Elizabeth would want to avoid having Philip kill Gregory, but it still seems right that Philip’s arrival would make Elizabeth able to back Gregory’s plan where she wasn’t before.

There’s probably a whole other analysis to be done comparing Gregory to Martha, who also loses he great love but does choose to go to Moscow. Or a comparison of the characters who do choose suicide (Gregory and William) vs. those who don’t. For me the main feeling about the two suicides is that they are people who just feel like they’ve run out of road—that their story is over. Martha just feels like she’s alone again and instinctively moves forward like she did before. Claudia really does seem to see fighting as life. In S6 I think Elizabeth pretends she’s ready for suicide but even in her numbness she’s actually furious about it and does want to live and is desperate for someone to throw her a life preserver.

[Roseanna]

4 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

There’s probably a whole other analysis to be done comparing Gregory to Martha, who also loses he great love but does choose to go to Moscow. Or a comparison of the characters who do choose suicide (Gregory and William) vs. those who don’t. For me the main feeling about the two suicides is that they are people who just feel like they’ve run out of road—that their story is over. Martha just feels like she’s alone again and instinctively moves forward like she did before.

When Martha is on that bridge where she could commit a suicide and decides not to do it, she has also the third alternative: to contact the FBI, betray "Clark" and go to the prison in order atone her treason. But she still believes that if she goes to Moscow, she will eventually meet "Clark" there. And as Philip tells that she used to goe to the church (although we don't see it and it doesn't influence on her behaviour otherwise), maybe she is against committing a suicide for relegious reasons?

William's suicide seems heroic: he decides to die painfully in order to avoid interrogations where he could betray his country as well as P&E (although he says something about them, it's too general) and maybe avoid also the sentence. But although he sacrifices himself, he does it for the a very doubful cause as the virus found in his body is used not to revenge the nuclear attack against the USSR, or rather as a deterrent against such an attack, but against the Afghans who (although religious fanatics and not freedom fighters Reagan called them) are defending their country against the Soviet invaders.

[sistermagpie]

11 hours ago, Roseanna said:

When Martha is on that bridge where she could commit a suicide and decides not to do it, she has also the third alternative: to contact the FBI, betray "Clark" and go to the prison in order atone her treason. But she still believes that if she goes to Moscow, she will eventually meet "Clark" there. And as Philip tells that she used to goe to the church (although we don't see it and it doesn't influence on her behaviour otherwise), maybe she is against committing a suicide for relegious reasons?

 

I remember something Alison Wright said that I totally believed about Martha. She said that when she was on the plane going to Moscow she was thinking to herself that she could always kill herself when she got there. I think that's a lot of how Martha is thinking throughout. Her instinct is always to try to survive another day. She doesn't really want to die at all--like when she's on the bridge I think she sees it as a solution in terms of wanting to escape, but she really doesn't want to die. Suicide is something she's got in her mind as something that's there if she needs it, but it's really just something at this point that gets her to move on, telling herself "Not quite yet." 

As we know once she got to the USSR, as terrible as some viewers thought her life was, it still was never so bad that she would kill herself.

11 hours ago, Roseanna said:

William's suicide seems heroic: he decides to die painfully in order to avoid interrogations where he could betray his country as well as P&E (although he says something about them, it's too general) and maybe avoid also the sentence. But although he sacrifices himself, he does it for the a very doubful cause as the virus found in his body is used not to revenge the nuclear attack against the USSR, or rather as a deterrent against such an attack, but against the Afghans who (although religious fanatics and not freedom fighters Reagan called them) are defending their country against the Soviet invaders.

Yes, I thought William's suicide was proving that Gabriel was right about him. He didn't really have much in his life at that point beyond his job even if he often thought it wasn't helping anyone. Iirc, when he's going to be captured he even does it with an attitude of rolling his eyes, like he knew this was how it was going to end and that he was going to wind up following his original directive yet again no matter how much he might have dreamed about rebelling. He was, as Gabriel said, a patriot at heart still. He's not that different from Philip who asked Gabriel "What if he's no longer that guy?" (He was and so is Philip.)

[Roseanna]

12 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes, I thought William's suicide was proving that Gabriel was right about him. He didn't really have much in his life at that point beyond his job even if he often thought it wasn't helping anyone. Iirc, when he's going to be captured he even does it with an attitude of rolling his eyes, like he knew this was how it was going to end and that he was going to wind up following his original directive yet again no matter how much he might have dreamed about rebelling. He was, as Gabriel said, a patriot at heart still. He's not that different from Philip who asked Gabriel "What if he's no longer that guy?" (He was and so is Philip.)

I think that William's patriotism is different than that of Philip and Oleg.

William is manipulated by Gabriel to do something that he think it's wrong (because the lazza fever is so an ugly way to die) and a danger for himself. Gabriel promises that he will be respected as a hero and he accepts because he has, as you say, anything else in the world.

Instead, Arkady doesn't manipulate Oleg but appeals to him to take the huge personal risk and do the right thing in order to help his country become better. Oleg makes the decision, even if failure means losing his wife and child. 

Oleg uses same arguments with Philip who must choose between loyalty to his wife or his country.     

[sistermagpie]

11 hours ago, Roseanna said:

I think that William's patriotism is different than that of Philip and Oleg.

Yes, you're right. Their ultimately choices are very different situations.

In fact, now that you put it like that, they're kind of the opposite in some ways. William was a patriot, but he also saw himself as defeated by the way he expressed it. He always just did the thing he was being asked to do. He clearly admired Philip for standing against the Centre on some things and maybe connected that to Philip being lucky enough to have other things in his life. When he infects himself with the virus he's sacrificing himself, but I think it's partly because he can't really think of anything else to do, he's done this for so long. The real good thing he's doing is protecting the Jennings. Where as Philip and Oleg both have things in their lives that mean a lot to them that they're risking when they could say no. They're actually motivated by something positive rather than just avoiding something negative.

