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They've made it fairly clear that E&P have all sorts of agents-in-place that they're running, legends that they're maintaining, and that they only show the ones that are relevant to the plots they're actively telling. So yeah, P occasionally puts on his young-guy clothes and sparks a doobie with Kimmie, E probably still goes and hangs out with Black Power types, and so on. Really, these two have way too much going on, and I feel like the show should show them failing more often, and it being treated strictly as the nature of the beast. Hey ho. Now, as to 'Stupid reds think that the US is poisoning their grain,' the thing to remember about the USSR was that it was actively loving itself over, while hewing to a philosophy that this was impossible. Everybody Knows that Marxisim, as expressed by Lennin, is the truly progressive way, and that reactionary capitalists and bourgeois are destined for the ash-heap of history. So, for example, when farming is collectivized, because of course collective farms will work far better than private farms, and yield goes to absolute poo poo, the problem simply cannot be that we were wrong; nope, must be outside influence. Must be those drat reactionary Americans, seeking to fatten themselves on the backs of the workers and peasants.
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Mar 16, 2017 16:31
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She clearly considered him to be knowingly and willfully complicit in planning the genocide of innocent workers of glorious USSR, she didn't need any more reason to kill him than that. They'll spend a few more episodes chasing down this plot, find out that the US is working on pest-resistant grain to send to the USSR, Elizabeth will come up with some way it's a horrible plot, and Philip will become even more disillusioned with the Rodina. It would be interesting seeing the last four episodes of the series be them back in Mother Russia, realizing what a horrible shithole it is. Last line of the series will be Elizabeth looking at Philip, Kremlin in the background, and saying something like "I want to go home," meaning the US. Or Philip kills Elizabeth when she tries to forcibly take the kids to the USSR.
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Mar 22, 2017 23:22
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The further they get out of their usual territory, the less elaborate the disguises need to be. This is back in the eighties, there wasn't much in the way of "national databases" of suspects. Hell, twenty years later, the FBI was still getting poo poo for poor data warehousing.
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Mar 23, 2017 17:43
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Earwicker posted:sure and that explains Philip just throwing on a cowboy hat in Kentucky, but the airline pilot one barely looks like a real person, like it just looks like a dude with a bad fake mustache, and that one is used close to home Lots of people have hair a different color than facial hair. And I get the impression that this job is out in a suburb or bedroom community.
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Mar 24, 2017 02:30
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Boris Galerkin posted:Yeah me too. Honestly I figured she was just gonna be killed off screen rather than having to deal with actually paying to relocate her and everything since I keep hearing the USSR has killed their citizens for less. They made a point of trying to treat defectors well, IIRC, to encourage others, and for PR purposes, of a sort.
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Mar 24, 2017 12:52
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Yeah, the final episode, or at least the back half of the final episode, should absolutely just be really short little looks at various important future points of the various surviving main characters over the years. They've spent quite a bit of time in the last few seasons going into P and E's reasons for staying strong and to the cause. They both remember growing up in the USSR as post-war shithole, parents starving, needing to kill people just to not get their milk stolen, all while The Party tells them that World Socialism would already be a thing and everything would be perfect, if only it wasn't for those bourgeois aristocrats and fat cats in Europe and the US purposefully fattening themselves at the expense of the workers and people. So, P&E go to America, the Main Enemy, and spend, what, 15, 20 years trying to help bring about world socialism and consign the US's capitalist exploitation to the ashheap of history, as the dialectic demands must inevitably happen. And what do they see? The US continues to prosper and prosper and prosper. Henry throws out a piece of toast in a fit of teenage assholery. They can't help but contrast their kids' lives versus their own. Meanwhile, you've got this soviet family telling them that, in fifteen years, NOTHING has changed. Philip is getting an earful from the defector guy. Russia really does have every single thing it needs to be just as prosperous as the US; the land, the climate, the resources, the people. So why isn't it? When the only real difference is the leadership and ideology, what could possibly be causing Russians to starve while the US is literally producing more food than it knows what to do with? Why can a sixteen year old kid in the US get a pilots license as a hobby, when in the US, vital infrastructure still involves 'horse and wagon?' In fact, things have probably gotten worse, in a lot of ways, from when P&E were kids. So P&E, but especially Elizabeth, are clinging more and more to this idea that it's all, somehow, the USA's fault. Mark my words, they're going to find out that the midges are for testing pest-resistant crops, cuz the US is trying to be helpful, and it's going to rock Elizabeth, if not shatter her. Also, mad props on Momma Oleg dropping some truth bombs on how to survive. TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Apr 3, 2017 |
