Plums

The key is "on some level". When he first found out and talked to them, he said "I know what spies do" when they condescendingly gave him the song and dance to convince him they wouldn't hurt a fly and "spies, lol, Is that the word Paige used?". He let himself go along with it because it he didn't really want to hurt Paige and was looking to be convinced not to turn them in, or he would have done it when he first found out. It was easier for him to just imagine them as communists loyal to Russia and The Cause, talking to willing sources or whatever, but he knew on a deeper level it was probably bullshit and that they were dangerous. Humans are complicated.

woo! Keri, Matthew, and the show were all just nominated for Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Drama Emmys! https://www.refinery29.com/2018/07/204252/emmy-nominations-2018-list I feel like Keri deserves the recognition, but it's a super tough category to win for her. A lot of really great shows. Matthew may have better luck though in the Actor category, as a couple shows have two nominees and some guys could cancel each other out. Plus The Americans is due for major wins. I hope they get Drama. Edit: Also, the Joe and Joel got a writing nomination for START. No supporting or guest noms this year. I feel like whatever the Emmy is for the soundtrack, the person or team responsible for placing those songs/creating those montages has been perennially robbed.

I mean, the show is pretty blatant about it. Wasn't Elizabeth's "they get them when they're young" rant the same episode, or thereabouts, where Nina waxes nostalgic about being a Young Pioneer? Yeah, when we get our first good glimpse of him, he's at dinner with the family talking up his anti-war protest stories from college. I think one of the main reasons why he backed off from any serious attempt to witness to them is because he understood on some level that they were dangerous and didn't want to be any more entangled with these people than he had to be. I wouldn't be surprised if, after he found out the truth, he remembered that confrontation with Philip and broke out in a cold sweat. He's probably sorry he ever encouraged Paige to demand the truth from them and got himself mixed up in that business. That's not to say he isn't a good person who is gonna want to help whoever needs it, but considering the shit he unexpectedly had to deal with for converting the daughter of spies, I can see him wanting to keep the spies themselves at as much a distance as he was able to. On the other hand, he's not gonna turn people away who seek his counsel. He does tell Elizabeth he would pray in her situation, but he's not gonna push it when she asks him what she should do as an atheist.

Pastor Tim is an interesting character to me. Like, he could see the psychological damage done to Paige because of her parents secret- he probably picked up on how unhappy she was in all those months when she was forced to spend so much of her time with him and Alice, but you get the impression from him that what was really worrying for him about her was he could tell she was moving away from Christianity. We forget sometimes that this dude is an evangelical pastor. He derives his moral compass from a very specific faith. There was that scene where he kind of probed Paige on if she was praying, with this concerned look and tone to him, and Paige basically says not so much. So he's worried for her soul on that level. There's such a complex mix of knowledge and naivete to Tim and Alice. They're removed enough from the situation and adults who know better enough to understand that Philip and Elizabeth being Russian spies means they're probably involved in some extremely shady shit, but they also allow themselves to be placated by the maybe-Priest because they have a very left wing take on global issues, their personal politics are probably much more in line with socialism than capitalism, Marx's views on organized religion and Soviet religious suppression notwithstanding. They also obviously understood that they could be in danger from having this knowledge, such that Alice would immediately suspect the Jenningses have arranged for him to "disappear" when Tim goes missing in a communist country. Yet they don't seem to have ever grasped just how much danger they were in, or how lucky they were to not get killed immediately. Alice feels safe enough to blackmail them. Tim wonders if P&E are monsters, thinks they're capable of monstrousness, yet he doesn't wonder how he's been allowed go around knowing about this pair of deep cover Soviet operatives. What's even more interesting to me after this episode is that P&E genuinely go to him for advice after seeing what he really thinks of them and what they've done to their daughter, lol.