[sistermagpie]

First monster post on the new revamped site!

Just watched Covert War. This episode is more interesting now that the show’s finished. It's another place where you get a mini-sixth season all in one ep. In this case, it's Claudia tricking Elizabeth into acting as a weapon for her personal vendetta and Elizabeth pulling out just in time due to Philip (this isn’t explicitly stated in this ep but I think it’s implied). There’s also an interesting mirroring of the Beemans and Jennings in it.

The kids only appear in a short scene, visiting Philip’s motel room. Henry asks some questions about insurance that aren’t that silly and Paige calls him a doofus. It’s not that significant except that it's so consistent in the way she interacts with him and it implies an insecurity that's really central to the character, imo. Most of Paige’s interactions with her brother throughout the series involve her being performatively more mature (rather than mean) and he ignores it unless she’s embarrassing him.

Right after she does this the family spots a guy peeing in the parking lot. Paige says, “What’s he doing?” and Henry says he’s taking a leak. First, there's a little character note in how Henry doesn’t take the opportunity to emphasize that now he’s the one who knows more than she does. More importantly now that the series is over, Paige being arrogant about her superior knowledge of the world when watching TV, then failing to identify something seedy going on right in front of her is very on-the-nose foreshadowing. Later she'll stumble on her mother covered in blood bent over a dead body and believe it’s a suicide. I don’t think this scene is making that strong a point purposefully, of course, but it winds up being that in retrospect.

Another really direct foreshadowing is Patterson’s speech to Elizabeth where he accuses her of being a soulless robot with no feelings and blood on its hands. It’s echoed in The Summit where Philip tells her to act like a human being—clearly Elizabeth is really sensitive to this criticism despite often seeming to aspire to exactly this idea. In fact, this ep has her laying this out when Zhukov asks her what love is and she says it’s “a feeling.” It reminded me of a later scene where she says she thinks EST is about talking about “feelings” and Philip corrects her that it seems more like thinking about parts of himself he doesn’t usually think about. EST actually is an intellectual exercise, which appealed to Philip who's far more stuck in his head than Elizabeth. So you can see Elizabeth’s conflict—she thinks she needs to repress her feelings to be loyal, but is even more sensitive about being told she has no feelings.

The show really upped its flashback game in later seasons. Early on they're often used either to spell out things that weren’t really necessary or to introduce ideas that don’t really ring true. In this ep Zhukov is transformed from the guy who asked Elizabeth about Philip’s loyalty in the pilot into the world’s #1 Philizabeth shipper. Why does he care so much about Elizabeth opening herself to love and happiness? Elizabeth scoffs at Philip for going to EST, but sometimes it seems like the world’s Elizabeth’s therapist—she’s always meeting people who want to make her a emotional health their project. She’s called to Gryazi, Switzerland and Rome so Zhukov can encourage her to let herself love. In the first scene he says he’s called her there because she’s not happy! It makes it seem like Elizabeth gets a lot of perks nobody else gets—and this is even before we find out she gets tapes from her mother, another thing we never see Philip getting.

The Zhukov/Elizabeth relationship just seems pretty forced compared to the later more organic tie between Gabriel and his charges, especially Philip with whom he’s in conflict. You can see why Philip’s challenges would make Gabriel rethink his own choices while Zhukov’s focus on Elizabeth seems more convenient to the plot. (The rest of the ep makes clear that Zhukov was not like this with Philip since Elizabeth says Zhukov loved *her* and not them.)

The flashbacks are unnecessary, imo, and reduce Elizabeth's conflict to a more cliche idea about choosing to live without love which doesn't really describe it, imo. It also makes is seem as if Zhukov thinks any two people partnered will fall in love like a dog and its master and that's just obviously not true. (Also I assume Philip is the not-the-brightest or handsomest stray dog Daddy Zhukov is giving Elizabeth so she has something to love--nice!)

One thing I continue to think is better in this season is the fight scenes. Despite just being a bureaucrat, Patterson isn’t an easy takedown for Elizabeth. He smacks her into a wall and stuns her at one point and once he’s captured he remains calm and turns the tables on her, then gives detailed answers about what happened to him.

The main issue of the episode is Claudia’s tricking Elizabeth. Claudia’s choosing Elizabeth for her plot also echoes not just Claudia choosing Elizabeth, presumably, for the plot in S6 but also Arkady choosing Philip. In both cases Claudia chooses to lie and manipulate despite seeming to think Elizabeth would be on her side anyway. Her manipulation of Elizabeth isn’t that subtle (she claims she never thought Americans would stoop so low, but we all know there’s no level to which Claudia wouldn’t easily believe the Americans would stoop), but it works like a charm. Maybe the biggest different between this and S6 is that here Elizabeth has a paranoid theory that Claudia’s doing this as a personal attack on Elizabeth and MM does a lot with her reactions to suggest there’s something else going on with Claudia.

Stan is also manipulated in this ep, in his case by Nina. He tries to break it off with her and she agrees, then reminds him that he’s taken everything from her and Stan quickly takes it back. She hasn’t known him long, but knows exactly what to play with him—his desire to be the good guy and a hero. Claudia will later tell Elizabeth, when she thinks her plan worked, that she admires Elizabeth’s similar “predictability” and finds it comforting. Elizabeth is predictable—she strives to be straightforward and single-minded and it really does make her easy to manipulate. Claudia’s genuinely surprised when it turns out Elizabeth changed her mind and I really do think the implied agent of chaos here is Philip. It means something to Elizabeth when he shows up to help her with the hare-brained scheme she knows he doesn’t want to do, and he does it to protect her personally (unlike Zhukov who sees Elizabeth as an agent first, even if he wants her to be happy.) I think Philip showing he’s got her back personally is what makes her feel safe enough to feel things. It makes her think more clearly, although she thinks it should do the opposite.

