The suicide note he typed was really Phillip speaking. “I had no choice.” Indeed.
I was afraid it was too anvillicious, what with going to EST (Trust your gut) and all, that Phillip is “on the edge”, but maybe it isn’t.
And as much a I am against what P&E are doing, I can’t cheer for the Feebs if they let Stan keep his job after all he’s done. They deserve whatever they get.
I know. And then Philip responded. They help with information they couldn’t otherwise get. He doesn’t use ‘spies’ and no one does after that. And certainly Paige doesn’t in either phone call to the Pastor.
So, UTJ… what is your point?
He might not be a KGB agent, but you can bet he sympathizes a lot with the Soviet point of view, judging from his involvement with the peace movement and all. It would be interesting if he told E&P “Paige told me all about you, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you in your cause!”
Now that’s an interesting twist.
It’s surely the most likely scenario. I mean you don’t even have to be ‘pro-USSR’ to disagree with Reagan. I mean really, the peace movement means you sympathise with communism?
You just have to be a little less indoctrinated.
Does Pastor Tim also sympathize that his life’s calling as a devotee of Jesus is completely antithetical to the Soviet way of life?
I mean, I bet Elizabeth would love the chance to subvert him and he’s all for nuclear disarmament, but it makes Pastor Tim a pretty shallow character if he can’t see the forrest for the trees.
Back in the '80s, the chapel at my college was the focus for all the peace/disarmament/anti-nuke/anti-apartheit activists on campus. They were all happy to deal with the Sovs on that level. This was even before Gorbachev came on the scene.
Your campus chapel dealt with KGB illegals? Wow, what college was this?
Less likely to get taken down with a copyright hit if you put it up on youtube in the shitty way.
Obviously, if there were illegals, none of us would have known it, would we now? :dubious: We did have visitors from the USSR on occasion, though.
I’d love to see Phillip, Elizabeth, & Paige’s utter bafflement at that. 
But that speaks the point I meant to make which is Pastor Tim now knows Philip and Elizabeth are illegals. Paige didn’t come right out and use the word “spies,” but from what she said and the freaked out tone in which she said it, it shouldn’t take much reading between the lines for him to understand that Philip and Elizabeth are spies.
If your church knew it’s Soviet visitors were, in fact, illegals, do you think they would have still done whatever campus rallies, meetings, etc? Because that’s the position Pastor Tim is in. He now knows (ostensibly, anyway, we’ll have to wait till next year for the details) that they are spies. It’s one thing to say it would be interesting if Pastor Tim offers up his services, but do you think that it is a realistic course of action for his character? To just out of the blue throw in with the Soviets because he’s a progressive?
Stranger things have happened. You know: politics, bedfellows, all that. I could see the chaplain we had offering the hand of friendship. Wouldn’t have meant he was prepared to do anything criminal, though. He was already doing the Sovs a great service simply by promoting their agenda.
I don’t believe anyone would do something like this “out of the blue.” You’d have to be pretty committed to their point of view already.
I didn’t say the church had Soviet visitors, BTW. We had visiting professors from the USSR living on campus. We also had a lot of exchange students from parts of the world with political instability and high Soviet influence. Any one of them could have worked for the KGB.
Not saying they were; they just could have been.
You don’t think anyone would do something like this out of the blue, yet you also say stranger things have happened. You seem to be taking both sides here.
What it comes down to, I think, is, in the narrative of the show, what makes you think it’s reasonable that, upon being told by a clearly distraught, underage member of his flock that her parents are spies, his main course of action would be to offer his services as their operative? I’d really like you to explain it, because I don’t see it.
Just for clarity - I don’t think I’m getting it - you associate nuclear limitation and/or disarmament with sympathy for communism?
I agree with Up The Junction–and others who have posted similar sentiments on this point. I posted a similar thought earlier concerning many people disliking Ronald Reagan and his policies. I bet if you asked most people involved in the “no nuke” movement, while they opposed proliferation, they wouldn’t make the leap to actively assisting the KGB.
To reiterate, as well, Pastor Tim can tell no one what he knows, including P and E.
Interesting how so many people in this thread can see how unlikely it would be for Pastor Tim to want to help the KGB, but still swallow the subplot of trying to recruit Paige.
It just wouldn’t happen. It was stupid for the writers to even hint that the KGB would attempt it.
If they wanted a second-generation spy, they should have started her indoctrination at infancy. P&E should have watched the news with her every night, and explained how the evil US media was lying and distorting stories about the USSR. They should have spent dinnertime talking about everything bad the US ever did – from slavery and the treatment of the Indians, all the way up to the then-current CIA activities in Central America and elsewhere. And how the USSR was fighting Hitler while the US was still dithering.
After 16 years of that sort of indoctrination, THEN they could decide whether she might be receptive to recruitment. To do it completely cold to an average American teenager is just insane – almost as insane as continuing to see Martha (oops, I forgot — P is being extremely cautious with his foolproof warning system, as long as any counterintelligence agents remember to pull up right in front of Martha’s apartment in cars with government plates).
The problem with trying to “indoctrinate from infancy” is that you couldn’t count on the child to be discrete and not say to a friend that his parents were commies (leaving out the spy aspect). Paige’s telling Pastor Tim, even at her age, pretty much confirms that.
Except, staying within the drama, it worked with Jared.
On a societal level, she’s already been indoctrinated for 16 years via school, culture and media. That’s the problem for Paige.
Plus the small matter, on a personal level, that the total level of ‘evil’ in her world is drug dealers and liars. She can’t scale her experience with the world.
On the other hand, there’s Henry.
btw, the finale recap blog post is up. I’m obviously not linking to where it is.