Elizabeth’s anger was so blazing that I thought that there was more to it than just angry officer chastising a young recruit.
Honestly, I thought it still wasn't enough. Not that I needed her to be more angry, but the later scene with Paige seemed to leave them just where they were before, with Paige insisting she was totally mature and she "got it, Mom! I did a bad thing" and Elizabeth again encouraging her and ready to send her right back into the field. Sure she didn't let her spend the night at home, but the mom/daughter walk and talk was pretty close. Hans wouldn't have gotten that.
I wonder if Elizabeth was always planning to kill the warehouse guy, or if it was a last second decision because he mentioned that his girlfriend was in company security.
Definitely last second, imo. I think we saw that play out with him unfortunately mentioning his girlfriend (or fortunately for Elizabeth). If she was planning to kill him presumably she'd have had a better method.
- I started to wonder how much of Claudia’s ‘lessons’ about Russia are truly meant to educate/indoctrinate Paige, and how much is meant to reinforce Elizabeth’s own nostalgia for the Russia of her childhood. What better than feeding Elizabeth the feel-good food that her own mom used to cook for her when she was a kid before mom gave her over to the KGB, to make Elizabeth feel good about now giving her own daughter to the KGB? I still don't trust Claudia at all.
There definitely seems to be something of that in there. After all, it's not like Paige has any actual memories of this stuff. And yet these lessons, according to Elizabeth, just fill her with more rage when she's reminded she's back in the US. (Which she chose to stay in when Philip wanted to leave!) Her hatred of the USA seems to be driving her almost more than the hope of a Soviet future at times.
It was a funny presentation of food, actually. I'll have to watch it again to be accurate, but it seemed like Claudia was presenting this as great peasant food that helps them survive through all those famines and wars. But during the famines they would not have access to any of this stuff.
I wondered, actually, if a reason Philip doesn't tend to respond as sentimentally to Russian food as people often expect him to be (twice I've seen him accused of actually thinking it's crap by viewers) is because he doesn't have a lot of happy sense memories about food because he really just didn't have a lot of it. Things presumably got better as he got older, but the only food associated with his childhood we've seen on the show is hot water with an onion in it and black moldy hard sawdust bread rations.
Did Philip put himself in financial risk to expand his business only because he needed more money to pay for Henry's schooling, or did he expand the business because he simply likes being a businessman, but in capitalism businesses must always either grow or die?
It seems like he might have been speaking truthfully to the guy at the school in that he sunk a lot of money into the business but won't get the actual money for a while. So it's a cash flow problem that's pretty standard when a business expands? I'm not a business person at all, but there was a good storyline about this on Mad Men.
But like I said below, I feel like they're retconning a bit to put Philip in a role he wouldn't really be in with that school.
Saraquel and Urban Transport...
Honestly, I thought it still wasn't enough. Not that I needed her to be more angry, but the later scene with Paige seemed to leave them just where they were before, with Paige insisting she was totally mature and she "got it, Mom! I did a bad thing" and Elizabeth again encouraging her and ready to send her right back into the field. Sure she didn't let her spend the night at home, but the mom/daughter walk and talk was pretty close. Hans wouldn't have gotten that.
Definitely last second, imo. I think we saw that play out with him unfortunately mentioning his girlfriend (or fortunately for Elizabeth). If she was planning to kill him presumably she'd have had a better method.
There definitely seems to be something of that in there. After all, it's not like Paige has any actual memories of this stuff. And yet these lessons, according to Elizabeth, just fill her with more rage when she's reminded she's back in the US. (Which she chose to stay in when Philip wanted to leave!) Her hatred of the USA seems to be driving her almost more than the hope of a Soviet future at times.
It was a funny presentation of food, actually. I'll have to watch it again to be accurate, but it seemed like Claudia was presenting this as great peasant food that helps them survive through all those famines and wars. But during the famines they would not have access to any of this stuff.
I wondered, actually, if a reason Philip doesn't tend to respond as sentimentally to Russian food as people often expect him to be (twice I've seen him accused of actually thinking it's crap by viewers) is because he doesn't have a lot of happy sense memories about food because he really just didn't have a lot of it. Things presumably got better as he got older, but the only food associated with his childhood we've seen on the show is hot water with an onion in it and black moldy hard sawdust bread rations.
It seems like he might have been speaking truthfully to the guy at the school in that he sunk a lot of money into the business but won't get the actual money for a while. So it's a cash flow problem that's pretty standard when a business expands? I'm not a business person at all, but there was a good storyline about this on Mad Men.
But like I said below, I feel like they're retconning a bit to put Philip in a role he wouldn't really be in with that school.