I’m quite content with Joe Weisberg’s knowledge and experience at the CIA.
I know a lot of folks are focused on “Checkov’s cyanide pill”, but don’t forget the same thing happened when Martha got a gun.
I still have my eye on Stavos (employee at the travel agency). I have been somewhat suspicious of him all along, as possibly a spy in his own right. Could be the reddest of red herrings, of course.
The actor who plays Stavos is Alan Arkin’s son. And he first appeared in Season 1, episodes 2 and 3. Hmmm…
Yes. And it’s also plausible that the KGB would want to ‘have something’ on her, as opposed to a scenario in which she attends college and goes to work at the CIA and never has actually performed any tasks for the KGB.
This would be some insurance for the KGB against the possibility of Paige becoming a triple agent (ostensibly working for the KGB to subvert the CIA, but actually reporting TO the CIA on the KGB). The acts of espionage she’s now committing for the KGB give them leverage over her, now and in the future.
Am I the only one who thinks Stan actually is competent at his job? I see this stuff over and over on various forums about how stupid he is, and I just don’t see it. I wonder if “the Joes” see him this way.
I agree that having her put some “skin in the game” is useful for the reason you cite and others. But a nitpick: wouldn’t she only be able to be a triple agent if her job in the CIA was to pretend to be Russian? Which is very unlikely.
Being blindsided for a decade by his neighbours and close friends is problematic though it was interesting to see Dennis Aderholt / wife / baby also at the Soviet spies latest dinner party.
If Renee is also playing him, as seems likely, that has to be seen as a pattern.
In terms of conventional casework, I can’t recall everything but like you my sense has always been he’s competent and respected.
I guess it’s like “Breaking Bad”. People thought the same about Hank, but there’s just no reason to suspect them: the Jenningses (and Renee if she is in fact a spy) have all the informational advantage. As does the audience at home.
Stan did suspect them right at the beginning of the show, but then Philip cleaned up the trunk and Stan felt stupid. That kind of inoculated them from then on.
Well, one hypothetical: her parents are dead. She goes to her CIA boss and says ‘my parents were KGB agents and the KGB wanted me to take this job, and they will believe I’m working for them–they’ll believe any disinformation I bring them on that basis. I’ve come to believe that the love for the Russian leadership my parents had was misguided, and I don’t share it. I love the USA and I want to help the CIA against the KGB.’
So in that scenario, even if she were assigned to duty as an American (not posing as a Russian) in some other part of the world, she could be reporting to the KGB–just not with good information, but instead with disinformation that the CIA wants her to give to the KGB.
Amazing that the General fell for the old Evil Gloat trope. :eek:
If you’re gonna whack someone, whack them. Don’t give them a chance to take you by surprise.
Dennis has seen the composite drawings of the suspected spies too. And we’re supposed to believe he doesn’t see any resemblance between them and the Jenningses? :dubious:
Again, did the FBI ever contact Martha’s parents to get copies of her wedding photos?
Yes, but I think that would make her a double, not triple, agent.
Fair enough.
In re Martha and possible wedding pictures: do we know that there WERE photos taken of “Clark’s” mother and sister, at the time of the ceremony? (I don’t remember.)
I’m pretty sure there were—snaps at the church, at least. Which would, of course, be a major violation of tradecraft. Agents are to avoid being photographed.
I found the photograph of Barsky on Novyi Arbat with his mother (I think it was) amusing. His handler is a dead ringer for the “instructor” at the Pushkin Institute who accompanied my group on a trip to Yalta in 1990. :eek:
The wedding photographs were essential to maintaining Clark’s cover; I’m sure the Centre judged them to be an acceptable risk and presumably had some kind of plan for retrieving or destroying them. For all we know the Centre provided the photographer and there was an unfortunate “accident” at the film lab and they were overexposed.
What I was thinking.
Terentti, I also went to the USSR in 1990!
I was there from September 1989 through June 1990, working on my MA. The Pushkin Institute is in southwest Moscow, near the Kaluzhskaya metro station.
The trip to Yalta was sometime in May. We went to Leningrad on that one too.
I don’t quite get the “Stan is an incompetent” agent talk. While he’s a problematic (at best) human being, he has often shown to have some gut instincts that have proven right; he was the first person to suspect that Martha was compromised for instance.
But slight nitpick, the Soviets weren’t hosting the dinner party. They were at Stan’s house. Though the houses look similar (built by the same developer perhaps), when the women went into the kitchen and Elizabeth began doing the dishes, Renee was telling she didn’t have to (clearly implying she was hosting), and Elizabeth said “I’m just going to get you started.” Elizabeth was playing gracious guest…while she snooped on what Renee and Aderholt’s wife were saying.
BTW, was Aderholt married before the fast forward in the time frame? I remember he took Martha out on a date (basically to feel her out when Stan suspected, but couldn’t prove, she was dirty), so he was single until at least that time. I don’t remember any mention of him getting married however. And is there some kind of parrallel to Aderholt and Oleg both being fathers now? (Apart from that it’s an easy way to show time has elapsed for these characters.)
If she ends up doing that, I certainly hope it works out better for her than it did for Nina (RIP).
In the latest episode, both Stan and Aderholt reference their own previous respective divorces when discussing how Sofia wants to break up with Gennadi. It’s possible Mrs. Aderholt might have been invented solely so Elizabeth could overhear Renee talking about Sofia and Gennadi. On the face of it, I’d say Aderholt is too much of a secondary character to draw parallels, but then again, the show has never shied away from showing the tolls the life of a spy takes on personal relationships.
IIRC, the sketches are images of fairly generic people in their late 30’s or early 40’s. Probably have half a dozen people in the FBI office alone with that look.
Which is the purpose of the Jenning’s disguises, won’t fool anyone who knows them well (as a disguised Elizabeth said in the season 1 finale when confronted with the prospect of being caught by Beman), but will ensure that any description of them will be off as to the real person.
Philip is almost always disguised as a blonde or Gray-haired.