# Counterpart, new series on Starz (spoilers boxed in 1st post) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 15, 2018, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662 "2018-01-15T02:44:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/61 "2018-03-02T02:54:03Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > The plot thickens. > > So Toby Ziegler’s daughter (Claire) is the mole. I was a little unclear on the coffee stains on the documents Quayle was looking at (I guess she copied them and passed them along to Emily?) I wonder if Toby is in on it or if they killed his daughter and swapped her with Other Side Claire? > > The three people holed up in the apartment…an assassin squad? > > I do like how this show doesn’t talk down to the audience, and JK Simmons is a delight playing both Howards. Subtle differences, but I can usually tell which is which. I didn’t get that at all. I thought the implication of the coffee stains was that someone in Quayle’s house was reading those documents, and it wasn’t him. Therefore, his wife is the mole. This makes perfect sense - they killed the guy and put Quayle, who knows nothing, in his position having already compromised his wife. That way, Quayle can pass lie detectors and will not give up the game by doing something suspicious. He truly has no idea that his wife is doing. The perfect cover. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/62 "2018-03-02T03:10:43Z")
Similarly, when Howard was being interrogated (while the lie detector was running), he could say, “I don’t remember” when asked what he talked about with Emily, because Mild Howard was the one being interrogated and the events they were asking about were things done by Howard Prime. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/63 "2018-03-02T16:20:14Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I didn’t get that at all. I thought the implication of the coffee stains was that someone in Quayle’s house was reading those documents, and it wasn’t him. Therefore, his wife is the mole. This makes perfect sense - they killed the guy and put Quayle, who knows nothing, in his position having already compromised his wife. That way, Quayle can pass lie detectors and will not give up the game by doing something suspicious. He truly has no idea that his wife is doing. The perfect cover. I think you guys are basically agreeing: Quayle’s wife and his boss’s daughter are one in the same. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/64 "2018-03-02T16:21:49Z")
One and the same, but yes. I think someone even complimented Quayle for being smart enough to marry the boss’s daughter. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/65 "2018-03-02T16:31:06Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Similarly, when Howard was being interrogated (while the lie detector was running), he could say, “I don’t remember” when asked what he talked about with Emily, because Mild Howard was the one being interrogated and the events they were asking about were things done by Howard Prime. This might just be the best lie detector scene ever filmed. He’s telling the absolute truth, and in the process convinces them that he’s an even better liar than he used to be. Brilliant! ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/66 "2018-03-02T17:58:07Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > One and the same, but yes. I think someone even complimented Quayle for being smart enough to marry the boss’s daughter. It was mentioned many times. His boss said a few things along the lines of “It’s good you make my daughter happy but…” But I can understand forgetting because of course they had never had her onscreen as wife/daughter until the reveal in the last episode. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/67 "2018-03-02T18:27:34Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I didn’t get that at all. I thought the implication of the coffee stains was that someone in Quayle’s house was reading those documents, and it wasn’t him. Therefore, his wife is the mole. This makes perfect sense - they killed the guy and put Quayle, who knows nothing, in his position having already compromised his wife. That way, Quayle can pass lie detectors and will not give up the game by doing something suspicious. He truly has no idea that his wife is doing. The perfect cover. I took it to mean he saw the coffee stain on the copy and maybe remembered making the stain on the original… He pulled the original out of the safe and matched up the coffee stain. Which means someone went into the safe and made a copy of the document and gave it to Emily. Since it wasn’t him, it must be his wife. DUN DUN DUN! ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/68 "2018-03-02T20:12:54Z")
I totally missed that they are the same person! My bad. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2018, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/69 "2018-03-02T20:16:21Z")
That’s kind of what I like…the show doesn’t anvil drop you. It expects you to make the connections sooner or later. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/70 "2018-03-06T17:29:36Z")
Despite this episode focusing mainly on a character we barely know and featuring Howard only for a couple minutes, I think this was the best episode so far. The only problem is that it seems like border control is really lax. They must have someone on our side in charge of it, because why isn’t someone going “Hey, this woman never came back over?” ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/71 "2018-03-06T17:54:53Z")
