Anybody watching Allegiance? First episode tonight, and it’s also about deep cover Soviet spies.
I think The KGB or Residentura(sp?) would find some way to threaten Paige if she doesn’t go along. Most probably by telling her that her parents are getting to the age where they are no longer useful as agents and if Paige refuses to go along, they will reveal their identities to the CIA or FBI and P&E will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Paige wouldn’t know this is an absolutely empty threat. There are many reasons why the KGB would never do that - make that **could **never do that. But they could threaten to mutilate P&E so that they will have to live the rest of their lives in pain or some similar threat.
But if P&E reveal the truth to Paige, then she is a sitting duck for the KGB to threaten her and force her to do their will. They would have to also threaten her that she couldn’t tell her parents what they are doing because if Paige ever did tell P&E she was being threatened, P&E could put a stop to that in many ways. But Paige doesn’t know that.
Why would they want to do that. That Guarantees that she will defect in 6 months? If P & G are sold to the FBI, they will gladly make a deal with them and betray most of the network. A fact that an older Paige will know. No, the only realistic way for them to use her is to get her parents to convince her.
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She did toss her in the pool, when she couldn’t swim.
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MY dad did the same thing to me. Last I checked , he is not a KGB commie fanatic pretending to be American.
Of course, that’s what he’d say.
I think the show has tried to paint Elizabeth as extremely committed to the ideology and the cause but not as a fanatic. Would a fanatic have beaten up her supervisor so badly? Her and Philip had previously agreed to never involve their children, and presumably that was a possibility at a time where she was at least as if not more ideologically committed than now. Yet now she’s shifting, and I think it’s partly because of what Moscow wants, but more because she wants to be closer to her daughter.
On second thought, I must admit you are very likely correct. They would need to set up some special circumstances if they ever hoped to force Paige to work for them.
It is possible they could do that (for example, if they were to hold one or both of her parents in Russia) but you are def correct in that the odds are against them.
I have to acknowledge you thought that through much better than I did.
I don’t understand the significance of E telling P about how her mother didn’t blink an eye and told her to, “Go serve your country.” Is that a prelude to her trying to convince P they should do the same thing with Paige?
Is she trying to hold herself up as an example and tell P that if he loves her, she must have turned out all right. So maybe it would be a good idea for them to try to convince Paige to work for the KGB.
I really don’t know what she is thinking here and her words and actions don’t really jibe when it comes to what she told P about Paige initially and then what she told Gabriel (the Frank Langella character) later.
When she spoke to Gabriel or maybe it was later when they were in the car, Phillip just looked at her as if to say, “Have you lost your mind”?
I appreciate how the show crew does a really good job at period details. I think that was a correct Milky Way logo, and the pop machine had a tab for Tab. The cars seem correct as well, as does the spy gear. They made a decent approximation of a view finder for the film camera.
I don’t think the locks on the motel were period, but they were only in a long shot. And as good as Phillip’s “my daughter…uh, yeah” line was, i don’t think people talked with that affected inflection at that time.
Given the way that Russia treated men who were forced to join the army and had no previous experience, I can’t blame E’s father for running from armed and experienced Nazi soldiers - especially if he was told to attack them without any weapon (as I wrote in a previous post). Also, if they forced Russian soldiers to walk forward over a mine field with arms linked and try to find all the mines that way, who could ever blame a novice soldier from running away?
Stalin was really out of his mind. It was his fault that Nazi Germany attacked Russia at a time when they were wholly unprepared to fight. He had plenty of notice the Nazis were moving their troops Eastward toward Russia but he still honored his trade commitments and the day before the Nazis attacked, Stalin still sent them a huge trainload full of oil and steel. Like other leaders of that era, Stalin had plenty of info that Hitler would attack him several weeks before it happened. But he didn’t want to prepare for fear of offending Hitler. I think he got what he deserved for that.
I can’t understand why the Russians didn’t overthrow Stalin and get rid of him. He treated his soldiers much worse than Hitler ever did.
I must admit that I got a laugh from the reports that when Stalin died, everyone was so terrified of him that no one would go into his room or approach his corpse for a week or two after he died.
You’re likely referring to what were called “punishment battalions,” which consisted of men convicted of crimes against the Soviet Union and were used for suicide missions. If they refused to enter the minefields or run away, they’d be shot on the spot by their NKVD handlers. And every unit in the Red Army had a “political officer” (NKVD) to keep an eye on things and make sure that only the official version of events was given.
Plenty of people were willing to do his bidding in return for their own positions of power, and the Bolsheviks were experienced revolutionaries who knew every trick in the book for hunting down people who opposed them. There were many other ways of keeping people in line besides brute force. The threat of having your heat turned off in the winter, the crappy bugged telephone system, control of the media and propaganda, complete dependence on public transport, and so on.
It wasn’t that long ago. “Uh … yeah!” would probably have been followed by a “Duh!” (not “D’oh!” which really did come later).
She wants her daughter to take the one particular career path that serves the interests of the state. It’s the opposite of empowering her daughter; it’s putting her daughter to use.
