Season one group rewatch: the pilot

[jae]

This is the discussion post for the pilot episode in the group rewatch of season one. When you rewatched the episode, was there anything you noticed that you didn't notice the first time (and any subsequent times) you saw it? What things about it did you perhaps view differently after having seen the later episodes?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first season in the comments.

Comments

[treonb]

Her behavior is off, in this episode, but we don't know that upon first watch because this is our first time seeing her. But having her rapist locked in her trunk is upsetting her, I think he was trying to console her, that they'd get orders, that the mission wasn't a failure. Obviously he didn't know Timoshev raped her.

I like your take on this, because I find it difficult to accept that Philip and Elizabeth had lived together for 20 years without developing some sort of relationship.

[katiac]

Like, I think they definitely had SOME sort of relationship, and I actually believe Elizabeth had some sort of feelings for him in there too. I doubt she was cold to him all the time, or that she was cold to the kids all the time. I could see things being hard at first, but the longer they lived together, he really wasn't "a strange man" and it really wasn't "a strange house" to her any more. I think they would've developed a comfort level around each other once Elizabeth determined he wasn't going to rape her like Timoshev had. And while I think a huge part of things for Elizabeth centers on control (of her feelings, of her behavior in order to control his behavior), I would find it harder to believe that she'd gone 20 years and NEVER felt any twinge of attraction or fondness for him and then suddenly was all hot for him in the car, versus that she'd occasionally had an inkling something like that could be there, but it scared her or upset her and the ramifications conflicted with control issues, and what they were there to do so she kept it locked away inside. And then the events of the pilot made it where that just wasn't possible any more.