What part did you not get? I can’t think of anything that was ambiguous about it.
I did, it was relatively straightforward, I thought. The assassin had placed a directional charge near the door so it would take out any threats. He had the remote trigger in his hand and Elizabeth shot him in the arm, starting a shootout. He was reaching on the floor of the bathroom for the remote trigger when Phillip tore the charge off the wall and threw it to Elizabeth. She immediately tossed it into the bathroom with the assassin right as he hit the trigger, blowing himself up by accident.
Did the explosives dealer’s daughter jack the shotgun slide backwards, cuz it looked like it to me. I watched the scene twice, but still couldn’t tell for sure.
While we’re wondering about explosives, how did the 2-inch square of explosive he put in the FBI agent’s phone destroy a house? Did he somehow program the phone to cut the gas line first?
Ahh, thanks. Old eyes here.
THAT definitely threw me off a little. I didn’t expect a small portion of plastic explosives in a walkie-talkie to take out an entire house. His head, yeah. A house? Not so much.
Is Claudia that same woman in Total Recall that kept saying “Two weeks, two weeks” before her head exploded?
That scene with her in the car made me think of that for some reason.
Silly question here, one that’s been bugging me for a while.
Who does the FBI secretary (Martha?) think “Clark” is? Some sort of internal affairs agent? She obviously trusts him, and he’s been visiting for a while to get information.
Some sort of internal security, yes. We saw him asking about security procedures and explaining the sort of thing he’s concerned about when they first met. She thinks he works for some agency that has the authority to audit the security of and investigate her department.
I love the show, but there’s still a couple of things that I can’t quite suspend my disbelief over: 1) They weren’t native English speakers before, were they? If not, I can’t believe that an adult can convincingly lose their native accent (or more accurately, convincingly acquire the second language accent). 2) Do the kids not have any known relatives at all? It’s hard to picture someone with no exposure to an aunt, uncle, cousin, or grandparent. I’m sure it happens, but it can’t be common. Or is there a good cover story that would explain it?
Doesn’t keep me from watching it, though.
I’m trying to figure her out. On the one hand, what she told Katherine was true about what happened. Philip did sleep with the woman, and lied about it. And she doesn’t really know Philip’s heart, and what she says about the male agents is probably true in general. On the other hand, she seems to be doing everything she can to sabotage their relationship, both working and professional. Saying she doesn’t trust him is face-saving for her, and just relies on information that Katherine provided them, so it’s safe to think Katherine might still harbor those concerns. Especially if those ideas are fostered.
Their relationship was an arrangement, a creation by the KGB. The KGB trained agents, then put them together for a deep cover assignment. From the KGB’s perspective, it helps to keep them from having a real emotional relationship because it helps keep a leash. You have each of them keeping an eye on and reporting on the other - a much deeper level of control than relying on the handler’s impressions from very short meetings. Plus, if the couple gets strong feelings for each other, they are more likely to let their feelings for Mother Russia take a back seat, possibly looking at defecting. Keep the agents focused on their duty and concern for the homeland, not divided between homeland and home.
Of course the agents need to trust each other to work together. But there also might be concern that too much emotion would cloud judgement and interfere with necessity, i.e. sleeping around to get info fostering jealousy, or going into harm’s way for the sake of the mission.
Well, they didn’t really fuck up, but yes, they didn’t successfully prevent all actions and that will come back against the KGB.
His jealousy seems to be leading him to following her. Is it suspicion about her behavior, or just jealousy? Clearly he’s going to meet “Clark”. How will they deal with that?
Just some random hooker that the assassin used as a distraction. He sent her to have sex with the FBI guy and get him into the bathroom so he could get into the room to plant the explosives.
That outcome came out about how I expected it, except for the shape charge. They went to confront the contractor and tell him to back off. But how is he going to accept their instructions, if he didn’t meet them before? They tell him to get back in touch with the task assigner? But will he let them witness him make a call? Or would they let him out of their sight without a commitment? An agent like that has a methodology. He’s going to be suspicious about anyone calling him off his job. And he’s smart and careful, he’s going to take precautions. So I couldn’t see it going down any other way but with someone dead.
