BBB - Yes that was a pretty bad beating for Jennifer. Liz looked almost as bad in last year's finale, but her eye wasn't swollen as much as Jennifer's.

Tuxie400 wrote:

Eastcoast and others - What do you think about how the December 1990 dates and the payoffs for the March 1990 submarine disaster blow up the timeline we've previously had?

Luther Braxton aired in 2014:  Dr. Orchard takes Liz back in her memories to a fire that happened 26 years ago (December 1989)

In Monarch Douglas Bank, Liz tells Red that his wife and daughter were placed in protective custody in 1990. 

In The Caretaker, Red told Liz her mother committed suicide in 1990.

If Liz's childhood fire was in December 1990 that gets rid of the conundrum that Reddington disappeared in December 1990, a year after the fire. These discrepancies in dates really bother me.  Is this just an attempt to get rid of the one-year time lag, or are Katarina and Fitch involved in something deceptive in the phone call?

Liz did say in 6.01: The FBI can trace this Reddington forward from ’95. And I know for a fact that our father died five years before that. 
Some fans took that to mean the fire happened in 1990. I thought that still allowed for the fire to have happened in December 1989.

I've always thought the fire took place around Christmas 1989, when Liz was 4, since she was born in 1985. And that RR disappeared at Christmas 1990. I'm still going with the switcheroo probably happening during 1990 with the old "guy in bandages, unable to communicate, needs extensive plastic surgery (or in reality the little nips and tucks it took to make him convincingly into RR)" soap opera cliche being employed. So, by Christmas when Fake Red is heading home on leave, he conveniently totally disappears. His family looks for him, but then the Powers step in and offer them a deal to also disappear into "protective custody." This was after they were accused of being "in on it", and harassed, but probably cleared due to the work of Ian Garvey. I wonder if the Cabal were planning to just kill him at that point, since his usefulness had probably pretty much expired. If he talked that might be a problem. But I think the real problem was that little old Fulcrum thingie that they were afraid might be used to expose them. When they found he might have it hidden and the death trigger thing in place, they had to leave him alone. So he goes off to lick his wounds for awhile. Maybe he was still working on something where he was needed out of sight. Maybe it had to do with Katarina. So they couldn't kill him. They then came up with the idea to make him into a traitor to discredit him. But being clever, he turned the tables on them and instead of fighting it, he became a big time criminal for real. I suspect he may have started his life as a small time grifter, like so many of his old friends seem to have been. But this opportunity to become the Concierge of Crime really worked out for him, even though it did mean life on the run in exchange for the wealth and power.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

We got a Cape May image on this episode as well. I wondered in the previous episode thread, if Cape May is truly the place where Katarina and impostor met for the first time. Subtle hint for this being maybe the only time he saw Katarina? (as he spoke of a beautiful russian woman, the Cape May scene is shown)
When did the Cape May happen? And the surgery?
Is there a possibility the timeline has been miscalculated, thus the assumption of fire happening in Dec -89, when it happened in Dec -90, thus fixing the strange timeline issue in here, where Katarina says on Dec 17 -90 that Reddington has taken Masha.
Did you find it odd that Katarina said first "I love his daughter. Then adding "I love my daughter" like she accidentally let it slip she in not hers?

NP - Yes, it was nice to see a Cape May image of Katarina.  Red told Liz in Season 3's Lady Ambrosia episode that Katarina went to Cape May two months after the fire, left her clothes on the beach, walked into the ocean and was never seen again.  Then Red told Liz in The Caretaker episode that Katarina committed suicide in 1990. The imposter's surgery was in October 1991.  I suppose it's possible that the imposter could have met Katarina just once at Cape May.  But I tend to believe that Red is Katarina.

 

Tatiana - Yes, several times in dialog it's said that Liz was 4 years old at the time of the fire. She also told Ressler in the Longevity Institute she wasn't sure when her real birthday was.  You are right that 1985 was the year of birth listed on her tombstone in Seasons 3 and 4 and on her wanted poster at the end of Season 2.

Tatiana - I don't remember Katarina writing she worked for the Cabal.  That was not in the part Liz heard Katarina say in her hallucination. On one of the pages that was translated by someone who allegedly knew Russian, and no on knows for sure if it was legit, she supposedly wrote about going to talk to some American agency and being afraid. I can't remember exactly what it was, but the word Cabal or Alliance was not used. I thought she was taking about the CIA.  It could have been Fitch.

Funny how it all came back to the Cabal, the Fulcrum and Fitch. I was starting to think those were finished or dormant storylines.
 

Tuxie400 wrote:

Eastcoast and others - What do you think about how the December 1990 dates and the payoffs for the March 1990 submarine disaster blow up the timeline we've previously had?

Luther Braxton aired in 2014:  Dr. Orchard takes Liz back in her memories to a fire that happened 26 years ago (December 1989)

In Monarch Douglas Bank, Liz tells Red that his wife and daughter were placed in protective custody in 1990. 

In Lady Ambrosia Red tells Liz her mother walked into the water at Cape May two months after the fire.

In The Caretaker, Red told Liz her mother committed suicide in 1990.

If Liz's childhood fire was in December 1990 that gets rid of the conundrum that Reddington disappeared in December 1990, a year after the fire. These discrepancies in dates really bother me.  Is this just an attempt to get rid of the one-year time lag, or are Katarina and Fitch involved in something deceptive in the phone call?

Liz did say in 6.01: The FBI can trace this Reddington forward from ’95. And I know for a fact that our father died five years before that. 
Some fans took that to mean the fire happened in 1990. I thought that still allowed for the fire to have happened in December 1989.

Tatiana - Here's an earlier post I made where I was baffled by the new 1990 dates. I'm not sure you saw it.

 

I wondered if the phone call between Katarina and Fitch was actually a different date, but then it wouldn't make sense that Katarina came after Minister D 4 days after the call was made and burned him in an explosion/fire.
So I have to take the phone call as canon.

So, if the fire at D's place was The Fire, and the supposedly killed Zachary became Reddington, it still doesn’t tell us why. They inferred by the photo that D and Zachary might be a couple. Perhaps that was how they got him to suppress the tape, by threatening to really kill Zachary if he made it public. Or, maybe D was the one using the tape to keep them from killing Zachary? And Zachary becoming the fill-in for the inconveniently dead Real Red was an agreement made with the Cabal in exchange for protecting something bigger? That would explain Katarina being the one taking him to Dr. Koehler.

Sorry to just ramble here, but this episode got me thinking again. I need to watch both episodes again, for sure.