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Apr 3, 2017 15:16
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Earwicker posted:That is an interesting direction and plausible for sure. But what about the fact that Stan and Alderholt are going around trying to talk to people who deal with those same agricop companies, and being coldly refused? Stan and Aderholt are trying to talk to Soviet nationals, if I'm thinking of the same things you're thinking? Well, paranoia was an art form in the USSR. Remember, this is the same KGB that kidnapped and tortured their own agents, a few seasons back, as a routine loyalty check. And those agents took it as a given that such things would happen. Those guys that Stan and Aderholt were talking to had an implicit understanding that they might have just been talking to KGB agents. They'd immediately go fill out a 'contact with foreigners' type report and submit it to the KGB. They'd understand that if they were seen talking to these guys in any way that could be construed, shall we say, 'poorly,' well, their families are probably still back home. This is still a country where your sentence is partially defined by which type of forced-labour camp you're sent to. When getting sent to a camp of 'moderate regime' is literally a plea-bargain; nobody wants to go to a camp of strict regime.
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Apr 3, 2017 15:41
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Earwicker posted:Maybe I'm misremembering but I don't remember those guys being Soviet nationals? They seemed like random American businessmen who had dealings with some of the same agriculture companies that P&E are dealing with, but I don't remember them having Russian accents or names or anything. Maybe I was just too high and missed that.. In Episode 3, they go to a diner, sit down on either side of a guy, and say 'Hello, Anatolyi' and 'we know you work for Aeroflot.' Later on, they hit up a guy named 'Mr. Pirogov' who works for Amtorg. This is also intended to illustrate the difference between the capabilities of the USSR and the US; the USSR were acknowledge as the masters of The Great Game. When the USSR wants to find out something from the Americans, maybe they send in their deep-cover operatives to build a full legend, arrange a 'chance' meeting, and engineer a relationship. The US sends a couple of G-Men to bother you while you're taking a piss. LostOne posted:Unfortunately I have to agree with this, as much as I'd love to watch Liz's face as the wall comes down I just don't see how it'd work. Like her or hate her Paige is pretty much central to the heart of the show (family not spycraft) and unless she catches a growth spurt to match her brother's five years would be a huge stretch and getting a new actress would almost feel cheap. Besides that'd be way too happy of an ending, no way Liz makes it that far. I'm not sure why this would be an issue. Put Holly Taylor in not-teenager clothes, crimp her hair (hey, it's the 90s) and a few other Hollywood aging tricks, and Bob's your uncle. Hell, the actress is already four years older than the character; to 'age' the character of Paige five years, they'd basically just not do what they're already doing to de-age the actress.
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Apr 3, 2017 16:29
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Stan: Hey, Aderholt, can you believe this? Aderholt: Yeah, I know. First Martha, now it turns out your next door neighbours are commie spies? Stan: And to think we'd never have known if their daughter hadn't let slip to my son while smoking ganja. Aderholt: Well, we take the breaks we can get. Hey, do you think we can use the daughter against the parents? Make her a double-agent, like? Stan: You mean *sunglasses* turn the Paige? YEEEAAHHHHHHH
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Apr 3, 2017 19:15
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The thing to remember is that Stan's story this year, so far, is paralleling P&Es, which is to say: disillusionment with his government's goals and policies, with stated versus actual ideals. Stan is still pissed about Amador. He's pissed about Martha. He's pissed about Nina. He's pissed that Gaad was killed, and nobody seems to care. He's pissed that his personal connection with Oleg is being used against him. If it turns out his new chippie is a plant by anybody, that's going to hurt him. On the other hand, the last time he had somebody who'd pissed him off in his power, he murdered him, in cold blood, as I recall. Stan could go a few different ways. Maybe he'd go after P&E with a vengeance, and they'd be 'shot trying to escape.' Maybe he'd break down and off himself. Maybe he'll come to the conclusion that he and Phil have more in common with each other, than with Moscow/Washington, and they'll reach their own version of détente. Maybe one of the epilogue scenes from ten or twenty years down the road will be Stan getting off a plane in Moscow, and going out with Phillip for a drink while they reminisce about old times. "We were foes, but we weren't enemies. It was all part of the Game." Hell, maybe Oleg will try to burn Stan, assuming Stan is trying to burn him, and it'll go in a completely different direction. I love this show so much.