That really does seem to be the case, from what we’ve seen so far.
I’m pretty sure she doesn’t love Phillip at all, but does she even love her daughter? Mothers are supposed to be the protectors. Fathers are stereotyped as distant. But Phillip seems genuinely more of a parent than Elizabeth.
I feel like the people who see Elizabeth as nothing but cold and calculating are watching a different show. She obviously loves Philip even if she hasn’t said the words. When Philip found out she had been sleeping with Gregory in season 1, she felt bad and told Philip that she was ending the affair because of her growing feelings for Philip. They also separated for a brief period but then got back together, which they didn’t have to do. They have plenty of sex with each other, and it’s not out of duty.
Elizabeth loves her daughter too, she just shows it in a much different way than Philip.
Yes; one of the great strengths of this show is that such an idea can easily occur to viewers–the writing is that good. No cardboard villains, here. Characters on both sides of the political conflict can seem sympathetic.
How much does she even know about love?
She was snatched away from her mother when she was 17 (I think it was 17) and thrown into a phoney marriage with Phillip. Her focus was entirely about carrying out this charade. How much could she really know about love? How well could she understand love?
I think an argument could be easily made that she has no idea what love is since she has spent her entire life in the service of her government. If she got orders to kill Phillip and the two kids and make it look like an accidental house fire and she was to sneak across the northern border into Canada … she wouldn’t blink. She would just do it.
What would that say about love?
That was very helpful. Now we know Elizabeth isn’t a one-dimensional fanatic but her service is driven by … well, it’s left for us to choose … shame, guilt, gratefulness, almost certainly a sense of debt on behalf of her father. She is paying the debt for her mother and herself, and what looked like irrationality has become a sense of duty.
Of course, we now know more than Phillip (about Elizabeth’s motivation), which is always interesting when it comes to storyline development.
Loved, loved, loved the black humour with the limbs of the dead body. And what kind of mind can actually do that stuff and then go home as a normal couple …
Hassling dad and Stan, Oleg’s in trouble; you ever met a woman who drives you so crazy you willingly risk everything? Nothing you can do. Dad should end this now but he won’t.
Has there ever been an entire episode without sex or murder?
I’m sorry to say this. But I honestly cannot tell whether you’re being serious or sarcastic and I apologize to you if you’re being serious.
I was left wondering about their need to break her limbs in order to fit her into that suitcase. Why couldn’t they just have bent those limbs in the direction they were naturally intended to bend and in what direction was it necessary to break those limbs in order for her to be able to fit inside that case? I think that probably seems like a silly question. But I’d like to know just why they had to break her limbs. Why didn’t they just use a larger suitcase instead?
Bottom line for me was that Annalise was such a silly character, I don’t think they could have ever trusted her to keep her mouth shut and I think they would have had to have silenced her in one way or another. E was probably correct when she said that if she had been the one to handle Annalise, they never would have had that problem.
I know it was unrealistic to expect that E could have handled her from the POV of the writers. However, on a purely personal level, I would have just loved to have seen how E would have handled her.
I find myself growing more and more fascinated with E the longer this show goes on. Aside from being a real beauty, her character is written as a highly competent agent and she may well be one of the very best agents in her field.
Oh, Hell! I think I’ve fallen in love with her character. Sigh. Sometimes I just wish I could escape into the fantasy world where she lives. I’d love to walk up to her and introduce myself. But, I sure would like to avoid taking any kind of beating. When I think about how she laid that beating on those two FBI agents, if it ever happened irl, that would be just too funny to accept. When John Boy said words to the effect, “Before you give me any snark, just remember it was dark out”, I must chuckle now, every time I recall that conversation. “John Boy!, You sure are a #@%*#ing pussy!” Chuckle.
IMO, one of the finest films I’ve ever seen is “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (1988). It stars Michael Caine & Steve Martin. It’s a comedy but it took me a few viewings to get the full depth of the humor created by the writers. They did a great job, btw.
It was rated 7.3 by IMDB and I’ve always thought it should have been at least 8.3 or higher. For those of you who’ve seen this film, there is a wonderful moment when Steve Martin bursts out in a litany of complaints about the lead female (played by Glenne Headly). When he finishes, Michael Caine looks dreamily out into space and says, “Yes. But isn’t she wonderful?” He says this with a sigh and with an inflection that makes that moment the climax of the film.
If you haven’t seen it, I’d sure like to recommend it to you. But if you have seen it, I hope you’ll remember that moment because … that is exactly the way I feel about Elizabeth. I know she is just a figment, just a character that Keri Russell and the writers have created and it’s foolish for me to feel anything about her. But I just can’t help it. She is just wonderful. Sigh. Truly dreamy.
I think she’s trying to explain how she can be considering this as Paige’s mother. Which really blows a hole in the whole “Elizabeth is an unfeeling fanatic” thing. She clearly loved Gregory, she clearly developed feelings for Philip.
Elizabeth had reported Philip in the past. I feel like she wouldn’t be approaching Philip in the way now she is if she was really so cold.