It’s pretty stunning, btw, how Elizabeth is so able to self-righteously ask Patterson what it “feels like” to order the deaths of innocent people when it’s something Elizabeth does so often. Just this season she killed a random security guard while Patterson killed KGB agents.  I think Claudia, too, feels honestly self-righteous about Zhukov’s death. Easy to see how people like this would scuttle peace talks.

Elizabeth also seems a little out of touch when she feels she has to complain about 3-year-old Paige being in a play group rather than working in the salt mines or something since Elizabeth claims she never got to play as a kid. Funny, though, that from what we know of Elizabeth's life there's really no reason it ought to have been devoid of play at all. Philip's life seems actually harsher yet he's got two references to play.

Elizabeth also reveals here she held off telling Philip about Henry so she could keep her abortion option open. On hand that doesn't seem that significant--she wanted to hold onto the choice as long as she could. But since this is her second child, I think there is a different thought process going on here, and it somehow seems sadly fitting that even during pregnancy we see Elizabeth feeling more strongly about Paige, whether she was bravely ordering Philip she was ready or crying in terror over the prospect of being a mother. (Also, of course, Zhukov's throwaway line about how *Philip* must be happy about the second child.)

Stan and Elizabeth are paralleled in having trouble connecting to their children who aren’t like them—in this case Stan’s not sure how to react to Matthew’s Rocky Horror drag make-up. (Later he’ll remember Matthew watched the movie and grab a VHS copy for Henry and Matthew to watch alone, I think, never seeming to learn how tone-deaf this is—I will never get how some describe Stan some kind of spiritual father for Henry.)

So I’d seen those parallels with Stan and Elizabeth but then it occurred to me that Philip and Sandra are interestingly paralleled too. Philip isn’t a main player in the Zhukov story, exactly—his biggest scene in this ep is the memorable lunch with Martha’s parents. Gotta hand it to Clark as usual here, because at first I thought it wasn’t great how Clark is so clearly uncomfortable during it. Then I remembered that not only is Clark socially awkward, he has very good reason to telegraph to Martha that he’s not happy with this ambush. So by the end when she apologizes he gets to be the hero by not being angry. Clark: 587 Martha: maybe 2.

Philip’s own story comes in the first and last scenes here—he and the kids see the guy peeing in the parking lot and it inspires him to move into an apartment.

While the kids are with Philip Sandra and Elizabeth go out to a bar. They don’t really bond with each other—both are in different places emotionally and Sandra’s not the type Elizabeth’s going to see as a friend. Elizabeth seems to just want to feel free and dance, while Sandra’s trying to find someone with whom to talk out her issues with Stan. (No wonder she, like Philip, is later drawn to EST.) When she brings up the question of cheating Elizabeth gives her the same reaction Philip will later give to Stan on the subject, that everyone married has thought about it. This is probably an answer both have learned through experience—plenty of people considering cheating are considering cheating with them.

Anyway, Sandra talks as much to herself as to Elizabeth, then calls home to learn Stan’s again working late. When he gets home she confronts him about how he’s obviously checked out of the marriage and accuses him of having nothing inside, just as Patterson will later describe Elizabeth. Philip’s later scene with Elizabeth is nothing like that, but both spouses are announcing that they’re moving forward rather than remain in limbo. They’ve both made it clear they want to be with the other person and been rejected.

Sandra’s directness and honesty is in direct contrast to Claudia’s manipulation. Elizabeth is also in her own way trying to get what she wants without admitting it. When she discovers Philip packing she assumes, with relief, that he’s agreeing to end the separation on her terms (which are somewhat like Stan’s). She says some vague words about how “it’s been long enough” and it’s “the right thing to do” as if they’re agreeing to live together again for the kids, but then Philip makes it clear he’s moving on, like Sandra, rather than continuing to live in limbo, Elizabeth backs off and runs.

In a sense both Philip and Sandra are checking out. Sandra is telling Stan he’s no longer going to treat their home like a motel and Philip says he’s no longer living in a literal one. Both are taking a definitive step away from the other person and into some new life on their own. In Elizabeth's case she's getting what she said she wanted but really doesn't. In Stan's case he's getting what he claims to not want, but he really does. (Although to be truly honest what they both want at this point is to stay in limbo where they get to have it both ways.)

One other note on this ep—remember that auction they had of props after the show ended? I did get one pin and I’m pretty sure Claudia’s wearing it in the scene where she tells Elizabeth about Patterson. Hee!

[scartact]

Popping back in to say I am definitely still aiming to eventually do a rewatch of the series! I hella miss the show now that we're approaching the months where usually new eps would be out.

Anyway, Covert War has gotta be my least favorite episode of the entire series, from what I remember of that episode (I haven't watched it in a long while). It just feels so overestimated and overwrought, and it kinda feel like in an alternative universe, the show could have easily becomes this mess of an episode. And if I'm thinking of the correct episode, this is also the one where Elizabeth kinda has a minor freakout? I don't remember buying what they were trying to sell in that episode.

Anyway, some half-formed thoughts! I miss thinking about an analyzing this show.

[sistermagpie]

1 hour ago, scartact said:

And if I'm thinking of the correct episode, this is also the one where Elizabeth kinda has a minor freakout? I don't remember buying what they were trying to sell in that episode.

