First of all: am very very relieved Martha actually made it out of the country alive. Doesn't mean she's fine, or happy - how could she be, in the circumstances? - , but like I said last week, not killing her off at this point was the twisty thing to do, and it allowed everyone to deal with the fallout without the emotional shortcircuit that a death (no matter whether suicide or murder) would have presented. And Martha: provided we don't get a scene later this season where she's shown committing suicide in Moscow or wherever, I think this was a good exit. (As good as it could be, for her story.) She's gone through the breakdown and despair and emerged on the other side facing her new life with a kind of brittle, stoic courage. No more lies (not even attempted chatter at breakfast by Gabriel or Philip; the utter silence of the opening until they had arrived at the plane was powerful), and her last dialogue with Philip, those few words, exemplified Martha's mixture of emotional insight and delusion: "Don't be alone, Clark."
(Insight, because obviously Philip is lonely , and delusion, because ongoing marital and family crisis not withstanding, he's not alone.)
(It's also showcasing a difference between Martha and Gregory - btw, I am thrilled the Elizabeth/Philip argument later brings him up, after talking about the parallels and contrasts with other fans in the last two weeks! -, because, if you recall, Gregory's parting advice to Elizabeth was "Don't let him make you soft".)
Putting Martha's departure by tiny airplane right at the start of the episode without any further delay or artificial last minute suspense (no sudden pursuit and race to the plane) is exemplary for this show's character-centric storytelling. It also means we get the rest of the episode dealing not just with the fallout from Martha's departure but with the fallout from a lot of accumulating developments.
Philip being physically back home doesn't mean he's emotionally, and after a few aborted attempts at talking on Elizabeth's part we get the first big argument between them of the season, and the first in a long while that's not about Paige. I like the way the episode builds towards it: after the first non-committal non-talking from Philip Elizabeth contacts Young Hee (for no reason other than to hang out with her; the show really makes an effort to establish Elizabeth actually likes Young Hee as a friend, which is so going to end badly), after the second she goes to an EST meeting to understand what the allure is. And then we get the confrontation. The best thing about how it starts is that Elizabeth is dead-on, both with what the appeal is to Philip and then later with her observation/criticism of how the organisation works. (EST to my knowledge wasn't as exploitative or power mad as Scientology, but the principle of getting people to sign on for more seminars, thus spending more money, bringing their friends in etc. sounds awfully familiar.) This isn't just Elizabeth making a routine ideological objection, this is Elizabeth making a valid point, and I think that's why it jolts Philip out of his brooding and into arguing and venting.
It's always good if canon backs you up; so when Gregory was brought up I practically cheered. Elizabeth saying that at least Philip didn't have to send Martha to commit suicide by cop (Martha, in fact, has the fate Elizabeth wanted for Gregory) must have been on her mind for a good while now, but if saying it showcases again Elizabeth's assumption/insecurity about the Clark/Martha relationship, it also finally makes Philip explode about his old insecurity. Calling Gregory "the man you love" is a reminder he's never been sure about Elizabeth's feelings for him. (As several people last week pointed out, she's never told him "I love you" in as many words; she's always phrased it differently, from "I feel like it's happening for us now" in 1.04 to "come home" in Russian, but she hasn't said it point blank, and of course one ongoing tension for the Elizabeth/Philip relationship is her devotion to the Cause.
(One more thing about Gregory: it occurs to me that Elizabeth earlier attempting to be supportive on the Martha matter and getting her description of what Martha was like wrong wasn't just a case of Elizabeth being inadvertendly condescending about Martha, but Elizabeth again making unconscious parallels, because if you think about it, the appeal of Gregory back in the 1960s when their relationship started to Elizabeth probably was just what she assumes about Martha - things were simple with him, straightforward, what he wanted was on the table and she could talk to him about her emotions.)
