I owe all the people who thought Jared murdered his folks a huge apology.
I thought that was a preposterous suggestion but it turns out they were right.
I can’t help but think of all the speculative theories about the TV series True Detective predicting a supernatural ending and how I thought such an ending would have been better that what finally transpired.
I’m actually looking forward to the next season.
I also couldn’t help but be moved by the whole story line of P&E reacting to hearing about their daughter taking a stand against the US government(their ostensible enemy) but clearly having mixed reactions to actions that in their homeland(which they’d sacrificed so much for) would get someone labeled a “counter-revolutionary” and a bullet in the back of the head.
I wonder if at some point they’ll come to recognize that in the end they’ll lose because rather than in spite of such tendencies in the US.
I’ll also admit as someone born in Iran and who still proudly considers himself Iranian, it’s quite affecting.
It was very difficult to understand his words due to his being shot in the throat.
But, the image I got was that “The Center” sent Kate to pretend to fall in love with this 16 year old kid and he fell for an older beautiful woman like a ton of bricks. “I love her and she loves me”, I heard him say. Also, “we were going to do great things together.”
I think what happened is that when he told his parents about his love relationship with Kate, they would have freaked out. Jared did say something about his father “climbing the wall” or “hitting the wall” or something else about “the wall” and his sister screaming her head off.
So, I think Jared was just so far gone over his first sexual relationship that he refused to consider giving that up and when his parents voiced their objections and likely demanded he stopped seeing her, he chose to kill them instead of accepting that decision.
He never was told that Kate was dead. So the one thing I wasn’t clear about was why he insisted several times that P&E must tell Moscow that he saved them. Maybe he wanted Kate to see him as a grown man who was equally committed to the cause as was she? All I know for sure was that if a grown woman in her twenties had entered into a sexual relationship with me when I was 16, I would have been a goner. I would have killed as many people as possible to have kept that relationship going. Furthermore, P&E must have been beyond furious at the thought of what could happen to Paige’s mind if the Center did something similar to convince her to become a 2nd Generation Agent.
I did initially scoff at the idea that they would “go there”. But then the past couple episodes, I acknowledged that the possibility seemed to be increasing–and that if they did, it would be a shark jump. I stand by that opinion.
I was sure he was on the same wavelength I was. That this finale very much did not stick the landing (unlike last year’s), but that the show had built up enough good will that we were going to hope it corrected course next season. However, he continued:
And later in the review:
“Wonderful, horrible fashion”? Well, he’s half right anyway. :smack:
I am firmly convinced they either originally had some other plan they couldn’t follow through with (like Claudia’s lover that was raised and then dropped, bizarrely) or as is so common in TV, they started the season with no clue who killed Leanne and her husband, boxed themselves in, and in the end couldn’t come up with anything plausible. I sense they were looking for some other approach until the last three or four episodes and then gave up and went with this.
In the spirit of Tony Sinclair’s great comment upthread, I submit that it was a preposterous suggestion *and *it turns out they were right.
I’m also very not sure about the Jared thing. I’d need to rewatch the episode, but I think he would have been too new and too young to pull off the reaction that Phillip heard in the hallway had he just been faking it.
I also don’t get what Moscow/Centre is doing with the 2nd generation program. Those kids (Jared/Paige) are entirely the wrong age to be brought in to all of this. To make that successful, the parents would have needed to start working on their kids at a much younger age. Dropping the “your parents are Soviet spies” bomb out of nowhere on an American raised highschooler is pretty much asking for something to go wrong.
Poor Martha, she’s not going to make it through next season.
I rewatched the scene from the season premiere, and he not only was very convincing after opening the door, he was just before that very relaxed and happy looking (but not in an insane way) as he passed Philip. Whatever the showrunners claim, I don’t believe for a second that the actor (if it was the same guy–he looks different) or the director of the episode believed that Jared was the killer. And if the showrunners really had that twist planned all along but kept it close to the vest to avoid it leaking, they are culpable for letting it get edited that way.
I think it unlikely that an average 16-year old would have been able to cold bloodedly murder his parents in a situation like that. But if an argument starts, there’s yelling on both sides, the father pushes him up against the wall, he knows where the gun is… that’s very believable.
And the scene in the hallway? Well, maybe he (the character) is just a good actor. Some people are.
I’m quite confident this was the plan all along, I think it holds together very nicely, explains all the loose ends, and segues perfectly into what will presumably be a large arc next season.
I do agree that it seems a bit unlikely TO US for the center to want to recruit second generation agents starting at Paige’s age, although I’m willing to overlook it for purposes of dramatic license. Also, it might seem more plausible to someone who is a Soviet true believer. After all, they are RIGHT, so of course it will be possible to convince people of how right they are.
Two parents who are combat-trained deep cover agents at that. Of course said parents might be so shocked at their beloved son starting to shoot them that they might have been paralyzed. But I dunno - snuffing his sister as well because she was a threat? Pretty hardcore. For a 16 year old that goes way beyond dedication to the cause to serious psychoville. And I agree his “return from the pool” acting was just a little too good for 16 as well - if he had been a lot more obvious and jumpy I’d have given the writers a ton more credit.
Shark-jumping? No, not for me. I can fan-wank it just barely. Weak, if dramatic plot-point though. A solid season and a solid end despite the Jared stuff - the threat to Paige I guess is a semi-plausible payoff.
