Another interesting plot point is the travel agency going under and the Jennings going bankrupt without Elizabeth knowing about it. Will Phil be happy to go back to Russia to escape all of that or maybe use his skills to steal some cash?
That is interesting. Philip going the full Dale Carnegie. Poor Stavos being usurped by the guy who did two cruise deals. Man, is there anything more cringing ad soulless than the sales world (I see Glengarry Glen Ross was first produced in 1983 ish).
It seems the difference between Dead Hand and second strike capability (via nuclear submarines) is Dead Hand is automated and doesn’t require approval by the Soviet leadership - thus guaranteeing MAD: Dead Hand - Wikipedia
I might be wrong, but I think the school stuff is less important as a plot point and more about showing just how far apart Philip and Elizabeth have drifted. Philip is now almost completely acclimated (his enthusiastic pro-sales speech, worrying about bills/business, eating takeout, a positive outlook) while Elizabeth is stuck glorifying an idealized past (chuckling at “droughts, famines and wars,” clearly being pissed at Philip rebuffing her zharkoye, total inability to accept a future of peaceful coexistence).
Plus, from a more mechanical point of view, I think the Center would find a way to cover the costs because this is a fancy-schmancy school Henry attends, right? It could help the Center immensely in the long run if Henry develops powerful or well-placed connections.
I don’t think it’s fair to say Philip rebuffed her zharkoye. He said it smelled amazing. It was just bad timing.
I agree though that the Centre would not want them to go bankrupt. (That’s embarrassing for Philip though.) Whether they care about Henry’s schooling is another matter. They don’t seem to have plans to recruit him.
I could possibly see the latter. I’m not sure it’s clear though that the agency is going under. It is inarguably bigger, and supporting a much larger staff at least for the moment. Couldn’t it simply be a cash crunch caused by rapid expansion? Businesses do sometimes collapse after expanding too rapidly, but there had to be a basis for success or he wouldn’t have expanded at all.
ETA: Don’t submarines have the authority to nuke the enemy without authorization from above if they see abundant evidence their own government has been taken out by a massive nuclear strike?
There is some poetry in how Philip is idolizing the best of America while Capitalism is slowly kicking him in the nuts while Elizabeth idolizes a Soviet Union that no longer exists (or never did) as the real one is crumbling away.
If you wanted to silently murder someone from behind, wouldn’t you use a garrote? Watching E strangle the warehouse guy with her bare hands seemed excessive, especially since he didn’t fight back at all.
It was odd for sure. That’s one reason I’m persuaded by the argument that it was an improvisation based on his girlfriend’s job, not something she planned all along. As to how plausible it was for her to be able to pull it off, that’s another story. We also saw her just start to try to drag his body, but without much success before they cut away. She is quite small and slight, and he is big and heavy.
Regarding Henry, with computing, the abstract maths and the babes and pucks (did I spell that right?), the whole trajectory reads to me like Wall Street winner, or maybe internet entrepreneur.
Fwiw, I am currently torn between E in retirement finding some notoriety as a visual artist of PTSD, and her and Renee disappearing off a cliff like Themla and Louise.
That was totally spur of the moment. He was free and gone until he mentioned his girlfriend. ‘in security’.
Which leads one to wonder: if he hadn’t let that slip, would Elizabeth be boned? And can she carry out her mission when a guard (going out with someone in security) is missing? Maybe if she hurries, before he’s missed.
I was thinking she would set it up as a suicide. Leave him hanging in the hotel bathroom, and it would be hard to tell that he’d been strangled prior to being hanged, even if they thought to look for it.
Yeah, that’s how I took it, too. If she were a foreign agent she’d know that her background probably wouldn’t stand up to scruitiny of getting approved to the FBI academy regardless of the age cutoff, but by expressing interest it encourages Stan to share information about his work with her just to bring them closer, which was set up by her acknowledgement that her work isn’t interesting enough to talk about. She feigns being clumsy, but she’s actually a very slick manipulator. Or the character is a complete red herring, but the show has really never done that and I don’t know why they’d introduce a character like her now and spend all the time to set her up only to say, “Fooled ya!”
