Surprised we don’t have more discussion of this great show. This episode was eventful.
Nina flipping back was a pretty big surprise and a game changer.
And I feel really awful for Martha. Spy work, at least the fictionalized version we see, is nasty. But it’s one thing to be hurt by a stranger. It’s quite another to have one use and manipulate you in such a long term fashion. It’s hard to imagine you could ever recover from something like that when you found out.
Yeah - two flips in this episode:
Maid comes clean, so now US has a way to feed misinformation.
Nina comes clean, so now USSR has a way to feed misinformation.
Would seem like a tie game, but then poor Martha has given the ball back into USSR court with the pen.
As sad as the Martha story is, it was somewhat amusing to see Clark’s “mom” and “sister” at the wedding.
Next week is season finale.
My guess is there will be a surprise or two in store.
No doubt. This is moving along too well just to tie it all up in one big shootout or mass slaughter.
I’d love to see a duel between John Boy and Arkady out in the street at High Noon, though. 
And Mags Bennett can’t be killed off, can she?
I had suspected that during the episode before it happened, since:
She didn’t tell Stan about the listening device planted in Casper Weinberger’s(?) house.
Then she also didn’t tell him about being promoted into a very significant and advantageous position.
She was still wistful about what happened to Vlad and seemed to know that Stan had killed him.
Yeah, I think the key moment was that he didn’t deny killing Vlad, at which point she switched from having-sex-with-him-because-she-wanted-him-as-loyal-to-her-as-possible-so-he-would-keep-her-safe-plus-maybe-she-did-kind-of-like-him-in-a-stockholm-syndrome-kind-of-way to having-sex-with-him-to-keep-him-on-the-hook-so-she-could-hopefully-disinformation-the-crap-out-of-him.
Martha is being set up so hard, I’m almost going to wonder if/when she discovers the truth, she’ll turn and stay with “Clark” just to keep her marriage?
I liked where they went with Nina. She feels alot of shame & guilt over betraying her homeland, and only did so because she was being blackmailed. And she’d have had to of come from a reliable nomenklatura background in order to get Washington as her first overseas assignment. I loved her boss’s utter bewilderment & shock when she confessed; he could barely process what she was saying. I wonder what they’ll do to her? Use her to feed misinformation to the FBI, or send her on a suicide mission to kill Stan (or will she send herself)?
Yeah, seeing Claudia & Elizabeth pretending to be mother and daughter was fantastic. I’m sure the fact they were both trying really hard to mask their mutal hatred really help sold the performance. 
One thing though, you’d think Marcha’s parents would insist on some kind of wedding photographs, and that would be a very, very bad thing for the KGB. Sketch artist drawing are one things, but an actual photograph of Martha’s “husband”? :eek:
BTW, isn’t the KGB aware of the existence of The Vault in the FBI office? Phillip should know from his conversations with Martha that there’s a room Gaad and the other agents go to discuss highly classified info that she’s can’t set foot in.
No, the key moment was her reading the loyalty oath out loud.
I had a thought that the pin she got after reading the oath was a bug, but it didn’t turn out that way. Anyone else think this?
I think that if Stan had denied killing Vlad, and she’d believed it, she would have stayed the traitor course… I agree that the oath definitely influenced things.
Has anybody ever noticed that if you close your eyes and listen to his voice, Stan sounds like Steve Martin?
I interpreted some of his look of shock as being afraid for himself for not only not seeing it sooner, and not only sacking the old boss, but actually *promoting *the mole into the most sensitive position possible. I get the feeling that he is not going to tell anyone else, and frame it to Nina as if he is only doing it for her benefit. Besides, if he were to reveal Nina’s betrayals, it would come out that the old boss was not guilty of treason and (if he’s still alive) he might be reinstated.
I had the same thought, but back in those days, any battery that would power such a device wouldn’t last very long and/or transmit very far.
The pen bug “Clark” gave Martha gives a little more room for a decent battery, but even that would realistically have to be swapped out periodically. And that’s with a very low transmit power requirement, since the receiver would always be in close proximity.
So, I don’t see how that pin could hold a bug that would broadcast far enough, or last long enough to be useful, given the likely operating conditions that would be required.
Agreed. It reflects horribly on him. The best thing for him at this point would be for Nina have an accident. If KGB finds out about Nina then yes, Vasili would be exonerated, but he wouldn’t be reinstated. His career would be toast after allowing himself to be compromised like that. Of course it’s really hard to believe that; Vasili wouldn’t suspect Nina of being the mole (especially after those looks they exchanged), and that wouldn’t have repeatedly told his interrogators this. Even if they didn’t believe any of it and thought he was just lying to save his skin there would have been some follow up and Arkady would be asked about it. :smack: Which of course makes things even worse for him if all that actually happened, and he vouched for Nina then promoted her. Either way there’s going to be a whole lot of people who’s first concern is covering their own asses.
Dang, mole girl’s now a triple agent? Holy crap.
Not quite; she’d be a re-doubled agent. A triple agent reports to 3 different intelligence. Having the Chinese or the Swedes enter the fray would make things even more convoluted.
Nobody expects the Swedish opposition!
Not only that, he always looks as if he’s thinking of something funny. He doesn’t exactly smirk, but he looks like he’s about to laugh, even in the most serious situations.
She knew about that?
Good point. Makes you wonder how many takes it takes to get his scenes filmed. I wonder if the DVD will have a gag reel…
Yeah, Arkady told her about it at the end of last week’s episode.