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shallowness) wrote2022-04-06 07:38 am
shallowness) wrote2022-04-06 07:38 am
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I know I'm a step or two behind
The Ipcress File - ep 4
For future reference, because, yes, the blackout during the adverts happened again during the final ad break, switching the TV set off at the plug worked, unlike everything else I tried.
I should note that I couldn’t read anything, not the translation of the inscription on the back of the photo; not the note on the door, although I got that Harry matched the writing on that to notes on a file; nor the sheet Harry tore out from Lady Psychiatrist’s notebook. I also didn’t know what Jean had picked up until she handed it in to Maddox. On top of the vision issues, I was tired when watching it.
Harry and Jean are sent somewhere sunny again, with him still dealing with having taken another life, and not really buying Dalby’s revelation that the dead man wasn’t a Soviet operative, but American, and without having talked much to Jean since the aftermath of the kiss at Beirut. The question was: would the latter overshadow their mission effectiveness? Actually, duty over personal feelings or the complexity of managing both would also apply with Dalby.
Maddox isn’t as good an intelligence officer as he thinks he is, is he? I bristled at his first conversation with Jean, which ended up being about Harry, but suggested the American was underestimating her.
The episode was big on with-holding information from us, at first we just got the most general briefing from Dalby to Harry about the mission, but then it was revealed that Dalby had instructed him to focus on Lady Psychiatrist and Jean on Maddox - using both attractive young people as honeytraps, perhaps not recognising that they might have feelings about watching the other do that. Or if they did, expecting them to be repressed and English about them.
The most important thing that Harry told Lady Psychiatrist was that her colleague had been shot dead while doing similar work to her. Poor Abducted Physicist. Considering they want him for his brain, they’re really damaging it badly. It’s kind of awful.
And the show’s not a nuanced picture of the American military. Aside from Lady Physicist’s point about the swaggering males, the captain was being a bit unreasonable in how personally he took his friend being killed. I know we’d seen the killing from Harry’s POV and that it was self-defence, but it was on a mission with guns. Although he seemed to be just bluster enhanced by the soundtrack, or was Harry (back in military jail) more injured at the end than I appreciated?
Anyway, we had therapy, Americans thinking they knew what was going on with Harry and Jean, Maddox telling stories and giving both Jean and Harry a detail that indicated that the other wasn’t the source of his knowledge about their relationship breakdowns.
Of course, they lost the physicist, but Harry found out more about the case, and finally, four episodes in, the word ‘Ipcress’ arose. Jean tried to warn him, and had gained Maddox’s confidence, because of the underestimating of her and the men seeing Harry as more of a threat.
Meanwhile, I had to eyeroll at the angry American agents in Finland, Dalby is as much a spook as you are (and better at it because it’s a British story) so of course he was going to be adroit at shaking off a tail. That moment when he pulled Chekhov’s gun out of his hat and shot all the Soviets was stone cold, though, and we got repressed nuzzling with the rescued Lady Physicist. Striking, as he’d looked out at his wife (also blonde) gardening earlier that there are no children, plus that the missus didn’t even act suspicious at Jean’s call, which we knew wasn’t what Maddox thought it was.
Anyway, the montage of (overly cocky) Randall getting ‘tied up’ as it became clear what the American had done was chilling. I hope the defecting Lady Physicist gets to show some physics chops.
Killing Eve 4.3? Rainbow in Beige Boots
New move with the title cards naming characters not locations (I am not going to pretend that some supporting characters’ names sunk in with me.) Villanelle let herself in at Eve’s, the morning after the killings before. Eve tried to play it as if she wasn’t affected and carry on with the Helene fall-out. Villanelle kidnapped the psychiatrist in his own home, and they had a ‘maybe you’re not a psychopath if you’re trying to change for Eve’ conversation. Of course, she then inadvertently managed to hurt the shrink, and had done it to get Eve’s attention, as Eve observed, and then Eve betrayed her by calling in armed forces.
In the meantime, Eve deduced Helene didn’t know that much more than her, but following up on her now ex, fake bonding with her by talking about Villanelle like her perfidious ex, Eve found out that Helene had probably started something with Fernanda because of the latter’s ex-husband. Of whom there was a picture that I couldn’t make out, but apparently we’ve never met him before.
Carolyn did some less important or interesting information exchanges with her handler, but it looks like she’s going to Cuba to interview someone from the Twelve who survived Helene’s attempted hit.
Helene wasn’t having the best of time also because Pam, formerly baby!assassin, was bugging her (in fairness, how was Pam meant to know Eve’s MI5 history? Okay, she should have known she was a player.) Anyway, Pam’s life was all dead bodies and abusive brother, for the guy at the funeral parlour was that, and she snapped and killed him instead of letting him continue to abuse her physically. Helene was not happy, because Pam ‘wasn’t ready’ and called in Konstantin. So, he’s back in the game, while Villanelle is in a cell.