I want to concur with @companionenvy about what the average person may know or not know about the August Coup. I think we're probably the same age. I'm 30 and don't even remember learning about the USSR as any sort of near-present reality at all in school. The Cold War was part of history when I learned about it, just like WWI and WWII, just like the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution. We read about the turmoil in Eastern Europe in the mid-90s. Specifically, I remember reading Zlata's Diary in middle school. But my earliest memory of European geography are post-USSR maps. I certainly didn't know about anything about the August Coup until I started reading about it on wikipedia during season 6 of The Americans, lol. My main mental association with the end of the Soviet Union is the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Pilot is very interesting to revisit in order to see what was substantially changed and what stayed consistent. Superficially, the wig game is hilarious to me in season 1. It's interesting to me that it isn't a detail that was ironed out between when the pilot was filmed and the rest of season 1. It's consistently ridiculous the whole time. I mean, Elizabeth is having sex in that trashy disguise with bleach blonde wig in the first scene in the pilot, and it's just something she grabs off her head in the car afterwards like a hat, long hair tumbling down loose immediately. How can anyone have sex in such a precarious disguise!? Obviously the Clark wig is the same way at first for Philip. I think the writers got justifiably ribbed over how unrealistic wearing wigs like that when there's a strong chance you're engaged in activities where they could easily come off would be, so they changed it to the million pins plus adhesive goo after s1 (And then the first disguised scene in the second season specifically shows a wig getting torn off Philip only after strenuous effort was applied, lol) I agree that the meeting with Zhukov was totally impossible given what was subsequently established about how espionage functioned in this universe. I know it's been discussed before, but one of the ways I feel the show was probably retooled between the pilot and the rest of season 1 is that they discovered that the entire conceit of the character of Zhukov just didn't work. Maybe they realized the same about Amador and knew they would get rid of him halfway through too. They're both introduced as fairly major side characters in the pilot but then pretty much sidelined until they're killed and spark vengeful rages in the respective protagonist they're hamfistedly tied to via flashbacks. I definitely feel like there are some relics of characterization in the pilot that maybe linger a bit in early season 1, but are largely abandoned in the rest of the series. Specifically with Philip. The way he's pushy and possessive with Elizabeth, insisting she's his wife and broodingly listening to the tape of her honeytrapping the fed. We've fanwanked it to be about him getting lost in the character, but I really think they just didn't have the idea of who Philip would ultimately be at that point. Yeah, I mean I guess you could say since he knew his feelings were one-sided, all this stuff bothers him more because he's much more insecure about her, but eeeeeehhhhhhhh. I don't really buy it. Just like I don't really buy that Elizabeth would argue over the practicalities of defecting with him, such as how they would obviously get caught, or that he would make the decision unilaterally and try to force her to go with him in the first place. If he was that worried about the FBI knowing about them due to Stan's presence, they didn't establish it well enough. I feel like the much more believable, better illustration of their pre-Timoshev, marriage-becoming-real dynamic comes from that flashback to 1967 in 2x03, when Elizabeth decided to have kids, and it was implied to be the first time they had sex. They had a smooth, established working partnership, and he didn't have any illusions about how she really felt about him or what they were and was very respectful of her even if you could tell he wasn't happy about this happening given their unequal emotional circumstances.