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Apr 3, 2017 21:03
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Antifa Sarkeesian posted:Good call Nah, I got it backward. Elizabeth didn't seem to care all that much. "We'll be more careful. Still, we shouldn't be DROPPIN' BAHDIES anyway; bad tradecraft." Kudos to the art and direction team; from having the guts in this day and age to just have a long, still shot of two people staring at one another to the vintage McDonalds containers. I've said it before, I'll say it again: this show is my childhood. I couldn't help but notice the TV in this one shot when E comes home. Period accurate, but any one of the monitors hooked up to my computer is bigger. Crappy picture chat: Let this be a lesson: resize, *then* add text.
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Apr 6, 2017 18:11
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Keyser S0ze posted:That is a bedroom/extra TV not a family TV. I'm old so I remember those days and everyone would have had 27" Sears Floor Console sets by 1985 and nobody was putting tv's above fireplaces yet. Nah, I remember having quite the tiny one in the living room. I used to love going to visit Grandma because she had one of the larger floor models. Complete with an antenna on a rotor. Three whole channels. Luxury! Ah, the 80s. Saturday morning cartoons. Star Trek reruns on CKVR. Getting our very first Betamax player. Not knowing if you were supposed to hit 'stop' before 'rewind.' Atari 2600 and Coleco Vision. I adored my 64, my Commodore 64. I could write with it, paint with it, telecommunicate with it, my Commodore 64. Also, I didn't want to grow up, I was a Toys-R-Us kid. '85 would have been when the NES hit America, as I recall. If we don't see Henry playing Duck Hunt at some point, it'll be a tragedy. Also, Lazer Tag, in 1986. The original Worlds of Wonder Lazer Tag. Which also had a Saturday Morning Cartoon. Tom Clancy novels which talk about the super secret NavStar guidance system which nuke subs used to triangulate their positions so as to accurately launch nukes. Now we use it to play Pokemons. Microprose simulations.
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Apr 6, 2017 20:11
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those chairs posted:i could see elizabeth digging her heels in, seeing her country become even worse after the ussr collapses. Yup, could absolutely go this way. "Communism would have worked, if not for those drat bourgeois capitalist imperialists and reactionaries. Their corruption and rot is so pervasive, it was even able to bring down the work of Marx and Lennin!" On the other hand, Elizabeth also has a very idealized, foreign view of the USSR. She hasn't been there for, what, almost twenty years? She's not really a Soviet, anymore. They're in an odd, nebulous place. They're getting an earful from the defector family, but they can dismiss that as being self-serving exaggeration to impress the American government. But if Mischa shows up and starts dropping truth bombs about the USSR still being a shithole unless you're part of the nomenklatura (we're an egalitarian society but there's still special stores, special highway lanes, dachas in the forest with imported German appliances, and so on, for the more-equal-than-others) who knows? On one hand, true believers tend to double down. On the other hand, she's not an idiot, and has been carefully trained to use reason, logic, analysis, and so on. I also find it interesting that her and Philip are starting to actively miss each other, and want to be together. It's been a while since I watched S1, but didn't the pilot involve them having been estranged for years, her pulling a kitchen knife on him when he tried to touch her, and what not? They've always been able to separate their work-related sexual liaisons from their personal relationship, but that seems to be starting to fall by the wayside. Longbaugh01 posted:Someone watches Arrow. TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Apr 7, 2017 |
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Apr 7, 2017 14:23
