It's only key if anyone apart from Hitler and The Man have any idea they contain views from alternate realities. If the others have no idea that's the case, there'd be no reason for them to guess that. They'd assume them to be simple propaganda films, resistance meetings, or degenerate art.

He looked at photographs of his brother in a family album in the first season, and they obliquely referenced his euthanasia.

I liked it. Just because he's a directionless schmuck doesn't mean he didn't legitimately feel fantastically shitty about the looming slaughter of tens of millions he could do nothing about. He thought his father was an apolitical, fairly chill engineer who was a top-ranking government official but not a bloodthirsty…

No one's suggesting you do. We're just objecting to SVD complaining about all the shades of gray as if it's some fault or oversight on the writers' part when it's obviously the show central conceit. Sure, it could be a popcorn Resistance knights vs. evil Nazi dragons show with the same premise, but it isn't.

Agreed - but him being hypothetically okay with the bluff doesn't mean he's aware it is one. I doubt Tagomi explained his dimension-hopping adventure to Kido, and even if he did, I double-doubt Kido would have explained that to Smith. So either Smith knows the film is from another world but has no idea how Kido got a…

First, you mean Tagomi and Kido or Kido and Smith; Tagomi and Smith don't interact. Second, IIRC, they discussed whether it was possible the film could be fake, and concluded it was too realistic to not be real. And indeed, it is real - just real from another world.

No, it's genetic. His brother also had it.

To be fair, this series is now about ten times as long as Rogue One, which I liked, but won't argue that it really bothered to develop its squad.

As I understand it, the existence of the films are fairly common knowledge among the top Nazi brass, but not the fact that they depict alternate universes. They probably just think they're cheap, amateurish Resistance propaganda mixed with pre-war footage of various now-banned cultural stuff. Remember that when the…

Indeed. Has SVD not seen Star Trek's "The City on the Edge of Forever"? As Kirk and Spock acknowledge, Edith Keeler had the right idea - pacifism - but at the wrong time (shortly before WW2). In complex stories and the real world, being moral and upstanding does not guarantee a good outcome, or even your helping to…

At this point, sheer revenge would be a key consideration there, I'd think.

I can understand mini-reviews that only consist of Random Observations, but not a lack of grades. If a critic has seen the episode, why not a grade? Sure, ideally, there might never be a grade without a full review, but sometimes one just has to damn the torpedoes.

Hombre, we're talking about a map on a wall, not key plot points or even dialogue.

I think you may be underestimating just how much damage growing up in a totalitarian system does to one's conception of one's own psyche and free will. (Barbara Demick's "Nothing to Envy", about ordinary North Koreans, is a fascinating case study of this.) Joe grew up in the American Reich, under the part-time eye of…

I'm well aware of that. Yes, the show's premise is absurd on multiple levels. At some point, one has to either suspend disbelief or walk away entirely. The writers obviously don't much care about Russia or Texas in this scenario. It is what it is.

Indeed - which, again, is the opposite of laudatory, but also entirely understandable. His FWB at home was on to him and told him they were done. So what is he supposed to do, accept a menial construction job and crappy life on principle, or stick around Berlin, with all his potential there (silver-platter-handed…

The US Neutral Zone isn't a hotbed of resistance; it's just an impoverished area not worth the trouble and limited human resources for policing. I imagine that, apart from certain resource strongholds, the Reich feels the same way about most of Russia/Siberia.

"Joe has gone full Nazi, armband and everything, but it’s OK because he’s
not really down for the cause, he just always wanted a father. Ugh."

I appreciate the thought, but that's almost certainly artistic license, and not any extremely subtle hint that the "our" reality is not actually ours.

In New York, he had a shitty construction gig and a FWB who was sick of his crap. In Berlin, he's got servants, money, connections, and a hottie girlfriend handed to him on a silver platter, as well as a chance to be part of history. Why wouldn't someone with his lack of convictions stick around?