Next they bring their issues to Dad Gabriel, who in turn vents at Claudia, which was such a great little scene, if that phrase makes sense. I treasure each and every one of the Gabriel & Claudia scenes because they always let us know how Gabriel views things when he's not in his handler role with P & E, the insecurities he doesn't show them, but this one had the added bonus of Gabriel bringing up the Stalinist Purges as a formative experience for him again. (Yes, it was classic "They think they have it bad? In OUR youth, we had to...", but with a very The Americans twist.) And it informs the later scene with Elizabeth and Philip because evidently Gabriel's eventual conclusion from this isn't that P & E need to be tougher but that they shouldn't be broken in the same way he was. Last season, it was ambiguous how much of Gabriel's paternal attitude towards Philip and Elizabeth was calculation and how much was real (because they are all trained liars and manipulation is in the job description), but this season, I think, very much comes down on "he does care about them", and never more so than in when Elizabeth shows up in the safehouse after having had to kill one of her assets and he watches Philip (still in the dishevelled state he's in for most of the episode) taking care of her, never mind the marital tension. You can see Gabriel's face softening even before he pulls up the chair, sits down with them and promises he'll get the Centre to back off and give them time to recover. The three of them never looked more like a family.
(Sidenote: of course, I was instantly wondering how the show would manage that, given the rest of the season couldn't be about P & E recovering, and this was one of the few instances where a time jump not only worked but was completely necessary. In most shows, "7 months later" would be a bad idea, but not here. Not to mention it helps a bit with the young actors playing Henry and Paige aging rapidly when their counterparts supposedly aren't.)
I already mentioned Elizabeth hanging out with Young Hee; her asset from last season was Lisa, and not so coincidentally, in this episode where Martha leaves alive (if not undamaged) and dead Gregory is brought up, Lisa returns as another illustration of how the people P & E recruit and use for their work can end up. Lisa is a worst case scenario: her husband Maurice is drinking again, took the money she's made by supposed coorporate espionage and left with another woman, Lisa herself is drinking again, and she wants to confess to the police. Unlike Martha or Gregory, her emotional tie to "Shell" isn't enough to keep her from speaking. You know the moment Lisa says "police" how this will end. The exact manner of death is heavily symbolic, too, with Elizabeth hitting her with a bottle and later having Lisa's blood on her. As with Martha, it's not that Lisa didn't make her own bad choices (to return to Maurice, to take the money, to start drinking again), but the fact remains she wouldn't have made them without Elizabeth manipulating her into this situation, and Elizabeth knows it. Her first reaction when she sees in which state Lisa is, the offer to go with her in a meeting, is I think not a handler but a human one. I don't believe Elizabeth ever liked Lisa the way she likes Young Hee, but she felt responsibility towards her. And it was as graphic a reminder of the human cost her work creates as it could get.
Speaking of costs: in the ongoing seasonal subplot for Paige, we get a new mother-daughter confrontation when Paige wants to skip bible class with Pastor Tim, and Elizabeth dispenses with the parental niceties and gives her a crystal clear summary of why that's not an option any more. It was brutal, but I think it was earned, in several senses of the word. And again with the irony: the Centre might have backed off from demanding Paige be prepared for a spy life for now, but Philip and Elizabeth are actually transforming her into one. After the "seven months later" time jump, we seen Paige doing what Elizabeth had told her, reporting to her parents on Tim and Alice. What was once a real relationship for Paige has become a professional one, where she has to fake emotions if necessary, and which she reports on to her handles parents.
There's a small parallel to the Stan and Philip scene earlier in the episode, in that Stan just assumes now that Philip - but not himself - has apologized, he can go back to confiding into Philip, and Philip visibly has a "I can't believe you" moment but even in post-Martha depression is far too much of a pro not to play along and use the info Stan inadvertently leaks; the confirmation that the FBI was indeed onto Martha. Philip might have started his relationship with Stan for professional reasons, but he had come to treat it as a real friendship until Stan's Sandra blowup; now, he's back to treating it as a professional relationship and faking what he once felt. (Bad Stan.) One more Stan thing: Agent Gaad indeed loses his job, which is a relief in terms of the show remaining honest within its fictional uiniverse - there's no way Gaad would have believably kept his position at this point -, but is still around to have a friendly chat with Stan in his home, complete with speculation about why Stan hasn't pushed it with the blackmailing of Oleg yet: guilt over Nina. (A reminder that Nina's road to execution started when Stan blackmailed her into becoming an asset; she, as much as Lisa and Martha, is another example of the human price of espionage.) Which hadn't occurred to me, but makes sense. However, said little chat presumably signals that the waiting period in that regard is over.
