Dead Hand

Here we go!

Some time has passed since we last saw the Jenners. It’s 1987 and they’ve gone forward with the plan of staying, with Philip retiring from the spy game and Elizabeth continuing the work. Henry is now at board school and has a spot on the hockey team. Judging by the girls in the stands cheering him on, Henry is doing well socially as well. Paige is now in college (I think she’s a junior) and has stuck with her parent’s secret job. She informs her mother about a certain professor at the school and she’s in what looks like regular contact with Elizabeth’s handler, Claudia.

Philip and Elizabeth now live separate lives. The change in Philip is immediately apparent. The travel company is thriving in new, larger, offices. He’s into line dancing, he’s got a sweet car, and he has the time to go see Henry play hockey. Elizabeth is in the trenches. She’s up to her eyeballs in the shadows. She’s working some kind of angle in someone’s home as a caregiver and another job has her managing a man in a honey pot scenario. Then Claudia sends her to South America to meet in super secret, a Soviet general.

Philip is happy. He looks much better, he genuinely smiles. He digs what he does at work (we watch him give a rousing pep talk to his employees) and he’s embraced line dancing like you wouldn’t believe. He knows the steps, he loves the environment. Elizabeth is burning herself up at both ends. She never stops working for the Mother Land. She looks dower and exhausted every waking second. They made the right moves for each other. Philip is no longer at risk of imploding and Elizabeth still has the drive to solider the immense pressure and responsibility for spying for the Soviet Union.

Paige is committed too. She’s actively doing work with Elizabeth, staking out men who are involved in the huge summit meeting in Washington between Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev that is coming up in 9 weeks. There’s another woman working with them but she doesn’t know that Paige is Elizabeth’s daughter. While on the job, a guy who works at the nearby Navy facility (looks like he’s on security duty) notices her in the car. While investigating her, he pulls a shady move to get her to go out with him over the weekend. He asks for 2 forms of ID and she gives her drivers license and school ID. He keeps the school ID as collateral to get her to come out on Saturday.

When Paige meets up with Elizabeth later, she’s upset that she was noticed by security. But Elizabeth reassures her: you did everything you were trained to do. You didn’t raise suspicion and gave him fake info. It’s nothing to worry about.

Now this mission from the South America meeting is a massive one. The man she meets tells her of Dead Hand, the Soviet “last resort plan” to strike the United States with nukes should America strike first. The system is being built to be completely automated. One person needs to start it and it can’t be stopped. He and his side of the “old” government are afraid Gorbachev is going to give away the Dead Hand project in return for the US to stop their “Star Wars” defense program at the summit. They believe that the US can’t be trusted in these negotiations, that have to keep Dead Hand, and it’s very existence, to keep the Soviet Union together. Elizabeth is on board. Her mission is to find out what’s going to happen at the summit. If Gorbachev intends to sell out the Soviet Union, they’re going to have him killed to stop it. And in a chilling move, the man says, “Now that you know of Dead Hand, you can’t be arrested” and gives her a necklace with a cyanide capsule hidden in it.

And then Philip is drawn in from the other side. Back in Moscow, Arkady is now in command of the program that runs the spy operation, basically Elizabeth’s boss. He finds out about Elizabeth meeting with the Soviet general and that was not sanctioned. Soviet leadership has splintered. The general represents the side that wants no change, that the US can’t be trusted. Arkady represents Gorbachev, that it’s time to change politics to keep from being left behind in a changing social and economic world. Arkady needs to know what Elizabeth’s mission is and he can’t use his power because there are defectors all over the place. It would tip off the other side. So he seeks out Oleg, now a family man working for his dad in transportation to fly to the US to talk to Philip. This is crazy dangerous for Oleg. If he gets spotted in the States, he’s never getting out of prison. If he gets caught by the anti-Gorbachev movement at home, he’s dead. Arkady leans on Oleg’s patriotism to get him to go.

Using the old dead drop techniques to contact Philip, Oleg meets up with him (I love the spy stuff so much). Oleg uses the same lines that Arkady used on him to get Philip to move. At first, Philip swears up and down that he wants nothing to do with this, he’s been out for years. But Philip has embraced America. He doesn’t disparage his new home like Elizabeth and Paige do (and it’s unclear how in touch he is with what Paige is currently doing with her mother). So Elizabeth is for the status quo, while Philip is for the change. They’re on different sides in the same house. And then there is the ominous final request Oleg gives Philip. If he finds out Elizabeth is ultimately up to no good, stop her at any cost..,

Elizabeth takes matters into her own hands with the Navy officer. She figures out where he is the same night Paige meets him (which is also the same night Philip meets Oleg) and shanks him on the street! Elizabeth took this dude out with extreme prejudice. She doesn’t want anyone to know about Paige and made the executive decision to cut off this threat then and there. A burst of violence and extremes in an otherwise calm episode.

Finally, Elizabeth returns home. Another brutal day, another life on her hands. Philip wants to talk to her right when she walks in. She’s in no mood to talk and shuts him down at every turn. More than just wanting to sleep, she’s angry at him. Jealous too? It must make her boil that all of this is up to her now. For the longest time they shared the burden and like she told Tuan last season, you need someone to be by your side for this line of work or you’ll never make it.

Now, I’m not sure what Philip was going to tell her. I got the sense he wanted to tell her everything because he doesn’t want to play spy in his own house. He’s done with it and wants to warn his wife of what’s going on. But would he have? He lets her go upstairs without saying anything and I don’t know how he’s going to approach this now.

Riveting start and I skipped over Stan (still with Renee) and the Anderholts (Dennis being Stan’s partner) who now have a baby. There’s a very brief scene with Renee seemingly fishing for info (is she a spy?) while Elizabeth eavesdrops.

The honey pot scenario was left entirely alone but the caretaker job got some significant looks. I didn’t catch what the husband does but there was a rather large focus on the ill wife being an artist. She constantly draws and Elizabeth pays no mind to it until the woman talks to her about it. While this woman is very attuned to things, very observant to create (she draws Elizabeth while she’s sleeping at one point), Elizabeth is very detached. She doesn’t care or think about anything beyond her mission. Elizabeth tells her she doesn’t really look at art and the woman laughs. When Elizabeth does focus on one of her rather haunting works, you get a sense that she sees herself.