Daily Archives: April 26, 2017

The Americans S5E08

Immersion

Each piece on the chessboard moved a space this week.

First, the kids. A very quick check in with Henry. We see him play Atari with two friends. The girl is most likely the one he has a crush on (Elizabeth asks Stan if Henry has told him anything about this girl and Stan says he’s been sworn to secrecy so he doesn’t give an answer). Paige, as usual, has much more going on. We get to see her in a garage training session with her mother and she’s come a long way. Elizabeth has clearly taught her some moves and Paige is able to keep up with what is being thrown at her. She’s much less timid and has a decent mastery of strikes and evasion.  While Paige seems more confident, she’s down on breaking up with Matt and confides that she’s tired of being scared. The progress is good but there’s still a long way to go. Seeing this, Elizabeth opens up to Paige, telling her many years ago that she was raped. She understands how Paige feels and tells her that through her determination and training she has been able to overcome it and move on. The mental fortitude to know that no one will be able to hurt her again is what keeps her strong and confident. Later one when Paige is bumming around the house, Elizabeth gets her to go on a walk with her. Again, she opens up to her daughter even more. I think what we see them discuss during the walk is the longest and the most meaningful conversation they’ve had on the entire series. Elizabeth is making great strides to connect with and teach her daughter.

In the Soviet Union, the KGB gets suspicious of Oleg and come sniffing around his (parents) home. They don’t find anything because he destroyed the evidence from the FBI. That could have been a disaster.

Stan and Dennis meet up with their new mark. After being largely spooked by the last conversation they had with her, she’s now very open to helping the FBI. The rewards they have offered her seem to best the risks she will be taking to get them information. Interesting stuff watching them teach her how to observe without raising suspicions.

Claudia has taken over Gabriel’s position, much to the chagrin of Elizabeth and Philip. Especially Elizabeth. They’re very short with her, making it clear that it’s going to be strictly business. Claudia will update them on what The Center is doing and wants them to do. They will handle things as they see fit with no input from her.

Now for the mission. Alexei’s wife, Evgheniya, has begun teaching. She updates Elizabeth on how it’s going and mentions some of her students and that she’s going to go to one of their houses to teach the group in a less formal setting. This is great news for Elizabeth and Philip, they’ll be able to get all of her students on film to get ID. They follow her around and discover that she’s having an affair with a man named Bruce. The Center pegs him as a likely important transplant to Moscow when he’s ready to go and they want Evgheniya to be with him when he does. An easier flip if his mistress is with him. So the mission hits a pivot point: how do they get the Morozov’s to go back to the Soviet Union? Tuan comes up with a plan that might work.

Finally, The Center still wants Philip and Elizabeth to work their marks to keep up their connection to the wheat samples until they hear back about the sample Gabriel took home with him. Elizabeth’s mark, Ben, says he’s upset he won’t be able to see her that week (she’s got to work the Morozov angle with Philip). It seems sincere (remember, he isn’t keeping an exclusive relationship) as does Elizabeth when she says she looks up to him for the work he’s doing. Philip’s mark, Deirdre, has been a shaky connection from the start. When he calls her to tell her about not being able to see her for awhile, she’s cool with it. So cool, that she breaks up with him. Apparently, he’s not assertive enough. Philip is visible knocked down a peg. When he tells Elizabeth she wonders if he deliberately scuttled the relationship by not committing. He says no and gets down on himself, “Not everyone is as good looking as you are.” Quick to react to his self-doubt and crumbling self-confidence she rebuilds her partner. “If you want to get her back, you can.” Philip takes those words to heart and calls Deirdre to get her back. Using the “assertive” angle on her, he reels Deirdre back in quickly. With Philip being a pale imitation of himself for awhile, it’s something to see him get back on point.

 

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

The draw to go back to the world of Harry Potter is a strong one. I’ve always thought author JK Rowling would produce more Potter material for movies, I just never thought she’d open that door using a character that is more or less mentioned in passing.

Fantastic Beasts is about writer and magic zoologist Newt Scamander’s (Eddie Redmayne) trip to New York City in the 1920’s. Newt is an eccentric man with a love and respect for every kind of animal you can imagine. His life mission is to study and share his findings of the magical animal kingdom.

He enters New York during a trying time for the magical community. A magical creature is terrorizing the locals and threatens to expose the magic citizens in a largely No-Maj (the American term for Muggle) city. The magic government officials are up to their eyeballs trying to fix the problem and here comes a guy with a broken suitcase that lets out more trouble. While Newt scrambles to gather his escaped critters, he finds himself on the frontlines of identifying and stopping the creature that is running amok in the city.

Fantastic Beasts is classic JK Rowling. She goes back in time to let more creative and loveable characters loose to make friends and get into trouble with a twist or two at the end for good measure. A strong central character with morals, the comic relief sidekick, the strong-willed but often dismissed hero in training, the monster in the dark and the red herring are all here.

There’s a lot of Harry Potter canon at play. Rowling uses the rise of the wizard Grindelwald (Voldemort’s precursor of evil) as the immediate backdrop. This places the story in a time of great interest and possible expansion of the Potter universe.  The Halfblood Prince (and some of Deathly Hollows) gave fans the biggest insight into how Potter history started, how Albus Dumbledore got to where he was when Harry got to Hogwarts. Grindelwald was a major part of Dumbledore’s life and set the path for Tom Riddle to become Lord Voldemort and try to take over the Wizard world with his own dark agenda. Aside from the obvious ties to the franchise, there’s quite a few easter eggs for sharp-eyed fans to find.

One thing I appreciated on this new Potterverse tale is that everyone is an adult. There’s no learning to be done. The rules of magic are well established and they’re all accomplished wizards so its spells galore. The final act had a really impressive action sequence that only the later Potter movies made it to.

Overall, I think Fantastic Beasts is a successful movie. Really well cast, characters to care about, good special effects and direction, excellent soundtrack and a great heart that comes through at the end. Newt is very easy to dismiss as simply a weird guy at the start but as Kowalski (our gateway character to this world) spends time with him he opens up as a complex and endearing character. As the movie went on I felt like I was getting to know Newt well. He’s someone who I would honestly want to meet in real life. It’s these kinds of characters that Rowling is so adept at making.

With this new base established, I’m curious and excited to see where Rowling takes it. This could bring us to the point where we get to see Voldemort’s ascension to power, see the original Order of the Phoenix fight back, and get to the fateful night of Harry and his parents. Out of anything Rowling could write, I want this more than anything else.

Exciting stuff for those, like myself, that are inclined to the Potterverse.