I don’t think you need to convince anyone in this thread that the Soviet Union was the bad guys. My guess is that a successful recruiting spiel towards someone like Paige, ignoring the family aspects, would focus a lot more on emphasizing bad things the US had done, Iran Contra (which is coming up fairly soon in the timeline of the show), secret bombings of Cambodia and so forth, along with the history of racism and so forth, rather than trying to make the Soviet Union look good. And even so, it’s easy enough to imagine a cynical and reasonably bright teenager back in the day kind of assuming that the bad things they were always hearing about the Soviet Union were exaggerated for purposes of propaganda, and so forth.
I remember the Sparticus Youth League and the Students for Economic Democracy at college. The SYL was a commie front in my opinion, and the SED were useful idiots. Educated all, but lacking a sense of proportionality and justice. Disaffected youth. Obvious. Paige isn’t either. She’s a well adjusted churchie. It will be Elizabeth’s and Phillip’s undoing to try to recruit her.
Emphasis added. I don’t think you can quite count as a “commie front” when you are fairly explicitly communist ;). Far as I recall the Sparts were ( and are ) usually pretty open about being Trotskyists. Or at least willing to admit it if asked.
They were openly Trotskyite as I recall. But I had the sincere impression that they got their directions from Moscow. I was a letters editor at the time, and their op-ed pieces tracked the timing, tone and points of the USSR’s official outlets way too closely to be a coincidence. I don’t remember if I ever ran their materials, I do recall that I would not run some of them because they called some minor unknowns war criminals by name and I had no way of backing that up. They would not consent to omitting the names, so those pieces didn’t run at all. I don’t remember if any of them weren’t libelous and did run, but I was rather open to weird points of view that weren’t likely to end up in a lawsuit in my then young and inexperienced opinion.
Nah. I’m fairly certain that they didn’t - I was related to a few ;). In public and back in the day they usually pretty doggedly defended the USSR as a “deformed worker’s state.” But in private at least they were usually candid enough that the Soviets would have happily and quickly murdered them if they were ever so bold as to start agitating in Russia. And in fact in at least one case that may well have happened, post-Gorbachev.
But we’re veering off into tangents. Some very few American kids might have been open to that sort of radicalization at that age, but Paige is nowhere near far enough down that road to even be approached without a severe potential for disaster. Frankly anyone that young, let alone with her upbringing, could hardly be trusted with that kind of knowledge anyway. Realistically she’d need another few years of careful grooming, at least.
Of course both the Center and Elizabeth are greedy for it to happen NOW for their own different reasons. But it can’t but blow up in their faces one way or another. At least not without the show probably jumping the shark :).
I’m sticking with leftie, chained-to-the-fence church pastor > raging at central American > validating Page’s emerging political sensibilities.
You obv. don’t have to be ‘pro’ something else in order to be against something as, erm, the anti-nuclear campaign shows, thought it can lead you that way …
Even if Philip and Elizabeth aren’t actively teaching her to despise the Soviet Union, Paige is getting plenty of that at school and through television. In the very first episode Paige tells Elizabeth that her social studies teacher assigned a paper on how the Soviets cheat on arms control. That didn’t make Elizabeth very happy, but she couldn’t say anything about it.
Yeah, I think that if they wanted to convert her, they would need to isolate her from society and friends for a while, and feed her a pretty tailored news digest while indoctrinating her into Socialist thought. It’s a similar methodology as cults use (or, at least, it’s the path that feeds some people into cults, since I’m not that convinced that most cult leaders are all that bright and methodological). Though whether the writers are aware of this, I don’t know, so it’s hard to say whether that’s where this is leading storywise. Probably they are, instinctually, but since it’s just instinctual they’ll go with “send her to Russia” as a mechanism for transforming her rather than having the parents figure out how to do it.
Seems to me that Paige is far more strong minded than both P&E think she is.
The showrunners could have one Hell of a time awful lot of fun exploring how P&E try to deal with Paige’s mindset and they just might be staggered when they try to find a way to lead Paige to their promised land.
Paige may well attempt to convert P&E to either Capitalism or Christianity and that may well just floor P&E. They may have no idea how to deal with that and they may be terrified of trying to get help from the Residentura. After all, if their bosses ever get a hint of the fact that they are not able to control Paige, what do you think they will do? Seems to me they will have to bring in some new person - some mind control specialist to try and brainwash Paige.
Either that, or what did they call those sessions where they brought a team in and kidnapped someone and tied them up for a few days (literally tied them up) and then browbeat them with the Party Line and beat the Party Line into them. I don’t think P&E would be very happy with that.
Paige may even wind up getting her Christian comrades to come to her defense and storm the Communist headquarters.
It could get to be very, very messy and the Showrunners could well go in any direction they wanted.
Talk about opening up big old can of worms? Paige just might wind up taking one between the eyes for the Party. Phillip would lose his mind and go beserk.