That leans a little too much on a Paige/Henry relationship I never saw for me. Henry never confides in Paige about anything at all on the show. On the camping trip they were sharing a tent and he was four. She was probably a witness to his terror in the moment. The main thing I too away from the scene was that Paige is betraying his confidence just like she might betray Philip's at any minute. It's like the incident with the beer bottle. He didn't tell Paige about it, she saw it and he asked her not to tell anyone else. Probably wished she hadn't seen it either! Not that this means Paige isn't feeling anything like what you're describing there, though. I just think it's less about Paige being someone Henry confides in, or Paige being someone with any particular insight into Henry's vulnerabilities as an individual, and more about Paige and Henry having the same perspective as American teenagers vs. their weird parents. As Paige says when Elizabeth says Henry's the same age she was when she (and also Philip) left home, Henry isn't like her. Nobody is. (That is, nobody Paige knows is.) She knows how Henry will feel at their parents doing this because she knows what she felt and how she's feeling in that moment. She can't wrap her mind around them leaving their children. People don't do that. It's simply not a choice that she or Henry have been brought up to be prepared to deal with. They expect to have both their parents and their opportunities. I think it's a mix of both maybe. Paige is horrified by the idea that parents would abandon their still dependent child in general, as you say, but we've seen evidence that Henry and Paige have a strong relationship for a brother and sister, even if they're not like, super close friends who share interests and prefer to hang out with each other. Like Henry tells Stan in the car when he reveals they didn't have any other family to stay with when their parents were away on business, growing up it was mostly just him and Paige. She probably took care of him a lot as soon as she was old enough to be the babysitter. They had their moments, even if their relationship was never the focus. You had the hitchhiking disaster in s1, where Henry protects Paige from the creep, Paige comforts and takes care of Henry after he wet himself, and they both agree to keep the experience a secret from their parents. Henry is the one who comes up with the smooth, believable lie about how they got home after that. Later on, he also tries to cover for Paige when she skips school to visit Aunt Helen. When Philip and Elizabeth split up in s1, Elizabeth mentions offhand that Paige slept in Henry's room the night he left. Paige finds Henry's porn stash with the picture of Sandra and is very sweet and comforting after initially being immature about it until he freaks out and is clearly super upset. They had that moment with the beer during 4x07 when she and Henry went over to Stan's house to hang out with Matthew while their parents were all gone dealing with the Martha Emergency. She supports him in his desire to go to boarding school with their parents. They are clearly on the same wavelength with each other when they notice the frostiness between their parents over Thanksgiving. When Paige was absolutely losing it over her entire life being a series of one lie after another, the one unshakeable, grounding truth Philip was able to provide her was that Henry was really her little brother. That relationship was real and true. One of the main reasons she cracks in season 3 and calls Pastor Tim is because she's met her grandmother and seen this usually entirely hidden version of their mother, and she can't handle the idea of having to lie to Henry about it. I feel like, for the most part after Paige found out, she was mostly aligned with her parents in the narrative, and Henry was mostly gone, and it's true that their relationship was never the focus, but I think their relationship was sufficiently established for it to be believable that Paige would freak out about the whole family just up and ghosting on him due to how she relates to Henry specifically beyond just the idea of parents abandoning their children in general. That, beyond not wanting to go to Russia and rejecting her parents, especially Elizabeth, in that very final way (which I also agree was a major motivating factor to Paige getting off the train) the idea of abandoning Henry to deal with the imminent reality destroying blindside that's about to hit him, was a bridge too far for her because Henry is her little brother and maybe they couldn't always rely on their parents, but they could always rely on each other.

I agree, this is an amazing thread title.

that's a disingenuous translation of what the writers have said. an ending to a story does not dictate a resolution regarding the ultimate fates of the characters, and the writers have never said they didn't write an ending, just that the ending they did write leaves the future of the characters open to interpretation. it may not be an ending to your literary taste, but it is an ending, and it's not an uncommon type of one at all.

this is finally posted in it's entirety! edit: I hadn't watched it all when I posted it, but Keidrich has a super adorable moment where he's talking about the history of henry's character on the show and tries to reference the crush on sandra, but he's so embarrassed he can't finish the sentence and everyone laughs at him. and then he and holly have a sibling banter moment. v cute.

My take is that the story of this show came to a natural conclusion when Philip and Elizabeth ceased to be the titular "Americans". Examining the fallout of their actions on themselves, their families and friends and targets and various governments, are left to our imagination because the main characters of the show, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, no longer exist. That particular story, or maybe a better word is chapter, in both their lives and the lives of the people they left behind, ends as soon as they're in Moscow and speaking Russian to each other. I think it works. In any event, judging by the wide variety of opinions and desires from just this board alone, I'm happier we didn't get any sort of postscript or epilogue or Word of God statement about what happens to everyone. That was never the point of the show, imo.

The argument is that the FBI is not going to brag about "running the spies out of town". That sounds like some weary, sarcastic "look on the bright side" thing Aderholdt would say when the trail goes cold in a few days, but no one thinks it's funny because they let the spies escape and they're all exhausted and depressed.

The Clark/Martha marriage in season 2! When it was still mostly played for laughs before she became Poor Martha. That entire scene where Martha gets super drunk with Elizabeth-as-Jennifer and starts spilling the details of her sex life with who she thinks is her husband's sister was so hilarious at the time, and Elizabeth in character as Jennifer was absolutely hysterical. She never really acted so completely different as that in any of her other alter egos. I like to think she had fun with it, tbh. It's so sad looking back at it in hindsight because Martha was so glad to see her and have someone else to talk to Clark about and hear more about him from. And it was just all lies. Like, how bitter and depressed and over it she was when Gabriel met with her in Moscow and tried to make her feel better by mentioning Clark. Like, oh my God, Gabriel, of course she knows by now that literally everything she ever thought she knew about him was this huge, elaborate con, please shut up. Anyway, yeah, I am enjoying how less doom-y yet more cohesive than season 1 it is, and I particularly enjoy the Westerfeld marriage. I almost wish we saw more of it, because in the few instances we did see them where Philip was just in character and not really actively trying to do something, they were such an average married couple! Eating breakfast in their schlubby PJs and watching the news! GIMME MOAR. He spent more or less 2 days of the week just living with her as this guy, for almost 3 years. Like, that list of places she could be when she runs away in 4x07 that he knows from this whole separate life they've lived that he's detailing as he runs through the list, and it makes Elizabeth so insecure seeing how well and intimately he knows this woman (my favorite detail- the very first place he guesses on his list of possible places she would go is exactly where they eventually found her), I wish we had seen some more of that other life. Like, I know why we didn't, but I guess it's just this slice of life thing I'd like to read in a one-shot or something. Just Philip as Clark with Martha during like the timeline between seasons 2 and 3 when she was still happily married, and he's just spending the day with her.

