[9.4/10] In my old age (or at least what feels like it) I’ve come to realize that the acting I like the most tends to be small, often non-verbal stuff. I like a whole host affected, bombastic performances too, but there’s something about when an actor does so little, and does it in such subtle ways, but nonetheless lets the viewer know exactly how their character’s feeling, that consistently blows me away and leaves me feeling like that character is a real person, and not just a story-delivery system.
That seems to be the tack of “The Deal.” It’s an episode where Elizabeth and Philip are surprisingly quiet almost throughout. They’re not necessarily motormouths to begin with, but given their status as the main characters on the show, they’re often called upon to deliver the exposition or vocalize the problem or speak their minds in ways that help drive the action.
Here, on the other hand, the episode mostly consists of other people talking and our protagonists reacting, or in most instances, trying not to react and betraying just the hint of an emotional response that could nevertheless move mountains.
Now maybe that’s projection on my part. Katharine Hepburn is reputed to have said, “If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.” There is a lot of restraint in the performances of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys in “The Deal”, and maybe I’m just filling in the gaps as I see fit. But either way, those mostly one-sided colloquies, and the little bits of reactions we got to see, blew me away.
The most prominent of these is the conversation between Philip and the Mossad agent he and Elizabeth kidnap after the resolution of the cliffhanger from the end of the last episode. It turns out that Russia and Israel are both after the physicist the Jennings’ were scoping out, and after the Israelis nab him, Philip has to hold onto the Mossad agent who attacked them as leverage to try to get him back.
It’s the first spy business we’ve had that isn’t aligned purely the along the American/Russian dichotomy that the show’s set up so far. (A hint that there’s more to the story of Emmett and Liane than just KGB vs. FBI?). While Philip is understandably taciturn, the episode uses the loquacious Mossad agent to do a lot of compare and contrast, and Philip shows the way the ideas the guy is putting into his head, the life that he’s living, start to wear on him, even if he doesn't want to show it.
The Mossad agent is gregarious, charming even, despite being a prisoner. There’s a certain “it’s all in the game” quality in the dynamic between him and Philip that makes it compelling when he spins yarns about the Israeli intelligence service and compares his life to Philip’s. He talks about getting to go back home for Passover, about the sort of communism that existed in Israel, about hiding what he does and not who he is, about knowing his worth and, in effect, getting to have his own life, even if it’s a fraught life, making his grass seem greener in the process.
That’s not something Philip can say. When he returns home, he asks Elizabeth about the icicles as the Mossad agent mentioned, a sign that he misses the home he may never see again. And you can tell in their exchanges that as frustrated as Philip is with the hostage situation, as much as he tries to play the stern if occasionally yielding captor to the Mossad agent, the guy still managed to get inside his head.
It seems like there’s more rattling around in Elizabeth’s head than she let’s on as well. The parallel setup for her involves her running over to Martha’s apartment, posing as Clark’s sister once more, and talking her “sister-in-law” out of putting Clark’s name on an employment form that could blow their cover. (This is all thanks to a tip from a KGB-aligned guy who’s listening in on Martha’s phone calls, which is an interesting development.)
The scenes between Martha and Elizabeth are relaxed, fun even. There’s this odd sense that, despite the fact that Philip is holding a rival spy hostage and Elizabeth is working her semi-fake husband’s fake wife out of a jam, this is the closest the two of them get to a guys or girls night out. Elizabeth commented recently that the Jennings don’t have any real friends, and it’s interesting watching them experience these pseudo friendships and pull something out of what’s filling that space in their lives even when they don’t intend to. Each finds themselves paired with someone they can, in sideways ways, relate to, and ends up taking something away from the experience.
For Elizabeth, that’s quietly commiserating about what it’s like to be Philip Jennings’ wife in a way that only she and Martha could even halfway understand. And despite their sense that the honeypots are just a part of the job, there’s a subtle discomfort, maybe even jealousy, when Martha describes what it’s like to be with Clark in bed. (Though honestly, that’s a pretty weird thing to discuss with your sister-in-law.) It’s another thing that this job has taken away from them -- an unshared intimacy -- and the impact of that seems to hit Elizabeth in ways she didn’t anticipate.
Speaking of things weren’t anticipated, there’s a bit of a triple cross, or at least winding series of developments in the Stan/Nina/FBI/Rezidentura section of the show. Arkady is getting tired of Oleg throwing his weight around and presuming to be involved in everything, and Nina feels the same way. So while Nina feigns ignorance with Stan over the scientist kidnapping, she gives him just enough on Oleg to raise the FBI’s interest and get a team on Oleg’s tail to get him out of her hair. (A pretty cold move in the end, to be honest.)
That team involves Agent Gaad, who’s been effectively demoted but is a lot more fun as a teammate than he was as a boss. The FBI gang tails Oleg as a group, but he makes them pretty early, gets one-on-one with Stan, and offers a pretty compelling twist in the narrative. He knows about Stan’s arrangement with Nina, and basically threatens her safety if Stan doesn't cooperate with him. It’s an interesting layer to add to the existing seven-layer dip of deceit in that corner of the show, and while I’m not the world’s biggest Oleg fan, I’m curious to see where it goes.
