hellmouse

One change that would have been interesting to explore is what it felt like for them when both their children were out of the house. That happened sooner than expected, with Henry at boarding school. Did they like not having kids around? Did they miss them? Is that part of what drove them both to focus more on their work, because there was no one at home they had to put on an act for? Is that when they stopped paying attention to the late nights that Stan Beeman might have noticed? The showrunners talk about how this is a marriage story and I think the empty nest could have been an interesting and pretty universal topic to explore. Also, how do they both feel about the fact that Elizabeth is continuing to sleep with people outside the marriage but Philip is not? Does it cause problems with their own sex life? I could see that happening - see them feeling uncomfortable with that disparity but never talking about it and gradually having less sex and losing that intimacy. And of course, that intimacy was a big part of how they expressed their feelings to each other. I just read an interview that made it pretty clear that the showrunners did this intentionally. AV Club: The Americans showrunners picked an ending early, and they stuck with it The fact that it was intentional is just frustrating. This whole show has been about the slow burn. It's been like watching a cooking show that happens in real time. "And now we put the roast in the oven and let it cook for three hours" and so we watch an oven for three hours. But with this time jump, they hopped from a kitchen counter with ingredients to a fully prepared meal on the table. It's so unlike this show. We wanted to watch them stir and chop and slowly simmer! I did, anyway.

Oh gosh, I wasn't even thinking of it happening that soon. But for dramatic purposes, it should be seen in the show. It might be in the final episode when Paige can't successfully execute a plan to get herself out of the country (or even out of DC) to elude the FBI. I picture Elizabeth and Philip waiting for her somewhere and finally deciding they have to leave without her. And then they see a news bulletin on TV and Paige has been arrested. But I don't know if that would be heartbreaking, though. I think that would make Elizabeth angry. So I guess it will be next week or the week after!

I want P & E to survive too! I like the idea of Philip & Elizabeth escaping the FBI. But maybe they can't all leave together. Paige has to leave separately and fails to get away (final example of her not being cut out for this life). She gets brought in for questioning and cracks and is ultimately given a lenient sentence in exchange for telling them everything she knows about her parents, Claudia, Gabriel, etc. Maybe her intel helps the FBI arrest Claudia.

Yes! Exactly! I would believe it if you told me the show had new show-runners as of Season 6. The change was that extreme. The curveballs and slow changes were a huge part of what made this show feel real. The flat linear path each character took over the past three unseen years is not only NOT real, it is even more unreal because the show has always been so good at those nuances before. Then you put that on top of what feels like some wasted time in Season 5 and it's baffling. They said they planned Seasons 5 and 6 together but it doesn't feel that way.

These two points are the major flaw in the KGB's 2nd gen system. These children are not Russian. They will not have the same loyalty to the USSR or to communist ideology that their parents do. And spying is not genetic. Even Philip's brother (don't get me started!) said that Philip was much smarter than him and we can assume that's why the brother is not in the KGB but Philip is. Even though their father was a guard at a KGB family, they weren't both recruited. Gabriel knew Paige shouldn't do it. Philip knew Paige shouldn't do it. Elizabeth sees that Paige can't do it. Heck, Marilyn (RIP) saw that Paige couldn't do it. But Elizabeth is lying to Paige and Claudia and Philip about Paige's abilities. She's setting Paige up for a massive failure, and by extension, setting herself up for a massive heartbreak when something terrible inevitably happens to her daughter down the line.

Your post was all very helpful - thank you! I think I am reacting to exactly what you said here. I can't envision Paige as an Officer because she just shows no aptitude for it. If she were a Soviet citizen there's no way they'd be investing so much time in her. But maybe they are willing to invest the time because an American citizen is that valuable to them.

