Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast. I'm Terry Morrow and I'm Catherine hileco. As parents and parenting writers, we can't help but see everything through a parenting lens. But as our kids have become adults, we find ourselves more interested in getting caught up on movies and streaming than I'm going over the same parenting topics over and over.
So since we're pretty sure we can find parenting wisdom anywhere, we're going to talk about what we're watching, what we thought about it, and maybe what we can learn from it, if only what not to do. Watch and listen along, and let's all make like we're doing something important for our families. Each Tuesday we bring you our thoughts on a newer entertainment property, and for this week of August nineteenth, we're continuing with A Gentleman in Moscow, a limited series
on Paramount Plus based on a book. This episode was called an Assembly, and we had a lot going on in terms of good spycraft, and you know, Alexander really coming trying to trying to face the fact that this is not a good situation and he needs to get Sophia out of it.
Yes, especially if she's going to continue to just wantonly play the Blues whenever she feels.
Like it, or right in front of the weasel?
How is it that he has not fallen a foul of somebody. I mean, I feel bad for Osip and I think that things will go very badly from him. But does Krushev mean that we get rid of the weasel.
He's part of the old.
Guard, right, he is a picture of stolen in his office.
Drag that man away immediately.
Oh my goodness, but I was very worried when he had Sophia come into her office and closed his door.
Oh yes, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no, never never a good thing.
But it turns out he is he is just a political weasel and not somebody who would harm a young woman psychologically.
So right, I didn't your parents got killed? Yeah?
Yeah, like thanks that guy?
Come on, that guy? What is that guy still around?
Oh?
You gotta he gotta admire him though, because he was you know, he's aged all through the almost all the way through this series in that hotel, and you know thinks pretty highly of himself.
I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, who knows what's going to happen to him? But uh, you know, somebody has read it out that he has a picture of stolen in his office and was very upset about the man's death, right right, right?
Mm hmm, I hope so, but it is you know.
I do feel for Osip, who at the beginning was such a foe and by the end he feels like I feel like Alexander should have been a little nicer to him there at the end, Right, it's your friend, this is your movie, watch movies with him?
Right, he saved your daughter?
Yeah, like snippy with him now, like's some gratitude all for Yeah, well, Osip did not appear to necessarily want it, but he did at least give him my heads up, right, And his wife, who was so snippy the last time we saw her, looked truly like what do I pack for the Gulag?
Right?
This is not going to go well for us?
Whatever is the is the horrible fate DuJour in the new regime?
Yeah, yikes.
And uh, Misha comes back, who I had assumed was long ago shot and thrown off at the side of the road somewhere, right, But when they when they previously as had him all over them, I'm going.
Oh, so at least for the light, at least for part of this episode.
He's still live, I guess, right, but he has been thoroughly broken physically and spiritually and mentally, and he.
He cannot stay.
I honestly thought he was gonna go throw himself off the roof, but he didn't. I guess he never showed the backstairs.
So I'm I'm glad he didn't.
Well, but isn't that what the girl did who alexander sister?
Maybe I can't quite remember.
I thought that would have been like a poetic right, but just wanders off into the snow. I'm sure he's just gonna find himself a nice coffee shop and uh, you know, have a pastry and then go right back.
Right.
But yes, that was very sad, and.
Some very like tender moments with Alexander trying to help him and trying to console him and wash.
His must have been very upsettingly awful feet. Yes, that was that was tragic.
But it certainly got him to be like, Okay, I can't I cannot just assume everything's going to be okay. I need to protect my kid.
Here, right right, Although I was thinking when he goes wired up into this meeting. It's like, if this goes bad, things are going to go bad for his kid too. Yes, just hope everything. Yeah, and Anna was with Sophia like, I appreciate the rebellious stage, Honey, I really do, but not tonight.