But that’s mostly there for the plot machinations, whereas the rest of the episode seems to be about character studies for Philip and Elizabeth, and a broader commentary on life as a deep undercover agent. On the Rezidentura side of things, we get a little shading on Arkady and a bit more decency from him as he says he’s willing to ruin his career to save the Directorate S agents, but for the most part, that part of the episode is plot where the rest is about how the Jennings feel after these experiences.
And it seems like Elizabeth is starting to feel again. As in the prior episode, it’s hard to know how much of Elizabeth’s dealings with Brad the navy guy (who delivers the files on her target) are performance and how much are her true feelings emerging, but the fact that it’s hard to discern is telling. When Elizabeth talks about moving past her trauma, about how long it took to feel things again, about not having anything to give Brad, it could be a gentle kiss off, but it feels like something realer than that, something more about the hardship that Elizabeth is experiencing in the midst of her own emotional awakening.
Which makes for another intriguing contrast, as Philip, who’s is normally the more sensitive of the two of them, is doing everything in his power not to show any feeling whatsoever. When he trades the Mossad agent for the physicist, he has to chauffer the scientist to the extraction point, as the man slowly but surely realizes what is happening to him, and pleads, begs, and cries to a stoic Philip for any other fate.
It is, so far at least, the most heartbreaking moment in the whole show. The physicists’ tearful pleas are convincing, as he bargains in vain for a deal, for the slightest bit of mercy or reprieve, that Philip couldn’t deliver even if he wanted to. Philip keeps his upper lip stiff in these scenes, but his eyes do all the work, as the man asks to be able to see his family, to be able to hang onto his life, his child’s life, in a way that cannot help but be understandable and piercing to Philip.
So Philip comes home at the end of this and crawls in onto the couch next to Elizabeth. The day’s events have clearly worn on both of them, as Philip seems to think about the lives they’ve given up, the choices imposed upon them, in the midst of their mission, and Elizabeth seems to recall and wonder as well how things might have been different. But then the alarm sounds, and the day begins a new, and they are thrust back into this simmering war.
It is, characteristic to the episode, a quiet scene, on that lets the characters’ exhaustion, their doubts, come through in the performer’s expressions, in their defeated but comforted body language, as they share this private moment in between their myriad responsibilities, both personal and professional. It is an episode of nuance, a showcase for Russell and Rhys to give us the emotional journeys that Elizabeth and Philip are undertaking with just a handful of words, and speaking volumes in the process.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-07-19T23:26:36Z
[9.4/10] In my old age (or at least what feels like it) I’ve come to realize that the acting I like the most tends to be small, often non-verbal stuff. I like a whole host affected, bombastic performances too, but there’s something about when an actor does so little, and does it in such subtle ways, but nonetheless lets the viewer know exactly how their character’s feeling, that consistently blows me away and leaves me feeling like that character is a real person, and not just a story-delivery system.
That seems to be the tack of “The Deal.” It’s an episode where Elizabeth and Philip are surprisingly quiet almost throughout. They’re not necessarily motormouths to begin with, but given their status as the main characters on the show, they’re often called upon to deliver the exposition or vocalize the problem or speak their minds in ways that help drive the action.
Here, on the other hand, the episode mostly consists of other people talking and our protagonists reacting, or in most instances, trying not to react and betraying just the hint of an emotional response that could nevertheless move mountains.
Now maybe that’s projection on my part. Katharine Hepburn is reputed to have said, “If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.” There is a lot of restraint in the performances of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys in “The Deal”, and maybe I’m just filling in the gaps as I see fit. But either way, those mostly one-sided colloquies, and the little bits of reactions we got to see, blew me away.
The most prominent of these is the conversation between Philip and the Mossad agent he and Elizabeth kidnap after the resolution of the cliffhanger from the end of the last episode. It turns out that Russia and Israel are both after the physicist the Jennings’ were scoping out, and after the Israelis nab him, Philip has to hold onto the Mossad agent who attacked them as leverage to try to get him back.
It’s the first spy business we’ve had that isn’t aligned purely the along the American/Russian dichotomy that the show’s set up so far. (A hint that there’s more to the story of Emmett and Liane than just KGB vs. FBI?). While Philip is understandably taciturn, the episode uses the loquacious Mossad agent to do a lot of compare and contrast, and Philip shows the way the ideas the guy is putting into his head, the life that he’s living, start to wear on him, even if he doesn't want to show it.
The Mossad agent is gregarious, charming even, despite being a prisoner. There’s a certain “it’s all in the game” quality in the dynamic between him and Philip that makes it compelling when he spins yarns about the Israeli intelligence service and compares his life to Philip’s. He talks about getting to go back home for Passover, about the sort of communism that existed in Israel, about hiding what he does and not who he is, about knowing his worth and, in effect, getting to have his own life, even if it’s a fraught life, making his grass seem greener in the process.
