Moving on and we are entering the unknown!
Gates, rather elaborate gates…
Rene Sinclair: Duclos took a great deal of money with him when he fled the island.
[Okay, I gotta remind myself- who is this Rene Sinclair? Billy said something.. Ah yes.. Potential upcoming president of Ile de Marine. Rofl. Love these made up countries! I wonder if that’s next to Cap d’Afar? ]
Sinclair: That money is desperately needed to revitalise the country’s economy. And I need to return that money.
[How to liven up some boring exposition? Put a cute doggie in the picture!! 🙂 me like! ]
Blackthorne: The people? That’s your first priority.
Sinclair: Right.
[Sinclair sounds like he thinks Blackthorne will also be on board with that. Like- of course!]
(A guy appears at the door)
Blackthorne: Yes, Landers.
Landers: Telephone for Mr Sinclair, Mr Blackthorne. It’s Mrs Sinclair, Sir.
Sinclair: Thomas, if you’ll excuse me.
[Ohhh so bad guy is Thomas, not Joseph. -well spotted Nancy!]
(Sinclair makes his apologies, shakes Blackthorne’s hand and leaves)
Blackthorne: Yes, of course.
Sinclair: It was a pleasure.
Blackthorne: Say hello to Maria for me.
Sinclair: I will. (Sinclair leaves)
Blackthorne: I’m afraid I misjudged our friend Rene. He’s on a crusade to clean up the island. I doubt that we can do business with him anymore.
[LOL at the dopey look on Landers’ face!]
The scene ends here.
[and LOL at the elaborate tea/breakfast or whatever that’s laid out. Why do baddies always have to be so elaborate?!
So I guess my question has been answered – Rene Sinclair is a good guy, who has been unknowingly mixed up with a bad guy. So.. what happens to someone Blackthorne can’t do business with anymore? Umm.. they get run off the road and over a cliff?
Hmm.. he is certainly a two faced liar. He seems to have Sinclair fooled so far.. Ugh..
Lastly, before we move on to the next scene – can I just suggest: watch this scene and only look at the dog! So excited to see a Golden Retriever on smk! (how about you 2 Goldens?!) Goldie here seems to be excited, wagging his tail and wanting to go somewhere off camera, but I think the handler is making goldie stay in the shot. Watch! You can see the dog goes to leave a couple of times and stops Too cute!
I loathe this Blackthorne but he has great taste in dogs ]
Moving on, we see a hallway!
Lee’s jacket..
We hear a key turning.. and in comes Amanda!
[Amanda has a key?! ]
Amanda calls out: Lee?
(Amanda enters and seems to be putting away something.)
[Oh wait! that’s one of Lee’s old manicure kits (i.e. lock picking kit)! Amanda picked the lock to Lee’s apartment and let herself in?! Woot Woot!!
I mean we don’t really know what these two are like now they started a romantic relationship.. but if she is picking his lock- she doesn’t have a key – i.e. he hasn’t given her one! To me, it seems things are still pretty new and they haven’t progressed too far with the commitment/mixing of their lives? thoughts?]
Amanda notices the jacket hanging, and moves further into the room..
Amanda: Hello?!!
She notices all the photographs spread out on the coffee table and picks a few up..
She hears a noise in another room and heads that way.
We see Lee lying on his bed, asleep in his bedroom.
[My goodness Lee has changed his bed sheets/set too?! No more grey stripey dreams huh I guess Lee is sleeping so much because he slept poorly the night before… those dreams were probably impacting his sleep.. ]
Amanda enters the bedroom quietly, putting down her handbag.. she quietly tries to rouse him from a distance
Amanda (quietly): Lee.
No effect. so she quietly creeps closer.. [LOL why would you be quiet when you’re trying to rouse him?!]
She leans down over him.
[Umm she kinda lingers there a moment before speaking up IMHO 😉 makes me wonder what kind of ‘comfort’ she had in mind here
]
Amanda: Lee, are you all right?
[Love the visuals here with the light coming through the blinds. Way to go KJ love the directing ]
(Lee grabs her upper arms with both hands, and flips her over onto her back on the bed. She shrieks in alarm. He jumps on top of her, pinning her down.)
[LOL check out this image below I captured..
Amanda’s legs go flying and her head goes under the pillow.. tee hee.
LOL BB can’t quite manage it in one smooth move ]
Lee pins her down by the shoulders.. and then seems to realise it’s Amanda. [I guess he was half asleep half awake, maybe he thought Amanda was the shadow looming in the hallway..]
Lee: Amanda?
Amanda: Yes.
Lee takes a moment.. then becomes indignant!
Lee: What the hell are you doing here?
The scene ends here.. hoo haaaa.. and goes to a commercial break.
I think we are left to wonder for the commercial break if Amanda came to proposition him I mean I think they are teasing the audience a little here with this cut away! Just a little… whoooo why is Amanda there?! did anyone think that?