And yet she so clearly being treated as an assr it's hard to even pretend to refer to her otherwise. It does start to seem like a "wasn't" rather than "isn't". Not only is she being lied to and drawn in with dreams of not being alone she's shown no ability to even understand a mission much less plan one. And not just because she doesn't know that yet. She can't plan stuff if she can't even know what they do right in front of her. I'm not an expert on the difference between asset - agent - officer and I know that others are, so please forgive me if I get it wrong! What I mean by asset is that Paige is an asset to the KGB because she is an American citizen. They are training her in tradecraft and also trying to indoctrinate her into believing the USSR is the best and the USA is bad. They will expect to take part in operations, to develop sources and obtain information. But she won't be developing those operations on her own. She's not going to be Elizabeth. She's not going to be Nina or Tatiana. AFAIK, she is not an employee of the USSR intelligence services. She is an American citizen who will be acting on behalf of the USSR. Does that make her an agent or an asset? I don't know, but to me, she requires far more hand-holding than I'd expect from an intelligence officer. (And again, I am not an expert so I may be wrong!!)

I don't think that. She really wanted to save the "Chicago Philip" and she was simply honest with him about how this operation might not work. In her way, she was saying goodbye. Did she (at least in her heart of hearts) want him there, because with him there was a better chance of living and getting Harvest out? Of course. Interesting! That makes a lot of sense. She knows that if this operation goes bad, she might die because she can't be arrested. So simply by telling him and showing him the cyanide pill, she is saying goodbye. I think you're right. I do still think there is a part of her that doesn't want to die and knows that telling Philip will mean that he'll try to stop her. Or maybe I just want that to be true!

She is halfheartedly (subconsciously?) trying to get Philip to stop her from dying by telling him about the cyanide pill. She doesn't really want to die but she wants someone else to stop her. She's putting the burden of saving her onto Philip, whether she realizes it or not. Philip realizes it. I think it's part of what he's reflecting on at the end of the episode. She's his wife. He wants to protect her. How can he protect her from herself? IMO they've treated Paige like an asset rather than an agent. They've handled her. So they never brought her all the way in - because if they knew if they did, she couldn't handle it. But the Centre forced them to bring her in. So they brought her in halfway. It's a problem.

I just re-watched Season 5, and having done so, I am shocked by where Philip & Elizabeth are at the beginning of Season 6. Not shocked as to "oh wow how could they have gotten to this point" but shocked by the writers choosing such a lazy option of telling, not showing. Literally at the end of Season 5, Philip and Elizabeth were closer than ever. They were sharing concerns and ideas. They got married. They decided to go back to the USSR. They both seemed to understand the toll that murder and manipulation were taking on them (both of them) and they both seemed to value their partnership. Elizabeth explicitly says to Tuan that this job is too hard to do alone and he will fail without a partner. Philip tells Elizabeth that she cannot do the job without him, that it's "us", not just her. So WTF happened over the past three years to make them so cold and miserable and distant? Are we meant to believe it just happened gradually and they've only noticed it now, three years in? That doesn't make sense given where they were at the end of Season 5. Was it a conscious decision to just pretend things were fine and normal? Did they both fall on their heads and lose their memories? It doesn't make sense that the two people we see at the end of season 5 would make decisions over a three year period that would put them where they are at the beginning of Season 6. But if they did, then show us! At least give us some flashbacks! Let us see them deciding how to divide up responsibility for Paige & Henry. Let us see them acknowledging that they're growing apart - or let us see them not realizing that it's happening. Something! These writers are usually so good - I think they could have done a lot with a few flashbacks. But so far, nothing. I may just have to decide that they did both fall and hit their heads and have some rare form of amnesia that caused them to forget things that happened three years ago in their relationship, but nothing else. IDK. /end rant

What an interesting point! Elizabeth is used to being the one whose compass sets the direction for others. Philip is not rejecting her but he is setting his own terms. He wants her, he wants to protect his family and help his country, but he does not want to blindly follow the Centre's orders anymore. As he says in the preview - "they give the orders, but we are the ones who do them. It's on us." He is the one who chopped off Marilyn's head, not the Centre. I could see him not wanting Elizabeth to take a cyanide capsule simply because it was an order. And maybe he tells her about Oleg so that she sees the situation is not as black and white as she believes. Maybe her art lessons with Erica have opened her eyes enough for her to absorb his message, and to heed Erica's regret about having chosen her work over her husband. Could Elizabeth do that? Would she choose Philip by saving herself, even if it meant disobeying the order to take the cyanide?

