I would guess that part of his deal would include a clause giving him immunity from past bad acts.
However, I must admit that it’s very difficult (closely bordering on impossible) to ever imagine how anyone could be given immunity if they murdered an FBI agent.
On the other hand,
we have seen just how valuable someone like Phillip would be to the American feds (considering Timoshev’s high value)
It has never been proven just who killed Amador or how he died.
It could be argued that Phillip acted in self-defense. It certainly seems that way to me. Amador was way out of line in watching Phillip all night and then trying to slap the cuffs on him when Phillip had not broken any laws and Amador was acting out of his passion for Martha. Amador had no business doing any of that. So, I’m guessing it may not be a straight line to argue (or prove) that Phillip murdered Amador - not even Manslaughter.
Amador’s motivation might have been “jealous ex” kind of stuff, but that goes out the window considering that he’s dead and was right about Phillip. Thinking it over, Phillip would be very high value. Timoshev could maybe ID agents by sight but was most likely ignorant of their cover ID’s and ultimate postings (compartmentalization, and all that). The KGB would probably have to roll up the whole program. Phillip knew how to contact the guy who was killed in the pilot, Emmett and Leann, so he might know the whereabouts of others.
I don’t think that Nina will be executed. Oleg has connections and will likely use them on her behalf arguing that she did her best to flip Stan and should be put somewhere where won’t be able to cause any trouble.
She has proven to be such a strong fan favorite that if the showrunners can possibly avoid it, they would want to have her come back and keep a starring role in the rest of this show - and so would I.
Nina is such a beauty and capable of so much exciting sexually charged energy … I think she is just far too strong a participant to ever be let go. I hope and fully expect that Nina will be with us from now until the end of the show.
It’s a very strong lesson on the value of an individual making themselves indespensible.
Whoever came up with the serial killer idea 2 1/2 pages ago certainly deserves some kind of award for originality because there wasn’t a hint of it on the show. In contrast, Jared laid out his entire (radicalised) motivation in his death speech.
Looking forward, obv. the new angle with Paige and, presumably the good Rev, must be an overarching theme of S3. In story terms, there’s also a gaping hole where there was a (love) triangle. I suspect the Rev is going to be a big player in S3. Given the show is running out of children maybe the Rev has a family…
I can’t help but think – and hope – S3 will ultimately be scathing about the Rev’s particular brand of hippy Christianity. I already got nauseous on the Partridge Family-scale bus they took to the protest.
On Nina, I guess much depends on whether the comrade is herself bailing out for bigger and better … money. I’m sure the producers wouldn’t want to lose her voluntarily. Fwiw, I can easily see a story arc where the Centre doesn’t actually doubt her loyalty but played that out for authenticity. With training she could even be the new Kate. There’s still plenty of room for manoeuvre with Nina.
I’m bored with Martha. The sooner she and Clarke get divorced the better. One interesting aspect of that storyline is that, in the UK, undercover police did actually have children with women who believed in the persona. I suspect the Soviets had more morality.
Agreed. Jerod would not be considered a “serial killer” in anyway, he snuffed out his entire family, a mass murder, for very calculated extremist reasons. They were in the way of his new found home with the KBG. If Emmitt and Leanne could create such a monster, imagine what Philip and Elizabeth must be thinking about their own children. We’ve already got the sense that they’re not on the same wavelength when it comes to how to deal with the sitation. Cut the children off completely trying to protect them from the Centre and something drastic could happen. Bring them in to the fold, and something drastic could happen.
I got an uneasy feeling about the Reverend. What kind of person allows a 14 year old girl to give him $600.00? that is a good sum of money and a fortune for a kid in 1980.
Some good news for the show, The Critics Choice Award Nominations are out for 2014 and the Americans got noms for Best Drama, Best Actor and Best Actress. Congrats to the show Mathew and Keri. There’s very stiff competition, but it’s nice this show got nominated.
BEST DRAMA SERIES Nominations
The Americans (FX)
Breaking Bad (AMC)
Game of Thrones (HBO)
The Good Wife (CBS)
Masters of Sex (Showtime)
True Detective (HBO)
BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES Nominations
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad (AMC)
Hugh Dancy, Hannibal (NBC)
Freddie Highmore, Bates Motel (A&E)
Matthew McConaughey, True Detective (HBO)
Matthew Rhys, The Americans (FX)
Michael Sheen, Masters of Sex (Showtime)
BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Lizzy Caplan, Masters of Sex (Showtime)
Vera Farmiga, Bates Motel (A&E)
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife (CBS)
Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black (BBC America)
Keri Russell, The Americans (FX)
Robin Wright, House of Cards (Netflix)
I thought that was weird too. Granted he did say they assumed the Jennings knew about it and offered to return it, but you’d think he’d make a quick phone call right away instead of just casually mentioning it on Teenage Sunday.
I’d love to see it win too. Not only this award but others as well.
I don’t know whether it’s true that for actors, rage is the easiest emotion to play. But Matthew sure does deserve accolades for that scene where he lost his mind over Paige and he started ripping apart her bible and uttered that phrase, “You have respect for Jesus, but not for us?”