Grrr.. there’s certainly plenty of heat going on here between them – on Lee’s bed!
I better pause here.. While smk teases us!! What do you think guys?!
The whole time I am watching, I am thrown by how young Blackthorne looks. The show starts in 1955… and Blackthorne was already an established spy. Let’s say he’s 30 back then… then in the present day, it would be like 31-32 years later. I don’t think Blackthorne looks over 60….
I LOVE Amanda waking him up an him flipping her over on the bed… I wish he hadn’t been angry and instead leaned down to kiss her for three days…. sigh
(I’m new here and posted a few comments as “Christi” but then I created an account and changed my name.)
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I’ll go back and adjust your previous comments to this same handle. it’s all good!
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Thanks! I’m thrilled that I found your site! Really nice group of people talking about my favorite show!!! And YOU are hysterical!!!
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rofl. yes I am a little crazy sometimes but.. I like to think I’m in good company – and the wonderful people who stop by here share in my style of crazy 🙂
Thanks LeeLovesAmanda, your comments made my day!
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Maybe Blackthorne uses the same face cream that the baddie used in Welcome to America, Mr. Brand – because he didn’t age either.
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I wonder how I would have felt if this episode had aired as the first of S4. After their long-awaited kiss in ATWAS plus a long wait for the next season to air, I probably would have been nonplussed with Lee and Amanda’s interactions up until this bedroom scene. I don’t find it particularly romantic as Lee seems quite irritated at first for having been woken up and to find Amanda in his bedroom. Reading Morley’s comment about what may be going through Lee’s mind helps explain it for me.
Had this been the first S4 episode, I think I would have been trying to figure out just what their relationship was. How did it progress over the off-season break? What are we supposed to assume? Initially they looked pretty happy – flowers and the desire to ditch work by Lee. But we can see that Lee is in a new apartment and Amanda has upgraded her station wagon to a big sturdy SUV kind of vehicle. We know she knows how to pick locks, so with the new more capable car and her ability to just pick Lee’s lock (Seriously? The baddies must not know where Lee lives.), it appears that Amanda has upped her spy game.
But I’m seriously confused about their relationship. Lee is all warm and fuzzy and then literally closes the door in her face. If I were her, there is no way I’d go to his place and pick the lock, so it’s a good Amanda is not like me. That seems to be stepping over a boundary. But Amanda obviously doesn’t think so and thinks it must be okay for her to do what she is doing.
So far I just find this episode very confusing. Even Francine is showing a vulnerability we’ve not seen before. What the heck? 🙂
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BJo!!!!!!
Great you could stop by!!! I know RL has been keeping you really busy..
Did you share your thoughts on ATWAS?
I agree – confusion was the main experience of the first part of this episode! I felt the same way.. pervading confusion..
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Frankly, I’m not even convinced this episode ought to be in Season 4 at all. To me it makes much more sense to me at the end of 3. Then we get the summer break while they become “regulars” 😉. Then we get Stemwinder. Although I think we’ve all noticed that SMK’s sense of time is a little sketchy anyway, so there certainly could be a huge gap of time between episodes 1 & 2 (or in this case 3 & 1
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I wonder if Blackthorne tried to manipulate Sinclair in any way or he just assumed that Sinclair was selfish like him. He seems surprised that Sinclair’s first priority is the people of his country. How did he not know this about the man before? So much for friendship.
Amanda’s concern for Lee seems to have overshadowed all of her previous hesitations about snooping through other’s things. She’s always had this aversion to going through hotel rooms and other people personal, private things. But this is different because she knows Lee and she knows something serious is going on. Her desire to help Lee and be there for him is outweighing any qualms she has about picking the lock to his apartment.
I think she knows he was there, she couldn’t miss his car in front of the apartment and she sees his jacket. I think she stewed about it at home and just made up her mind to go for it. I didn’t think anything about this exchange between them other than what it was–Amanda checking on Lee and Lee being surprised to see her. Maybe I was still young and naive at the time, but I didn’t see anything romantic or racy in the situation or in the fact that the scene ended and went to commercial. Considering everything that has been going on and where Lee’s focus has been, along with the fact that he’s been pushing Amanda away, it would have felt a little disjointed and out of place for it to be a romantic or racy thing. I just didn’t get that vibe or feel that there was any teasing. The only thing I questioned was just how much their relationship had progressed from the time we saw the kiss until now.
There is no way I could sleep with my hand laying on the nightstand as Lee’s is. That has to be uncomfortable.
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I meant to comment on this! Almost missed it!
I think the episode doesn’t tell us the answer to this interesting question.. but my thinking is that Blackthorne saw an opportunity to help someone gain power – with the assumption that having helped him, when it was time for him to ask a favour – Sinclair would oblige..