Not oh dear oh man. Yeah. I feel like in the book a couple of differences. One, Sophia was a lot more sort of innocent, and she wasn't she wasn't being so sassy to the weasel, you know, she just she was just kind of this sweet little thing who was a very talented musician. And and there was a whole thing about the dress, that blue dress that she had on. They basically changed it to when he had that freak out about her sitting next to the boy
on the piano bench. He in the book it was over that dress and how it was like backless and he was all like clutching his pearls over that.
Yeah. I was kind of expecting something like that, a little fatherly, But something on those shoulders missed.
Exactly that that for sure happened in the book. And then I don't, I don't. I could be wrong because I'm not good at remembering specifics about books, but I thought that the he didn't wear like a wire to that to that dinner. He just took mental.
Notes that would make a lot more sense.
Yeah, and you know he he had like drew this whole diagram of who was sitting where, and it was like very important to know who was sitting in what seats, you know. He it was a whole It was quite a long, you know scene. So that that was a change that they that they had to make.
Obviously so dangerous to have the wire, especially the relatively primitive wire setup that they had.
Right, given they had a man whose whole job was to be looking for yes, these things, seems like that could have been anticipated.
Oh well, fortunately.
The people whose job it was to frisk and to find the bugs were not good at their jobs.
So he made it through, right.
And they also in the book, you know, introduced that character of the American spy slash ambassador guy way before this. I mean, this was the first time we've seen him before. I don't think so, but in the book it was like a very long.
I would wish for that, and I didn't think that we had seen him before, but you needed to have he needed to have built the same relationship with him that he did with other people. And yes, this just seems like out of the blue, this guy says, hey, we'd like you to.
Risk your life. Here's what you need to do. Yeah, and yeah, so that was weird.
Yeah, that for sure was something that would not.
Have been hard to insert that guy into like ten scenes over the course of the series.
Right or three, Yeah, just like, well, a couple enough that you remembered him, you know, Yes, a small conversation at the bar in one episode of you know, yeah, just would.
Not have to be much, but I he just like came out of the you know, out of the blue.
Yeah. Yeah, there's a few things like that that you know, obviously they had to condense for for a time because, you know, anticipating the ending, there's there's a lot of people who need to play a part, and we haven't found them all yet. So really, yeah, so I'm not sure how they're gonna make that all.
Yeah, they're going to condense the number of people necessary, I guess.
Yeah, they're gonna have rolls or whatever.
But right, yeah, I mean I was wondering. I've been wondering all along, you know, like you can do things in books that you can't do in TV and vice versa, of course, so I'm curious to see how it all it all ends up. So but uh, at.
Least uh Anna finally told the count that she loves him.
That it was a surprise to him, that was such a great scene and he's just stunned, and she said, well, I'm not going to repeat it like you got one, buddy, and that's it.
They've pretty much raised a child together and known each other for decades and decades under dangerous situations, but you know his buddies apparently in his mind, right, Oh, it's very sweet relationship they've had. Yeah, I guess we did not see Olga this time, so I guess you maybe correct that.
Well, the voiceover saying we were all together.
Yeah, had to do with her no longer being around for whatever reason, but.
She's retired and taking it easy with vastly.
How many years are supposed to have passed between last episode in this episode?
Not it can be that many, right, because Sophia was as a teenager at the end of the last one and she's still a teenager in this one, so it's only it's only been a short time. I think. I think it's nineteen fifty three.
Yeah, so they said what was it last time? They need to give better signposts on I don't know they put the numbers of days, but I mean being that it's this, I think that she maybe was a younger teenager in the last one. In this, she's an older teen or early twenty something. I don't know, but it seemed like time had gone by for the others. Yeah, so presumably for her as well. Unless there's a place on the roof where you don't age.
Time doesn't time doesn't pass.
Yeah, it's harder to it's harder to age a young person into a slightly older young person than it is to Yeah, make a young person look older and older and older and older, right or not.
A young person in middle aged? How old is you? And McGregor, Yeah, good question. Maybe the youth jim up for the beginning.
Yeah, they probably.
Him up for the end.
Yeah, because it's quite a long time span, Yes.
It really is.