I still think she’s Israeli or someone other than KGB.
It’s a good contrast but kind of heavy-handed allegory; so far, I feel like they’re trying to jam in every good idea and comparison into these few episodes that could easily cover two or three more series while the Soviet Union and the East Bloc slowly deteriorates and the Jennings are left in an increasinlgy uncertain and ultimately untenible position. Given the number of people they’ve killed and things they’ve done, there is no way they could turn themselves in for anmensty and expect good treatment, and the conflict within the KGB is already setting up the potential for their exposure.
Henry would be shit as a spy. And while it would be relatively easy to launder money through the travel agency in the still-mostly-cash era of 1987, the fact that Philip is ‘retired’ means the Centre has no interest in supporting him. In reality, the “Illegals” got very little support from the KGB other than operational funds and were expected to support themselves with their ‘cover’ jobs, which actually paid vastly more in real value than the salaries they ostensibly banked back home.
I believe she was trying to choke him out without leaving marks so that she could then fake an embolism or hanging. It also wasn’t clear that she intended to kill him until he mentioned that his girlfriend worked in security at the plant; I think Elizabeth realized that he’d be likely to mention or accidentally let slip the interview with her regardless of her prohibitions to talking to other coworkers and realized that she’d be exposed.
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The show has no history of red herrings, really? What about Martha’s gun? Or Philip’s son, who went on an extended odyssey to see his father, then got sent home without Philip ever learning about him (and apparently is no longer part of the show)?
How would it be explained why he was there? Presumably Elizabeth booked the room under a fake name. This would probably be worse than dumping him somewhere.
I think the idea is that he will bounce things off of her so that she can help to make a difference and feel better about herself.
The image of the zharkoye going down the garbage disposal was just too good for the writers not to somehow include it.
He got too big for his britches and expanded too fast at a time when the full service travel agent was going the way of the dodo. People are leaving him for budget places. Of course, the internet will eventually kill them too.
That’s certainly a difficulty, which is why I’m pretty sure the killing was a last-second reaction, not a plan laid out in advance.
She could set it up to look like the guy was there for a tryst, but then succumbed to guilt over cheating on his girlfriend, or some such thing. The hotel obviously has no idea why she rented the room, and no one at his job should know that he’d been called in for a “security audit”, so there’s nothing that could point to this not being the truth. We know her identity was a one-off thing, she got the ID from Claudia just prior to the mission, so burning this identity shouldn’t be a problem.
The plot hole it that the Centre surveilled this guy to the point that they chose him for the interview and them missed that he had a girlfriend who worked for the same place.
Turns out choke holds or blood chokes - forms of strangulation as E appeared to use - don’t have to leave marks. I googled ‘forearm strangulation’ but I guess it’s there under a variety of terms.
I buy it. They figured out he was a guard there, which was all they cared about. They don’t need the level of research they would need if she were actually trying to make him a willing accomplice of the KGB.
This was a scrambled response to the general not supplying what they need. Desperate times, etc.
The internet travel industry didn’t start to arise until the late 1990s but discount travel agencies and direct marketing of full packages by cruise lines and tour operators was already in swing. Philip telling his people to focus on selling package tours, which are lucrative but don’t require the support of a full service agency, shows how just how much he’s bought into the Napoleon Hill philosophy without thinking about how his business may change just like any happy-go-yuppie ‘Eighties trickle-down success story or the affects in an economic downturn.
As they’re not married there may have been no way for the KGB to know that he was dating a coworker in security. The Centre is increasingly hurried and particularly in the case of Elizabeth’s mission with questionable sanction they may have not done normal dilligence. Remember, this is the backup plan to get the sensor they originally planned to get from the General Rennhull, so they’re already on Plan B and rushing to catch up.
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