I hope Elizabeth never ever finds out that she killed Lois Smith for this.

I think at least part of him means that sincerely. . .and rightly so, because in this instance he's telling the truth. Defeating the Afghan Mujahedin is one of the vanishingly few instances in which a Soviet victory really would have made the world a better place, and reduced the sum of human misery.

Taffet's problem, though, is that there are too many possibilities for him to eliminate. The person who placed the bug might as well be a ghost. The thing could have been there for years, and could have been placed by any number of people, including former employers and the custodial staff, none of whom can be…

Paige definitely needs to develop that skill, and by all appearances she's working very hard at it. Philip and Liz seem to know this, which is why they're being so careful not to tell her any more lies.

It's probably Russia, but it could also be Paige's mission to Kenya.

Like Philip, Nina's ability to convince her targets that she cares about them is rooted in her ability to convince herself that she cares about them. That is, the relationships that they start out faking have a tendency to become at least partially real.

The saddest part of this is that it might very well have been both of those things for Elizabeth. Philip is used to that kind of dislocation (biology dictates that he has to be), but Elizabeth probably doesn't have to do that enough to get used to it. . . and it's impossible to ever truly get used to it, as Philip's…

It's hard to tell. . . Martha was originally asked to plant the bug in the pen as a last ditch way to try to figure out whether the "Colonel" who gave Phil and Liz SDI plans in a drop and wanted to meet with them personally was for real, or if the whole thing was a trap. That incident ended in a shootout between the…

That's a exceptionally great observation. . and it makes me recall the scene in the movie theater where the "defector" a/k/a Agent WILLOW was watching "Tootsie", which is a perfect example of the kind of movie you're talking about.

That's just the thing, though- Martha's not a prime suspect in the bugging. In fact, going by Taffet's interactions with her, I'm not sure she's a suspect at all. Which is bewildering incompetence on Taffet's part, but I get the impression that the FBI's culture doesn't take women seriously enough to consider Martha…

Exactly. Also, the thought that was probably burning in both of their minds as a source of white-hot anger was the fact that the harassment that they'd just sat through would have been socially unthinkable if the second representative from SC&P had been a man instead of (Joan/Peggy). . . which is phenomenally annoying…

If your theory about the heart attack is right, then that could definitely be the "flight" he missed.

I wasn't sure about the empty elevator shaft when it first happened (maybe Don is so unflappable that he wouldn't be alarmed by that occurrence, and also enough of a narcissist that he so much as bother to call maintenance or warn the receptionist that the elevators were messed up and could get someone killed) but in…

They did- although, come to think of it, even that part of the meeting was kind of depressing. . . because the deft, flawless skill with which they deflected those comments could only have been formed by suffering through a long chain of equally horrible meetings over a period of years.

Also the best, though - they were both inexorably professional and collected through that gruesome meeting, to the point where the imbeciles across the table from them ran out of vile insinuations and were forced to finally take them seriously.

They had to be true to their characters, and to the social realities of the era that the show is about. Under the circumstances, knowing them both, the conversation that we saw was the only one that they possibly could have had. The only alternative (and it would have been almost as eloquent) would have been a long…

Is anyone else interested in the fact that Don is having hallucinations about death with increasing frequency? The reviewers don't seem to be focusing on this, but I think it's worth mentioning.

I also loved Don's incredulous response: "You'd rather get new creative [i.e.: start from scratch] than pick a girl?"

Thanks, Tom. In that case, I think that might very well be part of why she's out to destroy Agent Gaad. Even though on the "real" tape he came off better than the rest of them (a very low bar), on the edited version, Gaad sounded like the worst of the lot.

To me, the most interesting thing about Pastor Tim is how he seems to function as a kind of Rorschach Test of how people feel about religion. The producers have been very, very good about giving us subtle reasons to trust him and distrust him, for a wide variety of reasons. Just about every stereotype about religious…