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misdirectomy posted:Anyone else a little dissapointed with this season thus far? I get the sense that they are wasting time until they can kick off the end game, which I assume they've sorted out already. Stan and Aderholdt have had the same 1 pointless scene every episode so far. Phil's son comes all the way over here to have one scene with Gabriel, then gets sent home. What's up with Stan's girlfriend, anyway? This whole season has been slow and plodding without much payoff yet. And there's what, 15 episodes total left in the show? The show is a real slow burn, and yeah, it really does work better binged. But it's all about contrasts. When the Russians want to get something out of Americans, they send in super agents to kill or gently caress their way to victory. Their frickin' ministry of trade people will be sitting in your apartment, going through your ill gotten gains, and will consign you to the gulag basically at whim. The Americans will send a couple of dumpy middle aged guys who might as well be wearing giant flashing neon signs saying 'FBI!' to say 'Hey, wanna be a spy?' P&E bringing Paige to Gabriel is basically her 'baptism' into communism. She's been reading the holy texts of Marx, she's expressed an interest, now they're bringing her to the bearded, wise local high priest. Meanwhile, said high priest is having his own crisis of faith over lying to his acolytes, and is preparing to return to the monastery to seclude himself and strengthen his faith and conviction. I think he's also planning on personally keeping an eye on Mischa and trying to keep him safe from himself and from the Soviet system as best he can; I think he sees this as the best way to navigate all of his conflicting duties and loyalties; to the KGB, to the State, to Philip, and to his own conscience and ethics. And there's plenty of payoff. The little flashback of the Korean family, for example, was an amazing way to illustrate Elizabeth's regrets and internal discord about the human cost of what she does, and the sacrifices she makes on a daily basis.
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Apr 12, 2017 20:42
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Gabriel is falling on his sword. This is the only way he can think of to keep faith with Philip, and to honor his oaths and commitments to the State. He's punishing himself on Philip's behalf. And in being forced to do so, in realizing that part of his job is making sure that this guy he loves can't see his own son, he's realizing that while he still believes in the cause, and believes that the work he, and P&E, are doing is right and proper and necessary, he's also suddenly confronted with the idea that the collateral damage can be real and horrible. Better to have kept Paige out of it, for everybody's sakes, then to embroil her in the life. For example, Philip and Elizabeth are both fully aware, and prepared, to die if necessary. Gabriel and Claudia are quite prepared to order Philip or Elizabeth to their deaths if need be. Whatshisface from last season who worked in the virus lab was an excellent demonstration of all this. Now, though, say Paige becomes a second-generation spy. Gabriel, had he stayed, might have been put in a position of needing to order her to her death, for a cause that is ultimately as meaningless to her as could possibly be. Worse, Gabriel suddenly realizes that Philip or Elizabeth could be put in the same situation. Remember, back in one of the early seasons, P&E were taken by KBG agents and tortured as a routine loyalty test, and even to them, this made perfect sense and was just part of the job. We've seen Elizabeth teaching Paige how to fight. Is she going to teach Paige how to tickle a man's anus while blowing him? How to convincingly fake an orgasm when some guy is beating her with a leather belt? How to screw a guy then turn around and blackmail him? The best methods for keeping track of which disguise and legend you're using with which guy you're banging, and how to schedule them for different days of the week? How to kill your own protégé and trainee by capping him in the back of the head with naught but a shrug and a vague disappointment at the loss of time and effort invested? How to have a genuine conversation with an old lady about kids, life, and all that, before ordering her to swallow a bottle full of pills that will kill her? It's one thing to have voluntary recruits who believe in what they're doing go through such training. And even then, remember that Elizabeth was raped during training, and it was considered a perk for the trainers to rape the female trainees. Hell, it was probably considered an important part of the training, when you get right down to it.
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Apr 21, 2017 16:33
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Sinteres posted:I agree with the general direction of what you're saying, but Paige is supposed to be a deep cover plant with security clearance somewhere, not the kind of covert spec ops assassins Philip and Elizabeth are. Sure, but nevertheless, if Paige is, say, in Martha's old position, it's not inconceivable that she'd be tasked to sleep with the nerd running the IT shop to get access.