Yup, she wants to kidnap and murder this guy whose name Claudia gives her as the person responsible for Zhukov's death, even though he's rather randomly designated that. She's determined to do it alone if she has to, even though she says she can't do it without Philip. She starts out doing a big villain-monologue to Patterson but then completely crumbles when he starts saying she's a robot. And then Philip's all, "It'll be okay! I'll go kill that guy for you! You want me to kill him? I thought you wanted to kill him?"

I forgot to mention that Elizabeth and Claudia at the end seem like they're having a contest to see who can out badass each other, calling each other "dear" and "old lady" and it's kind of tedious. 

Hope you do a rewatch too!

[scartact]

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

She's determined to do it alone if she has to, even though she says she can't do it without Philip. She starts out doing a big villain-monologue to Patterson but then completely crumbles when he starts saying she's a robot. And then Philip's all, "It'll be okay! I'll go kill that guy for you! You want me to kill him? I thought you wanted to kill him?"

Oh man, I really don't remember this episode. I lightweight remember him calling her a robot, but eh, it was stronger when it happened in season 6. I sorta feel like this episode is an interesting contrast to The Summit in how the writing shifted and changed from season 1 to season 6, because the moment Elizabeth lets Patterson go is not unlike her letting Jackson go and having that be motivated by people basically calling into question Elizabeth's motives. It obviously resonates much stronger in season 6, because there's way more credibility to Phil and Liz's relationship at that point that I absolutely believe he would be the only one who could remotely crack her hell-bent ideology. Patterson using mind games just felt kinda cheap and silly for a character with pretty powerful mental fortitude. I just don't buy that the Liz we come to know would crack in that way.

But yes, I totally feel you on some of these older episodes really underlining moments and character beats, especially in season 1. And I was actually really into season 1 when I first watched it (it was like Spy AU fan fiction dreams!), but I really appreciated how much the later seasons went into better nuancing these moments and more consistently building the emotional arc.

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, scartact said:

Patterson using mind games just felt kinda cheap and silly for a character with pretty powerful mental fortitude. I just don't buy that the Liz we come to know would crack in that way.

I remember the first time I saw this ep I thought it was funny how Elizabeth was always claiming to be and being described as the cold one, but this was the second ep in a row where there was huge drama because of somebody Elizabeth loved. And I know now one could say that Philip was the same way later, but I really don't think he was. Because Elizabeth really isn't in control so she's swinging wildly back and forth--she pulls a gun on Gregory, then can't pull the trigger, she kidnaps Patterson but can't pull the trigger. But when Philip pulls risky moves with Martha, Pavel or Kimmy, he knows what he's doing and why and standing by it.

I do buy this basic idea about Elizabeth and emotion in a general way, but the situation in this ep is too removed. Her behavior's much more believable in Only You. This ep seems a little too much like they're telling us how she represses emotions so much she has trouble dealing with them. She's more out of control when she cuts off Philip.

[Roseanna]

Patterson also describes himself only as such who doesn't make decisions but only follows orders - which seems a clear lie as he is the chief CIA - and therefore isn't responsible for the murders. Instead, Philip is in S6 takes a responsibility for following the orders and urges Elizabeth to do the same.

Of course Zhukov is no more innocent than Patterson, but killing Zhukov is stupid as after that Patterson becomes a target (although not officially).    

[sistermagpie]

4 hours ago, Roseanna said:

Patterson also describes himself only as such who doesn't make decisions but only follows orders - which seems a clear lie as he is the chief CIA - and therefore isn't responsible for the murders. Instead, Philip is in S6 takes a responsibility for following the orders and urges Elizabeth to do the same.

I think his title is actual Director of Planning for the USSR--so there's probably truth to his saying he carries out orders that were given to him. But still, it's a weird distinction to make. Bureaucrats can cause a lot of deaths! Patterson was sort of saying that he was a middle man, carrying out policy from above by giving orders to those below while Elizabeth was just one of those "below" who carried out the orders physically, which made her worse.

But to me it seems like Elizabeth actually the better of the two since she's less removed from what she's doing. It almost seems like the real thing that should have freaked her out was recognizing that Patterson was exactly the kind of person who was giving her orders and not feeling the weight of any of it.

[sistermagpie]

Just watched The Oath.

This one really benefits from having a way to organically tie a lot of storylines together that have been building up all season. It starts with Nina’s oath to her country and ends with her confessing her treachery to it (in between she surprises Stan asking if he killed Vlad). Viola listens to a sermon and confesses her own treachery regarding the clock—oh, and her pastor says that lies are the devil’s sword and shield, the emblem of the KGB. Nice. We also have Clark and Martha’s wedding vows, and Elizabeth wondering aloud if her marriage to Philip would have gone differently if they’d said vows. (I vote: absolutely not.)

I liked the set design on Philip’s apartment. It looks convincingly spare with the only personal touches being pictures of the family. I think it’s the only ep where we see it. Paige is there for a special father/daughter dinner where I note she wears a shirt that reads like something currently considers the coolest shirt she owns, especially when she wears it again to hang out at Matthew’s. (Sure, this could be due to scenes getting switched around, but so what?) Paige and Philip’s little contest of tossing food and catching it in their mouths is a little echo of their fight in the last season—though there they both make clear they're not interested in games in totally different ways. (In that ep it’s Elizabeth Paige laughs with along with Claudia, but it’s still worlds away from the way she is here.)

It could be a little creepy that Philip runs from his daddy/daughter dinner to a romantic proposal dinner with Martha way out of town. Is he going from his real self to a character, or are both examples of him acting the part of the perfect dinner date?

This is also the only ep where we see Matthew’s band. In the first season Matthew is going through phases like the Jennings kids will later, here trying on the identity of a guy who would actually be in a band. Meanwhile Paige does that awkward thing where you have to act like you’re into the music you’re listening to. Neither of them really pull it off.

