The Great Patriotic War

It’s a growing war in the Jennings household.

The rift between Elizabeth and Philip is far greater than a disagreement. It’s a full division of ethics, morality, and political ideology. Since Philip decided to remove himself from the spy mission, he and his wife started living separate lives, all the way to the point in cleaving the parenting responsibilities in half. Paige to Elizabeth and Henry to Philip. Philip, from day one of the idea of getting Paige on board with the spy mission, has been opposed to it. He’s sat on the sidelines, in the dark mostly, on how Elizabeth is teaching Paige and the problems have gotten so bad, it’s becoming a danger outside of the house. Paige is taking risks and making terrible mistakes. And it’s all comes down to Elizabeth.

I’ve said that Elizabeth has been using (teaching) kid gloves with Paige for far too long and it’s blowing up in her face. She’s letting Paige make too many mistakes. Where others would have been let go, Paige is continuing to be used on missions. It’s nepotism at its worst. This time, Paige gets into a fight at a bar and throws down to physically defend herself. She’s known there so she’s drawn a huge spotlight to herself. “You can never go back there.” “Yes, I know that.”

Paige asks her mother to spar to blow off steam (and practice) where all of her transgressions come out–and Philip is there for it. She gets mad at her mother and snaps back, throwing an attitude far beyond her age and training. Sex comes up and that throws Phillip for a loop, forcing Elizabeth to tell him about the college intern mark Paige has/had in her sights. Elizabeth tries to talk him down, that she told Paige in no certain terms to not honeypot this guy to make him a source. With the bar fight, Elizabeth gets a much brighter picture that Paige isn’t meant for this line of work. When she says it to Philip, that he was right, he angrily tells her that “I said she would be able to do it. My point was that she shouldn’t do it.” Not only is he angry that his message was completely ignored, he’s furious over what Paige is turning into. The spy lessons may not be sticking too well, but the propaganda is.

Elizabeth spends way more time with Paige than Philip now. It also looks like Elizabeth and Philip don’t spend much time together. They definitely don’t have the bond they used to. Elizabeth is using Paige to keep the Soviet fight alive since she pretty much lost Philip in that role. As Elizabeth sees it, him stepping away from the work, is a giant step away from her. She can’t confide in him, she can’t work things out with him, she’s doing all the heavy lifting by herself. I think she resents him for it and that’s inadvertently seeping into Paige.

Philip is so flustered by finding out all that stuff about Paige during the sparring match that he goes to her apartment to talk to her. He asks if her roommate is around and when she says no, he finally speaks up about what she’s doing with her mother. Paige let’s loose with a flippant comment along the lines that he isn’t like her or Elizabeth, they see the world differently than he does now. It’s serious shade thrown at him and I’m not sure if she even realized it. I certainly did when his whole demeanor changed. If Philip was mad before, this pushes him over the edge. He tells her to attack him, show him what she’s learned, all the skills that Elizabeth has taught her on the quest to “save” the world.

He straight up dominates her. She’s tentative at first but he makes it clear he isn’t playing around. It’s a reality check from her father with anger fueling it. Oh, so you know what the world is like? You know everything? You think you’ve been in the trenches with your mother? You know nothing. He easily blocks every single one of her attacks and reverses the ones that leave her wide open. He could have easily choked her out but simply pins her against the wall, unable to do anything. This shocks the hell out of her. He is far more capable–and dangerous–than she ever thought he was. Paige still thinks the American source killed himself in front of her mother, she has no idea the extent of the darkness her mother, father, and those who have worked with them have done.

So with this battle going on, it was heartwarming to see Elizabeth and Philip come together. It had been so long since we’ve seen them express any sort of compassion to each other, it felt like a major milestone. Maybe things would start getting better between them. The morning after the lovemaking, Philip is a bright and bushy tailed man. After he makes Elizabeth coffee she lays down a bomb at his feet. Kimberly leaving the country, away from her father, is a problem. She needs the information the tapes they get stashed with her father. All other missions have failed and it’s desperation times because the summit is getting close. She needs him to do a hail mary mission: meet with Kimberly in Greece, get her to go to a communist country, plant drugs on her, and get her arrested. This will allow them to yse Kimberly as leverage to get her father to tell Elizabeth everything she needs to know. Then, Kimberly will be released and Philip will be all the way out of the spy game. Elizabeth will never ask him to do anything for the Soviet Union again. After a while, Philip agrees to do it. But…would he have said yes if Elizabeth didn’t break the ice last night? Did she honeypot her own husband to manipulate the decision in her favor?

Philip meets up with Kimberly and floats her the idea of visiting her in Greece. She doesn’t go for it and he ultimately crosses the line with her to get her to change her mind. After years of not getting physical with Kimberly (she was underage after all), he sleeps with her to change her mind about Greece. She wouldn’t be meeting up with her friend, but her boyfriend. He’s back doing everything he resents. When Elizabeth asks him if Kimberly agreed to the meet-up, he says yes but doesn’t tell her what he did.

Through all of this, Elizabeth has blinders on. She’s laser-focused on doing the work her homeland puts her on. Figuring out the summit is just one problem, Gennadi is the other. And she’s made much more progress on Gennadi. Following Stan has paid off, they’ve found him. Elizabeth is on the hunt and after one close call in an alleyway, she sneaks into his apartment to kill him. What she didn’t realize though, is that Sofia has come with their kid to spend the night. She tries to bail on the mission but gets caught, killing both parents and leaving the child to discover them murdered just feet away.

Stan is devastated when he arrives on the scene. That day he was hanging out with Gennadi, bored out of his mind wishing he wasn’t being forced to babysit this guy. Hours later, the people he swore the bureau would protect for their help are dead. Right underneath the nose of protection.  I think it’s safe to say he’s having flashbacks of Nina.

Stan mopes into the Jennings household the next day and finds Philip alone eating lunch. Over a drink, Stan tells him about the two Russians who were killed last night and Philip has a hard time hiding his honest reaction. It’s one of shock and disgust. While he explains it away to Stan as being surprised at hearing such a thing (which is true) he knows that it was Elizabeth.

Before this, I thought Philip had already been pushed to his limit. His fight with Paige was a physical manifestation of his anger and disgust. This news seals the deal, Philip completely flips. He calls Kimberly from a phone booth that night and severs ties with her. He will absolutely not help Elizabeth in any way now. He goes a step further than “breaking up” with Kimberly, he cryptically warns her about her trip. Stay in Greece, do not leave with anyone that approaches you. Come right back home. I think this is the first time Philip has risked outing himself. This is massive.

Philip has planted his flag firmly in American soil.