The Jennings family lives across the street from Stan. They live in identical buildings. The buildings are triplexes. There are three units - two on each side and one in the middle. The Jennings live in the left side of their building. So does Stan. We never see any neighbors in the other parts of the buildings. I think we are meant to believe that they are single family homes. Obviously, they are not because the interior floor plan doesn't match the exterior footprint.

I really really hope that there's a pay off to Philip's milque-toast act because he's really played it up around Stan. Even if Stan's suspecting him it would make sense if he still had a thousand false assumptions about him that put him at a disadvantage. I agree. I don't think Stan would picture Philip being either a physical or strategic threat to anyone. Stan considers Philip his best friend, and honestly, Philip really has been a good friend to Stan. He is a good listener. He includes Stan in family activities. He plays racquetball with him. He goes to EST meetings. He commiserates about challenges in relationships with wives and children. Even if the hug gave Stan pause, it's hard to see him being able to believe that his best friend Philip is capable of murder or emotional manipulation. Of course, Philip is a master of emotional manipulation. He is (usually) incredibly tuned to other people's emotions, able to say or do just the thing to get the reaction he wants. I think Stan would find that really hard to believe. As you said in the episode thread, "it'll it'll be really interesting if Stan *wants* to believe that Philip was sucked into this and wants help more than he does. Philip has tried to protect Stan and it would make sense for Stan to want to do the same for Philip. If Philip doesn't want Stan to be another Martha, Stan doesn't want Philip to be another Nina." It is interesting that in the preview, Stan only tore off the picture of Elizabeth to show someone. It makes me consider that right now Stan might see Philip as either an unwitting accomplice to Elizabeth or a sort of hostage to her. Maybe he imagines the KGB has blackmailed Philip into being Elizabeth's cover story, and that there's some guy out there who Elizabeth works with. He may genuinely think he can save Philip. IMO Philip will never abandon Elizabeth. He will kill Stan before doing anything to jeopardize Elizabeth. Stan won't see that coming.

I keep thinking about Stan's hunch. It's kind of funny to imagine Stan telling Aderholt he thinks that Philip & Elizabeth are illegals. Aderholt actually fought with Elizabeth! Since then, he's sat across from her at dinner more than once. He's never suspected her once. Philip comes across as kind of milque-toast, not a physical threat at all. I could see Aderholt laughing at Stan's suspicions. Does he really think that Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are chopping people up in garages and outwitting the FBI on more than one occasion? We've seen that Aderholt is a smart agent, so he probably wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, but Stan is going to need more than just a feeling about his neighbors' strange hours to convince him that they are illegals. So I can see Stan pursuing this on his own for a little while. Maybe he finds more ambiguous leads that neither confirm nor deny his suspicions, leading him to take riskier actions. Also, didn't Nina tell him that the illegals he shot at in Season 1 were gone - "she died, he was ex-filtrated"? Was there ever anything that would have dispelled that belief? Is he going to want to examine Elizabeth's stomach to see if she has a scar from a bullet wound? I don't know if this is the right thread to put these thoughts in, so please tell me and I will move it if it belongs elsewhere!

A lot of the scenes in the preview for The Summit are from previous episodes. But I don't remember the fire scene. Does anyone remember that in a previous episode? Elizabeth is in a large room and there is a big rectangular shaped fire in front of her. I was thinking maybe she is burning everything from their garage because they've found out the FBI is on to their garage hideouts. But maybe it's from an old episode?

I think she could stop being actively involved in training and stop planning for getting greater access to information for the USSR. But she would never truly be out. Someone would always have to keep an eye on her. Once you know the secret, you can never be left alone. Which, maybe, would be a good thing for Paige since she does not want to be alone. She may feel differently when she's 35, who knows.

We know so little about Philip's past. I feel like I am very young Philip with a spoon scraping an almost empty bowl, hoping to get something. At this point I've accepted that we won't find out more, but it is such a missed opportunity. For us and for Elizabeth, IMO. And Irina's whole story just makes me mad. I only got mad about it again because I was rewatching Season 1 and there she was, being ambiguous and wanting Philip to run away with her, and not even telling him whether Mischa was real or not. So annoying. I'm glad she was captured!