Paige feels inadequate next to Sara, the girl who comes to play with them and I like that the show makes this girl someone who seems to draw confidence from being genuinely talented and into music rather than some popular girl who’s snotty. Paige isn’t envious of her looks or fashion, but something of more substance.

It’s not so much Sara who makes Paige feel inadequate, really, it’s Matthew when he describes Paige as being just there to watch rather than, I don’t know, his friend. Probably because Matthew himself is a little nervous around this girl who seems to be the only real musician there. It’s fitting that Sara asks if Paige is in the group—Paige will try to be “in the group” a lot during the show while at the same time maybe feeling like the one who’s “just came to watch.”

By S6 Paige will be a girl who effortlessly gets all the male attention, but her self-direction isn't as real. It also reminded me how later, when Paige is getting together with Matthew, she makes a point of bringing this girl up so they can both make jokes about her name, claiming they can’t remember it, with Paige suggesting “celery.” It just, to me, is another insecure note at 16, like she needs to banish Sara by having Matthew dismiss her.

This ep has two interesting convos about Philip and Elizabeth’s relationship, one of which read differently to me this time. In the first Paige and Elizabeth talk about Matthew and Elizabeth gives her some good advice. First she says just because Matthew likes Sara now doesn’t mean he’ll always feel that way—the battle isn’t necessarily lost. But Paige doesn’t want to "fight for his feelings." She wants someone to genuinely know her and choose her. Paige will later be offended when Elizabeth says she “seems to have made a good impression” on the intern she dates in S6, suggesting Paige might have intentionally tried to get someone to like her (like a whore?).

Elizabeth switches gears, asking what Paige is really seeing in Matthew. She doesn’t know him that well, so is probably projecting things onto him based on superficial attraction. These are both things that Elizabeth would have learned from her experience as a spy. It’s even more clear that she’s speaking here as a spy when Paige asks if this is what happened to Elizabeth’s marriage—did she realize she was seeing things in Philip that weren’t there? Elizabeth has actually started to realize the opposite. Philip’s spent the past two eps proving that he really is the guy she “saw” in the garage in the pilot, the one who has her back and is nothing like the guy Claudia says he is.

This idea carries more weight now that we know about Elizabeth’s memory of her mother telling her her father was shot as a coward after Elizabeth spent her life looking at his picture and imagining him as a hero. I wonder if Paige’s question not only makes Elizabeth think about how she saw something real in Philip but how bad it would be for her to imply to Paige that there might be nothing there in her own father. (Though in S6 she seem to do just that, constantly using Philip as a cautionary tale of Those Who Fall Short and Couldn't Take It, setting up Paige to probably meet a similar fate as Elizabeth's father.)

Ironically, it's Elizabeth and possibly Henry who haven't really accepted the family situation. Henry buries the keys to Philip's apartment. Elizabeth reports the fact to Philip, seemingly as a way to express her own feelings about it. She makes a point of checking the place and asking about Philip hanging things on the walls. She gets sentimental at the wedding, wonders if vows would have made a difference. Meanwhile Philip keeps taking more and more steps in the other direction: apartment and now marriage proposal followed by immediate wedding with Elizabeth requested to be his sister.

The other relationship convo is between Clark and Martha, where Clark tells Martha he’s been married before and that it ended because he and his wife didn’t care enough—they cared about each other, but didn't know how to “be married”—iow, I assume, they didn’t care enough about the marriage. The first time I saw this ep I think it seemed so obvious that they were getting back together I just considered it a done deal and assumed Philip, too, saw the separation a sign of stubbornness.

But this time I saw Philip’s state of mind being in a different place, one who really did think the marriage was over. When he tells Martha about having been married, he’s presumably drawing on the short period of time after the pilot, before he screwed up with Irina. Where Elizabeth talks about the problems of relationships in terms of real and not real (with Philip being real), Philip is talking about the work of the relationship.

I think he gets that Elizabeth was suggesting he move back in in Covert War, sees that she’s using Henry to guilt him about the apartment, hears her musings about whether their marriage would have been different with vows are going. In the past I read his ignoring of these things as just a refusal to fix things for Elizabeth or accept an inferior position in the relationship, and there’s some of that, of course.

But I think it’s also explained in what he says to Martha about knowing what you’re getting into with marriage and caring about the marriage itself, with or without a vow. Martha is accepting less than true marriage in ways Philip will not. In that light, Philip isn’t just refusing to accept Elizabeth’s half-gestures toward reconciliation, he thinks that’s the best they can offer each other and is dismissing that. (Or at least he thinks it’s the best Elizabeth will offer him.) I often forgot in later seasons that Philip proposes to Martha when he’s separated from Elizabeth. Practically, that makes it a lot easier for him to spend nights with her. But it’s also sort of a statement that he might as well just have a totally fake marriage. Maybe he’d rather have that than a situation where he and Elizabeth have an on-again off-again thing dependent on anything but a commitment to each other.

The exchange between Paige and Elizabeth really sums it up. Elizabeth is still hoping for the right strategy to get Philip to do what she wants, but Philip doesn't want to fight for her feelings--either she's into him or she's not. And she's not.

[Umbelina]

21 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Paige feels inadequate next to Sara, the girl who comes to play with them and I like that the show makes this girl someone who seems to draw confidence from being genuinely talented and into music rather than some popular girl who’s snotty. Paige isn’t envious of her looks or fashion, but something of more substance.

Ha.  I think her name was Celery.  The whole family was named after veggies.

