Saint James Infirmary 570: Focus Issues.

[jmundt29]

I'm with Haight on the Watch use tutorial and its possibilities.  I think Rain might be too powerful a subject, though.

I think Pearl was a special case.  I think there were protections around her because of her lawyer-father.  If Jakob had paraded her around like Claudia or Meghan, awkward and explosive questions would have come up almost immediately and Jakob was rational enough to realize he didn't have satisfactory answers.  So, he built in protections to the programming to isolate her from her mother and to hold her in a specific place until circumstances were optimal to continue and complete her training.

[Haight]

That's what I thought, but when Pearl went off on her dad, she acted like he was complicit in the situation, and he didn't exactly disagree... he seemed pretty ashamed.

I think Rain might be too powerful a subject, though.

Pfah!

[GodWilling]

I can't help thinking that Miriam is a special case more because she's Adrian's half-sister. And that makes me suspicious that this could be her moment as a sleeper agent, with this being a deliberately laid trap rather than a happy accident.

We might be able to infer something about the programming based on Miriam's post-programming behavior...

Interesting analysis. The only spin I'd put on that is that if this is a deliberate trap, Erin could receive programming here that is specific to her, even though it was planted in Miriam's mind.

As far as Miriam coming to Kearsarge goes, I've always been at least as interested in what it was that brought Jacqui back to Kearsarge when she was with Q in New York. She first came to town at around the time Jakob was teaching at Wilmot.

Obviously we're different, though - you enjoy 'peril' a great deal, for me the idea of a character willing to give up all that control, submitting to a controller who's going to take away all her free will, is really, really exciting...

Yeah, I think it has to be an involuntary submission of will for me. Because it's pretty much all about the journey to submission; what happens once someone is under someone else's control is usually of little interest.

And the idea of Adrian using the watch to block further mind control... I'll comfort myself with the hope that Erin's going to go home programmed to kill him.

[jmundt29]

Too powerful a subject does not mean too powerful to be hypnotized, it means too powerful to be safe.  Like the old joke about how to tell when Murphy Brown is intimidated, but literal.

Quietly counting down to Friday.

[mns_95125]

That's what I thought, but when Pearl went off on her dad, she acted like he was complicit in the situation, and he didn't exactly disagree... he seemed pretty ashamed.

Ezra was acting like the business impact of Jakob's survival was the most important thing; he didn't pay any attention to the emotional impact Jakob's actions had on Pearl.  And when she called him on that, he was right to be ashamed.  I don't think there's anything there to suggest that Ezra actually knew about and was OK with Jakob brainwashing his adopted daughter.  If anything, I think his reaction in #358 and #364 suggests the opposite.

[jmundt29]

Ezra was acting like the business impact of Jakob's survival was the most important thing; he didn't pay any attention to the emotional impact Jakob's actions had on Pearl.  And when she called him on that, he was right to be ashamed.  I don't think there's anything there to suggest that Ezra actually knew about and was OK with Jakob brainwashing his adopted daughter.  If anything, I think his reaction in #358 and #364 suggests the opposite.

That was my read too.  He was blind (and I took that to mean he was blind because Jakob took steps...or had someone else do it).  Which leads me to believe that if he'd known, he'd have raised a stink that Jakob couldn't afford.  Hence the precautions.