I hope for Paige's sake that the Soviets are prepared to manage her for the rest of her life. Otherwise she will end up like that poor man in Season 1 who was desperate to talk to his handler (the original KGB Rezident) but couldn't do so. He was lonely and vulnerable. And then there's William, who had the Soviet connection via Gabriel. He was lonely and miserable. I see Paige as being extremely vulnerable emotionally because she is trying to hard to not be vulnerable. I can't help but picture her getting in to a bad relationship and then being afraid to leave because she doesn't want to be alone. She is unlikely to be as lucky as Elizabeth was with Philip.

Elizabeth has a passport too. She went to West Germany with Paige. Gabriel thought she could have been caught at the time. I wonder if they can search old travel records. It would have been about five years ago in show time.

Oh man. Yeah, Curtis would know her well, probably. She often came to see Gregory without disguise. I loved it when he flipped on Gregory. Yikes. I wonder if Curtis ever met Philip. You inspired me to check IMDB for Father Andrei, and he will be in the final two episodes. The FBI is going to be questioning Russian priests. He's seen Philip & Elizabeth without their disguises. Double yikes!

That's not Henry. It's the intern Elizabeth's stalking and looks like trying to start an affair with. Somebody's definitely pushing her picture across a table, though. Doesn't look like Stan's hand but somebody wearing a wedding ring? They might be asking somebody to say whether she's the same person they've seen elsewhere, or telling them to look out for her. Maybe it's Renee on a mission from Stan or something. In the preview we see Stan looking at a picture of him & Sandra with Philip & Elizabeth. The picture of Elizabeth that is pushed across the table has been cut out from that picture (you can see a hint of Philip on the left margin). So if it isn't Stan, then he's let someone else know about his suspicions.

