Your questions about Mischa Jr cut right to why this particular plot didn't really work for me - although I did come to genuinely appreciate the character and sympathize with him. For me, what bothers me isn't so much whether or not Mischa Jr knew what his mother did for a living. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I expect that he did know that Irina was KGB.
But let's say maybe he thought she was just an Aeroflot pilot or something similar that would explain her long absences from home all the time. And maybe she raised Mischa Jr to believe that his dad was either a defector who'd escaped to the West, or else some random American dude she had an affair with while she was in the US on (totally not KGB) work. Maybe she told him that his father was just some random one night stand and she didn't want to talk about it. Whatever he knew or didn't know, wouldn't Mischa Jr have been suspicious to discover that his mother (KGB or not) left him a whole box of amazing fake IDs and cash and instructions on how to find safe houses and passage through to the US, complete with a secret phone number to call once he got to DC? If he knew she was KGB and had disappeared, wouldn't he be concerned that the KGB might now be watching him? And if he thought that she was just some random Soviet citizen, wouldn't he wonder how she organized his escape to the West, up to and including secret phone numbers and codes to use once he got to America?
What really bothers me is not what Mischa Jr knew. It's that Irina knew that Philip was an undercover KGB agent. She had to have known that she was putting both Philip and Mischa Jr in grave danger with this half-baked scavenger hunt. She had to have known that this was a no-win situation for Philip (at minimum). She also had to have known that the KGB would intercept Mischa Jr the moment he phoned their call center using Philip's secret codes, thus making it all pointless. It made for a dramatic, emotional story, but logically none of it made any sense to me.
From a purely writing perspective, I don't think we've seen the last of Mischa Jr. His personal plot line feels incomplete to me. The season's overall 'damaged father/son relationship' story line still has more to reveal about Philip (as both son and as a father to sons). Maybe we'll find out more about what Mischa Jr knew or didn't know about his parents. Maybe the writers are making a meta point that Philip suffered emotionally his whole life because he never knew the truth about his father and now both of his sons are experiencing the same thing.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: not really a review at all
Date: 2017-04-12 12:23 pm (UTC)But let's say maybe he thought she was just an Aeroflot pilot or something similar that would explain her long absences from home all the time. And maybe she raised Mischa Jr to believe that his dad was either a defector who'd escaped to the West, or else some random American dude she had an affair with while she was in the US on (totally not KGB) work. Maybe she told him that his father was just some random one night stand and she didn't want to talk about it. Whatever he knew or didn't know, wouldn't Mischa Jr have been suspicious to discover that his mother (KGB or not) left him a whole box of amazing fake IDs and cash and instructions on how to find safe houses and passage through to the US, complete with a secret phone number to call once he got to DC? If he knew she was KGB and had disappeared, wouldn't he be concerned that the KGB might now be watching him? And if he thought that she was just some random Soviet citizen, wouldn't he wonder how she organized his escape to the West, up to and including secret phone numbers and codes to use once he got to America?
What really bothers me is not what Mischa Jr knew. It's that Irina knew that Philip was an undercover KGB agent. She had to have known that she was putting both Philip and Mischa Jr in grave danger with this half-baked scavenger hunt. She had to have known that this was a no-win situation for Philip (at minimum). She also had to have known that the KGB would intercept Mischa Jr the moment he phoned their call center using Philip's secret codes, thus making it all pointless. It made for a dramatic, emotional story, but logically none of it made any sense to me.
From a purely writing perspective, I don't think we've seen the last of Mischa Jr. His personal plot line feels incomplete to me. The season's overall 'damaged father/son relationship' story line still has more to reveal about Philip (as both son and as a father to sons). Maybe we'll find out more about what Mischa Jr knew or didn't know about his parents. Maybe the writers are making a meta point that Philip suffered emotionally his whole life because he never knew the truth about his father and now both of his sons are experiencing the same thing.