ETA: Somebody ( not me ) should go back to early episodes and see if Kate is obviously jumpy about Jared from early on. That should settle whether it was a planned move or was just firmed up in the latter half of the season.
Exactly. Killing his dad is hard to believe; killing his mom is too hard to believe; and killing his sister is impossible to believe. I wouldn’t have done that for Nina, let alone Kate, and I was hornier than the Tijuana Brass when I was a teenager.
Anybody that far around the bend would have shown signs of it. Remember early in the season when his mom and Elizabeth were talking about their kids? You would think a trained agent might have said, “By the way, I think my son makes Charles Manson seem like Richie Cunningham.”
And if he did it all for Kate, wouldn’t he have told her? Yet she seemed totally clueless. And if they were having an affair, they were sure public about it. Why not meet at a motel?
On the plus side, we were treated to Stan, all ready to go through with selling his soul for Nina, but being brought back from the dark side by one look at Ronald Reagan’s smiling portrait.
Right, and then mom and sis get it too–all execution style. Verrrry believable.
And smooth at getting rid of the murder weapon, too.
It sure helped that even the showrunners admitted the actor didn’t know his character killed them until the last third of the season. (I really hate when shows do that to actors, and audiences.) But they still could have edited it differently, to not show him walking by so happy and casual before he “discovered” the corpses of his entire family.
There are several events in this show that are unrealistic. I think one has to accept that in order to enjoy the show.
One example is when they took Nina out of the embassy and placed her into a car. I would think that irl they would surely have placed her in some windowless vehicle or the back of a van within the building itself - like within a garage - and then driven her out and away. In that way, if someone wanted to try and stop them, they would never have even see Nina.
Some people will say that they are all diplomats and have immunity and so no legal organization would ever interfere with them taking Nina back to Russia. But we have seen many times that these undercover agents will resort to all manner of illegal activities.
Personally, I still consider this to be the very best drama on TV today (I think it’s a tie with Game of Thrones). I love this show - notwithstanding any and all the unrealistic events.
I wish you all a nice summer and hope to see you back for Season 3!
Thanks to you, as well. And I think your point about the mixed feelings P&E had about Paige’s protesting activities is excellent. There’s Social Justice, and then there’s Freedom (of speech and of assembly)—and the 1980s-era Soviet Union wasn’t really a shining example of combining those things.
Very interesting (the underlined bit–what’s the source on that?) I do think that the director must have instructed the actor to have that big smile on approaching the hotel room (the one that caught my attention)…because the “Jared killed his family so that he could be with Kate” concept doesn’t work on its own:
As several have pointed out, killing his father during a struggle (initiated by an argument over Being With Kate) might be plausible…but gunning down his mother and little sister, too, requires a big helping of sociopathy. The big smile works as a sign that This Kid Ain’t Right In The Head.
Anyway…how many here think that it’s possible the Center has already started working on Paige…in the form of the charismatic, social-justice-conscious Pastor? (Why couldn’t an agent profess a belief in Christianity in the name of achieving an objective? How much “Jesus” talk have we heard from him, anyway? If he talks mostly about Justice and the Corrupt US Government…:p)
I wasn’t saying “I can’t see Jared being the one to come out on top”, I was saying “I can’t see him cold bloodedly and premeditatedly planning it”. But in the heat of an argument, when they’re demeaning him, they’re saying that his One True Love Kate doesn’t really love him, they’re saying he’s just a kid and they know better, and then suddenly he pulls a gun, and his dad still doesn’t respect him, and then blam blam holy shit, and then his sister is screaming and blam and oh shit oh shit…
That’s how I assume it went down.
And however well trained his parents were, I can certainly see them not going into instinctive ass-kicking mode when the person holding the gun is their own son.
Thanks for that. (Fascinating that the showrunners would choose to publicly rule out that possibility…you’d think they’d want to keep that viable as a potential plot development.)
I don’t think it was the portrait. I think it was Gad being oblivious and Stan had already betrayed Gad and felt terrible, then he took a walk around the monuments and decided he couldn’t to it. Gad is one really weird duck, but Stan loves him.
Did anyone notice that in Stan’s dream that when Stan isn’t looking, Martha is taking files off the cart and putting them in her bag?
I can see where they are coming from, though. They had a certain intention for this plot thread, and it is kind of lost on the audience if people are always holding their breath expecting something nefarious under the surface. It would also make them feel they perhaps made a mistake in casting or writing that it came across that way when they totally didn’t intend it. Kind of like if people kept thinking Stan’s marriage troubles were because his wife was secretly KGB or something, and thus not being able to focus on the human drama.
The pastor seemed pretty unfazed when Phillip came in and threatened him. The pastor also knew that Phil was threatening him, which would not have been entirely obvious to someone who had only casually met Phil and heard about Phil from Paige. He was also highly collected when Paige confided that both her parents were liars and cheating on each other. You may be on to something.
That’s how I am fan-wanking it as well. And you could argue the huge grief and trauma evident after his parents bought it was partially massive guilt and remorse. Which he then tried to justify away by convincing himself it was all for the glorious cause and everlasting love and hey his parents obviously never loved him because they lied to him his whole life. Teenagers are half-crazy anyway :D.
So not quite a shark-jumper for me. But close - I don’t really care for it. Larrick would have made a lot more sense.
