This is how I see it too. That doesn’t mean she’ll just get a “nice thirty minute chat”. Neither will Henry. But if I were advising her, I’d tell her not to go try to start that new life in Canada. I’d give that advice even if Henry were not in the picture, but given that she wants to keep in touch with him, it goes double. (Otherwise, she is forced to become a secret agent with a false identity making frequent trips across the border to see someone the FBI may be watching…to what end?)
And I’d advise her to get a lawyer and draft a statement with that lawyer stating that she is devastated and wants to spend time with her brother, yadda yadda. Maybe offer to answer some questions in writing, but not agreeing to be grilled in person. Then let them arrest her if they think they can get an indictment, but with a decent lawyer (and I bet someone would be willing to waive their high fee to work on such a juicy case and get the publicity) I’d bet on her not having to ever be jailed, handcuffed, or even questioned. And she might get a book deal.
It’s the late 1980’s. Before FB and Twitter. Or cellphones. Disappearing is the easiest thing. She already has a identity and has at least some espionage training.
If she buggers off to California she is basically safe. The FBI won’t look for her. As far as they will be concerned, she went to the USSR with her parents. Maybe she can contact the center for help.
You don’t think she’d “be jailed, handcuffed or even questioned”? Are you kidding me? Not even questioned??
She’ll be an adult daughter of two Russians spies that have been living in Washington for over 20 years, who have killed many people (and the FBI will believe they are responsible for some of them), had a personal relationship with two FBI agents for years, and you don’t think they’ll even drive by her apartment and ask her a few questions?
I’m in my fifties and I was an adult during this part of the cold war and the government (the military, FBI, CIA) were focused on the the cold war and had been for decades. To think that Paige would be completely ignored as you portrayed it above is flat out wrong.
No, you guys misread my post. If she agreed to it, of course they’d question her. For hours and hours and hours. But there’s a little thing called Miranda that says she doesn’t have to answer any questions, and she has a right to have her lawyer present. (And this was well after the Miranda ruling, but well before things got muddled post-9/11.). The lawyer can hand them the written statement, perhaps offer to answer questions submitted in writing, and beyond that tell them to charge her with a crime or leave her alone. I mean, even mob bosses that “everybody knows” are guilty get to be free and avoid being questioned if they have aggressive lawyers who protect their Miranda rights. And Paige is nowhere near that level, and also looks a lot more sympathetic if they go before a judge/jury.
A couple of quibbles with the Rouses Point border check. I’ll let slide the geeky stuff, like Rouses Point being a low-platform stop. But why would US Border Patrol be going through a train leaving the US? I don’t remember ever having gone through US controls when crossing into Canada.
Miranda. It’s that sweet. There’s a little thing called espionage too.
The world is a different place now than it was then. The Russians were the one enemy of the United States. Presidents lost elections by the perception of being soft on communism. We fought the Korean and Vietnam war over communism. Reagan got elected because he was a viewed as being tough on the Soviet Union and Iran. The Reagan build up? We spent hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars increasing our military to defeat the Soviet Union or bankrupt it. The Cuban missile crisis 25 years previously was against the USSR. They were our number one enemy for 30 years with no end in sight (at that time). We tend to forget how all encompassing they were as an adversary. I wasn’t a Reagan fan, but when he called them “the evil empire” he spoke for a vast majority of Americans.
It nothing else she has a counterfeit passport. I’m guessing the FBI will come up with something else to have held her with in about 5 minutes. But if you think that Paige could have successfully told the Federal government to go screw itself with nary a 10 minute sit down with the FBI, I guess I won’t convince you otherwise.
People have gone to prison for the rest of their lives without so much as a “10 minute sit down” with any kind of law enforcement officer. The right to remain silent, as an American citizen post-Miranda and pre-9/11, was absolute. That doesn’t mean you have the right not to be prosecuted! But I’m absolutely comfortable saying she could go without even that “10 minute sit down”.
Then you have to ask yourself: if they don’t have the opportunity to grill her and trip her up, are they going to be able to successfully prosecute her? I don’t think they would try, because they don’t have any solid evidence and she’d make an appealing and sytmpathetic figure in court. And if they did try, I believe they’d lose, for the same reasons. Her defense lawyers would say the government is frustrated because they lost a couple spies who were sitting there under the nose of a counterespionage FBI agent for years, one of them becoming his best friend. “So now they want to take it out on these poor kids, who are victims of their parents’ crimes as much as anyone else is.”
