Question of the week #57

[treonb]

What does Martha really think about Philip?  How far would she be willing to go to protect herself, from both Philip and the FBI?

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

[treonb]

My answer is the same as with the previous question about Philip's view of Martha. I don't think she wants to think.

She really should have been suspicious from the start, but she didn't want to think then either, and now her world has been turned upside down. At the moment Philip is offering her something semi-stable: he's the same guy she always knew. She's been keeping his secret all along after all. Except he isn't the same guy and she knows it, and at some point it's all going to blow up.

At the moment she's not going very far at all in protecting herself from Philip. And having Philip kill for her, it might push her to confess, but it might keep her from talking too, since now she's implicated in the murder too.

[sistermagpie]

The familiarity factor is probably stronger than we like to think, you know? Like you said, she's been doing this for a long time. I remember arguing with someone once about Martha and they basically felt like she never would have fallen for this guy's line because she wouldn't believe he'd be in love with her. Basically they were saying this is what they would have thought, so felt she should feel the same way.

But I was like well, we know plenty of people who fall for even more obvious cons, and the key thing here is that it happens one step at a time. If Martha hadn't excepted the 12 steps that led her to this point she wouldn't be at the point now. So she's been easing into this slowly and each time making the choice to go along with Clark. It's very normal to her now. When the truth came out this wasn't something that blindsided her completely.

[theplatonicnonyeah]

I'm thinking Stockholm syndrome, actually. And also that normalisation of violence (or something else that goes against your original ideals). It's such a smooth transition Martha doesn't even notice it until she's already on the other side.

[sistermagpie]

I think in Martha's case it's more that she justified it rather than didn't notice it. I mean, the secrecy and lying has always not only been part of the relationship it's been part of the appeal. Even in his original cover story Philip was somebody she was breaking the rules of security by seeing. And Martha's broken some rules without even being asked--like by bringing home the files. But yet when the bug was found she suddenly acted like she'd been caught doing something really scary bad.