Plus, it was also very good PR for Blackthorne. Nothing covers up a baddie’s true character better than doing good things.
However, Sinclair’s unexpected, and unambiguous declaration here that he will put his people first is the direct opposite of what Blackthorne apparently needed from Sinclair.
I’m thinking if he had approached Sinclair and at the start said ‘I’ll do this if you do that’ – Sinclair would have said no.
Many people would say no.
But if someone helps you, and then you have to say no – this is much harder to do.. it’s a common persuasion technique.. [and a bit Krutiov-esque!]
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I agree about Blackthorne sort of latching onto Sinclair. I looked back at the post where Francine mentions Blackthorne and referring to him as an American folk hero and how he recognized Sinclair and his country before anyone else did. He was working his support to his advantage. I guess he is now seeing that he will ultimately get nowhere with Sinclair. I also agree that he was waiting for the right time to approach Sinclair.
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Cool! 🙂 Yeah I think this Blackthorne has many irons in the fire!! 🙂
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Regarding Lee’s hand on the nightstand, I wonder if there is a photograph that has slipped to the floor at the foot of the nightstand.
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I think they are trying to show us how independent, a little sly and forceful Amanda has become. Lee has been clear that he doesn’t want to talk about it. So the fact that she isn’t giving up, makes me sit up and say wow. She’s not willing to just sit around and wait to see how this shakes out. I will say that she did the same kind of thing in Burn Out.
Lee is still not comfortable with this probably so we’ll see how he reacts
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So he gets a bit angry here? Is that because she has completely invaded his privacy, or is it because he was startled awake by her presence in his room? Maybe he is also a bit unnerved that Amanda has entered his room because I get the feeling that he has been trying to be a gentleman in his romantic conduct with her and even though he is really sidetracked by what is going on with himself right now, maybe having Amanda present in his bedroom, leaning over him could be sending him all sorts of mixed messages. He is trying to rest, he is trying to grieve, he is trying to solve some sort of question, he is trying to figure out what to answer Amanda and now she is in his bedroom apparently leaning prone over him! Poor guy 😉 When it rains it pours, huh?
I don’t think she would bother to pick the lock and let herself in if she wasn’t extremely worried about him. He really hasn’t been himself at all and she knows it. I think that is a testimony to how well she really does know Lee.
That was probably the longest commercial break ever!
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And, if I was Amanda, I think I might be rather scared at the moment. If Lee doesn’t fully come to his senses, he could just kill her. Waking a spy is dangerous business.
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And one last thought about the phone calls from the previous post. I wonder if receiving that call and the disjointedness that I pick up between Joe and the boys and even the history of the broken relationship with Joe and Amanda doesn’t make Amanda decide to make sure that their wont be anything to create distance between herself and Lee at least as far as it depends on her. I can just hear her deciding to bite the bullet and go find Lee after she hung up with Joe.
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Yay! An (iced) tea drinking baddie! We are off to a great start.
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I kind of like the implication that Amanda has become sneaky enough that he isn’t going to talk to her, she’s going to take matters into her own hands and snoop like a good spy darn it!! Maybe she really wasn’t sure if her was there until she heard him from the other room and then approached him quietly because she wasn’t sure why he was conked out on the bed. She seems to give him a good once-over – and yeah, ok, we’d all do that –
but she seems to be looking for signs of illness or trouble before moving on to actually trying to wake him.
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I love the dog! Should have been more of them in SMK. For some reason, all I can look at in that scene is the dog and the maid. No-one else is particularly compelling.
Hmmmm, so Amanda hasn’t got a key so she gets into Lee’s apartment using a lock-pick??? I hope they didn’t show us how she hammered frantically on Lee’s apartment door multiple times, because it does seem an inappropriate (if innovative) intrusion to get in that way!
This scene could turn a bit racy with the Amanda-flip on Lee’s bed– I think KJ and SMK are teasing us a bit here 😀
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“I think KJ and SMK are teasing us a bit here.”
Yes and, as the Director of this episode, I wonder just how many times did Kate call ACTION repeating this maneuver until she got him exactly as she wanted him!! How many times did she call CUT because they were laughing? Looks to me like his thigh bumped her backside, shooting her legs in the air. Too funny!
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I am sure she had this scene filmed many, many times to get it just right (well, that is what I would do!)
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“I loathe this Blackthorne but he has great taste in dogs.”
But the dog has no taste for him! Note how this golden wisely steers clear of Thomas Blackthorne. Most dogs can smell a slimy-like-a-snail’s-trail double crossing low life from miles away and he clearly wants no part of TB.
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Love it!
This is the best dog ever! 🙂
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High-fours for Goldie from the 2Goldens household! Oh, there are humans in this scene, too? We hadn’t noticed.
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LOL, I see I am in good company here. I read through the dialog and thought, “that’s odd, I don’t remember a word of this.” But I realized I could tell you every move that the golden had made.
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