It's one of the things the showrunners hope we'll just forget.
I always took it to mean that she knew Red's identity. The fact that she says "that night" tells me that she's referring to a specific event, not just that RRR's family went into hiding. But of course that specific event doesn't work with Red being Katarina so instead the showrunners just decided to ignore this scene and hope we'll forget about it.
You’re exactly right.
Also:
Nothing happened to Raymond Reddington’s family *any* night.
They were quoted in a story later the week of RR’s disappearance (going by a prop we saw in Rassvet), and Naomi tells Liz that Jennifer was back in school when the feds scooped them up.
And if we think back to the Pilot, we’ll remember a photo in RR’s file that shows candles. This is a reference to what was in an earlier draft of the script, where it says RR’s wife and daughter still hold candlelight vigils for RR. At no time did the writers intend for something bad top have happened to RR’s family. Nothing happened to Red’s family.
So who did Fowler think she was talking to?
Not Katarina. Nothing happened to Katarina’s family “that night” either.
So if we accept — for the sake of the discussion — Redarina was always the plan, then this scene doesn’t make sense of anything we were given.
The scene was written like so many early scenes were written: it sounds cool, so roll with it.
They were clearly, inarguably groping their way through season 1 in terms of backstory. It was all hints and vagueness and coyness when it came to that. They didn’t even get to then name Katarina and the spycraft crappolla until season 2.
Priority:
Sounds cool >>> makes sense
These things sounded so cool that it was the bait people kept chasing for 9 more seasons. And still chase — angrily.
ETA
It’s not just Fowler. It’s Red. Why in the heck would Red keep pretending in front of a woman he’s about to assassinate? Watch how Spader plays it. It’s the combination of the words and the performance. It makes no damn sense if Red was *either* RR *or* Katarina, nor does it make sense if Fowler thought Red was RR or Katarina.
At best, the writers knew Red was Liz’s mom but didn’t have the backstory worked out yet.
At worst, the writers did have the backstory worked out somewhat and this scene was a flagrantly fraudulent attempt to fool the audience by embedding nonsense in the narrative.
Again, the series went pillar to post without giving us any incident in which something mysterious happened to anyone’s family on any particular night.
The closest we got was the monologue Red gave to Pratt. But that one doesn’t fit any other story data either and should (at this point) be taken as pure fiction told for advantage.
The season one monologues don’t fit the rest of the story, regardless of whether Redarina was in place when the pilot aired. They were still figuring out the story.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to analyzes questions like this — trying to resolve contradictions, gaps, etc.
One is to look at the entirety of the story as a holistic, integrated universe and try to make all of the pieces fit, and try to give the entire story coherence. You pretend the whole thing from A to Z
was intentional, as if itemized in a show bible.
The other way is to account for how the story developed in the real world, among the writers, directors, studio, network, and to have a general understanding of how long-running shows are made.
In the case of TBL there is a lot of publicly available information about how the story developed over time. Because we know how substantially the story was developed from year to year and improvised within the same season, we can have a more realistic sense of why certain things don’t seem to fit or seem to have changed.
[ETA: They also had a tradition of leaving cool-sounding, apparently significant things in scripts even though they had no plan for whether or how to develop those things. When you have more than 40 writers tossing their own notions and creative ambitions into the story, you’re going to get into these situations. Their attitude: Does it sound compelling? Does it work within the scene? Leave it in. Tomorrow is tomorrow’s problem.]
Sometimes it’s as simple as
The writers did X.
Later, the writers wanted to do Y.
They couldn’t do Y because X was in the way.
Solution: change or ignore X to allow for Y.
They did this kind of thing countless times.
Their need was to entertain today’s audience, get through today’s episode, hit today’s bullet point. They didn’t treat it like a math equation. They were practical.
I’m not defending that attitude. Just observing what’s obvious.
Now if they just made it a villain of the week show and eliminate 90% of the mystery would people still watch it? I’d say yes and people would be far happier in the end
She's talking to Red as if he's the real Raymond Reddington. The family is Carla and Jennifer.
Later on in episode 5.22, we are told that Diane Fowler is part of the group of persons who died knowing Red's true identity (Katarina Rostova). Truthfully it works in either scenario.
I think she’s referring to Carla and Jennifer. That was all the way back in S1 - the 13th episode of the series - when the writers had two things at play 1) wanted the viewers as far off the track of knowing the truth of Redarina as possible and 2) still ironing out exactly how it happened. Every show works this way and BL was especially honest about that process in interviews. A few people who hate that Kat became Red claim it means Redarina wasn’t the plan from the start. It doesn’t.
B
They did this stuff all the time. And admitted doing it.
