Question of the week #50

[treonb]

At the end of the Season 3 finale Philip started saying something, but Elizabeth (and Reagan) interrupted him.  What do you think Philip intended to say?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first three 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

[soupytwist]

This is pretty much what I took from it - that he's trying to be the best and most honest person he can be right now, but what actually happened when he tried to express himself fully was basically incoherent, jagged-edged longing. I don't even think he necessarily knows what for, exactly (and especially not, like, coherently and explicitly - if he had the words, he'd have used them then). I think it's more amorphous than that, more just this overwhelming wanting for things to be different. To be less painful.

I keep changing my mind over how much I think Elizabeth would understand if she'd not been distracted, though. :)

[treonb]

I keep changing my mind over how much I think Elizabeth would understand if she'd not been distracted, though. :)

That's a good question. Well, first of all, she herself says she doesn't understand what he's saying. And the fact that she's distracted also shows she's not realizing this is VERY IMPORTANT.

With all due respect to Reagan and the fact that this was pre-dvr and pre-internet. She could have gotten his speech later.

[saraqael]

If/when Philip is able to coherently express the thoughts and feelings that he's experiencing, I suspect that Elizabeth would only be sympathetic to a point, but she'd expect him to pull himself together and carry on. Otherwise, he'd be a liability to the cause. IMO, Elizabeth is still duty first, personal life second. She doesn't suffer from the same doubts and questions that Philip does. So long as she firmly believes in the justness of her mission, she'll be fine. Elizabeth also seems to me to be highly intolerant of weakness or failure. Philip can't even pretend to say with conviction that the awful things he does is saving innocent Russian lives anymore because he just feels too terrible inside.

I actually got the impression that Gabriel was more in tune to Philip's mental distress than Elizabeth is. At one point, Gabriel flat out asked Philip if he was falling apart. I'm sure it's part of Gabriel's job to intervene somehow if one of his undercover agents started to crack up. He could probably have Philip pulled off field duty and sent back to Russia if he thought that Philip was in danger of cracking.

[sistermagpie]

I don't even think he necessarily knows what for, exactly (and especially not, like, coherently and explicitly - if he had the words, he'd have used them then). I think it's more amorphous than that, more just this overwhelming wanting for things to be different. To be less painful.

It's like the showrunners once said when asked what Philip wanted. They said he just wanted his soul to hurt less.

[soupytwist]

What interview's that from? I feel like I'd remember it if I'd seen it! That's great - and heartbreaking!

[sistermagpie]

Hmm...can't remember. But it was I think after the season 2 finale and I believe it was a podcast. Maybe on Slate they did one?

Interestingly, I just read an interview that just dropped where they specifically asked about Philip's speech here and they said, as we assumed, that the whole point of it is just that he doesn't know what to say. They said they talked to MR about some of the things that might be motivating him if he could say it, but mostly it's about how he has no idea what to say so the question isn't even if he'll be able to finish but if he'll figure out what he wants to say.

Which I think is kind of important because it's easy to watch the scene and just see Elizabeth tuning him out, but part of the sadness is that even if Reagan hadn't broken in Philip would probably never have been able to communicate anything while Paige is across the hall knowing exactly what she wants to say to Pastor Tim. But in some ways the reason she knows what she wants to say is because she's young and more self-centered. She just knows that she's repulsed at seeing her parents as liars and resents them wanting to make her like them. She's not thinking beyond that. Philip's the opposite. Where Paige can only focus on how she feels and can't move beyond to her parents' pov Philip spends so much time thinking about other peoples' povs that his own is a mystery to him.

[jae]

Ha! I came over here to link to that interview, and you'd already mentioned it. Here it is in full, and this is the relevant bit:

the whole point of that scene was that he can't express himself. We never wrote past that, although we did have a long conversation with Matthew Rhys in which we shared some of the details that might be on the other side of it if Phillip could articulate it. Essentially, talk to him about what would be in his semi-conscious mind that he couldn't find the words for.