But Oleg would then be able to say "No, my pilot fell through and this was Tatiana's pilot." Which is easily checked because her pilot is bringing the rat. And the Centre knows this because she's the person they arranged this with, not Oleg.

Yeah, I agree. I do think that's what it is.

But that makes her a terrible double agent. She'd be telling the Centre in advance that she knows Martha's going to be nabbed by the FBI.

It wasn't necessarily a secret. The KGB was looking for her and the phone operator seemed to know what was going on.

An American could never make her way into that position in Russia in the KGB. So far I don't think there's any reason to think she's working for the US. The pilot wasn't actually sudden, it was her own secret project to get the rat, I assumed.

Kimmie's into older. That's what's it's all about for her. So this'll only make him more attractive. :-)

I don't know what they're going to do—maybe they will kill her. It wouldn't totally shock me. Obviously they *would* kill her, since they would have done that here if she made too much trouble. I just don't see why it's so impossible that they would consider sending her to Russia, especially since they're saying…

It does—the real Illegals did apparently did try to recruit some of their kids but as far as we know there wasn't a lot of success. It's kind of funny to think, actually, of somebody thinking that the kids would be "not American" because of their parents when, of course, in the US having immigrant parents is just not…

Yeah, I agree. The most it could have done would be to prepare the parents emotionally for what was expected, but you can't raise the kids knowing the truth or even with values that are too unAmerican. That destroys the whole point.

I love that since Matthew Rhys was apparently a huge fan of it and used to like to recite the opening along with the show in his American accent.

I don't even know if that was originally the plan. Seems like something they thought about when the kids got older. I guess they could have been wanting to spring it on them later, but you'd think it would make more sense to give them a heads up.

Gaad does know they collaborated on a scheme last year and that Stan is meeting with him to turn him. He also pretty much knows, I think, that it was about Nina.

Insecurity doesn't always have to be rational, though. Elizabeth doesn't know how Philip and Martha interact. She doesn't see them. I think her insecurity was very well set up in how she's over the years tried different ways of being "inside" their relationship and failing, and also she's just always got insecurity…

My point, which may be different from your point, is that we have seen KGB agents on the show explicitly talking about getting Martha (who they know as the secretary that's been providing them a lot of intel) to Moscow. None of them have brought up any of the issues you're raising. Why are not only Elizabeth, Philip…

I think the fact that Martha is a loose canon definitely makes her different. If Gregory had taken the deal I would probably have just assumed he was fine. With Martha I suspect next week the problems of getting Martha out will just be beginning. She was calm at the end of this ep, but might freak out and need to be…

There was a scene last week where they talked about transporting a secretary etc. so that's what I was going with. Oleg has nothing to do with bioweapons so I think his pilot was meant for Martha.

I agree with you. I think Philip always held that out as a possibility, but he was no doubt adjusting Clark along the way. Every step with Martha was to see how far he could go. He seemed pretty happy just getting info from her when we met them before he kicked up the romance, so I think if she hadn't been open to…

Philip wrote it to Elizabeth in The Colonel at the end of S1 and we think he maybe also said it in Mutually Assured Destruction before Elizabeth kicked him out. Elizabeth has never said it.

I wondered that too. As a teenager, she's stuck with the Christian thing for pretty long. Even without the shocks she's gotten in her personal life it wouldn't be unusual for her to start exploring a different self. Not necessarily acting out with drugs and alcohol, but I couldn't help but think when she asked for the…

We've seen them talking about arrangements for Martha specifically—but Tatiana's arrangements were for the rat, as I understood it. The two just came together when they decided to use the same plane.