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Apr 21, 2017 17:46
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Profanity posted:I agree that compared to other seasons, less has happened and especially with regard to any sort of action. But where this might be a detriment to other shows, it's still as thrilling as ever here - it feels like they're going for a super slow burn this season. It's less action, and less extra characters. Note how a season or two back, they made the title sequence much longer to accommodate all the extra names.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:34
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I'm pretty sure Tuan knows straight up that P&E are deep cover KGB agents. They likely haven't volunteered any personal information, as that would be bad tradecraft. On the other hand, Tuan is clearly a full-on member of whatever agency he works for, as he feels free to give suggestions to P&E, and their relationship isn't like, say, Elizabeth's was with Hans. He clearly respects their experience and, for lack of a better term, pedigree, coming from the KGB and all, but he also seems to consider himself a professional in his own right. He's a deep-cover agent himself, if I recall correctly, specifically placed with his previous host family to build his legend, not an already-immigrated kid who was recruited. I find it interesting that numerous times in this thread, somebody's said 'Hey, whatever happened to/with X?' only for that to be addressed the very next episode. Best show on TV that nobody watches.
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May 4, 2017 15:47
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try the new taco place posted:Season Finale Paige kills Pastor Tim to prove herself to her parents and Henry + two friends walk in on her clumsily moving the body Paige keeps doing things she thinks she "should", and it's escalating. Snooping to diary reading to diary pix. So yeah. Tim will turn down the job, and shell set him up, fake some evidence, or kill him.
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May 12, 2017 12:45
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Kontradaz posted:I still have no idea what's happening in the Oleg storyline. maniacripper posted:But are we seeing how that style of system turns a moderate into a believer or is he still the outsider looking in? It's there to show what it is that P&E are fighting for. And to demonstrate the absurd weirdness that was the USSR in the 80s. Look at Oleg. He's intelligent, educated, and was chosen for the prestigious honor of working in the very heart of the Main Enemy. His father is a minister, which makes him part of the Nomenklatura, and they've been really subtle about pointing out what that really means, like the offhand comment about getting his boss into a 'special' store. Yes, in the worker's paradise, your subordinate might get to shop at a fancy store because of who his father is, while you and he track down why your country, which has more good farmland than America has total size, is starving, while at the same time you can't actually answer this question, or that very same country will consign you to a mental ward for anti-state and counter-revolutionary thought. And the guy that signs the order knows that you're perfectly correct.
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May 17, 2017 23:29
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phosdex posted:Like BIG HEADLINE said previously, I don't think she was getting out of that alive no matter what. No, as soon as they rolled up and pulled a gun on her, her fate was sealed; they couldn't take any chance whatsoever of leaving direct witnesses behind. They only reason they bothered talking to her was to try to salve their own consciences by demonstrating that she was actually guilty. She didn't ever regurgitate any information that they didn't give her, so I'm still undecided about her actual identity.
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May 18, 2017 21:47
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maskenfreiheit posted:Elizabeth Did Nothing Wrong Did you see how she walked straight into Phillip's field of fire when she was getting a glass of water for the woman? Cherry mistake, should have gotten them both killed.
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May 19, 2017 03:50
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Ever since learning proper trigger discipline I can't unsee it in any TV show or movie - both were practicing proper discipline. I doubt the old lady was armed or could move very fast. Nope. You never block the field of fire. All it takes is the old lady shoving E into P, maybe hubby carries a gun, maybe somebody picks up a knife. They can't explain away a knife or gunshot wound to kids and coworkers.
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May 19, 2017 13:19
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howe_sam posted:That's what a trip to the sick aunt in Pennsylvania is for. There are bold spies, and there are old spies, but there are few old, bold spies.
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May 19, 2017 23:54
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Philip has a job. He's patriotic and all that, but ultimately, it's his job. Elizabeth, on the other hand, it's her identity. It's who she is. So she has to rationalize or ignore the bad, including being raped by a trainer, seeing her government lie to her repeatedly, and so on. Cognitive dissonance only goes so far.