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timeasmymeasure
My review
Date: 2016-05-05 07:15 am (UTC)First of all: am very very relieved Martha actually made it out of the country alive. Doesn't mean she's fine, or happy - how could she be, in the circumstances? - , but like I said last week, not killing her off at this point was the twisty thing to do, and it allowed everyone to deal with the fallout without the emotional shortcircuit that a death (no matter whether suicide or murder) would have presented. And Martha: provided we don't get a scene later this season where she's shown committing suicide in Moscow or wherever, I think this was a good exit. (As good as it could be, for her story.) She's gone through the breakdown and despair and emerged on the other side facing her new life with a kind of brittle, stoic courage. No more lies (not even attempted chatter at breakfast by Gabriel or Philip; the utter silence of the opening until they had arrived at the plane was powerful), and her last dialogue with Philip, those few words, exemplified Martha's mixture of emotional insight and delusion: "Don't be alone, Clark."
(Insight, because obviously Philip is lonely , and delusion, because ongoing marital and family crisis not withstanding, he's not alone.)
(It's also showcasing a difference between Martha and Gregory - btw, I am thrilled the Elizabeth/Philip argument later brings him up, after talking about the parallels and contrasts with other fans in the last two weeks! -, because, if you recall, Gregory's parting advice to Elizabeth was "Don't let him make you soft".)
Putting Martha's departure by tiny airplane right at the start of the episode without any further delay or artificial last minute suspense (no sudden pursuit and race to the plane) is exemplary for this show's character-centric storytelling. It also means we get the rest of the episode dealing not just with the fallout from Martha's departure but with the fallout from a lot of accumulating developments.
Philip being physically back home doesn't mean he's emotionally, and after a few aborted attempts at talking on Elizabeth's part we get the first big argument between them of the season, and the first in a long while that's not about Paige. I like the way the episode builds towards it: after the first non-committal non-talking from Philip Elizabeth contacts Young Hee (for no reason other than to hang out with her; the show really makes an effort to establish Elizabeth actually likes Young Hee as a friend, which is so going to end badly), after the second she goes to an EST meeting to understand what the allure is. And then we get the confrontation. The best thing about how it starts is that Elizabeth is dead-on, both with what the appeal is to Philip and then later with her observation/criticism of how the organisation works. (EST to my knowledge wasn't as exploitative or power mad as Scientology, but the principle of getting people to sign on for more seminars, thus spending more money, bringing their friends in etc. sounds awfully familiar.) This isn't just Elizabeth making a routine ideological objection, this is Elizabeth making a valid point, and I think that's why it jolts Philip out of his brooding and into arguing and venting.
It's always good if canon backs you up; so when Gregory was brought up I practically cheered. Elizabeth saying that at least Philip didn't have to send Martha to commit suicide by cop (Martha, in fact, has the fate Elizabeth wanted for Gregory) must have been on her mind for a good while now, but if saying it showcases again Elizabeth's assumption/insecurity about the Clark/Martha relationship, it also finally makes Philip explode about his old insecurity. Calling Gregory "the man you love" is a reminder he's never been sure about Elizabeth's feelings for him. (As several people last week pointed out, she's never told him "I love you" in as many words; she's always phrased it differently, from "I feel like it's happening for us now" in 1.04 to "come home" in Russian, but she hasn't said it point blank, and of course one ongoing tension for the Elizabeth/Philip relationship is her devotion to the Cause.
(One more thing about Gregory: it occurs to me that Elizabeth earlier attempting to be supportive on the Martha matter and getting her description of what Martha was like wrong wasn't just a case of Elizabeth being inadvertendly condescending about Martha, but Elizabeth again making unconscious parallels, because if you think about it, the appeal of Gregory back in the 1960s when their relationship started to Elizabeth probably was just what she assumes about Martha - things were simple with him, straightforward, what he wanted was on the table and she could talk to him about her emotions.)