So I was worried that when they were doing all this plotting of all sorts, are they I guess they were running the bathtub because they figured their place is bugged. Yes, I was nervous about people having discussions, and how is it that after all these all this time, nobody has found the fake room in his little snit use that at will and nobody says, hey, uh, the Count doesn't seem to be anywhere in the hotel at this moment.
Where what could he be?
And where is he? Where is his his friend?
Periods of time completely and nobody.
Well, only his friends know about it.
I guess. I guess they don't have his room bugged, which seems foolish. Why would you not?
But why would not have OSIP done that? Ages and ages ago?
Maybe they didn't have the technology at that time.
I guess you would think the weasel would have gotten to it.
I bet he's talking about me.
What is he saying about me? Yeah?
I enjoyed, enjoyed when he was giving a toast to the fallen leader, and all the staff was just like trying their very hardest not to roll their.
Eyes, and.
It's like, great, Stalin missed, It's not really.
You gotta be careful, oh my.
The talk about the modern conveniences that we have in America.
Door open garage door openers, garage door openers, right, and the washing machines.
Yes, all this stuff well, I'm gonna send you, even though you sort of disapprove a little bit.
You're gonna send your kid there because that's what we want for our kids.
System.
Let's have the conveniences. And of course that's right what every parent dreams.
I remember when I was a kid, my mom would get out of the car and open the garage door. That was my dad would stay behind the wheel. My mom would have to get out and yank the thing up. So I imagined she was pretty psyched when garage door openers became a thing. But you know, it seems like
unmanly for my dad to not have done it. But I think his feeling was he would have to turn the car off and then turn the car back on her, you know, right, he was the driver, I was the driver, and he was always the driver, right, So you know, I guess women maybe see the value of the conveniences.
Like like Anna said, you know, you see, he says he's been in the most inconvenient place, but of course he really hasn't been in the most inconvenient place, a very very cushy spot, right, even under the limited circumstances, right, you know, as.
Even though he has he has fallen from us, from gentlemen to waiter. But he has always had enough to eat, He's had a roof over his head, he's had a secret room, he's he's never seemed to have a shower or a bathtub, but he's managed to keep himself clean somehows right.
Yeah, well maybe he uses anna as when he's over there, but yeah, you know, he's you make your you make your best to what you got, and he has a good place to make the best of raised raised one kid there, sort of partially partially friendship wise, a second so sad, he's had a surprisingly complete life for somebody else and in jail, right, so house arrested, I guess. And now of course he comes to the point where you have to let your kid go, right, that's very difficult.
But even if it weren't the case that if she stayed, she would have a life of problems, even so, it's still hard to say.
It's still hardly.
Little bird, It's fine, it'll be fine. I can't go, I'll have to stay behind.
But you go, right, you know, And uh, well.
I mean I guess Nina also flew off to have her life and that didn't work out, so well, so hopefully Sophia will you know, have a wonderful career as a pianist and wear beautiful dresses and not end up in a ditch it's frozen area. And we know she doesn't because she is narrating.
She's narrating exactly.
A couple of times in this episode.
I was going, oh no, oh, wait a minute, She's allowed to talk about it, so that's a relief. And also there's one more episode, so I'm pretty sure Alexander doesn't get killed in this one.
So yeah, well that'll lead us to Spence. Yeah, so next week we will discuss that finale. It's called adieu, which is you know, a signal there, Yes we are last episode.
Yes, we will also.
Kick off the next season of only Murders in the Building.
It's back the building to building related properties, one after the other.
That is true, but I believe they are leaving the building and this month that is true.
There wasn't in the building, but they are not themselves staying in the buildings. Right, everybody's fully in next.
Week, so since that show is going to be dropping its episodes on Tuesdays, we are going to give ourselves a day to collect our thoughts and discuss those episodes on our Wednesday episodes. So then we're gonna switch lost to Tuesdays, but for this week, our last chat will still be on Wednesday, which is tomorrow, so we'll see you back here for that.
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