Why Is The Man In The High Castle's Frank Taking So Much Crap Off Juliana?

When's Smith going to kill his kid already?

Just kidding. But seriously. With Thomas now falling down the stairs and stuff, this has got to be a question the Obergruppenführer is asking himself. Will Smith observe Nazi policy and exterminate Thomas as a drain on the state? Will he test Helen's belief in the practice of euthanasia by telling her that her own son is supposed to be subject to it? Assuming Helen caves once she knows all the facts, will Helen and John figure out a way to save Thomas by sending him to the neutral zone -- maybe to Lem's unlicensed halfway home for young persons with physical challenges? Or is Smith going to end up proving what a good Nazi he is by doing what's best for the Fatherland and putting his son to sleep?

(Hee hee. I wrote "Will Smith.")

Why are the Resistance operatives taking so much shit off Juliana?

For a novice revolutionary who just got jumped in to the Resistance, like, last week (and, not for nothing, but: judging by her generally unquestioning faith in Joe, she is not super-great at it), she sure is a brat who's putting her own interests ahead of the group's! I get that she feels indebted to Joe for that time he paid for her breakfast in Canon City...oh, and helped her fake her death to get her on a bus out of town and saved her life. But when her Resistance comrades Lem and Karen use their Grasshopper movie money to ransom her when she was sloppy enough to get pinched by the yakuza, I feel like she's kind of out of line immediately turning around and demanding that they come up with even more money, to spring Joe as well. For one thing, they don't know Joe at all. For another, acquiring and disseminating copies of The Man In The High Castle's films is kind of what this whole organization is about -- so when Karen and Lem tell Juliana that if she actually can come up with ¥50,000, she should spend it buying this new film, I'm pretty much Team Not Juliana. (I'm basically always Team Not Juliana, but particularly on this one.) "If you're going to be one of us," says Lem, "you got to be ready to sacrifice." Fuckin' A right! I understand that Juliana has value as an operative, for Karen and Lem, by virtue of her job at the Nippon. But her dumb yap has got to cancel that value out.

Why is Frank taking so much shit off Juliana?

I can't believe I'm about to say this because Juliana is SUCH A ZERO, but I kind of wish we had seen a little bit more of Frank and Juliana's relationship before she became Fake Trudy and took off on her adventure, because based on what we've seen, I don't know why Frank didn't throw her in the garbage as soon as she came back. We know they've been together a while; we've seen that Juliana's mother and stepfather consider Frank part of the family; but even in the context of their stilted, oppressed lives together before she joined the Resistance, I'm not getting why Frank puts up with her. Truly, all she has brought him since she came home from the neutral zone is one session in the bone zone, bookended by misery. Did he really believe her when she said in the previous episode that she would make it back in time to get on their bus together? DID ANY OF US? And now she's saying she wants to take their entire fleeing-in-the-night nut and use it on AN OBVIOUSLY NAZI DOUBLE AGENT? Ugh. As tiresome as she is -- which is very -- I just wish we could get more of a picture of what's holding them together other than that she's just grandfathered into Frank's life, because if not for her nonsense, he'd at least be on a bus with ¥46,000 right now -- and, going back further, might still be a brother and uncle. SPEAKING OF GRANDFATHERED...

No one trusts Ed's grandpa, right?

I Stand With Alex on the matter of how creepy and unpleasant it is watching DJ Qualls act/do anything, so I'm not mentioning this because I particularly hope there is more to see from Ed and Clan Ed. But seeking refuge in a house with a cantankerous old manga reader with a hard-on for the valour of the Japanese people seems like it will prove to have been a bad call when this fucker inevitably dimes them out.

How much better would this show be if every episode were an hour of Kido glaring at people?

Until Frank Frink was a fugitive from justice, people in the Pacific States were just buying bus tickets without any ID check?

This has seemed to me to be an extremely efficient and orderly occupying force, so the sudden change in interstate transit policy seems non-credible to me.

How bad are we supposed to feel for Wegener?

"Boo hoo, I tried to sell out my party and now I'm being railroaded into killing Hitler." I didn't tell you to become a Nazi, son!

Does Okamura really know who shot the Crown Prince or is he just fucking around?

As a figure involved in organized crime, Okamura undoubtedly knows lots of People who know lots of Things. And he does seem pretty knowledgeable on the details of the shooting, like where the actual shooter was located, though that might just be from his own experience of being around shootings at various points in his life in organized crime. Maybe Okamura is trying to gain an advantage over Kido by trading information now -- information that, if it proves out, will save Kido from having to commit ritual suicide for having failed to solve the case. But maybe he's only called this meeting to try to test Kido for weaknesses?

WHAAAAAAAAAT THE FUCK?!

While Frank and Juliana wait for Joe in an otherwise empty public school, they decide to check out the new movie Joe has obtained by shooting people with Frank's last two bullets. Juliana tells Frank this is different from the last one she saw. UNDERSTATEMENT!!!

My first thought (particularly since this is all based on a novella by a sci-fi writer) was that the films aren't, as I'd assumed to this point, speculative explorations of what the world would be like if the Axis powers hadn't triumphed in WWII -- since, you know, that's definitely Frank, and that's definitely Joe shooting him dead, and if The Man In The High Castle has faked all this with camera tricks, he is a very gifted CG artist. But if it's a parallel universe, it's just as crappy as the one we've been watching. Film Joe isn't just a Nazi; the stripes-and-swastika insignia on his armband shows he's from the Greater Nazi Reich.

Can The Man In The High Castle time travel? Is this future footage from WWIII -- which seems ever more imminent as hostilities between Germany and Japan are escalating? Is every possible universe equally depressing and hopeless? If so, does the Resistance really need to bother? Or are its chances for successfully bringing freedom to the American people so slim that they might as WELL keep pinning their hopes on stupid Juliana?!