I'm going to say Martha's fate is a bit better than Nina's and Anneliese's and Gaad's and whatever other corpse that's come up. I know it's not the life she wanted at all, but if she was a lonely Russian woman who'd come to the US and was living in an apartment and her only friends were the translator and the guy who…

You're right, I don't know why in my last post I started talking as if this was a prediction. I did know the whole thing was hypothetical either way. I really just meant to say that I couldn't rule it out as totally impossible for the characters.

Of course, you could be totally right. I don't have any inside information on where the show is going or anything. But so far Holly Taylor's favorite acting choices are stricken, bravely vulnerable and (in her best scenes) outright weepy. It doesn't seem satisfying to use a time jump to make her Action Spy Paige after…

Yes, I get what you meant, but we've seen Paige develop over 5 seasons and for her to become a badass in the last 14 or so eps would be like if Elizabeth, who's also been developing over 5 seasons, turned into Martha by the end of the show. It's not about whether she's studious or whether or not she's clumsy, it's…

LOL! And iirc, Henry's response to her question of if he was "in love" with Mrs. Beeman was to say "That's disgusting!"

Heh. Well, Stan didn't. And Stan was sleeping with a known KGB agent he was coercing into working for him. This guy at least picked a defector trusted enough to work for the CIA.

I agree. And also, don't put "conflicts within my marriage" on the table as an acceptable subject of conversation with Claudia who spent all of season 1 trying to break you up.

Which you'd think would make the CIA—and the guy she's sleeping with specifically—very suspicious.

Gabriel was not a guard in any camp. Philip's father was a guard in a different camp than Oleg's mother was in.

I think part of the reason for that is that she'd be totally unbelievable in it.

I guess I just get the opposite impression. They have plenty of moments when they're not fighting, but I really don't see them as particularly close. The incident with the hitchhiker is pretty much the only time they seemed particularly allied with each other. (And since Henry wet his pants saving her ass, I wouldn't…

Why would Tuan hesitate to hurt Pasha if he wasn't a double agent? This is his job.

God, that just reminded me of a skit I wrote/was in in high school where we did indeed make the Sugar Smacks frog an addict. It was the 80s.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I think she's starting to get closer to the place where she can actually have a life without it. I just think the conflict for her partly comes from the fact that her entire life has been built around the idea that this is what she is and it's what makes her life meaningful,…

I don't even think she does wish it was unneeded. I think she's terrified of facing life without it.

Back in s3 she found a picture of Mrs. Beeman in Henry's room (she was stripping his bed, I think). Henry got upset, Paige was all "Are you in love with Mrs. Beeman?!" and Henry denied it, said the picture wasn't his, and Paige then maybe realized she was really a dick and so gave it back to them.

I'm sure the Soviets can take care of their own math needs without having to resort to an eighth grader good enough to be moved up to algebra II.

They don't want or need the dad to go.

Yes, and that would be terrible for her even if she didn't have to kill anybody or sleep with anyone for it. Look at Philip's source Charles—I'm sure his alcoholism is supposed to be connected to his double life.

I thought that too. I think Elizabeth is disturbed at the idea of Paige not being a spy. It's her way of keeping them close. Plus she probably takes it as a personal failure to think of Gabriel thinking Paige shouldn't be a spy. So she not only talked to Claudia about Philip and Paige, she thought it was important to…