[sistermagpie]

Just finished The Colonel and with it, season one in my very slow, verbose re-watch. Things that stood out to me:

This is the ep where Paige steps into her role as true snoop. It’s ironic to see the contrast between Paige’s grilling of Elizabeth’s doing laundry late at night without the washing machine running and Paige sneering at Philip encouraging that kind of questioning about the dead body she just saw. 

Stan totally jumps the gun on promising to ex-filtrate Nina. This is good for plot purposes in that it gives her the info she takes to Arkady, (it’s also good for Nina’s purposes as it lets her be forgiving and encourage Stan to prove himself to her) but it seems like a doofus move for Stan. Gaad did not at all tell him this was a done deal even if they caught the Illegals. But it is interesting to try to think about in the context of his later gestures toward protecting Oleg and Philip. At the same time, Gaad’s clearly relying on Stan’s instincts with Prince.

The episode (and Elizabeth) spends a lot of time highlighting Elizabeth’s impending sacrifice, insisting that Philip should be the one to be with the kids. (She claims they should be with him because he’s the one they “understand,” which sounds like a humblebrag to me and also makes it all about her.) We get scenes of Elizabeth making her big sacrifice with longing looks at the kids etc. But the twist is that throughout the ep Philip is coming to the same conclusion about himself as if it’s no big thing. I really do think that a lot of Philip’s attitude comes from just being a kid in post-war Russia where parent=mom and dad’s needed, but not in the same way.

Oh, and when Philip comes over to take the kids to dinner and Henry begs off for a hockey game. His dad who he no longer gets to see at home all the time has come to take him for a nice dinner (which might have turned out to be the last time he ever saw his father, unbeknownst to Henry) but the hockey game’s what he’s interested in now. Though he is happy when Philip opts to stay with him. Emotional labor is so not Henry’s thing. On one hand it’s just a way of emphasizing Henry’s normalcy the way he takes his parents for granted, but it also means his ultimate tragedy and/or gift is to find out his father was actually more interesting than anything on a screen the whole time.

The main person I found myself focused on in this ep was Claudia—it made me start imagining a possible things about her we didn’t see. She murders Patterson (rather pointlessly), proving herself a badass. She and Elizabeth have a big confrontation in a restaurant which I found it really tedious. It was like listening to two people on the internet who keep talking about how little they care about the other person’s opinion, posturing all over the place and shut up, you two, you’re both idiots.

Then Claudia talks to Arkady. Originally this scene, iirc, was important because it showed clearly that Claudia wasn’t the person Elizabeth thought she was, that she was trying to protect her and Philip. Watching it now it seems obvious Elizabeth was totally off. Having Arkady marvel at how Claudia is protective of the Jennings after they “stabbed her in the back” was a bit much. Like Arkady’s telling us how wronged Claudia’s been. First, drama queen much? Is it really a stab in the back? Second, Claudia’s got good reason to not want Philip and Elizabeth caught. Third, maybe Arkady might have understood if he knew what she’d been up to. Claudia’s been the one sticking knives in everybody’s back.

Claudia has actually sucked as a handler for these two. She shows up to work with two people with what I presume is an amazing record. They’ve worked together smoothly for years. So why on earth would a handler decide to start tweaking their marriage? A good handler would just sit back and learn for a while, not start meddling and trying to make Elizabeth trust her partner less. It's the last thing I'd expect a good handler to do.

We know that later Claudia will confess (I don’t see a point in lying about this in this exact context) to sharing her true identity with some guy she was in a relationship with, that she’ll be part of the neo-Stalinist plot to get rid of Gorbachev, one for which she’ll happily sacrifice an unwitting Elizabeth. We’ll also learn she has children and grandchildren in Russia she can’t relate to. She’s very often using her job to pursue her own agenda or instincts—she tells Arkady to call off the Colonel meeting, sends Elizabeth after Patterson, kills Patterson herself and enlists Philip and Elizabeth to investigate the Connors’ deaths.

On the show she immediately got seen as just a super badass, but we’re mostly seeing the Claudia she would want people to see. She might not really be the Centre’s favorite handler and might have resented that more and more, conflating her own personal needs with the USSR’s.

With that in mind, the last scene played a little differently. The first time I saw the scene between Claudia and Philip after Elizabeth’s shot as just being about Claudia recognizing that Philip actually cares about Elizabeth (like the audience sees Claudia has Philip and Elizabeth’s best interests at heart). This time I couldn’t help but think that Claudia tried to send Philip home, telling him Elizabeth would have to be with “us” a long time, and thought that if he’d gone he wouldn’t have been there when Elizabeth woke up and asked him to come home. Not that Claudia would have known she’d do that, of course. But there is a subtle expression of the dynamics there. Claudia is saying that she, as the handler and representative of the Centre, is the person Elizabeth would be with now. Philip, her partner, can leave.  And Philip, naturally, is like piss off, who even ARE you?

It seems like Claudia learned to back off Philip overtly where Elizabeth was concerned, but I think she did totally think she’d gotten rid of him in S6 and thought this put Elizabeth under her thumb where she belonged. But there again she didn’t get him or them.

[sistermagpie]

Just watched Comrades. It’s making me remember how much I enjoyed season 2 the first time.

Philip’s been working on his own for 3 months, which is far shorter a time than Elizabeth was by S6, but I think it’s also the thing that revvs up his burnout, working alone and being alone. Philip’s being a single dad AND running the agency AND spying, including being Martha’s husband without taking u smoking. Elizabeth seems to just be doing spying, having left the agency, gotten rid of one kid and folding the other one into her job.