So they come into the room simultaneously from different directions, to get him by surprise and thus get the drop on him. Except he’s rigged a shape charge toward the door as a security measure, so he pulls out the detonator. Trying the old Mexican standoff routine, backing into the bathroom. The Jennings can’t surrender, he’ll likely just kill them anyway, so they team attack. Both of them shot, which hit the arm isn’t clear, I’d say it was Philip from the angle but it doesn’t matter, someone hit the arm and thus knocked the detonator out of his hand. He’s outnumbered in the gunfight and ducks into the bathroom. Philip hits him through the wall, then grabs the charge off the wall and tosses it to Katherine, who has a better angle to lob it into the bathroom. Just in time for the guy to hit the detonator and eliminate himself.
Yeah, that was definitely Hollywood overselling. I mean, bad enough they’re using big fireball explosions instead of concussion blasts, the size of that explosion seemed out of proportion to the size of the charge.
He said he works for internal affairs, performing oversight on their office. So he interviews her on the comings and goings, to get a different insight into “what we already know”. That’s why he delayed the relationship, pretending interest but inability to act because of his job status.
They both started young, apparently high school age. Probably had some deep immersion training, i.e. saturated by TV or films and lots of repetition.
That’s a point they haven’t addressed on the show, but I suspect they made up a cover story. Something about being only children and parents dead, or orphans, or some such. Or maybe there’s an “Uncle Mike” who is another agent that we haven’t seen yet, who “lives in Albequerque” or somewhere to explain why they never see him. Just as a backup plan.
And I agree that Nina is totally playing Stan.
Maybe they were selected from a young age and surrounded with Native English speakers and movies and culture. It’s plausible, I think. The Soviets would do things like that - select promising kids early on and train them for life.
Yeah, but if you don’t catch them before 7 or so, they’ll never lose the accent. I remember reading that Henry Kissinger came to the US when he was about 9, his brother a couple or three years younger. Henry never lost the accent, but his brother sounds like a native.
But, again, this doesn’t come close to ruining the show for me. In some ways, it’s a fantasy.
ETA: But to continue the Communist paranoia, I could see them with a cadre of four year olds learning English, for just such an eventuality.
Why were they allowed to have children? It’s one thing to expect them to be emotionally detached from their “arrangment”, but ludicrous to expect detachment from their flesh & blood children. And an agent is much more likely to defect for their children as opposed to their “spouse”. Is having children to “fit in” really worth all the potential complications?
That’s certainly a confusing complication. On the one hand, having children helps them fit in, to be a good little family. That really sells the cover - who would suspect? On the flipside, it complicates things greatly. I mean, you can’t raise good little communist soviets while pretending to be good little Americans. You can’t tell the kids you are spies because kids can’t keep secrets like that. Even if they wanted to, it would be trivially easy to get them to tell.
So they are raising good American kids while all the time supposed to hate America and want to be good Soviets, and at some point presumably indoctrinate their children to be a second generation spies? Or else send them home to mother Russia?
Yeah, I can’t make sense of it, either. It sounds like they were given the choice, and they chose to have the children but not ever involve the children. Sounds like they are trying to raise American children except give them some counterbalance to make not so evil capitalists but maybe good communist Americans or something.
I don’t know, it seems so complicated. And yes, having children to protect is dramatically more likely to give them more susceptibility to defect. Or get caught.
Ahh, the ethical dilemmas of spyhood.
Rather thought that our West German mad bomber should’ve put that shaped charge on some sort of dead man’s switch–would’ve been rather more effective as a deterrent to killing him, I would think. Ah well–he’ll know better next time. Oh… wait.
Still digging it, but I thought this was a weak sauce line:
“You look really good. I miss you…”
“…because we used to date.” :smack: Yes, we get it, you’re the jerk ex.
Well, I doubt he expected to need a dead-man switch. The shape charge was probably intended as the kind of security where he has the controller in his hand when the attack comes through the door. He just used the opportunity when it presented itself.
Yeah, he’s really fumbling.
Eh, while this is plausible, I think the opposite tack - that emotionally committed teams can work together more harmoniously and effectively if attached - also holds up. After all one of the biggest issues of spies is trust and with a spouse you always have that comfort of someone you know is working with you. There have been real husband-wife espionage teams ( like the “Krogers” - Lona and Morris Cohen ) and their marriages seemed real enough. Though I think in many cases they were married before being recruited, which obviously is an entirely different scenario than the show.