So again: this is not about the FBI’s interest in grilling her, which would obviously be high. It’s not about whether she can placate them, get them to believe they ought to forget about her: she can’t. It’s about her asserting her constitutional rights, and probably getting the ACLU to go to bat for her to defend those rights. And it’s about the government just not having any evidence to use against her. You guys have implicitly acknowledged that but are assuming she’ll “fold under questioning”, as the memorable line in “Goodfellas” goes. So I’m simply making the obvious point that she can’t fold under questioning if she refuses to be questioned!
You’re way to vested in a fictional character played by a terrible actor (Holly Taylor) that ruined… every scene… she was in…?.. with her… irritatingly pause riddled… speech patterns.
But here’s another take on the last scene of her sitting in the safe-house, drinking vodka:
She realized how much she had to lose while on the run with her parents. She took the first opportunity to bail on them because she realized she preferred a life (on the run with likely consequences) in America rather than go to Russia with her spy parents. She resented them for dragging her into that life and making her part of something she never would have chosen for herself. The shot was a “fuck all that” toast to all the bullshit and trying to put that behind her. She was never committed to the cause anyway, she was a wannabe with naive idolation of her mother. She was easily influenced as a teenage girl, first by a charismatic religious leader and then by her mother who assisted in the brainwashing by that manipulative fuck, Claudia.
The character finally took control of her life. Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought far enough ahead because she has no resources on which to depend on for her very survival. Unlike her parents, she had no plan B. She’ll eventually want to see her brother and that’s when she’ll get caught by the FBI. What happens to her later is that she’ll tell the FBI (Stan) everything she knows because her life was ruined and she’ll want revenge and Stan is the only adult she has left in her life who always treated her well and never lied to her, and who will look after her and Henry. For all his faults, Stan isn’t going to abandon them. Also, the FBI will question pastor Tim again and he’ll spill his guts after learning that the Jennings have been exposed and done a rabbit.
That you seem to think the FBI had the power, in 1987, to make people answer their questions? Yes. Yes it is. Quicksilver’s scenario is pretty silly too.
Quicksilver wrote: “You’re way to vested in a fictional character played by a terrible actor (Holly Taylor) that ruined… every scene… she was in…?.. with her… irritatingly pause riddled… speech patterns.”
You know who else had pause riddled…speech patterns.
I don’t really see that Holly Taylor is a terrible actor. But then I’ve only ever seen her play Paige. I guess we’ll know more when we see her in a different roll.
I don’t think she’s terrible either. And even if she doesn’t have great range, that won’t make her retroactively terrible. There are some pretty good actors who kind of sound the same in every role, but they have so much personality and screen presence, it makes up for it.
I don’t think the actress is bad, so much as the character.
Paige was so obviously star struck by her mom, and Claudia (not by her father, though), and enjoyed the secret knowledge of being “in the know” about her parent’s secrets. She was born to be a follower. She’s easily swayed.
If she’d been born to hippie parents she’s be wearing beads and burning incense. If her parents were Hare Krishnas she’d be handing out poppies at the airport and wearing saffron. If her parents had been white supremacists, she’s be carrying a copy of the Protocols and keeping a journal with swastikas on it. I’m not sure at this stage of her life if she even has her own independent character or belief system yet.
And, although nothing came from it, Elizabeth was really a poor spy trainer. She never saw her daughter’s weaknesses. Paige’s eagerness would have eventually blown a mission. And E was too close. She was so proud to have her own little girl take over the family business that she was blind to the fact Paige was unsuited to it. She would have eventually got the entire family caught.
Just goes to show that the whole “2nd gen illegals” program was a bad idea. The simple fact is that there’s no right age to tell your kid(s) that you’re a spy for a hostile power. Tell 'em too soon and they can’t keep the secret (as Paige didn’t). Tell 'em too late and they’re too Americanized to want to follow you. And since the ideal moment would vary from kid to kid…
He’s fucking annoying too, and a barely tolerable actor. Without exceptions I can think of, his (over)acting is a punchline.
Sure but it’s what’s said in the spaces between the pauses that matters. Paige’s character was intentionally written to be earnest but credulous. She wasn’t supposed to be a clever and independent thinker. She was an impressionable follower, easily influenced and brainwashed.
She doesn’t have a large acting repertoire. Perhaps her lack of range is why. I’m not interested in seeing anything else she’s done. I kind of doubt I’m missing much.
I still think your russophillia has you far too vested in the character to be an effective critic.
Thanks ever so much for the psychoanalysis, but it would make a lot more sense if we were talking about Oleg or at least Elizabeth. FWIW I have no “philia” for Russia as presently constituted (nor for the past couple decades).
Maybe, but OTOH there’s that confrontation with Philip over the Bible.