Anyway, I can sympathize with Philip having just gotten his wife back and then having it ruined with a mass murder.  Philip is repulsed after using Henry as part of an op even though it makes everything go smoothly. A direct contrast to Elizabeth in S6 who will continue to work with Paige when she mostly just causes trouble. I love Philip’s disguise in the caper they pull btw—he looks like Groucho Marx. I'm surprised the guy isn't totally distracted by it.

We add yet another canonical confidante for Elizabeth in this ep—along with Gregory and Zhukov we’ve got Leanne who knows her enough to be asking how things are between her and Philip as if she, too, knows how resistant Elizabeth was to the marriage. Maybe everyone in the USSR knows how little Elizabeth liked Philip! That said, I think the show does a good job introducing the Connors as a real family with a real history. (Leanne also takes the opportunity to affectionately kiss Elizabeth’s bullet wound while they’re in a threesome.)

This ep is our introduction to Oleg, jamming to Rod Stewart in loafers w/o socks. Such a great intro given where we now know the story is going, because Arkady and Nina’s first impressions of him are pretty logical. In this ep it seems like his father being an important government guy is just setting him up to be spoiled, but it’ll turn out to be really useful to the plot and his storyline.

Several pop culture references. The kids and their sitter watch WKRP in Cincinnati, which Paige abandons to “check Mom’s laundry.” Later she will of course also check their bedroom, linking personal intimacy to her suspicions again. She’s happy they’re back together. Henry’s annoyed they’re going out to a romantic dinner (not really) on his birthday. But he does get a big party in the park, mildly disappointing presents (he just really wants Intellevision, y’all—this will continue to come up too) and a day at the amusement park.

Speaking of that park, Jared and his father compete in a game that involves shooting which Jared wins – yipes. Henry has an interesting convo with Philip while unwittingly being used as an identifying mark for Philip’s brush pass. Henry talks about a kid in his class whose dad has season tickets to the Capitols and therefore Philip should become friends with that dad. Philip laughs and says Henry should become friends with the kid. Henry’s suggestion is both age-appropriate and Henry-appropriate, but also very spy-related. Throughout the series Henry’s relationships actually are pretty consistently associated with personal benefits of one kind or another. Here it’s just ironic that Philip’s already friends with lots of people for what he wants.

Another pop culture reference here is Leo Buscalia, the love doctor. Sandra’s watching it when Stan comes home unexpectedly (meaning people are still awake). The Philip/Sandra connection is really clear here—it’s no wonder the two meet in EST. She’s listening to a guy talking about finding yourself after having lost yourself for a long time, encourages Stan to “take a risk” on love because if you cross your arms to love you’re only holding yourself—Elizabeth spends a lot of S6 in exactly that position. Stan also insensitively dismisses things she sees value in, just like Elizabeth would do to Philip in this type of situation in S6.

The third pop culture piece in this ep is French Lieutenant’s Woman. Stan starts out stopping by the evidence room at the FBI to get something chicks dig and the guy recommends that over Road Warrior. Unfortunately, this is not the movie Nina’s into. There’s no clear reason, imo, for exactly what her reaction is, but it fits very well as just as expression of her frustration over her life. She feels the character is less a woman than what a man thinks a woman should be (something Nina must be with Stan), and asks Stan if he thinks Anna Karenina is a whore for giving her heart to Vronsky. Stan, bless him, has never even thought of reading Anna Karenina so that bit of culture falls that. (Nina then has a fun little moment in describing Oleg as a soft mattress where she says it first in Russian—you can tell before we meet Oleg that he’s already gotten under Nina’s skin and it creates a strong connection between the two right away, though Stan might not see it.)  Watching the movie with Nina Stan seems to barely be connecting to it at all.

So the bro-ey conversation between Stan and the evidence guy doesn’t pan out the way they imagine. But later Stan goes to see the same movie with Sandra because he really can’t refuse her invitation when she’s obviously trying so hard. Sandra, unlike Nina, does freely cry at the movie, but it’s really Stan who seems affected by it. Sandra even winds up turning from the screen to watch Stan instead.

It’s impossible to tell exactly what Stan is thinking—is he linking Sarah to Nina? Or to himself? (She’s making a speech about “marrying shame” because conventional life isn’t for her.) Whatever it is, NE totally sells that it’s something. (It’s a big contrast to the times Paige is called upon to do a moment like this.) Maybe he took Sandra’s advice and opened himself to love in this scene—love for Nina.

Oh, and this is the ep where Renhull kills Prince, who's been showing up at the FBI demanding money. This is the crime that Renhull will be haunted by in S6, the one that leads him to try to kill Elizabeth, though he doesn't regret, it seems, the information he passed. Stan's obviously suspicious of Renhull here, maybe because he himself is barely covering up a murder he committed. Barely covering it up, really. He's practically just sticking his tongue out at the KGB when it comes to Vlad.

[kokapetl]

I went and watched Game of Thrones.

😑 Ugh. It seems this show would’ve highly benefited from Sandra Beeman fucking her son. And when Mischa found his way to DC, it would’ve done wonders for the ratings if he and Paige had banged. 🤮 🤢 

Sick, but true. 

[sistermagpie]

8 hours ago, kokapetl said:

I went and watched Game of Thrones.

😑 Ugh. It seems this show would’ve highly benefited from Sandra Beeman fucking her son. And when Mischa found his way to DC, it would’ve done wonders for the ratings if he and Paige had banged. 🤮 🤢 

Sick, but true. 

I dunno, Sandra's the only one who could pull off drinking wine from a goblet at a big window like Cersei!

[sistermagpie]

Re-watched Cardinal...

This ep introduces both Fred and Lucia and I can't help but think of the contrast between these two and the two Philip and Elizabeth work with in S5. These two are both so immediately interesting. Granted, they're also both spies so they're interacting with them in a very different way.

