Question of the week #34

[treonb]

What's your favorite season 2 episode?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first two seasons in the comments.

(There's no expiration date on these questions, so if you're reading this post months later and feel like jumping in, please do.)

Comments

The Deal

[sistermagpie]

At first I felt like I should say Martial Eagle because that ep was so intense, but I really really loved The Deal. Part of my love for it comes from it being what I would consider the very first Philip-centric episode, since last season Duty & Honor seemed like it was going to be, but then left me feeling like I knew no more about him than I knew before. This one, despite revealing even less about his past than D&H seemed to really get into his head.

This ep also featured Elizabeth scene with Brad--and the one with Paige where Paige tries to explain her interest in the church and she doesn't get it. Now that we can put it in context of the season I can see that as part of Elizabeth's dawning understanding of the similarities between the two of them that she just didn't get when Paige put it in terms of self-actualization and feeling, because Elizabeth doesn't think that way. Stuff that seems obvious to me as a viewer just goes right by her--and still does, because I still don't think Elizabeth thinks of herself as having any sort of need that's fulfilled by the cause--I mean, she knows she has a need to do good in the world, but doesn't see it in terms of it providing anything more personal to her.

Also now that we have that one little scene in Echo where P&E talk about their pasts we now know that there were probably several times during the season when Paige was acting out and Elizabeth was remembering how she spent her 14th year. Not that Elizabeth would have constantly been thinking about her mother all the time, but when Paige tries to explain herself in that scene I can see Elizabeth thinking "Your life is crazy?" and comparing it to her own--yet she doesn't actually tell the story until the very last episode, when she shares it with Philip. Much like how Philip goes this whole ep without saying anything about any memories Yossi might dredge up until he shares that one little thing with Elizabeth at the end. So I feel like on rewatch there will be times when she must be thinking about that time, even if she dismissed it asap.

Plus I also like the caper at the Rezidentura with Arkady being at his best--you can even see why he'd get along with Claudia, both of them sometimes being seen and treated as if they're most hostile to the Illegals than they actually are personally. Not to mention Oleg makes himself a big damn player in Stan's story here.

So yeah, I just loved this episode.

Re: The Deal

[jae]

"The Deal" is not my favourite episode of the season, but it's the one I think was objectively the best. There is not a thing I would change about it.

-J

Re: The Deal

[katiac]

Yeah The Deal just had so many reasons about it that were going to make it a top contender. It's easy to forget about some of the Elizabeth ones since so much of the episode was focused on Philip but it was strong there too.