Next they bring their issues to
DadGabriel, who in turn vents at Claudia, which was such a great little scene, if that phrase makes sense. I treasure each and every one of the Gabriel & Claudia scenes because they always let us know how Gabriel views things when he's not in his handler role with P & E, the insecurities he doesn't show them, but this one had the added bonus of Gabriel bringing up the Stalinist Purges as a formative experience for him again. (Yes, it was classic "They think they have it bad? In OUR youth, we had to...", but with a very The Americans twist.) And it informs the later scene with Elizabeth and Philip because evidently Gabriel's eventual conclusion from this isn't that P & E need to be tougher but that they shouldn't be broken in the same way he was. Last season, it was ambiguous how much of Gabriel's paternal attitude towards Philip and Elizabeth was calculation and how much was real (because they are all trained liars and manipulation is in the job description), but this season, I think, very much comes down on "he does care about them", and never more so than in when Elizabeth shows up in the safehouse after having had to kill one of her assets and he watches Philip (still in the dishevelled state he's in for most of the episode) taking care of her, never mind the marital tension. You can see Gabriel's face softening even before he pulls up the chair, sits down with them and promises he'll get the Centre to back off and give them time to recover. The three of them never looked more like a family.(Sidenote: of course, I was instantly wondering how the show would manage that, given the rest of the season couldn't be about P & E recovering, and this was one of the few instances where a time jump not only worked but was completely necessary. In most shows, "7 months later" would be a bad idea, but not here. Not to mention it helps a bit with the young actors playing Henry and Paige aging rapidly when their counterparts supposedly aren't.)
I already mentioned Elizabeth hanging out with Young Hee; her asset from last season was Lisa, and not so coincidentally, in this episode where Martha leaves alive (if not undamaged) and dead Gregory is brought up, Lisa returns as another illustration of how the people P & E recruit and use for their work can end up. Lisa is a worst case scenario: her husband Maurice is drinking again, took the money she's made by supposed coorporate espionage and left with another woman, Lisa herself is drinking again, and she wants to confess to the police. Unlike Martha or Gregory, her emotional tie to "Shell" isn't enough to keep her from speaking. You know the moment Lisa says "police" how this will end. The exact manner of death is heavily symbolic, too, with Elizabeth hitting her with a bottle and later having Lisa's blood on her. As with Martha, it's not that Lisa didn't make her own bad choices (to return to Maurice, to take the money, to start drinking again), but the fact remains she wouldn't have made them without Elizabeth manipulating her into this situation, and Elizabeth knows it. Her first reaction when she sees in which state Lisa is, the offer to go with her in a meeting, is I think not a handler but a human one. I don't believe Elizabeth ever liked Lisa the way she likes Young Hee, but she felt responsibility towards her. And it was as graphic a reminder of the human cost her work creates as it could get.
Speaking of costs: in the ongoing seasonal subplot for Paige, we get a new mother-daughter confrontation when Paige wants to skip bible class with Pastor Tim, and Elizabeth dispenses with the parental niceties and gives her a crystal clear summary of why that's not an option any more. It was brutal, but I think it was earned, in several senses of the word. And again with the irony: the Centre might have backed off from demanding Paige be prepared for a spy life for now, but Philip and Elizabeth are actually transforming her into one. After the "seven months later" time jump, we seen Paige doing what Elizabeth had told her, reporting to her parents on Tim and Alice. What was once a real relationship for Paige has become a professional one, where she has to fake emotions if necessary, and which she reports on to her
handlesparents.There's a small parallel to the Stan and Philip scene earlier in the episode, in that Stan just assumes now that Philip - but not himself - has apologized, he can go back to confiding into Philip, and Philip visibly has a "I can't believe you" moment but even in post-Martha depression is far too much of a pro not to play along and use the info Stan inadvertently leaks; the confirmation that the FBI was indeed onto Martha. Philip might have started his relationship with Stan for professional reasons, but he had come to treat it as a real friendship until Stan's Sandra blowup; now, he's back to treating it as a professional relationship and faking what he once felt. (Bad Stan.)
One more Stan thing: Agent Gaad indeed loses his job, which is a relief in terms of the show remaining honest within its fictional uiniverse - there's no way Gaad would have believably kept his position at this point -, but is still around to have a friendly chat with Stan in his home, complete with speculation about why Stan hasn't pushed it with the blackmailing of Oleg yet: guilt over Nina. (A reminder that Nina's road to execution started when Stan blackmailed her into becoming an asset; she, as much as Lisa and Martha, is another example of the human price of espionage.) Which hadn't occurred to me, but makes sense. However, said little chat presumably signals that the waiting period in that regard is over.