To add to your point- one thing I've noticed on re-watch about that- okay so, Leanne left a letter for Elizabeth to give to Jared in the event that she and Emmett were killed, explaining the truth about who they were, and Elizabeth burned the letter because at the time she thought it would do more harm than good for him to know. Both Philip and Elizabeth were initially dumbfounded that the Center even told Jared the truth. Obviously the FBI didn't either, as you say. Stan gave him the impression that his parents were involved in something criminal and subtly interrogated him as a potential witness, but he was never treated as a suspect or even like he may have known. Then, in the garage scene, Philip makes a point to ask Stan to tell Henry the truth. The truth as opposed to what? Elizabeth makes the argument that the FBI will tear Henry to pieces earlier, but she's not thinking logically in that moment because she's looking for an excuse to not leave him behind, and then they both come to the conclusion that Henry's obvious innocence will protect him. But Philip acts like it's SOP for these spy cases to remain classified, and we actually see that as a pattern in the show. No one ever sees a news report about any of the people the FBI discovers are spies talking about that fact. It's safe to assume Philip expects Henry to wind up in a similar situation to Jared at that point in the garage, and the FBI didn't tell Jared his parents were spies. But like Leanne, who wanted her son to know the truth and asked a trusted friend to tell him about them in the event his parents disappeared, Philip wants Henry to know the truth and asked a friend to do it. He probably expected that Henry would get a cover story about his family disappearing.

Yeah, this was cool. I never made a habit of rewatching season 2 (such a mistake, because there are so many gems!) where these scenes take place, but I've seen the scenes where Arkady learns about Gaad's death and is super upset about it and when he can't hide his guilt when Wolfe accuses him bunches of times, and those early season 2 interactions add so much to those later scenes wrt Arkady's character. He was playing the game with Gaad in season two, but he obviously also respected him as a counterpart and probably personally liked him too. I'm just appreciating Arkady as a character so much right now. such a mensch.

This all feels like a wild, willful misinterpretation of the argument. I never said they wanted to protect Stan. They want to protect the organization and the image of the government as a whole. this isn't a win at all- the spies got away. and if the story got out and journalists dig into the story and discover the details, it'll make the entire US intelligence apparatus look foolish and incompetent. Hence, they bury the story.

This has always been my view. They were neighbors and intimate friends with an FBI agent for 6 years. Their daughter dated his son. The head of FBI counterintelligence had Thanksgiving with them. They fled the country on a passenger train that was inspected by a border control unit armed with their photographs and knowledge that they wear disguises yet still managed to be fooled by wigs, makeup and nonchalance. This is farcical incompetence and the most humiliating intelligence failure in decades probably from the perspective of the US government, and no way they'd want it exposed in the media. In my personal headcanon, they even devise some cover story when questioning people who don't know the truth, like the travel agency employees, just to make sure the story stays hushed up and contained, like shady financial crimes or mafia ties.

In fact almost the very first thing Oleg says when he and Philip first meet, after they've established there's no surveillance is, "Arkady Ivanovich sent me. We need your help."

I don't know why you posted the transcript of the confrontation with Claudia because it just looks like it proves Erin's point. It's heavily implied and all but stated outright that if Arkady was able to expose the details of this conspiracy to the Party, the balance of power in the government tips decidedly in the reformers favor and all the people involved with this particular plot are neutralized, either through death or imprisonment. the issue it seems you have is that you're equating the plot the show invented with the actual coup in 1991, and they're not the same. A whole hell of a lot happened in the four years in between. And we know the 1991 coup succeeded in ousting Gorbachev at the very least even though it hastened the end of the USSR and made that end even more chaotic than it would have been otherwise; we're not arguing that the show is telling us that coup was prevented and the course of history broke off into an alternate canon AU, we're just saying there's no danger to any of our main characters in Russia at the end of the show, because this is a different coup with different people involved.