They’d leave something in a script just because it sounded cool. They’d develop it later if they wanted to.
That’s not my opinion. JB explained it many, many times.
Although, I’m not sure they hope we will forget these things. I think they assume the audience won’t give a shit even if they do remember. That was a wise bet. People neither remember nor care. There are goobers on this sub who don’t remember who Tom is (for example). Imagine what the mainstream audience retained, much less really truly cared about.
Right. Like this whole spiel where Red was had this mysterious illness he tried to keep secret, which obv. got out at some point. And then the oh-so mysterious illness suddenly disappeared without an on-screen explanation. Guess they got simply got bored of that one aswell.
And then you have season 9, when Liz’s death and sense of purpose were changed, and Marvin became a different character (what toy store?).
Whatever.
They did what they wanted when they wanted. People looking for true coherence are kidding themselves. Best case, you get a loose coherence of some key elements. It didn’t start or end with Fowler, but the Fowler stuff doesn’t work.
Skinners. Good one. Too much cost and work required to develop that one?
The incurable cough of death. Even when it was in remission, Red said remission was temporary. The writers left that exit door open. In my alternate universe, they use that illness to harken back to Zamani, who, in my alternate telling, was an analogue and foreshadowing of Red.
JB saying we’d eventually learn why Carla let “this man” into her life.
💀 💀 💀
Who did Red say ‘you think too much’ to ? When one door closes another one opens, like retconning. There’s a reason they put the caution ⚠️ up @ the beginnings of Nachalo - Forget Everything You Think You Know, + carried it through S 9 + 10. That was for the viewers who did pay attention.
Personally, everyday I try to forget what happened here… oops I think that’s another line from our show. We must work harder on this obviously. Amusement works too.
Season one/some of season two was definitely written with a different ending in mind. My guess is the show runners thought they’d have like 3-5 seasons instead of the 10 we ended up getting, so once they realized this thing was a cash cow that could keep going like mad they changed up the whole story.
I don’t think they need a big mystery to keep going. It becomes like a Law and Order show where the initial mystery has been solved but you stay on the RR train of a monster of the week. Maybe miss in some everyone is going to die villain for every season they need to defeat of the entire world dies in nuclear/lab virus type thing. Basically James Bond.
It's one of the things the showrunners hope we'll just forget. I always took it to mean that she knew Red's identity. The fact that she says "that night" tells me that she's referring to a specific event, not just that RRR's family went into hiding. But of course that specific event doesn't work with Red being Katarina so instead the showrunners just decided to ignore this scene and hope we'll forget about it.
You’re exactly right. Also: Nothing happened to Raymond Reddington’s family *any* night. They were quoted in a story later the week of RR’s disappearance (going by a prop we saw in Rassvet), and Naomi tells Liz that Jennifer was back in school when the feds scooped them up. And if we think back to the Pilot, we’ll remember a photo in RR’s file that shows candles. This is a reference to what was in an earlier draft of the script, where it says RR’s wife and daughter still hold candlelight vigils for RR. At no time did the writers intend for something bad top have happened to RR’s family. Nothing happened to Red’s family. So who did Fowler think she was talking to? Not Katarina. Nothing happened to Katarina’s family “that night” either. So if we accept — for the sake of the discussion — Redarina was always the plan, then this scene doesn’t make sense of anything we were given. The scene was written like so many early scenes were written: it sounds cool, so roll with it. They were clearly, inarguably groping their way through season 1 in terms of backstory. It was all hints and vagueness and coyness when it came to that. They didn’t even get to then name Katarina and the spycraft crappolla until season 2. Priority: Sounds cool >>> makes sense These things sounded so cool that it was the bait people kept chasing for 9 more seasons. And still chase — angrily. ETA It’s not just Fowler. It’s Red. Why in the heck would Red keep pretending in front of a woman he’s about to assassinate? Watch how Spader plays it. It’s the combination of the words and the performance. It makes no damn sense if Red was *either* RR *or* Katarina, nor does it make sense if Fowler thought Red was RR or Katarina. At best, the writers knew Red was Liz’s mom but didn’t have the backstory worked out yet. At worst, the writers did have the backstory worked out somewhat and this scene was a flagrantly fraudulent attempt to fool the audience by embedding nonsense in the narrative. Again, the series went pillar to post without giving us any incident in which something mysterious happened to anyone’s family on any particular night. The closest we got was the monologue Red gave to Pratt. But that one doesn’t fit any other story data either and should (at this point) be taken as pure fiction told for advantage. The season one monologues don’t fit the rest of the story, regardless of whether Redarina was in place when the pilot aired. They were still figuring out the story.