That was an incredibly powerful scene. I think I will remember that for a very long time.
From a dramatists pov the two characters needed to have their scene. I guess you work backwards and provide the pretext. It had to be enough for Philip to (a) go there (b) with ill intent. I somehow assumed it wasn’t one donation but happened over a period.
The scene seemed to be about Philip mostly, the stuff about forgiveness and grace resonating at a time when he’d tired of all the killing. He’s obv. pretty conflicted on several levels.
I don’t know what it is about the Rev but he creeps me out as well. Not sure that wig helps, and that says a lot in this show.
It is nice. Out of leftfied, a performance I also liked was the actress playing Sandra Beeman. She def deserves to have her secondary character given this divorce arc.
Unfortunately, I predict that Matthew McConaughey will win for True Detective.
Nothing against Matthew Rhys. I would prefer to see him win. But McConaughey was amazing in the movie Dallas Buyers Club and he made extreme changes to his physical appearance. He has recently become extremely gaunt and ever since Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, voters often give the nod to actors who make extreme changes in their physical appearance. Robert DeNiro won the Oscar for Raging Bull 1980 by the way (and rightly so IMHO).
I know that comparing McConaughey and Rhys is like comparing apples and oranges because comparing McConaughey to Rhys has nothing to do with that movie. But voters still tend to consider recent events when voting for awards. I know it’s silly. But I still think McConaughey will get the nod for True Detective because of his work in the movie Dallas Buyers Club.
BTW, if you have not seen Dallas Buyers Club, it is a fine film and worth seeing. But I didn’t find it to be extremely special and I hope Matthew Rhys manages to pull out the win.
And that’s not even mentioning Bryan Cranston, who might get the “this was the last season of Breaking Bad” factor, not to mention the fact that he was absolutely incredible. And Hugh Dancy in Hannibal is nothing to sneeze at.
And if there is any sense in the world, Tatiana Maslany will win best actress for Orphan Black.
I didn’t watch true detective because it seemed like a slow start, bit I’ve read a lot of positives about it, and Orphan Black is such a ride and a tour de force of one woman playing so many characters I do hope Tatiana gets the nod. I think Mathew Rhys is an amazing actor and he’s not out of place at all.
Much as I’d like to see somebody from “The Americans” get the recognition, I think that this year belongs to Bryan Cranston (again). And, as others have observed, the woman from “Orphan Black” does some amazing work. But then again, who knows?
This seems likely to me, too. And did Nina actually ever give Stan anything that harmed the USSR? Wasn’t she playing him from the beginning? I seem to recall that she disclosed the situation to the KGB station chief fairly soon after Stan approached her.
When Stan flipped her (or thought he did), she was doing something that could get her into legitimate trouble: the pilfering from diplomatic bags. But as seriously as the 1980s Soviets might take that, it wouldn’t be an automatic death sentence, would it?
Yeah, me, too. Even if the character is not working as a recruiter for the KGB (as has been posited), surely the writers won’t simply play him as what he appears to be.
Well-deserved, I’m sure we all agree.
The pessimism about wins for TA is probably well-placed; the voters will want to take the chance to salute Breaking Bad one last time, and will be impressed by McConaughey’s recent weight loss (as Charlie Wayne mentioned). And Maslany’s role is not only showy, but genuinely well-played, too. The same is true of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, who are frequently unrecognizable in their various disguises–but this may not be their year.
(What’s up with nominating Hugh Dancy but not Mads Mikkelsen, anyway? That guy is doing some subtle work. But I guess that’s a separate thread.^_^)
The showrunners have said in interviews that they have to constantly remind people that the minister is not some evil guy ready at any moment to rip his mask off, that this is just a “nice church”. So it would seem that they did something with the writing, the wig, something, that conveyed to a lot of people an ominous portent that they didn’t intend and are actively trying to fight against.
Who knows, they might just give up and decide to go that way and quit swimming upstream against the audience’s expectations; but as of now it looks like they have a completely different intent for that storyline than the way most people are taking it. (I for one, despite being an atheist, never really took him as that shady; but I can see why others might.)
Fair enough about the minister being in charge of a “nice church”—and also that the showrunners don’t want to go in the predictable “sinister ‘man of God’ shows his true colors” direction. Admittedly, it’s a bit of a cliché these days (just as ‘man of God is truly, dependably pure’ was a staple in fiction of the twentieth century and before).
But the showrunners are surely going to do something with the Living According To Ideals aspect–“Christian ideals” versus “socialist ideals” or the like. Both the minister and the spies are actively working to subvert the status quo, after all, with his peaceful protests and their secrets-stealing.
Right, we are on the same page on this one. I think that’s definitely the kind of idea they have in mind, along with a kind of struggle for Paige’s soul, as it were (literally, I guess, in the case of the pastor). I can imagine how, if that’s their intent, it would be frustrating to find so many people misinterpreting the pastor’s role in the story. It would appear they erred in choosing his look in terms of hairstyle; I expect they were going for a kind of hippyish, antiestablishment vibe rather than creepy cult leader. Fine line, LOL.