It all comes down to the type of show we were watching, I guess. For me, the tone and what the writing chose to emphasize is what matters and informs the story. And the writing has always emphasized the characters over any kind of action or spy stakes. The plot serves the characters, not the other way around. The characters' relationships with one another, how their actions effect those relationships and their emotions, how their missions effect their characterizations, that's always been where the story is and the only things that matter, not the geopolitical plots themselves. I don't need to actually see that the anti-coup elements have lost this round, because those people don't matter, they're Claudia who has gone back to fight from the trenches and will probably be a figure in the 1991 coup if she isn't killed as one of the co-conspirators. and if she makes it she'll be just as shocked that the people aren't with her as the actual coup hardliners were when they thought they were saving the country. Otherwise, in the show these people are mostly nameless and faceless. They don't matter, and this plot never mattered beyond how it positioned characters we actually know and care about, and how it created conflict between P&E and grew Elizabeth's character. We don't need to see them actually lose to know they're not important anymore. I get from the narrative shorthand of seeing P&E meeting Arkady, who has been established as a competent, intelligent, sympathetic authority figure, and finally being able to rest as he takes over from there, that they got their message to the appropriate people in time and they're out of danger. It isn't anything that actually needed to be seen to be understood. The music and tone emphasizes their heartbreak at being separated from their kids and having to start a strange new life without them. that's where the story goes after the screen fades to black; there's not any sense of danger from outside forces. And I agree that I won't debate anything to do with Paige with you, since what we see her as capable of is an entirely irreconcilable difference of opinion. I just don't see any doom on the horizon at all, except for what we know will ultimately happen to the Soviet Union. Not in the immediate futures of any of the characters. Stan will care for Henry for as long as he needs it, and he won't get fired even though he may choose to retire, because that's all implied in what we saw on screen and what we know of the characters. This was a bittersweet end to a character drama, not an abrupt end to an action show.

I liked Mad Men's ending montage but wouldn't have the patience to re-watch any of that show past season 4 (lol, so in that respect I can totally relate to you @Umbelina) True Blood, ugh. Just forget about it. I felt like the entire thing went off a cliff after Alan Ball left. See, that entire storyline, and all the drama and suspense of this couple knowing the family secret it caused, was paid off for me personally entirely for that moment when he lies to Stan and covers for them out of loyalty to Paige. That was so delightful and satisfying to me. All these ironies playing out in the final season- Elizabeth's, of all people's, sloppiness and lack of forethought or caution, is what ultimately puts the FBI on the trail of Harvest, which cracks open the entire illegals operating strategy, and puts Stan in particular on the trail of P&E. Paige's inability to hide her emotions isn't what makes Stan suspicious, but Henry's guileless complaining about how his parents are always leaving in the middle of the night. It's not ticking time bomb Pastor Tim who gives them up, but Father Andrei, who they trusted implicitly. I absolutely love that stuff. I'm sorry you didn't like the last two seasons. It's interesting how differently people interpret things. I get absolutely no sense of physical peril at all for any of the characters at the end. For just as clearly imperiled as you see them, I see them as just as clearly safe. The fallout from the emotional wreckage is the most immediate conflict I see everyone dealing with where we leave them, not any outside threat.

I'd also love a deep dive series re-watch discussion with spoilers allowed. We always knew that these characters were tragic due to what was going to happen in the near future geopolitically, but now we'll be able to see even more tragedy, knowing what will happen to them personally!