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May 21, 2017 01:38
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Phil and Liz are in a stand-off. Paige kills Liz. Liz praises Paige with her dying breath. Everybody realizes Henry just kinda wandered away at some point. Seriously though. Liz will wind up back in Russia, or in jail. She'll claim that she'd been duping Phil the whole time to protect him. Series of time skips showing things like the fall of the Berlin Wall, perestroika, the August rebellion, etc etc. finally, twenty years later, she'll be reunited with Phil and the kids.
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May 21, 2017 04:23
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Henry is the reincarnation of Lenin. He is seduced by Saturday morning cartoons and Commodore 64s. Somewhere, Stalin bristles.
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May 22, 2017 03:41
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Jordache jeans and a Knight Rider shirt. Maximum 80s.
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May 25, 2017 00:33
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BIG HEADLINE posted:"I WAS *THIS CLOSE* TO TOUCHING MY FIRST BOOB!" Do not fret, Henry Mikialovich. KGB will supply many boobs for the touching of young genius math prodigy. I think Paige is getting seriously seduced into the spy game. It makes her feel powerful and in control. She sees the KGB building legends, Mom kill some fools, the parents getting Pastor Tim sent away with little or no effort, all the stories about how they're doing cool stuff for the benefit of all mankind, and she digs it. TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 18:49 on May 25, 2017 |
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May 25, 2017 13:26
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I dunno. I mean, they already did the 'child of illegals becomes more zealous than parents' storyline, but Paige is getting into it. I wonder if they'll go the other way; Paige tries to do something spy-like to please her parents, gets caught and charged with something. Now P&E are kinda hosed.
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May 25, 2017 18:51
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Suddenly I feel like they're really contrasting Henry and Paige. Henry is really setting down roots, he has lots of reasons to stay in the US, he's becoming his own person and gaining distance from his parents, the way kids are supposed to. Paige, on the other hand, isn't. She's growing away from her local ties; no more boyfriend, no more church obligations, and actively growing towards the possibility of becoming a second-generation spy, despite P&E's desire to keep her out of it. I half expect that the final scene of the season will be Paige standing around somewhere, waiting for a ride or something, and up rolls Claudia. "Hello, Paige. I work with your parents, on their "special career." I hear you're interested in learning about this?"
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May 25, 2017 21:42
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She's a zealot, and she's built her core identity around being a deep cover spy, but they'd have screened her out if she was a sociopath.
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May 26, 2017 18:16
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Something exciting better happen with Mischa. They sunk a TON of time into showing him making his way to the states, then they specifically went back to him working at Glorious Soviet Factory and being met with by, apparently, Philip's brother. And the way his foreman was acting, "take all the time you need," my first thought was 'KGB wants to have a word with you. Welcome to Lefortovo, tovarisch.'
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May 30, 2017 19:23
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My hot take on the whole finale, which I know you're just dying to hear. Finding Pascha: drat, that was rough to watch, and I normally couldn't care less about such things. The actress playing Pascha's mother nailed it. Tuan: I'm starting to think his role in the show is 'reminder about what Elizabeth used to be like.' It's pretty clear that they're now showing how she's mellowed out and is starting to see the good side to the American way of life. In season one, she would have been giving that speech, right down to the Party slogans and comments about bourgeois sentimentality. Now, she's absolutely still a patriot, and absolutely still dedicated to the cause, but clearly, she's losing faith in the Party and the concept of the advancement of socialism. This is further demonstrated in the final scene, where she's finally willing and able to relieve Philip of his duties, without the dogmatic responses Tuan is showing. I really liked the scene where she was hanging up her shirts, then suddenly realizes what she'd be giving up, and the camera pulls back on her full closet in her beautiful house. Suddenly, I wonder; is she jumping at the 'we can't give up Kimmy's father as a source after his promotion' strictly so they have an excuse to stay in America? This episode, and the last few, have been having a LOT of fun with buildup and false climax. The scene with Paige leaving the food pantry, dark roads, the parking lot where she watched her mother kill some fools, wow. First, I thought she was going to blow poo poo with Pastor Tim. Then I thought she was gunna get mugged. Then I thought she was out hunting scumbags. Nope, nothing. Similarly, the teasing about Stan and his new girlfriend. Is she just a pretty girl with a thing for craggy faced tall men? Is she CIA? KGB? Something else? Martha getting taken to an orphanage playground and being told, basically, 'Choose.' Like going to a shelter to pick a dog. Really, this season was half a season. I seem to recall the show runners saying, before the season started, 'this entire season is nothing but setups for the final season. Slow burn, no real payoffs this year.' I'm not looking forward to waiting until next year for the finale.
