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FeeCJ's Replies
Interesting question. Depends on what happened to Paige. Did she get in trouble? If so, was she ever allowed a passport due to her background? Henry was an innocent. But he also might have had problems getting a passport. But maybe they could emigrate and be allowed to do that. So it's an interesting question!
Agree absolutely. That look on Renee's face was not "our Renee." She watched with narrowed eyes, intent assessment, an un-recognizable expression and face, completely different from the always jovial Renee that was her cover. You could see the wheels turning.
My guess was that she may not have been taking the baton. She had to know with the Jennings' clearly gone, something went down. And that Stan would be in the Feeb cross hairs as would she.
After lingering in the driveway to assess what was happening, it looks like she had decided something. She walked back into the house, and likely was going to emerge in a few minutes, her purse in hand like she was going on an errand, to go instead to wherever her safe house was, get her bug-out bag and head for the train to Canada, too.
Stan burned? Jennings and being found out. She has to get out of there immediately, if she's one of them.
I was leaving conclusions open about Renee all the way along, until the final scene. That tied it up for me. She was a foreign agent. OR undercover Feeb or US Marshall because Stan had come under suspicion at some point, and someone wanted to do a deep surveillance all around.
But foreign agent is more likely, due to the marriage happening.
But one way or another, the camera lingering on Rene''s face at the end, close-up, watching her intently watch the Feebs crawling all over the Jennings' house. It told the tale.
Oh happy clappy smiley Renee. Always energetic, up for a good time. Hm.
None of that was present in the driveway. Her face had dropped every hint of every expression we've ever seen from her--it was cold, calculating, her eyes narrowed and watching the activity across the street with a very piercing professional air to it.
Finally. She turned and walked back inside. IMO, they showed us what she was right there--the actress played it perfectly. Not little softy Renee.
That "Renee" was someone else, someone who had dropped her act when alone in the driveway. You could see the wheels turning.
Somebody else she was, for sure. Who though? That we don't know. What do we want to bet she went back into the house, got her purse, got in the car to "go shopping," went to a place where her bug-out bag was and was on the next train to Canada?
That's my vote.
The Jennings are gone. Stan's finished with the FBI. Toast. She ain't gonna stay around until the the Stan thing disintegrates and she's brought in for questioning? Hello Canada.
Yes! I remember watching it the night it premiered on tv. It was an amazing opening to a series for sure! Don't remember anything like it before that.
Always was. And if they'd stuck to the every day stuff and not succumbed to having them constantly killing people, the show might not have lasted more than one season on its merits as a deep character study in a very weird world! Ha.
This.
The plot was to have the run to the Canadian border be successful so that they could later be seen at home in Russia. If authorities were on the platform, and caught Paige, they'd have caught Philip and Elizabeth, too.
Abandoning a finale to a cheap arrest chase would not have worked with the show's whole theme.
The power of Paige's end was in having Paige "escape" from the safety of her parents' well-planned bug-out plan, as a result of Paige's per usual over-confidence in her own righteousness, to return to Granny's flat where she was just being groomed as the next generation and never knew that's all it was.
Paige finally did herself in. Well done. She's alone. No place to go but the streets to try to live anonymously?
I suspect Paige was knocking on Stan Beeman's door in a day or two. Come what may, though good luck to Stan. Best friends with a sleeper family for years.
Oh dear oh dear. Bye bye pension.
It has been awhile since seeing it, but glad to see there is an active board.
As for Paige, if memory serves, she was very open to being the next generation sleeper. I think she bought Granny's act, hook line and sinker, really--which was only grooming of course.
Paige decided no RU for her, she was feeling estranged from her parents so thought no, I'm not going to RU with them. Why not just stay and serve?
So, she went directly to Granny, which was logical, because that was of course a safe place and she likely thought Granny would be there for her and bring her in as a operative in some way.
IMO, that is why that scene is so poignant. She must have realized then that her parents were trying to protect her by getting her to safety with them.
Because now she's sitting in the vacated apartment, not knowing what to do next. There's no real Granny. No real apartment. No real anything. Her parents' op has been rolled up.
She's been had.
In 2024 they would be crying and telling reporters that the coach was making threatening micro-expressions.
Good point!
Yes, up there with the greats. Wish there were more Sandbaggers fans around in my world to discuss the show. One thing that American audiences might have missed that made the show more layered was the obvious social class games that were going on, especially with Burnside.
It reminded me a lot of "Jewel in the Crown" in which, if you did not understand Ronald Merrick's character, his background, why he'd have ended up as a colonial police officer, the social class situation between him and Hari Kumar, etc., key motivations for the characters is entirely lost.
I miss the old British shows before international streaming began, when they were made for a British audience, so were imbued with a lot of "inside baseball" social signals for characters that let you understand them without the show having to spell it out in dialogue. Merrick was one of those characters.
IMO, without understanding Burnside's and Merrick's place in the British social pecking order, so much of what they do and the reasons they do it are lost on a viewer and just the plot remains and some interactions seem confusing.
