When he said it back to her and she started to say it was impossible but then stopped herself...I almost wanted to sing the Mary Tyler Moore theme to her as she got on the plane. In S2 the showrunners said they thought it was funny to show that the marriage was actually good for Martha and while it destroyed her life, her Clark experience I think does make her see herself as potentially able to find love. That's why it was the one lie Philip kept up. And yeah, I do love that she recognizes the loneliness in Clark that's real.
ETA: It's possible, though, that Martha was just being kind of Clark and not wanting to leave him worrying about her in Russia, but she really isn't sure she has any hope. That would be a lot like Martha.
if you recall, Gregory's parting advice to Elizabeth was "Don't let him make you soft"
So glad I wasn't the only person who thought of exactly that line. Two such different relationships and philosophies and couples and histories.
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.
Ooh! I totally didn't think of that aspect of it but yes, that's great. She almost had to prod him to get him out of that place.
Btw, another thing that struck me during the scene. I wonder if MR IRL does that teeth-bearing thing he sometimes does in scenes where he's angry or if it's a Philip thing, because it just seems to fit the character. In the fight scene there's a moment where he's in that dim hall and he's getting ready to angrily speak. I noticed it in the Bible-tearing scene too, where his mouth does that. In the dim hall in this scene his teeth practically glowed.
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.
Also I couldn't help but wonder if Elizabeth was comparing Philip's reckless defense of Martha to her stoic resignation about Gregory's fate--or even Martha's willingness to relocate to Clark's homeland vs. Gregory's preferring to die. I don't know if she was thinking those things for sure, but since Elizabeth was hitting the "it happens-we lose agents" angle I wondered if underneath she saw it the other way, since Martha and Gregory's fates were in part luck, in part choice by Gregory himself, but also in part down to Philip.
It is also so interesting that Elizabeth's insecurity about Martha is so great and yet she actually is the person who had the long affair, the person who chose someone else over Philip in ways he never did. And she didn't address this during the fight. That is, when he said "the man you love" and "stuck with me" she presumably meant to say "I chose you" by saying she took him back, but didn't really do it. It was the opposite of that scene last week where Philip heard Elizabeth asking if he'd like to be with Martha and he said no, that was crazy.
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.
I hadn't thought of this either but wow, yes, that's so true. Simple is so true about her relationship with Gregory. It wasn't that he was a simple person, nor was she, but they laid out the ground rules so strictly and stuck to them.
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.
Yeah, I thought this was huge, with Gabriel bringing up the Purges for a second time. Also I liked when he spoke to Philip telling him he couldn't get Martha's parents to see her on his own because he feared the kid might just try it. But without the anger.
And it was as graphic a reminder of the human cost her work creates as it could get.
And great how she was obviously trying to illustrate her stone cold attitude she'd talked about with Philip and instead wound up looking like Philip in Martial Eagle, covered in blood and not realizing it (not to mention not realizing her cigarette was gone). Her attempts to push herself to that place didn't put her back in control, they just pushed her into a sort of shock state.
Loved that her "You know what we should do?" at the end was also a callback to her wanting to take the kids to Canada at the end of The Colonel. After they went through the same fight again.
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.
Yeah, this is so interesting. Stan's gotten a lot of encouragement to be clueless in his personal life. I liked that in this scene he inadvertently gave Philip really valuable info-he's really never done that before except in In Control when he was telling them things that would be in the news the next day.
I wonder what that will mean if he decides to get serious about Oleg.
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.
I loved this, because so much of what's happened with Paige is her living in this bubble of entitlement as a regular middle class US teenager. Despite her panic in a couple of eps when he parents disappeared and she wondered if that was about her, she still just doesn't really get how much is on her here. Of course she thinks she can just skip Bible Study--normally it would be no big deal. (She probably thinks she's making a huge effort to go at all these days.) So Elizabeth drops the facade of gently prodding her or pretending she's not in hot water now.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: My review
Date: 2016-05-05 07:13 pm (UTC)When he said it back to her and she started to say it was impossible but then stopped herself...I almost wanted to sing the Mary Tyler Moore theme to her as she got on the plane. In S2 the showrunners said they thought it was funny to show that the marriage was actually good for Martha and while it destroyed her life, her Clark experience I think does make her see herself as potentially able to find love. That's why it was the one lie Philip kept up. And yeah, I do love that she recognizes the loneliness in Clark that's real.
ETA: It's possible, though, that Martha was just being kind of Clark and not wanting to leave him worrying about her in Russia, but she really isn't sure she has any hope. That would be a lot like Martha.
So glad I wasn't the only person who thought of exactly that line. Two such different relationships and philosophies and couples and histories.
Ooh! I totally didn't think of that aspect of it but yes, that's great. She almost had to prod him to get him out of that place.
Btw, another thing that struck me during the scene. I wonder if MR IRL does that teeth-bearing thing he sometimes does in scenes where he's angry or if it's a Philip thing, because it just seems to fit the character. In the fight scene there's a moment where he's in that dim hall and he's getting ready to angrily speak. I noticed it in the Bible-tearing scene too, where his mouth does that. In the dim hall in this scene his teeth practically glowed.
Also I couldn't help but wonder if Elizabeth was comparing Philip's reckless defense of Martha to her stoic resignation about Gregory's fate--or even Martha's willingness to relocate to Clark's homeland vs. Gregory's preferring to die. I don't know if she was thinking those things for sure, but since Elizabeth was hitting the "it happens-we lose agents" angle I wondered if underneath she saw it the other way, since Martha and Gregory's fates were in part luck, in part choice by Gregory himself, but also in part down to Philip.
It is also so interesting that Elizabeth's insecurity about Martha is so great and yet she actually is the person who had the long affair, the person who chose someone else over Philip in ways he never did. And she didn't address this during the fight. That is, when he said "the man you love" and "stuck with me" she presumably meant to say "I chose you" by saying she took him back, but didn't really do it. It was the opposite of that scene last week where Philip heard Elizabeth asking if he'd like to be with Martha and he said no, that was crazy.
I hadn't thought of this either but wow, yes, that's so true. Simple is so true about her relationship with Gregory. It wasn't that he was a simple person, nor was she, but they laid out the ground rules so strictly and stuck to them.
Yeah, I thought this was huge, with Gabriel bringing up the Purges for a second time. Also I liked when he spoke to Philip telling him he couldn't get Martha's parents to see her on his own because he feared the kid might just try it. But without the anger.
And great how she was obviously trying to illustrate her stone cold attitude she'd talked about with Philip and instead wound up looking like Philip in Martial Eagle, covered in blood and not realizing it (not to mention not realizing her cigarette was gone). Her attempts to push herself to that place didn't put her back in control, they just pushed her into a sort of shock state.
Loved that her "You know what we should do?" at the end was also a callback to her wanting to take the kids to Canada at the end of The Colonel. After they went through the same fight again.
Yeah, this is so interesting. Stan's gotten a lot of encouragement to be clueless in his personal life. I liked that in this scene he inadvertently gave Philip really valuable info-he's really never done that before except in In Control when he was telling them things that would be in the news the next day.
I wonder what that will mean if he decides to get serious about Oleg.
I loved this, because so much of what's happened with Paige is her living in this bubble of entitlement as a regular middle class US teenager. Despite her panic in a couple of eps when he parents disappeared and she wondered if that was about her, she still just doesn't really get how much is on her here. Of course she thinks she can just skip Bible Study--normally it would be no big deal. (She probably thinks she's making a huge effort to go at all these days.) So Elizabeth drops the facade of gently prodding her or pretending she's not in hot water now.