I’ve rewatched the scene. Oleg’s father says “What you sent him there for, it didn’t work then”, and Arkady replies “Yes”. I read that as “Yes, it didn’t work.” I can see the argument for ambiguity, since the question was phrased in the negative, but in context, I think my reading is just more plausible.

At this point…

Fair enough. I’ve just realized I’ve been making “fridging the girlfriend just shows how important she must have been to the hero”-argument, and of course, that never flies.

Stan doesn’t delive the tape - he lets Elizabeth escape so that she can deliver the message herself. We see them make contact with Arkady, so we can assume that Oleg’s mission suceeded.

Couldn’t disagree more.

I’ve learned to stop questioning people’s emotional reaction to traumatic events. People react in very different ways when their world is shattered and it’s rarely what others who never had that particular experience would expect. I don’t think there’s a behaviour that could properly express all…

Yeah, he was outnumbered. And those two are professional killers. Although even Elizabeth at her most ruthless might hesitate killing a long-time family friend in front of Paige. Unless of course things got really desperate - and they were absolutely headed that direciton....

 Throughout the scene I couldn’t decide…

Gotta be cruel to be kind. Philip knows exactly what kind of harm’s way spies might put their marks in, and I assume that he himself in that situation would want the heads-up. But this is really one of these cases where the golden rule tends to fail, because people often have such dramatically different preferences…

I would have loved to get some confirmation that Oleg will really be fine, but I agree the implications of the ending give reason for optism. When Oleg’s dad gets the news he immediately looks for ways to bail him out, and is shot down by Arkady, because Oleg had been on an inofficial mission which failed. By the end…

My impression as well.

I read that less as a general indictment of all pet names for kids, but more as a recommendation to not use pet names for people you’re not actually that close to, just because they’re younger than you. It’s the presumption of intimacy, not so much the concept of a pet name per se.

I really don’t think Liz ever wanted Paige to do more than passing along info. If I remember correctly she says “It will be different for you.” Paige was never intended for that sort of mission Liz is doing.

I hope you like to write fan-fiction, because I have a feeling that after next week I’m going to be in the market for fix-it-fic.

Elizabeth totally did shoot back. “Sex, pff, nobody cared about that, INCLUDING YOUR FATHER”. I trust Paige to get the implication.

I think he’d feel relieved, and horribly guilty (about his part in setting Elizabeth against her, and also about feeling so relieved about her death). But certainly relieved. Their last meeting left no doubt that he’s made a powerful and vicious enemy in her.

I kinda admired the character and was sad to see her go out…

Thanks for that ray of hope. I think the only way I can emotionally survive the last episode is seeing Oleg back with his wife and kid.

Agree. Poetic irony calls for Philip, since he’s the one better suited to build a new life. Also, I’ve been having a sense of foreboding since last season, when Elizabeth couldn’t be reached by the Nazi Collaborator’s pleading to spare her husband and killed him in front of her. Maybe poetic justice calls for Philip…

She despises him for it? I never got that at all.

I doubt his talk about “it’s on us, all of it” would have gotten through to her the way it apparently did, if she didn’t hold him in high esteem.

[Never mind, everyone else already adressed the rotation]

My gut tells me the same. I felt such a strong sense of threat when she came to him while he was looking out of the window.

Eh, the portmanteau thing seems a bit like a non-sequitur. So zedonk means zebra and donkey, nice, but how do you build on that?

Exactly! People can feel more than one thing at a time. But I guess the “blatant metaphors are distracting”-camp would argue it dilutes the power of an emotion to have it tainted by another bleeding into it.

But yeah, not an issue for me. My emotional reactions are basically never “pure” in retrospect, and as far as I…