She seemed to be mulling it over. . . it's a tough sell, but just the first of many that Elizabeth will have to make if she's serious about turning Paige into an illegal.

I wondered about that too. . but then I figured it was probably Ncgobo who chose the site, so he could have had just about anything prepped in advance.

Well. . . no argument is perfect.

Elizabeth knows nothing at all about Christianity, but her comment to Paige that fighting for true justice can often mean breaking bad laws and risking the consequences is exactly the kind of argument that will resonate powerfully with Paige's religious beliefs.

The place will be shut down tight. . . but it's already the headquarters of U.S. counterintelligence- how much more tightly can they shut it? They'll install a security camera in Gaad's office (and we'll probably see a tight close-up of it 2 episodes from now, as Beeman is moving his stuff in) and maybe another one on…

I don't know how high Claudia's official rank was, but in practice she was entrusted with great power and immense responsibilities. Running the KGB's illegal operations in Washington D.C. is as serious as it gets.

That's an excellent point. In fact, I think the whole immolation sequence was just a setup for the quietly harrowing scene when Elizabeth (sincerely??) reassures Todd that he doesn't have to worry; he doesn't deserve to die like that and she won't let in happen; all he'll get is a quick, pain-free bullet to the back…

Martha's an odd duck, as we've known all along. She's brilliant, reclusive, and packed to the gunwales with resentment at being relegated to taking steno notes in front of Gad's desk when she ought to be behind it giving orders.

A middle-ground possibility is that she says she'll keep spying for Philip, but in fact is just playing for time. What with Gad on high alert, Taffet still poking around, and "Agent Unusual" presumably on the prowl to catch the real mole before the department decides to pin the whole thing on him. . . nobody, not…

I think Oleg's dilemma is the opposite of Stan's. His biggest fear is that Stan could turn out to be right, and that he'll have unwittingly helped him take down a deep-cover agent.

Another outside possibility (in my opinion at least as likely as her confessing) is that she willingly agrees to keep spying for Philip and the KGB. That's the smartest play she has at this point, considering her motivations. . . and it would make for an extremely interesting plot twist.

No- but for someone with no experience in this sort of thing, she's a quick study. She didn't blurt out her suspicions to Clark right away - she kept them to herself. And she deflected Taffett's inquiries almost as deftly as Philip himself would (and probably better than Liz). She revealed what she knew about Clark at…

I'm not sure that Martha wants to talk. . . if Taffet isn't sharp enough to catch her (and it certainly looks like he's not), then this whole thing goes away. Bluster aside, he can't keep poking around and around in the offices of FBI Counterintelligence forever- he'll eventually be forced to either arrest someone or…

It's the "unexpected" part that makes me think that the collateral damage won't be Martha. She's about as "expected" as collateral damage can get.

I don't think so… Liz knows bone-deep fear when she sees it, and I think she's right. After what Todd has seen, I think he really *is* done.

Actually, microfiche seems a little bit high tech for 1983. Paige was lucky not to have to use microfilm on motorized reels.

Ah crap, I just made that joke. Re-edit? No, because the longer version of that joke has already been written as well. Bank shot the South Park episode reference to Captain Pike with the dude who burned to death? Eh. Live with the shame.

Whoah… shades of Captain Pike!

The irony, of course, is that it's 1982 and the Soviets don't actually have a couple of decades to wait around in for their long-term plans to bear fruit. The Centre's cultural focus on the "long game" is probably one of the things that's blinding them to the fact that they no longer have one.

Probably. . . although wasn't the actual head of counterintelligence for the CIA in this time frame a KGB mole?