Annalise had issues and people took advantage. I agree things might have gone better if she’d had a female handler but,then again, she always thought of it as a kind of game and that’s what got her killed.
I don’t know if you can fold a 5’ 6" female (approx) into a suitcase but it doesn’t matter; the scene was about the disconnection - Annalise was no longer human and had become an object; we’ve all experienced trying to fold something in a space that’s a real squeeze.
Elizabeth was originally supposed to seduce the guy instead of Annalise though, not handle her. Phillip didn’t want her too and recruited Annalise instead to do it. Elizabeth said that if see had done it, she wouldn’t have died at his hands.
I started a new thread to discuss this show. I thought it would be wrong to discuss it in this thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18117733#post18117733
Tony, thanks very much for letting us know about this new show. It should be a lot of fun to compare the quality of the production of this show to The Americans.
So, how was the new episode? One phone call and the can organize a rescue under the noses of the CIA/FBI.
Despite that apparently, they don’t have dentists on staff to check out Elizabeth.
I was completely stunned by that scene with P and the pliers making like a dentist.
I can understand showing the basic scene for a few seconds to show that E was one tough Russian girl.
But why have it go on for so long? It may have been the longest single scene in the entire show and I just can’t figure out why.
Could it be the director or someone else made some kind of mistake and they needed an additional 3 minutes of footage and that was the only choice they had?
I’d love to know if anyone here can think of any kind of reason why they would show us 3 minutes (I didn’t time it but it just seemed that long to me) of E quivering and whimpering while P doesn’t look any happier than she does.
Honest. I just can’t understand why they did that. The whole thing is just a complete mystery to me.
Come to mention it, given the scene with the rescue, this whole episode seemed kind of like a “filler” episode to me.
It was to show her absolute trust in Philip. As opposed to the earlier time, when she reported his less than enthusiastic embrace of [del] Mother Russia[/del] socialist, fraternal ideals.
The episode last night certainly had some tense moments. I could have done without the cringe-worthy, Soviet home dentistry tutorial. If the CIA started following them at the open house, I find it hard to believe that they didn’t take any photos. Or maybe they’re just not sharing with the FBI? At this point, Elizabeth should start cross-dressing.
Slightly clumsy set-up going from Beemans “people want to hear that they are right” speech to his epiphany about the Russian “defector.”
I really enjoy the street scenes. It’s so obviously New York but maybe that doesn’t bother anyone unless they live there or in D.C.? There was a scene in the finale last season on a street I walk by every day on my way to the subway in Astoria. All they had to do was stick a fake payphone on the block and presto magico, it’s the 80’s. Last night they were on Henry street in Brooklyn Heights. They move all over Brooklyn and Queens, even Staten Island. It’s amazing all the work that goes in to those scenes; lining all the blocks with old cars and driving other ones up and down, switching out garbage cans, hiding parking ticket machines, adding phone kiosks etc etc…
Thank you very much AK47. That is certainly an excellent reason for doing that. Showing that in this conflict over Paige, P can count on E and trust her all the way.
I wonder if anyone might know of any other kind of reason that could cause them to do that - perhaps one that might have been caused by some kind of production error?
Blank Slate, have you ever seen this show doing any work around your house? I would love to just stand by and watch that.
Can anyone predict the story line that will unfold with Henry and Mrs. Beeman?
When I was 12, there was a woman in my neighborhood who would wear her underwear (all black bra, panties and stockings) while she was changing to go out in the evenings and I delivered newspapers to her house. I could usually see her through her dining room window and she ran around her house trying to get prepared for her evening. I bet you can guess the rest of this story. I’ll give you one clue that I’m guessing you could see coming … I was appropriately humiliated.
Sorry, but I just don’t have the energy to go looking through the rules on this board. So I’ll just omit the remainder of my thought on Zelda (she was from Germany and her name was Zelda). I usually find it incredibly difficult to search the rules of this board and usually wind up asking someone in a forum.
