I'm trying to move on but I'm stuck on how long it would take in real life for a girl to get from suburban Virginia to Washington DC and then up to Harrisburg, PA by bus. I don't see it. It's 3 hours by bus just to Harrisburg, so that's already six hours rt. I'm thinking the writers have never traveled via bus in their lives but if Paige did the research necessary to organize this trip she would have known she was never going to make it home in time, even if Philip hadn't gotten home early. I'm also not sure they did the necessaries to make her journey believable psychologically. Maybe there's a missing scene somewhere in which she asks when they'll get to meet this aunt and her parents put her off? We know she's curious but this was reckless--daring--rebellious behavior.
Lying, cutting school, challenging authority. Sounds like an American teenager to me. Poor Philip and Elizabeth have no idea what they're in for.
It never occurred to me that the girl Paige met on the bus trip was anything other than another girl, but--she's out of school, too, heading on a bus alone to see her father. Paige swallows her story whole but I can't decide if we're meant to or not. I'm assuming it's meant to be ambiguous. We know someone is watching the kids. We surmise someone alerted "Aunt Helen" that Paige was on her way. The door was left open on purpose to lure her in. The "Aunt Helen" cover story was elaborately planned--probably well in advance--and not improvised on the spot after Elizabeth was injured as I had worried it might be. This was oddly reassuring.
Her confrontation with Philip at the end. I've read through some of the comments. I don't think the emotional charge during that conversation necessarily has anything to do with Philip's real life story. What Paige did potentially put the entire family in mortal danger--and Philip is all too aware of that. He's angry at her and he's afraid that what happened to his friends and their children could happen to him and Elizabeth, to Paige and Henry. I think those are the losses he's reacting to, that is the dead family in his mind's eye, people he felt strongly about and identified with, his comrades-in-arms, not his family back in the USSR.
Paige's Bustrip to Harrisburg PA
Date: 2014-03-22 03:30 am (UTC)Lying, cutting school, challenging authority. Sounds like an American teenager to me. Poor Philip and Elizabeth have no idea what they're in for.
It never occurred to me that the girl Paige met on the bus trip was anything other than another girl, but--she's out of school, too, heading on a bus alone to see her father. Paige swallows her story whole but I can't decide if we're meant to or not. I'm assuming it's meant to be ambiguous. We know someone is watching the kids. We surmise someone alerted "Aunt Helen" that Paige was on her way. The door was left open on purpose to lure her in. The "Aunt Helen" cover story was elaborately planned--probably well in advance--and not improvised on the spot after Elizabeth was injured as I had worried it might be. This was oddly reassuring.
Her confrontation with Philip at the end. I've read through some of the comments. I don't think the emotional charge during that conversation necessarily has anything to do with Philip's real life story. What Paige did potentially put the entire family in mortal danger--and Philip is all too aware of that. He's angry at her and he's afraid that what happened to his friends and their children could happen to him and Elizabeth, to Paige and Henry. I think those are the losses he's reacting to, that is the dead family in his mind's eye, people he felt strongly about and identified with, his comrades-in-arms, not his family back in the USSR.