(It was distracting enough from health concerns, but no more than that.)
For future reference, because, yes, the blackout during the adverts happened again during the final ad break, switching the TV set off at the plug worked, unlike everything else I tried.
I should note that I couldn’t read anything, not the translation of the inscription on the back of the photo; not the note on the door, although I got that Harry matched the writing on that to notes on a file; nor the sheet Harry tore out from Lady Psychiatrist’s notebook. I also didn’t know what Jean had picked up until she handed it in to Maddox. On top of the vision issues, I was tired when watching it.
Harry and Jean are sent somewhere sunny again, with him still dealing with having taken another life, and not really buying Dalby’s revelation that the dead man wasn’t a Soviet operative, but American, and without having talked much to Jean since the aftermath of the kiss at Beirut. The question was: would the latter overshadow their mission effectiveness? Actually, duty over personal feelings or the complexity of managing both would also apply with Dalby.
Maddox isn’t as good an intelligence officer as he thinks he is, is he? I bristled at his first conversation with Jean, which ended up being about Harry, but suggested the American was underestimating her.
The episode was big on with-holding information from us, at first we just got the most general briefing from Dalby to Harry about the mission, but then it was revealed that Dalby had instructed him to focus on Lady Psychiatrist and Jean on Maddox - using both attractive young people as honeytraps, perhaps not recognising that they might have feelings about watching the other do that. Or if they did, expecting them to be repressed and English about them.
The most important thing that Harry told Lady Psychiatrist was that her colleague had been shot dead while doing similar work to her. Poor Abducted Physicist. Considering they want him for his brain, they’re really damaging it badly. It’s kind of awful.
And the show’s not a nuanced picture of the American military. Aside from Lady Physicist’s point about the swaggering males, the captain was being a bit unreasonable in how personally he took his friend being killed. I know we’d seen the killing from Harry’s POV and that it was self-defence, but it was on a mission with guns. Although he seemed to be just bluster enhanced by the soundtrack, or was Harry (back in military jail) more injured at the end than I appreciated?
Anyway, we had therapy, Americans thinking they knew what was going on with Harry and Jean, Maddox telling stories and giving both Jean and Harry a detail that indicated that the other wasn’t the source of his knowledge about their relationship breakdowns.
Of course, they lost the physicist, but Harry found out more about the case, and finally, four episodes in, the word ‘Ipcress’ arose. Jean tried to warn him, and had gained Maddox’s confidence, because of the underestimating of her and the men seeing Harry as more of a threat.
Meanwhile, I had to eyeroll at the angry American agents in Finland, Dalby is as much a spook as you are (and better at it because it’s a British story) so of course he was going to be adroit at shaking off a tail. That moment when he pulled Chekhov’s gun out of his hat and shot all the Soviets was stone cold, though, and we got repressed nuzzling with the rescued Lady Physicist. Striking, as he’d looked out at his wife (also blonde) gardening earlier that there are no children, plus that the missus didn’t even act suspicious at Jean’s call, which we knew wasn’t what Maddox thought it was.
Anyway, the montage of (overly cocky) Randall getting ‘tied up’ as it became clear what the American had done was chilling. I hope the defecting Lady Physicist gets to show some physics chops.
Killing Eve 4.3? Rainbow in Beige Boots
New move with the title cards naming characters not locations (I am not going to pretend that some supporting characters’ names sunk in with me.) Villanelle let herself in at Eve’s, the morning after the killings before. Eve tried to play it as if she wasn’t affected and carry on with the Helene fall-out. Villanelle kidnapped the psychiatrist in his own home, and they had a ‘maybe you’re not a psychopath if you’re trying to change for Eve’ conversation. Of course, she then inadvertently managed to hurt the shrink, and had done it to get Eve’s attention, as Eve observed, and then Eve betrayed her by calling in armed forces.
In the meantime, Eve deduced Helene didn’t know that much more than her, but following up on her now ex, fake bonding with her by talking about Villanelle like her perfidious ex, Eve found out that Helene had probably started something with Fernanda because of the latter’s ex-husband. Of whom there was a picture that I couldn’t make out, but apparently we’ve never met him before.
Carolyn did some less important or interesting information exchanges with her handler, but it looks like she’s going to Cuba to interview someone from the Twelve who survived Helene’s attempted hit.
Helene wasn’t having the best of time also because Pam, formerly baby!assassin, was bugging her (in fairness, how was Pam meant to know Eve’s MI5 history? Okay, she should have known she was a player.) Anyway, Pam’s life was all dead bodies and abusive brother, for the guy at the funeral parlour was that, and she snapped and killed him instead of letting him continue to abuse her physically. Helene was not happy, because Pam ‘wasn’t ready’ and called in Konstantin. So, he’s back in the game, while Villanelle is in a cell.
(It was distracting enough from health concerns, but no more than that.)