Sorry, Sage Rat. I didn’t see the entirety of your post before I wrote mine. You came up with the idea of a group effort to brainwash Paige.
I didn’t want you to think that I was trying to steal your idea.
Before Season 3 ends Agent Gaad will probably be revealed as a double-agent working for the Soviets. The model will be FBI counter-espionage agent Richard Hanssen, who had a job similar to Gaad’s in the Soviet analytical unit.
Gaad appears to be a bungler, but his blunders are deliberate.
In Season 1 he acted upon intelligence received through the bug Nina planted in the embassy, which tipped off the KGB that security had been breached.
During Season 2 Gaad blocked Nina’s expiation. Why?
In the Season 3 premiere he allowed himself to pummeled by 5’4" Elizabeth. But in doing so he acquired that CIA list of Afghanistan agents. Was it really part of the plan to pass on the list to a Soviet agent posing as CIA? What was a senior official like Gaad doing on such a mission in the first place?
Anyone else suspect Gaad?
They were still around when I was in college, hanging around the school trying to look important. I always laughed at their name.
Youth Front my ass. I don’t think they has a single member under 40.
I don’t but it’s certainly vastly less crazy than the idea of that kid being a sociopath who murders his sister and parents because they disapprove of his girlfriend and aren’t sufficiently supportive of the Rodinya.
Yaz! One of my housemates in college loved that album. I hadn’t listened to that in ages.
Quite an episode…I thought it was better than each of the two previous installments. You don’t need cracking corpse bones or teeth pulling to weave together a good episode.
I have to admit, this one keeps me guessing…I’m not sure what’s going to happen. If Paige is serious about devoting herself to Christ, how plausible is it that she will be OK with working for a country which made a policy out of eradicating religion? Also, does this throw cold water on the pastor-as-plant theory?
I do know one thing…is there any doubt that Elizabeth–while convincing herself otherwise–cares about one thing and one thing only…and that’s The Cause? All else, even her daughter’s well being, are secondary. She desperately wants Paige to be Russian, yet she is an American, and unlike Elizabeth, Phillip knows remaining an American is be the best thing for his daughter’s future.
It also makes me think Phillip knows how the Cold War will turn out, with the USSR on the losing side (see final paragraph below).
Not sure Gaad is a traitor, but I do wonder why he was doing grunt work in the first episode of the season. Gaad is a supervisor, and I wouldn’t think a guy in his position would be putting himself into those situations. Not to mention, E could have blown him away, but didn’t. As another poster noted, it’s more plausible than the Jared story line. I hope he’s not a double…I actually like the guy.
I’m also closer to being convinced how this show will end. Not sure yet what happens to Elizabeth, but in the series finale–whenever that is–I think Philip is going to wind up doing what he thought about in the series premiere: defecting.
Take the money and run, Phil!
I never suspected Gaad before. But I congratulate you on some fine thinking.
GeorgeMartin,
I made a mistake when I watched the episode. I accidently clicked on Season 1 Episode 4 instead of Season 3 Episode 4.
It took me a long time to realize I was watching the wrong episode. I thought to myself, "OMG! GeorgeMartin is correct! They are going to have him try to take over the US Govt.
BTW that was the episode where Pres Regan got shot.
Doh!
Wow!
That episode was directed by Tommy Schlamme. He is one of the best TV directors of them all. Possibly even the very best. I wonder if he approached them or if they approached him.
I suppose it doesn’t matter. But that sure was a big surprise for me and that sure speaks volumes as to how great this show is.
Well, Stan has put his suspicions about the defector on the table.
Miss Belgium wasn’t put in the cell to get information from Nina, she was put there so Nina could get information about her.
Does anyone see a certain symmetry between how Stan recruited Nina and how Phillip is going after the daughter of the Afghan group leader?
It occurs to me that the way to “redirect” Paige might be compromising the pastor. Paige does have the “true believer” mentality that intelligence services want in an operative, but now it’s going in a direction that doesn’t serve their needs.
What was the song playing at the end? I think I’ve heard it on “Fringe”.
“Only You” by Yaz. It’s from the album that they were listening to the whole way through the episode. “Don’t Go” from the same album was played when Stan was ripping apart the bathroom.
Speaking of which, I kind of get why he did it. But I also kind of thought that he really doesn’t understand purses.
This episode S03E04 sure did have a different feel about it from all previous episodes.
I tried to check through IMDB to see who directed the previous episodes.
This episode (Ep 4) was directed by Tommy Schlamme.
Ep 2 was directed by Daniel Sackheim.
The director of Ep 3 was not listed.
This episode was different in that it had much faster cuts. There were some scenes that cut into a diff scene (I think one example was when it changed to the episode where Phillip was wearing a wig and talking to those 3 girls).
I never even realized that was a different scene. I thought it was still part of the same scene.
But this episode was just too much for me. I need to watch it again to get a sense of what was going on. Possibly even multiple times. It just seemed so frantic. So many false suspicions.
Anyway, I’m going to watch it again.