That’s not something Philip can say. When he returns home, he asks Elizabeth about the icicles as the Mossad agent mentioned, a sign that he misses the home he may never see again. And you can tell in their exchanges that as frustrated as Philip is with the hostage situation, as much as he tries to play the stern if occasionally yielding captor to the Mossad agent, the guy still managed to get inside his head.
It seems like there’s more rattling around in Elizabeth’s head than she let’s on as well. The parallel setup for her involves her running over to Martha’s apartment, posing as Clark’s sister once more, and talking her “sister-in-law” out of putting Clark’s name on an employment form that could blow their cover. (This is all thanks to a tip from a KGB-aligned guy who’s listening in on Martha’s phone calls, which is an interesting development.)
The scenes between Martha and Elizabeth are relaxed, fun even. There’s this odd sense that, despite the fact that Philip is holding a rival spy hostage and Elizabeth is working her semi-fake husband’s fake wife out of a jam, this is the closest the two of them get to a guys or girls night out. Elizabeth commented recently that the Jennings don’t have any real friends, and it’s interesting watching them experience these pseudo friendships and pull something out of what’s filling that space in their lives even when they don’t intend to. Each finds themselves paired with someone they can, in sideways ways, relate to, and ends up taking something away from the experience.
For Elizabeth, that’s quietly commiserating about what it’s like to be Philip Jennings’ wife in a way that only she and Martha could even halfway understand. And despite their sense that the honeypots are just a part of the job, there’s a subtle discomfort, maybe even jealousy, when Martha describes what it’s like to be with Clark in bed. (Though honestly, that’s a pretty weird thing to discuss with your sister-in-law.) It’s another thing that this job has taken away from them -- an unshared intimacy -- and the impact of that seems to hit Elizabeth in ways she didn’t anticipate.
Speaking of things weren’t anticipated, there’s a bit of a triple cross, or at least winding series of developments in the Stan/Nina/FBI/Rezidentura section of the show. Arkady is getting tired of Oleg throwing his weight around and presuming to be involved in everything, and Nina feels the same way. So while Nina feigns ignorance with Stan over the scientist kidnapping, she gives him just enough on Oleg to raise the FBI’s interest and get a team on Oleg’s tail to get him out of her hair. (A pretty cold move in the end, to be honest.)
That team involves Agent Gaad, who’s been effectively demoted but is a lot more fun as a teammate than he was as a boss. The FBI gang tails Oleg as a group, but he makes them pretty early, gets one-on-one with Stan, and offers a pretty compelling twist in the narrative. He knows about Stan’s arrangement with Nina, and basically threatens her safety if Stan doesn't cooperate with him. It’s an interesting layer to add to the existing seven-layer dip of deceit in that corner of the show, and while I’m not the world’s biggest Oleg fan, I’m curious to see where it goes.
But that’s mostly there for the plot machinations, whereas the rest of the episode seems to be about character studies for Philip and Elizabeth, and a broader commentary on life as a deep undercover agent. On the Rezidentura side of things, we get a little shading on Arkady and a bit more decency from him as he says he’s willing to ruin his career to save the Directorate S agents, but for the most part, that part of the episode is plot where the rest is about how the Jennings feel after these experiences.
And it seems like Elizabeth is starting to feel again. As in the prior episode, it’s hard to know how much of Elizabeth’s dealings with Brad the navy guy (who delivers the files on her target) are performance and how much are her true feelings emerging, but the fact that it’s hard to discern is telling. When Elizabeth talks about moving past her trauma, about how long it took to feel things again, about not having anything to give Brad, it could be a gentle kiss off, but it feels like something realer than that, something more about the hardship that Elizabeth is experiencing in the midst of her own emotional awakening.
Which makes for another intriguing contrast, as Philip, who’s is normally the more sensitive of the two of them, is doing everything in his power not to show any feeling whatsoever. When he trades the Mossad agent for the physicist, he has to chauffer the scientist to the extraction point, as the man slowly but surely realizes what is happening to him, and pleads, begs, and cries to a stoic Philip for any other fate.
It is, so far at least, the most heartbreaking moment in the whole show. The physicists’ tearful pleas are convincing, as he bargains in vain for a deal, for the slightest bit of mercy or reprieve, that Philip couldn’t deliver even if he wanted to. Philip keeps his upper lip stiff in these scenes, but his eyes do all the work, as the man asks to be able to see his family, to be able to hang onto his life, his child’s life, in a way that cannot help but be understandable and piercing to Philip.
So Philip comes home at the end of this and crawls in onto the couch next to Elizabeth. The day’s events have clearly worn on both of them, as Philip seems to think about the lives they’ve given up, the choices imposed upon them, in the midst of their mission, and Elizabeth seems to recall and wonder as well how things might have been different. But then the alarm sounds, and the day begins a new, and they are thrust back into this simmering war.
It is, characteristic to the episode, a quiet scene, on that lets the characters’ exhaustion, their doubts, come through in the performer’s expressions, in their defeated but comforted body language, as they share this private moment in between their myriad responsibilities, both personal and professional. It is an episode of nuance, a showcase for Russell and Rhys to give us the emotional journeys that Elizabeth and Philip are undertaking with just a handful of words, and speaking volumes in the process.