First of all, this latest episode suggested a way of referring to characters who exist on both sides. Based on that, I’m going to refer to characters on “mild Howard’s” side as, for example, “Howard Alpha” and the other one as “Howard Prime”. Second, I don’t know if that’s the intent, but the show suggests how stupid all human conflict is. I mean, we have conflicts in our world over which flavor of Christianity you follow, or who you think is the rightful heir of the prophet Mohammed. (Or whether you crack eggs on the small end or the big end.) This show takes such conflicts over nothing to the extreme. At the beginning, the two worlds were absolutely identical, and yet now they’re bitter enemies. It kind of reminds me of the recurring “Spy Vs Spy” comic in Mad Magazine; the two spies were identical, except one was in black and the other in white. And in the latest episode, we learned that Earth Prime suffered a swine flu pandemic perhaps twenty years ago that killed about half a billion people, for which they blame Earth Alpha. An epidemic like that isn’t so far-fetched; we’ve had swine flu epidemics from time to time. Obviously none that bad. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/72 "2018-03-06T19:18:23Z")
> [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > The only problem is that it seems like border control is really lax. They must have someone on our side in charge of it, because why isn’t someone going “Hey, this woman never came back over?” They alluded to this problem in the previous episode, where the Alpha World Housekeepers were catching their two border guards who let Prince’s latest album cross the line. “Why is it always the border guards?” Well, it really has to be them, doesn’t it? It’s not like there’s a few thousand miles of border or coastline you can use for smuggling. If you haven’t co-opted the border guards, you’re screwed. The trick is how to do that. Start small with the things like cigarettes and vodka, and then move up to assassins and the like. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/73 "2018-03-06T20:38:57Z")
> [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > Despite this episode focusing mainly on a character we barely know and featuring Howard only for a couple minutes, I think this was the best episode so far. Agreed. Episode seven is a tremendous piece of television. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/74 "2018-03-06T22:22:31Z")
Oh man, watching the actor (Harry Lloyd) who plays Quayle completely screwing the pooch with Clare was hard to watch. And not very believable. So he has a few drinks and completely blows the counterintelligence opportunity because he got played? It’s difficult to reckon who is the bigger dumbass: Peter Quayle or Viserys Targaryen? Did anyone notice the location when Good Howard walks around a hotel/mall with Other Emily in a previous episode? Same place they set NASA in _Interstellar._ ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/75 "2018-03-06T22:37:47Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > Oh man, watching the actor (Harry Lloyd) who plays Quayle completely screwing the pooch with Clare was hard to watch. And not very believable. So he has a few drinks and completely blows the counterintelligence opportunity because he got played? It’s difficult to reckon who is the bigger dumbass: Peter Quayle or Viserys Targaryen? > \* A) I just now realized that was the same actor. B) I imagine that finding out that your wife was at some point murdered and replaced by a spy can be a little hard to keep to yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/76 "2018-03-06T23:29:51Z")
Yeah, I will give him a pass for losing it. I can’t imagine what that would be like. So, do we believe that Claire has actually changed? Or was that just a frantic attempt to buy some time? If she has really changed, it seems to me her only choice is to become a double agent. If she refuses to send intel back to her side, she’t toast. If they get any inkling at all that her loyalties have changed, they will kill her in a heartbeat to protect their operation. But if she doesn’t play ball with Quayle, she’s toast. If she thinks only he knows and she’s going to work him to keep her nature secret, she has Howard Prime to contend with - and she’s toast. So the way I see it, either she becomes a double agent and works for Quayle and Howard, or she has to die and/or try to run. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/77 "2018-03-06T23:53:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > So, do we believe that Claire has actually changed? Or was that just a frantic attempt to buy some time? Honestly, I’m not sure why she ever had any loyalty to her side to begin with. The School is clearly a splinter group of fanatics who believe that the plague was deliberately set by the other side, which is a minority opinion apparently. They seem to have grabbed her up when she was vulnerable, gave her no choice about joining their cause, subjected her to physical and emotional abuse for years, and then ordered her to cross over, commit murder, marry someone she hasn’t even met (while having to allow some jerk in a bar to take her virginity just to keep up the ruse), and then risk criminal charges for stealing secrets. Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she’s ready to tell “her” side to piss off. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/78 "2018-03-07T00:23:23Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > So, do we believe that Claire has actually changed? They broke her legs, and it had to be done while she was conscious, never mind all the other stuff. I’m sure Claire has her own thoughts on these matters. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/79 "2018-03-07T00:31:50Z")
On the other hand, she would be fighting against a lifetime of brainwashing. She was raised to think the people on ‘this’ side are monsters responsible for the deaths of billions of people. And she was cold enough as an adult to choke her own counterpart to death. Even Baldwin, a trained assassin, couldn’t bring herself to kill her counterpart. The argument for her switch is that she really has a baby, and sometimes that can change everything. But we will see. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662/80 "2018-03-07T00:33:48Z")
Did they say when they got married? I wasn’t clear as to how long ago the switch was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counterpart-new-series-on-starz-spoilers-boxed-in-1st-post/806662.md?page=5)