I miss the old IMDB message boards. In the early days, it was an amazing place to trade insights and background information people brought to the table. Dare I say, this early idea of boards was "civilized." Ha.
Mad Men had to be one of the better boards of all time then, an example that quip about the British blood being spilled!
The first MM comments that were a hint about where social media was beginning to take young people, was a threat in which some young female viewers said they would not watch this "disgusting show!" because of the way women were treated by the men and company and why was this even allowed on TV? "This needs to be banned!" (This was the first season time period.
The other classic, entirely predictable "I'm not watching this disgusting show," came from the threads complaining that the show's cast was unacceptably white and not diverse. This might actually be amusing even now, except that of course the modern Georgian-era costume dramas regularly have half of their cast of artistocratic nobles being played by African-American or Afro-Caribbean actors.
So joke's on me.
That was the time when an oldie like me realized for the first time, really, that young people in spite of the internet and accessibility to information, were not being taught nor exposed to any kind of history or social context before "today." It kind of shocked me at that time, because that was not the case with previous generations who seemed to realize "things were different in the past."
Yes! Only Mad Men could pull off that scene. It's why it was probably so iconic. They just went places time after that time that nobody in TV had ever visited before. And you had the combo of the actual combat veterans in the room (like Don and Freddy, though I don't remember if he was still at the agency then.)
Always remembered one of the best Freddy moments. Don called all the folks into his office in a kind of "look at what ad agencies are producing now!" lesson, and he was holding up a page from the NY Times that was blank, except for the theretofore unknown photo of a little Volkswagen Beetle up in the corner.
Nobody says anything, but Freddy squints up at it and says, "Last time I saw one of those, I was throwing a hand grenade into it."
Yes, it had all the hallmarks of having been made for and shown on a bottom-feeder simplistic network like ABC, rather than the original AMC (when it was a class act channel and not what it became later), when AMC was more high concept and made Mad Men in the same way we hoped Pan Am would be made -- a careful recreation of the time and place that folks could look at and take in, along with great characters and plots that went deeper than a car park puddle....
But ABC? If ABC were a person and not a network, they'd have an IQ of 70.
I had very low expectations and they were met (not the casting or perfect design though, except for the absurd too-young captain with hair so long in the back is stuck out in shards below his cap). Ha.
No pilot in those days had hair that long. It just showed that ABC was more interested in having some of their "stars" look modern to cater to their fan base and it cheapened the whole thing. Imagine Don Draper without the 1960 haircut, haha!
In the espionage category, only The Americans rises to the quality of writing and acting and theme that Rubicon achieved. It's deep, multilayered and intense, and so smart it probably is not going to appeal at all to shallow surface spy thriller fans.
Two sleepers trying to pretend to be Americans for decades -- while doing their ops right under the noses of the DC crowd -- leads to endless amazing personal and professional stories.
And no spoilers....but as a series finale, The Americans comes in Number One of every series I've ever experienced. Gripping does not cover it!!!
Just cannot describe it, because no series finale has ever been quite like it. And it delivers right up to the final few seconds by leaving a "hmmmmmm........" scene that, after everything else is tied up, leaves you wondering.............wow......could it be????
Ha!
No, a woman! We need a female Shaft....hahahaha.
The mission was not only to go in the kill the scientist, it was to eliminate the people who had done the mission to kill the scientist to hide the whole operation with the scientist, so that it had zero loose ends.
The guys who came after Pine to eliminate him and his team were one level removed from the scientist mission, so once Pine's team was gone, there were no living leads back to the scientist, except Kiefer's character who originated it.
Costner encountered more than one time when Bo did not tell the truth, not just the way he avoided answering about the birthday party.
And another regarding the $100 bill when he lied, again. Costner told his guys it was a matter of character he was concerned with in recruiting. And as a leader, Costner thought that counts, especially in the long run. When you are so disregarded by your own team mates that you they won't attend your 21st birthday party, that's a pretty bad "character reference" and it's a red flag.
It was put into context much earlier than Costner relayed the amazing story of what leadership in the QB is all about. With an anecdote about Joe Montana. When they were in the huddle in an absolutely critical moment, Joe kind of lightened the moment by saying hey is that John Candy in the stands? The guys relaxed a bit with the slight distraction. It broke the tension and they went on to make the key play. Montana managed a tough moment.
So, Costner nailed his standards to the mast with that story, that you can't be an ass as a person and be the kind of quarterback he wants for his team. And also his first pick Vonte gave the ball to his dying sister, even though it got him kicked out of the game after multiple sacks of Bo. He only did that after he'd sacked Bo so many times he was severely shaken the rest of the game.
Character.
SPOILERS
It made me wonder if in the true Hollywood tradition, the actress's agent began demanding a lot more money for the next season now that her role was upgraded, so they said, fine, we'll make it so you may....or may not...be written out. haha
Been done before, if memory serves.
Yes, other than the key characters like J Edgar and Billets etc., the biggest loss for me was Jimmy. His twisted smile irony always was one step ahead of Bosch's intensity. He was just not having it, ha.