I can sure identify with Henry. He had probably never seen a woman dressed in her underwear like Mrs. Beeman was dressed in that photo. I think she is a lot hotter than Stan realized and I wonder when he will realize that he made a big mistake and needs to get back with her.
But the important issue for that scene is I guess the showrunner is trying to tell us that Paige is indeed becoming an adult. Last year, Paige would have automatically go crying for her mother, “Mom? Mom? Look what Henry was holding in his room!” But this year, Paige thought about it and came to an adult decision.
Thank you AK47. Without your explaining the showrunners were trying to show us that E had total trust in P, I wouldn’t have come to the conclusion they were also showing us that P&E can trust Paige to make her own decisions. I wonder if P will be able to get past his wanting to protect his daughter.
I think most fathers will do just about anything to protect their daughters. It will be tough for P to stand back and allow Paige to make her own decisions about her future.
Despite the “fillery” aspects of this one there was a lot going on. First of all the home dentistry thing. Don’t forget that when she was shot at the end of season 1, the “Red Team” had its own doctor to treat her. Elizabeth has to have an actual dentist, right, won’t he (or she) notice a couple of missing teeth later?
Looks like the new black FBI guy has a thing for Martha. Another Chris in the making?
The Paige thing: Do something with it or drop it, otherwise it’s wasted time.
Henry and Mrs. Beeman. Funny, but it could lead to something. Taken in combination with Henry “breaking in” to the other neighbor’s house last season, he could be feeling the lack of proper supervision.
Kaufman Studios is here in Astoria, so it’s convenient to use area streets as background. For the locals, that means complaining about street closures/no parking.
I live next to Astoria Park, which gets used for various things, sometimes as a stand-in for Central Park (where shooting would be more difficult.) I’ve never tried to watch any filming. Usually you would have to be too far back to see anything, and mostly what you would see is guys setting stuff up.
The facade of this place gets used a lot, often with the name on the marquee changed, probably because it can easily be used for different eras. Last year they used it for something in Law & Order: SVU.
Dang! That is what I wanted to say. But I forgot. That’s what happens when you grow old. But thank you for saying that. I guess this show may just make a few errors wrt to “realism” every now and then. But, I sure don’t care because … it is just so damn good at everything else.
So, if a car gets dented and then is shown to be in perfect condition in the next scene, I just don’t care. Why make a mountain out of a molehill? IMO, it’s far more important to keep one’s eye on the big picture. That is the overall plot and the characterizations. They both continue to be superb!
So, if any of my previous posts carried the tone that I found something unrealistic and was unhappy about it, that is just plain wrong. The tone should have been that I found something unrealistic and I was pleased as punch to have found it … just because it’s so much fun to find those little things. But from the standpoint of the entertainment value, IMO, they have nothing to do with the overall quality of this show. The quality is sky high and some little unrealistic detail really doesn’t matter because we have found such a gem in this superb “little” show. Who cares if we spot a mistake here or there?
I have a feeling I’m going to come in for some grief on this one, and I will be up front in telling the group there are certain outcomes I am rooting for and will be pretty disappointed if they happen.
That said, after two plus years, the show is beginning to lose me. I’m wondering if anyone feels the same.
First, this whole “Paige making her own choices” stuff seems to be nonsense. Assuming P and E come clean and tell Paige the truth, what"choice" does she have other than to comply? Remember, we are talking Soviet Union era KGB, an organization which isn’t exactly synonymous with the ideas of freedom and/or choice. It also seems that Phillip is beginning to waver, which is disheartening.
Second, while I’m all for suspension of disbelief, this show makes the FBI and CIA look like bumbling morons, beginning with Beeman’s inability to connect the dots on E’s injury to letting Elizabeth slip away for about the fifth time after literally being surrounded.
I know, I know, if I don’t think the show is holding up I don’t need to watch, and I admit if Paige turns and the show becomes the KGB version if The Brady Bunch, I’ll be disappointed. Just want to see if anyone else feels the same. This is one of the few good boards where opinions are varied and always interesting to read, so just trying to see what others think.