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Jun 1, 2017 15:36
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Number Ten Cocks posted:It's not uncommon for victims to invent memories that justify what their abuser did to them. No, they love me, they really do, just, sometimes, I make them mad. It's my fault, really. http://screenrant.com/the-americans-season-5-details-fx/
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Jun 1, 2017 16:28
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Number Ten Cocks posted:He's a North Vietnamese agent, tho. Unless you're saying every non-Soviet communist is (and non-Greek democrat) is on the same field. The interesting thing here is, there were varying degrees of 'Communist.' Tuan has two things going for him. One: North Vietnam was just coming off of the Vietnam war. The Soviet Union hadn't fought this kind of war since WW2, really. Meaning that P&E don't have that immediacy; their way of life is 'under attack' and 'threatened' by the capitalist pigs, but Tuan grew up during an actual armed conflict, probably lost family members, and may well have been involved in war activities directly. Second, he's young. He hasn't been away from the Party long enough to shake some of the shiney off. He's still a zealous, wide-eyed True Believer. Ok, three things. Third, the Chinese and Vietnamese have long, long considered the USSR to be sell-outs, and not True Communists. Mentioning self-criticism? That's a nice touch. Meanwhile, he's throwing the idea of petit bourgeois in Elizabeth's face. Meanwhile, over in Moscow, we see Oleg, part of the Nomenklatura, who gets to shop in special stores that his boss doesn't, whom the KGB need special permission to investigate, because in this classless society of workers and peasants, he's explicitly a member of the upper class, while his boss explicitly isn't. Oleg is suspected of outright treason, and the KGB can't do anything but have polite conversations with him in an office. Meanwhile, Nina is accused of the same drat thing, and gets thrown into a gulag, pressured into sexing up another prisoner in exchange for some preferential treatment, and eventually, her file is marked Verkhnevolzhskie Magistralnye Nefteprovody, because hey, she's not upper class. Some guy is accused, not by the KGB but by the drat department of transportation, of being a bit preferential with the bulk food deliveries, and Oleg plus boss, despite being basically random office workers, can simply break into his apartment, arrest him, and throw him into solitary. Hell, Oleg's mother was thrown into the camps for whatever reason, and was pulled out just because his father said so. This entire season has been actively demonstrating that the cause Elizabeth believes in so whole-heartedly is complete and utter bullshit, and Elizabeth starting to realize that. Philip has realized it all along, I think, but he's a patriot, where she's a believer. Like I said before, Tuan is what Elizabeth used to be.
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Jun 2, 2017 16:14
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I love that they're willing to actually do foreign languages.
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Jun 2, 2017 22:54
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Sten Freak posted:A great example of the shift from spy drama to family drama was the scene of the family viewing the photographs of the preacher's journal. Scenes of people reading anything don't fare well in TV or movies but they had dramatic music and cuts which made it just silly. These are spies that kill without thought and they're troubled by some square talking about Paige's soul? And iirc that was the big ending of the episode: The family reads the preacher's diary. No, they were troubled that the pastor thought they were physically abusing Paige, and the duplicity of the pastor being all sweetness and light to her face, but actually thinking all this stuff, pushed her far into the wannabe spy side.
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Aug 8, 2017 22:45
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Dennis McClaren posted:Henry is redeemable and always seems like a cool, interesting character. Keep watching, and report back.
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Aug 29, 2017 19:02
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I think I interpreted it as she liked him, didn't want to, and didn't want to flout it in Phillip's face.
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Oct 4, 2017 18:50
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