[spoilers] Sir Harry Pearce - Return of the Jedi (#3)

[A Cousin]

(24-09-2011 08:55 AM)Silktie Wrote:  

(23-09-2011 12:51 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  Upon rewatch #206 , I was struck with the adoration in Elena's face when she looks at Harry. She is reminding me a bit of a "Fem Fatale?" IMO, her expression is not being returned. His face is one of someone whose is facing a ghost from their past. I don't think he trusts her.

I'm not sure about the trust thing. I saw nothing from Harry that indicates that he doesn't trust Elena. I think there was a lot of regret and guilt in the way he looked at her. But I don't think it is linked to their personal relationship. I think it has to do with the danger he's put her in, back when they had the affair and now in the present. As always, with Harry, you can't fully divorce the man from his job. (We're back to his 'tragic flaw - his moral sense and his sense of duty.) When he turned Elena into his asset, he put her in immense danger. He burned her in an effort to save her and his son from the facing the effects of what he'd turned her into, but now it is all back and she, and therefore his son, is back to being in immense danger. We're back to the Harry who said in season 9 that he didn't want to go to any more funerals, and now he's facing the very real prospect that it will hit very close to home this time.

Harry can't afford not to trust Elena, because that would be tantamount to admitting he's not as good an intelligence officer as he would like to think he is, and that Elena had played him for a sucker all those years ago. This where Ruth comes in this season, I think. She will probably need to be the one who takes a more objective look at Elena and what she might be up to.

OK - I can buy that. I very much sensed his own regret and guilt to be the pervading emotion but I also sensed something else. He is very guarded with her somehow. I suppose it makes sense. He thought he had protected them only to find out that she had been active for the last 30 years, as Sasha says.

So Elena was/is an innocent? Seems a bit of a waste of an actor with the skill and experience of Alice Krige? And what's in it for Elena?

And why do I keep flashing back to the Adam/Anna/Bhakshi plot of S6?