The show isn’t losing me, yet, but I will admit to being a bit disappointed in the anomaly AK84 pointed out–the Center’s instant ability to put a dozen drivers out there to help P&E, while having no ability to get Elizabeth to a dentist. If the Center has its own doctors, then they should have access to dentists. If not, couldn’t one of those drivers whisk her to some dentist far enough away (West Virginia, maybe?) that the Feds wouldn’t have reasonable expectations of a report about the visit being filed?
I really enjoyed twuest’s post. Especially the part about how the show makes the FBI & CIA look like bumbling morons.
For those who may not know, one of the two showrunners used to work for one of those agencies and he must be having a very good time making them look so bad.
But the funniest part of her post for me was about how Stan can’t seem to connect the dots.
It’s almost as if the show runner wanted to introduce this big comic laugh and see how long people would take before they say, "Oh right, Now I get it. It’s totally impossible for Stan to live next door to the biggest FBI targets in the country, and they keep rubbing shit in his face, yet he just can’t get the joke.
When I was in college, we had this joke called, “The Big Banana Bird Joke” and we would tell a story to some unsuspecting rube and everyone who told the story would add their own chapter. But it was always about some bussiness men who came down to South America to grow bananas but every year the horde of banana birds would foil whatever precaution they had taken that year and eat all their bananas.
The joke was to see how long you could string someone along before they finally got the joke and realized they were the joke.
In some ways, I get the feeling here that Stan Beeman is the joke. Or maybe it could be John Boy the FBI agen who was with some big experienced FBI agent when they tried to stop this little girl and she turned around an punched their lights out. Now that has gotta be some kind of funny. Funny as all get out!
Elizabeth doesn’t want a dentist, she presumably doesn’t even want the Centre to know she took a proper hit. I’d go as far as to say she agreed to the extraction for reasons other than the extraction, or at least in part.
Remember, the night before they went to bed facing away from each other. This was their way of finding each other again.
Paige is the next huge story. Of course she’ll be recruited - that storyline is basically the future of the show for reasons mentioned above (we can’t go on forever with variations on the same theme).
The picture of Mrs Beemen was not about th eboy but about Paige’s judgement and maturity, despite only being 14. She got what that was about in half a second and closed it down.
Strong episode.
I don’t have a problem with Stan not picking up on things re: Elizabeth and her injury. He suspected them at first going into their garage to check their car, and finding nothing, wrote those suspicions off as paranoia. Having done so, he’s developed a sort of blind spot where she and Phillip are concerned. It’s what they call confirmation bias.
Good call to the person who spotted Stan’s reaction to the defector. That one totally got past me. I’d wondered if P+E were going to be assigned to kill the defector but now I’m inclined to believe she’s bogus. It helped that the guy interviewing her was a journalist previously revealed to be a Soviet sympathizer.
I agree the moment with the Mrs. Beeman photo wasn’t about Henry, but about Paige’s maturity and her ability to quickly assess situations and solve them…a talent needed to be a spy for any country.
That said, we have to remember here that the show is set in the United States circa early 1980’s. It’s a tense time in the history of the cold war, and anti-Soviet sentiments were running high throughout a large part–if not all—of America.
Let’s then fast forward to a key moment in the history of the series…P and E in effect tell Paige…“we’ve been lying to you your entire life. We’re not travel agents…we are in reality spies for your country’s arch enemy. We’ve had to kill people as part of our job…and now the people we work for want you to join us. Oh, and by the way, while still want you to make your own life choices, be aware that if you say no, all of our lives are in danger.”
I don’t care how mature Paige might be, if this show is based in any kind of reality, then that revelation is going to wind up being pretty messy.
Yet if the writers have her happily going along and turning against the only country she’s ever known, it will be a shark-jumping moment for the show.
The seeds for this were sown some way back. Paige went through a difficult teen period when she didn’t believe anything her parents said and pretty much mocked their explanations for working late at night and that trip out of town.
And then there’s the laundery room thing.
She knows they’re doing something very weird, she just doesn’t know what.
Maybe she thinks they’re coke dealers. (It is the eighties.)