I almost wish this was a thing we had more of a sense of in earlier seasons. Like, because I'm watching season 2 right now, particularly "New Car", and the titular new car is got specifically because the travel agency is doing really well, and Philip has these asides where it's clear he's focusing on it a bit and hustling and getting new business and just generally being a successful small business owner. When he's not feeling the walls closing in and acting from flop sweat desperation mode, he's a really good, natural salesman. So he's not been established previously as bad at capitalism when I feel like he kind of should have been, in order for the final season story to not feel so out of nowhere. I mean, I get it. Philip hits a snag when he tries to expand and goes into debt just at the moment when the market takes a hit, and it's a common, unfortunate feature of capitalism that this happens sometimes, but he's not prepared to deal with it at all. The KGB business school probably didn't include lessons on risk and investing when it came to their agents' cover jobs. Losing Elizabeth's probably moderating input wrt the travel agency probably didn't help (she's the one who suggested he cut back when he first told her there were money troubles, and I don't see her agreeing at all to taking out a huge business loan to expand if she were still involved in decision-making at the travel agency). Honestly, his arc in season 6 with capitalism reminded me of Don Draper, someone else who grew up in utter deprivation, found himself living the "American Dream" under a false identity and was taken in by the myth and the trappings of the dream (like buying a totally sweet fancy new car because the image of themselves driving it made them feel awesome) without understanding the reality or the rules of it. Like, I see Philip with his struggling small business, putting on his cowboy boots, driving his fancy new car with fancy sun roof and fancy stereo, reading his power of positive thinking self help book in his office, and all I can think of is Betty Draper dismissively saying "I've seen how you are with money; you don't understand it". That succinct character penetration got Don right in the gut. One of the first things we see in the next season is that he's moved on from hoarding cash in a drawer to having an accountant. Like, I don't think Don is a similar character to Philip in any other possible way, but it just struck me as I was watching him in season 6, the familiarity of that particular character detail.

okay, I've been rewatching (basically it's been non-stop Americans since March, lol) and I literally just noticed this and it's blowing my mind. And it isn't even hidden! It's literally talked about in an episode. okay, so season 2- the submarine propeller plans that Philip and Elizabeth stole after inheriting the operation from Emmet and Leanne. The sub went down, and Kate told Philip that the plans were faulty and deliberately planted by the US government to trick the soviets into stealing so that it would lead to them killing their own sailors. This is a fact that I absorbed from the show, and it wasn't unrealistic at all to me. But then Oleg tells Arkady later that the plans were for a different sized class of submarine than what the Soviet Navy fitted it for, and that they were basically completely negligent and incompetent in how they went about implementing and testing the design. Implication being that there wasn't actually anything wrong with the propeller at all, and the story that the Americans planted it was made up by the Soviet military to cover for their own incompetence. Arkady gives Oleg a significant look and just tells him "We got bad plans. This is our fault", like, wordlessly telling Oleg to just accept that the KGB and the American government is being scapegoated for their military's failure and do not speak of this to anyone else. I spent years believing that though, even though Oleg literally gives the true story in the same episode! I don't know why. It fits a lot with what we see of the Soviet government's MO when it comes to lying to their officers in order to deflect blame for things that are their fault, and it adds another layer of tragedy to P&Es situation, that they're basically being unknowingly fed false propaganda to reinforce their commitment. It starts from almost the very beginning of the show though, with kindly grandmother Claudia lying to them that they'd be exfiltrating Joyce Ramirez and her baby to Cuba, when in reality they killed her and took the baby to Russia. But in terms of operations they were given, the exact same things happened with the biological weapons and the wheat storyline. They were told they were on missions to defend their country from American aggression, when really it was all bullshit to cover for the fact that the soviets want to use biological weapons offensively and someone to scapegoat for the endemic corruption leading to food lines in their country. Elizabeth just thinks they got mistakenly false intelligence rather than deliberately false intelligence, but it's paralleled with an entire Russian storyline with Oleg where he's examining the real root cause of food insecurity in their country, and they all know it's entirely their own government's fault. It happens again with Elizabeth in season 6 when they try to manipulate her into being a pawn in their coup. It's no wonder Arkady and Oleg were so disgusted by the status quo at home after witnessing years of this shit that they'd team up against these assholes and stop their coup of someone actually acting in good faith. Like I have to wonder if P&E will ever know the breadth of how much the Center lied to them over the years. I think Philip was starting to understand it on some level by the time he retired, but it wasn't really something he wanted to think about because it was too much and too terrible.

It's really about Irina, but Mischa comes up once between P&E, in a way, after s3, that I can think of. It's during the fight. "I am stuck with you because I took you back! AFTER YOU SLEPT WITH THE WOMAN WHO HAD YOUR SON, AND YOU LIED TO MY FACE ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" lol, honestly just wanted an excuse to quote it. I didn't even have to look it up.