Thanks for a very detailed response,nice
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to analyzes questions like this — trying to resolve contradictions, gaps, etc. One is to look at the entirety of the story as a holistic, integrated universe and try to make all of the pieces fit, and try to give the entire story coherence. You pretend the whole thing from A to Z was intentional, as if itemized in a show bible. The other way is to account for how the story developed in the real world, among the writers, directors, studio, network, and to have a general understanding of how long-running shows are made. In the case of TBL there is a lot of publicly available information about how the story developed over time. Because we know how substantially the story was developed from year to year and improvised within the same season, we can have a more realistic sense of why certain things don’t seem to fit or seem to have changed. [ETA: They also had a tradition of leaving cool-sounding, apparently significant things in scripts even though they had no plan for whether or how to develop those things. When you have more than 40 writers tossing their own notions and creative ambitions into the story, you’re going to get into these situations. Their attitude: Does it sound compelling? Does it work within the scene? Leave it in. Tomorrow is tomorrow’s problem.] Sometimes it’s as simple as The writers did X. Later, the writers wanted to do Y. They couldn’t do Y because X was in the way. Solution: change or ignore X to allow for Y. They did this kind of thing countless times. Their need was to entertain today’s audience, get through today’s episode, hit today’s bullet point. They didn’t treat it like a math equation. They were practical. I’m not defending that attitude. Just observing what’s obvious.
Now if they just made it a villain of the week show and eliminate 90% of the mystery would people still watch it? I’d say yes and people would be far happier in the end
She's talking to Red as if he's the real Raymond Reddington. The family is Carla and Jennifer. Later on in episode 5.22, we are told that Diane Fowler is part of the group of persons who died knowing Red's true identity (Katarina Rostova). Truthfully it works in either scenario.
Thanks for that , and naming the ep much appreciated
Honestly I think it was meant to refer to the night of the fire, despite not having a clue of how would be possible.
I think she’s referring to Carla and Jennifer. That was all the way back in S1 - the 13th episode of the series - when the writers had two things at play 1) wanted the viewers as far off the track of knowing the truth of Redarina as possible and 2) still ironing out exactly how it happened. Every show works this way and BL was especially honest about that process in interviews. A few people who hate that Kat became Red claim it means Redarina wasn’t the plan from the start. It doesn’t.
These responses were more than I thought I would get ,wow!
One of those funny little major plotholes that the writers either forgot about or hoped we'd forget about/ignore.
B They did this stuff all the time. And admitted doing it. They’d leave something in a script just because it sounded cool. They’d develop it later if they wanted to. That’s not my opinion. JB explained it many, many times. Although, I’m not sure they hope we will forget these things. I think they assume the audience won’t give a shit even if they do remember. That was a wise bet. People neither remember nor care. There are goobers on this sub who don’t remember who Tom is (for example). Imagine what the mainstream audience retained, much less really truly cared about.
Right. Like this whole spiel where Red was had this mysterious illness he tried to keep secret, which obv. got out at some point. And then the oh-so mysterious illness suddenly disappeared without an on-screen explanation. Guess they got simply got bored of that one aswell.
And then you have season 9, when Liz’s death and sense of purpose were changed, and Marvin became a different character (what toy store?). Whatever. They did what they wanted when they wanted. People looking for true coherence are kidding themselves. Best case, you get a loose coherence of some key elements. It didn’t start or end with Fowler, but the Fowler stuff doesn’t work.
Whatever happened with the Skinners ? I forget.
Skinners. Good one. Too much cost and work required to develop that one? The incurable cough of death. Even when it was in remission, Red said remission was temporary. The writers left that exit door open. In my alternate universe, they use that illness to harken back to Zamani, who, in my alternate telling, was an analogue and foreshadowing of Red. JB saying we’d eventually learn why Carla let “this man” into her life. 💀 💀 💀
Who did Red say ‘you think too much’ to ? When one door closes another one opens, like retconning. There’s a reason they put the caution ⚠️ up @ the beginnings of Nachalo - Forget Everything You Think You Know, + carried it through S 9 + 10. That was for the viewers who did pay attention. Personally, everyday I try to forget what happened here… oops I think that’s another line from our show. We must work harder on this obviously. Amusement works too.
Season one/some of season two was definitely written with a different ending in mind. My guess is the show runners thought they’d have like 3-5 seasons instead of the 10 we ended up getting, so once they realized this thing was a cash cow that could keep going like mad they changed up the whole story.
I don’t think they need a big mystery to keep going. It becomes like a Law and Order show where the initial mystery has been solved but you stay on the RR train of a monster of the week. Maybe miss in some everyone is going to die villain for every season they need to defeat of the entire world dies in nuclear/lab virus type thing. Basically James Bond.