I enjoyed this latest episode as well. I think that this Matthew Rhys guy is outstanding.
I liked “Haig could have ten nuclear footballs and it still wouldn’t be a coup.” That’s what pissed me off so much about the direction Last Resort went, if the President is part of a cabal inciting war on false pretexts, staging a coup is the dumbest possible response in our political system, about the only one that is guaranteed to fail in the long term.
It is, however, completely believable that people steeped in a culture where coups are part of the political landscape would expect one here, since it’s the “normal thing” for them.
Good stuff in the latest episode, although the casual way that Elizabeth offs the security guard was a little much–I know she’s a trained badass and everything, but her training is about 20 years back and she doesn’t shoot dudes in the head every day, I’m sure.
She’s done violence on the show before, and she’s prepping for guerrilla warfare, and scouting out Weinberger’s house for a sniper attack, so I’m not seeing the problem. That she shot him came as no surprise at all to me, it was clear it was heading in a direction that they couldn’t talk their way out of.
Besides that, they’ve made it clear that they conduct active operations regularly from the very first episode, so I don’t think she’s as out of practice as you’re assuming.
I guess I worry about her becoming an unsympathetic character by breaking that stuff out too soon (I like the show and I don’t want it to lose ratings). Yeah, I know they’re Soviet sleeper agents so they’re by definition anti-heroes at best, but that stuff has to be finessed, and I don’t think Keri Russel’s character (or the actress herself, honestly) is so likeable that the audience will give her a pass for killing a relative innocent, at least without showing signs that she’s somewhat conflicted about it in the aftermath.
Compare the violence done by Phillip so far to this murder: he killed the defector when he found out he had raped his wife years back, beat up the pervy creeper pedo, and kicked the two dudes asses that were crowding him at the military secrets buy. All of those guys in a way had it coming.
I was a bit surprised how casually she killed the security guard as well. It would surprise me a lot more of Phillip had done it though, and I do hope we see Phillip feeling uncomfortable about that, given what they’ve established so far.
They were both prepared to kill a complete innocent in order to get that transmitter into Weinberger’s study. I agree that they have established that she’s the believer and has a lot fewer qualms about violence that he does, though we’ve seen him do more hand to hand, starting with the first few minutes of the first episode where he fought the defector.
Agreed, the show has made it clear that they are both willing to do violence to innocent people to avoid capture or the failure of their mission (the maid and her family a few episodes ago, plus others).
I saw the bullet to the head as part of the costs of doing business. On its face it was a cold blooded move, but to a soviet spy in the 80’s it was a step in the process of keeping your cover intact and your entire family safe. That’s what they do. It is not an easy option and not the most desirable, but it was necessary.
Picked up for another Season of 13 episodes, btw. Woohoo!
I’m definitely enjoying it. It’s not Rubicon (the espionage part of Rubicon, not the goofy uninteresting conspiracy theory Rubicon main story), but it’s still espionage done better than it usually is on TV.
Cool I hadn’t heard that. I must say that is a fear I have of getting into new shows. Chances are usually good if I like it the show won’t have a long life.
Wow, I’m really glad to hear about it being picked up for a 2nd season.
I just caught up on this show and so far I’m enjoying it.
What I find kind of funny is how technology has gotten rid of so many avenues for plot progression or exposition. Instead of someone having to physically go somewhere to locate and capture information, nowadays we just beam that information through a text message between two disposable cell phones, requiring new extra-ridiculous tropes to compensate (the data is super-duper encrypted and requires a piece of hardware hidden in a military installation in order to read it… yeah!).
Elizabeth did another murder this episode (2/27), and much more deliberately than the last one. I think they’re establishing her as very cold blooded.
I keep wondering whether these murders are going to come back around to them somehow. Maybe not the one from yesterday’s episode, but the impromptu one from last week surely must have left some physical evidence.
What evidence? It’s 1982, I think? Matching DNA isn’t even on the radar at that point. Besides, these two are still ghosts. Nobody at all knows to look out for them.
The Reagan attempted assassination episode was just last week, and that happened early in '81, I seem to recall that it was in March, but it may have happened even earlier. You’re right that DNA wasn’t really a factor in law enforcement forensics yet at that time.
Yeah 1981.
I just saw the… fifth episode (the one from March 6) and man, every episode is better than the last. The two main leads are killing it, the story is moving along, and the twists and turns are coming nonstop. Now that I’m used to the setting, I’m also loving revisiting the early 1980s.
I’m enjoying the show as well. They are hitting their stride, I think. I hope they do not lose focus on the spycraft and veer too far into full relationship drama (even though that is an important angle, of course). I thought last night’s episode was quite good, how the pieces slowly fell together on the mission.