I thought Gadd misread them. They didn’t want to harm him, no idea where he thought he was going via nth floor patio.
Paige is a player; the churchman’s wife breaching/threatening to breach confidentiality, protocol or whatever … bad career move for them, The heavily pregnant Alice thing must have at least a modest angle.
Very, very interesting that E didn’t just smash Don - the fuckwit works creating viruses that make your organs boil. Go work at Johns Hopkins or something.
Good points. Gaad should have just listened, even played along a bit if he thought that was the safest play. And it’s true about Don: I hadn’t thought of that fact, that feeling so bad for him might not make as much sense when you ponder what he does. Although maybe he really is just trying to come up with vaccines?
No, it wouldn’t. Anytime a new character appears everyone immediately thinks they might be a spy. But it’s far more interesting for Elizabeth to have a crisis of conscience because they really are decent people.
Have to comment on one amazing sense; the tennis ball pounding the garage door - what a thing, the editing, the cinematography, the chopping, expressions from E we’ve never seen, the go back to Russia/I’ve never been to Russia … gripping. The tennis ball was like out of Sergio Leone or something.
(The sound people must have had fun coming up with a ‘sufficiently annoying thump’…of course it could simply have been ‘tennis ball thrown against a garage,’ but then again it might have been a more elaborate aural construction.)
The thing I love about this show is how it plays against expectations. Martha’s gun wasn’t used to shoot anybody, not even Martha. Pastor Tim and wife are still kicking (at least for now). Gadd goes on vacation, gets killed. The list goes on.
I’m a bit surprised that everyone is so intrigued by the proposal for Gad. I think far and away the most likely explanation is that the Soviets knew Gad had been kicked upstairs, thought that he might be bitter and willing to be recruited, and figured they’d have someone approach him. If he turned them down, then nothing lost, but might as well take a 1 in 100 shot of gaining a massive asset.
And somehow the instructions from Moscow got a bit garbled and the guys “approaching” him, not necessarily the KGB’s best and brightest, screwed up the approach.
Sure it might be just about anything else, but that fits the facts way too well for me not to assume that it’s the case until we find out otherwise.
Agreed completely, except even further: I don’t think the instructions were garbled, and I don’t think the soviet agents did anything particularly wrong in that scene. Gaad just freaked the fuck out. He ran himself through a plate glass window…whaddya gonna do?
Gaad panicking and running through the window seems goofy, but I guess it makes sense in this universe where the KGB is killing Americans left and right. Confronting him alone, outnumbered in his hotel room was a bit threatening.
I was thinking that they might want him as an intermediary. I don’t think he’d turn (and I’m betting the Soviets didn’t either). But he could carry a message when the Soviet Embassy wanted to get some info to the Americans but couldn’t go through normal channels.
Anyway, whatever they wanted him for, he needed to be alive to do it.
I agree with this. Other than entering his room without permission, they didn’t seem particularly threatening to me. I would have expected the character to be more calm and at least hear the proposition. He just seemed like a more level-headed guy. Hear the proposition, ask for time to consider it, then get his wife and himself to the embassy ASAP. Something like that. Running through the patio glass door was the last thing I expected of him.
Tbf, he sort of bundled through the doors as being pursued by one goon, but nonetheless it was an irrational choice in the circs.
Another angle on it might be to see it as a standard approach by the KGB and the interesting angle isn’t the fact or intention of the approach but the fallout from it.