I love this show. I'm willing to accept all kinds of things in a TV show. I give The Americans a lot of leeway in general because it has been so very good. But there are a few things that still bug me, that I think they could have handled differently. 1. Mischa & his mother Irina. What the hell. The whole thing. It's been discussed many times. His existence as Irina & Philip's son doesn't make sense. Irina's ability to defect and then get messages and documents to her son even after she's captured doesn't make sense. The amount of time spent following Mischa on his journey to the USA, only to have him NOT EVEN MEET PHLIP doesn't make sense. The scene with him and Gabriel is moving. The actor is likable. His journey is tense. But what a freaking waste of time. And then after he is sent back to Russia, he is united with Philip's heretofore unheard of BROTHER? That Philip doesn't even know about? That doesn't make sense. The whole story line of Mischa and Irina has so many plot holes that I'd be willing to overlook if it had led somewhere meaningful for Philip. But it didn't. It was a waste. If I could only pick one thing that bugs me about the show, it would be Mischa and Irina. 2. How time was used in Season 5 & the jump to season 6. Season 4 was a hard act to follow. There was probably no way to maintain that exquisite level of tension. So many familiar faces and deep rooted relationships were gone. But Season 5 went too far the other direction. The new characters in Kansas City were not interesting. The Morozovs and Tuan were interesting, but the wheat-watching was not interesting. Lying to Paige was not interesting. Meanwhile, Oleg has his own storyline, which was interesting, but was so disconnected from the rest of the show. Splitting the show in half and slowing each half down was a choice but it wasn't compelling. And it's especially frustrating now, watching Season 6 and thinking about what they could have done with Season 5 instead. I understand why they did the time jump, but coming after the super slow season 5, it feels like it cheats the audience out of seeing more of Philip & Elizabeth. They are why I love the show. What happened to them to cause them to drift so far apart? How did they adjust to Henry being out of the house? How did they adjust to not working together? How did Paige choose a college? And those are just small things. I just wish we'd seen what happened in those 3 years. It's also a missed opportunity to better develop the characters who needed it, like Paige & Renee. 3. Paige becomes less believable as she becomes more important. In the first few seasons, she is a catalyst, and in that role, she is interesting. In the pilot, Elizabeth is adamant that the children never know what they do, while Philip thinks they should know the truth. By the end of Season 2, their roles are reversed. By end of Season 3, Paige has put the entire family at risk by telling Pastor Tim. Up to that point, she is a believable young teen. She gets anxious when her parents separate. She notices her mother's odd behavior - doing laundry in the middle of the night, taking them to the movies then dropping them off, with strange explanations - and she gets curious. She pokes around the house. Believable - teens do that. She looks for something to belong to (the church). Believable. But then somewhere in Season 3/4, she becomes less believable. Her world narrows. Her personality contracts. She doesn't have any church friends - just the Pastor and his wife. Not believable IMO. She has no school friends and that is never explored in any meaningful way. She likes Matthew but then decides she probably has to be alone. She drops the church in favor of being a spy like her mother. She becomes a single-note character. She works as a catalyst for other characters but she is not developed enough to be interesting on her own. IMO she would have benefited form having at least one teenage friend and at least one teenage plot, something that let us see her as an individual without her parents or other adults. IDK - maybe the writers are pleased with Paige as a character but I feel like she's been a weak link since sometime in Season 3. 4. Stan's circle of friends: Renee. She either is just Stan's new girlfriend/wife, or she has meaning to the larger spy story. They make us think the latter because Philip suspects it. Renee's behavior with Stan is similar to how Philip & Elizabeth act with their marks. But it's entirely possible that she is just a benign presence re: spying. If so, I wish they had made her seem more like a real person and less like someone playing a mark. Maybe even have less of her altogether. TBF, it's hard to judge without having seen the end. Maybe they will pull it off in a satisfactory way. Amador. He is killed before the emotion of his death was earned, IMO. They have to create his relationship with Stan through flashbacks. It's not convincing, especially since it spurs Stan to murder Vlad as revenge. How long has Stan even worked with Amador? It just seems OTT. And I suspect if the writers could do it over, that they'd be able to fix this one fairly easily. Gaad. His death was so bizarre and unexplained. It's the kind of thing that would make me think the producers had a problem with an actor and needed to get rid of him. But I don't think that was the case. I just wish it had had some greater repercussion. It would have made more sense if Stan wanted to murder someone as revenge for Gaad, rather than Amador. 5. The house. I understand that they were stuck, having chosen that neighborhood and those houses for the pilot. But it just confuses people. It's a triplex, yet we never see any neighbors. The house exterior doesn't match the interior layout. I don't know if they could have fixed it with writing, but I wish they had been consistent in using CGI for the other garages. Or maybe come up with some explanation for the immediate-next-door neighbors we never see.

Maybe Stan will go talk to Paige next. It will be a good test of Paige's training. Can she act normal when being questioned? Or normal enough to fool Stan? Stan doesn't know Paige as well as he knows Henry so she might be able to fool him. But she's such a nervous, anxious creature that I find it hard to imagine her fooling anyone when something she really cares about is at risk. Plus, she certainly can't beat Stan up.

I think that Renee will be an unwitting "lightbulb" for Philip and/or Elizabeth to realize the FBI is on to them. Just like Henry was for Stan. She'll say something about how she was at the FBI for an interview and saw a file with Elizabeth's name on it and thought how crazy that was that there's a criminal out there with the same name! Something that makes Stan wince and Philip and/or Elizabeth act super normal and leave as quickly and normally as possible from wherever they are with Stan and Renee and then finally, finally, have to get out of town. Do they make it? Stan will be 100% watching them. Do they kill him? IDK, it seems like it would be a good parallel for the "innocent" party to be the one who spills the beans. To make the parallel even better, she does it when Stan isn't even there. I really don't understand what the writers intended with Renee.

I'm wondering if Stan will go visit the Jennings' travel agency now, and "casually" talk to some employees to try to find out more about Philip and Elizabeth's routines at work. Maybe he interviews Stavos - that guy would have no protective instincts towards Philip & Elizabeth after he was fired the day before Thanksgiving. And he's been there the whole time - he might have good info for Stan. Of course your idea is better - to talk to other travel agents and find out what's normal. But I don't think Stan will do that.