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

[sistermagpie]

I can see there being a sexual aspect as well--though to me it's always hard for me to imagine taking what she says on the tape as truthful because she's using it to trick the guy into impressing her with the information she wants. She tells him she needs him to be stronger and he immediately takes that as a hit on his manhood that he makes up for with bragging about the Russian spy he's got--and Philip shakes his head at how well it works, I thought. But then, Philip may actually figure he might as well try that out since he never had before. Like even if he knows that she's playing the guy on the tape, he can't help but wonder if she would respond to him being more forceful.

How they are with their marks is another system they've worked out--they don't tell each other the details of what they have to get up to out there. So Philip listening to the tape at all might be a breaking of the rules, seeing how she works, just as Elizabeth has that line when she sees the pictures Anneleise takes later and says "You didn't tell me she looked like that." There seems to be a mutual agreement about letting the other person have some privacy for their fake sex lives, so even after all this time there's a sense of the unknown there: what is Elizabeth like when she's the seducer? What is Philip like when he's with each of these different women? So Philip absolutely could be trying on a different sexual persona in the kitchen, just a bit, based on ideas he got off the tape.

[katiac]

I go back and forth on that point too (I think I've changed my mind every time we discuss it!) because on the one hand, I'm so reluctant to believe anything they say while honey-trapping. It's all tailor-fitted to coax information out of their marks, which is why Philip's different alter egos are completely different, even sexually, with Annaliese than we see him with Martha.

I kind of see the "stronger" aspect as maybe not intending to be directly true, but having some truth to it too. Like one aspect of Philip is that he's very shifty and slippery and hard to get a handle on. It's hard for Elizabeth to trust his motivations, and to trust that what he feels for her is special and unique, rather than that he seduces her as easily as he does the other women, so I kind of wonder if by "stronger" it could mean "steadier" or maybe "give me something I can trust about you." And I definitely think there's a "strength" component to it when he kills Timoshev and that's so meaningful to her, not that she couldn't have killed him herself, just that when put to the test, Philip wasn't slippery at all in his convictions. He's firm as a rock that he will defend and protect his family above all else and doesn't hesitate to kill the guy who raped her despite losing $3 million and giving up the security he's been arguing the whole time they need. Up until that point, it had to look to Elizabeth like he was a sellout who would betray their country for a payout, but that one act proved that in fact, it wasn't that he was a "weak" sellout, but that he was willing to do anything to protect her, Henry and Paige, an act of strength.