Lucia is the first of Elizabeth's younger (unlike Gregory) protegees. Their first scene together is great. You can see how Lucia immediately would look up to her but also want to prove herself to her and feel awkward about thinking Elizabeth didn't think she was good enough. Elizabeth goes immediately into teaching mode, refusing to come out of the shadows until Lucia gives her the exact right code words and giving he straightforward advice for the future, then adding at the end admiration for the work Lucia is doing and her country. You can definitely see Elizabeth being a good teacher here, with a different style to Philip, whom we'll later see teaching Paige to drive. It's hard to not not see every interaction like this with Elizabeth and compare it to her training with Paige, who so clearly lacks any real motivation or understanding of what she's doing, and it's reflected in her performance, and who Elizabeth passes anyway. (Elizabeth would have totally accepted the "close enough" password from Paige.) In some ways she's as cut off from Paige as she is from Henry, but tells herself it's worth it to hear Paige compliment her.

Meanwhile, Philip has a really fun interaction with Fred. He gets knocked out by a booby trap and wakes up about to be killed by him (or at least Fred thinks he should kill him). Then Philip Sherlocks the hell out of the scene, using all the little things he noticed in the apartment to appeal correctly to Fred. It's a nice parallel to Elizabeth's scene with Lucia because they're somewhat similar, but also not the same at all. It makes me wonder how Elizabeth would have handled the same scene. Philip's also in a more exposed position since Emmett saw him with Henry, who Fred correctly assumes is his son. This is the first (and maybe only, though I think there might be one more?) scene where Philip seems to hint at a close relationship with Emmett, one which seems to have truth to it even if he's deploying it to manipulate Fred. (He tells him Emmett didn't trust many people so if he told Fred about his family he must think highly of him.) It's mostly the delivery that makes it seem like it comes from truth.

I also think there's truth in Philip agreeing with Fred about a life where you don't really do anything--the kind of life he's trying to embrace in S6. It's not really who  he is, and I think that's mean to be reflected in Henry once he starts getting motivated as well.

Basically, these two are both well-created to set P&E on their separate journeys. Lucia ultimately becomes about sacrificing the person for the Cause while Fred from the start clearly needs Philip to integrate himself more, asking about his real life. (Funny when Fred asks what "Paul's" real name was Philip says Emmett, which would have been the name he had in the paper and is the only name Philip knew, but is not his real name. I've always liked how the show often showed that characters in Russia by contrast used the real Russian names to refer to the person).

Henry in this ep continues to show how his interactions tend to have to be on his terms because he's hard to pin down. Elizabeth is playing a board game with the kids (there's references to family games elsewhere to, and this is the type of thing people tend to insist don't happen in this family) and Henry says he'd rather watch TV, which Paige says he always does when he's losing. (Seriously, Paige rarely has any interaction with Henry where she isn't being critical or condescending.) Then when Elizabeth takes them to the movies and begs off at the last second, Henry's clearly disappointed she's not going to watch the movie with them. I know many only see the side of Henry being neglected--but I always imagine him kind of regretting being so much that way. Although he does also ask if he could help out at the Travel Agency in response to Philip's story about difficult competition--another little reflection of Henry in S6 when he offers to hook Philip up with someone who'll give him advice.

Elizabeth's behavior maybe is what motivates Paige to go ahead and track down "Aunt Ruth's" address since Elizabeth does pretty obviously suddenly decide to go to a movie--any movie--right after she gets a phone call.

This ep is the first time Martha suggests buying her gun, the one that never goes off. Philip manages to talk her out of potentially switching FBI departments. He says she would be happier doing things that matter (as if equal opportunity employment doesn't), which is ironic given that ultimately Martha will choose to commit treason for Clark. Iow, it's him who matters and since he's the one who claims to be so focused on protecting America, his suggestion that she wants the same thing is probably all tied up in her wanting him to see her that way too. Not that there isn't any truth to it, but it's really not her diving motivation, clearly. She doesn't get into spying because she feels like she's helping her country, but because she's helping Clark.

Nina, meanwhile, is in the uncomfortable position of having to deliver explicit reports about sex with Stan to Arkady in person, and that scene is sandwiched between a scene of Philip talking to Elizabeth on the phone and Philip talking to Martha and begging off going to see her in order to be home with an obviously nervous Elizabeth.

It's interesting watching this ep given where Elizabeth is in S6 because here she's genuinely worried about the kids, saying it never before occurred to her they could be in danger. At this point she's still keeping the cover life/kids and her work completely separate. Philip still feels terrible about just using Henry as a prop to identify himself to Fred and when Elizabeth reassures him he didn't have a choice, he says he did. In the last ep there's a similar convo. This time it's Elizabeth who "can't believe" she did something--in this case, killed a KGB officer. Philip gives her the same reassurance, saying something like "What were you supposed to do?" The implication again, there, is that she did have a choice and this was the choice she made--just as Philip chose to do the job for Emmett.

I guess that's why it'll start to create so much trouble when the Centre mixes the two worlds up. Then Elizabeth starts trying to have it both ways: hold onto Paige using the Centre and be loyal to the Centre by using Paige. And it leads her into this numb dreamworld where she again pretends that Henry and Paige couldn't be in any danger, even while she ignores not only the danger she's putting Paige in but Paige's being uniquely incapable of dealing with it.

Oh, and this ep is also the one with the convo that mirrors the very last one when Elizabeth asks how she and Philip are supposed to live "like this"--meaning knowing the kids could be in danger and Philip replies "We'll get used to it." Btw, Philip also looks at her in something like surprise when she says she never thought the kids could be in danger. I wonder if he's surprised that she now thinks they are, or that he's shocked it never occurred to her before. The latter seems far more likely, given Philip.