The Americans Retrospective

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, Nash said:

This is what you get when people fill in the spaces themselves. There’s no right or wrong and unless there is clear evidence to the contrary of a particular idea, the fans can write whatever endings they want. 

So Claudia’s thoughts on the coup failing are her opinion, not fact. P&Es comments that they’ll manage is their hope. Both and neither could be right or wrong. 

But fans can always write whatever endings they want, including in cases in which endings seem to be completely settled. In  George Eliot's Daniel Deronda,  the main character, raised as an English gentleman by an adoptive father, winds up finding out that he is Jewish, embracing his identity, and choosing to marry a Jewish woman instead of the other main character, a Christian gentlewoman. At the end of the novel, he and his own wife leave for Jerusalem. A ton of readers were really perplexed and disappointed by this ending, and at least one of them wrote a "sequel" in which Daniel's wife, Mirah, dies almost immediately upon arrival, and Daniel, realizing Jerusalem is dirty and vulgar, goes back to England, where he eventually returns to Gwendolyn.

Technically, the novel leaves room for one to do that. Eliot didn't not say that Mirah was going to die within the year, or that Daniel wouldn't regret his choice. But the "sequel" still flies in the face of what is on the page.

Even given all out respective disagreements on the Americans, I think most of us would probably agree that there are some theories for what happens after the ending that wouldn't be at all plausible. Since P&E are still alive, someone could write a non-AU fanfic in which they sneak back to the US or maybe Canada under totally new identities and with even spiffier disguises in order to reunite with Paige and Henry. Which would be very silly, but not technically impossible. 

Texts written by authors shouldn't be evaluated in precisely the same way as real-life events. If it were just a matter of a person saying "We'll manage," sure, that can be right or wrong. But this is a scene created by writers who wanted to leave viewers with a certain impression. Sure, maybe the impression they want to leave us with is "Elizabeth is totally delusional," but that's not what I see in the context of the episode or the series as a whole. Similarly, Claudia's thoughts on the coup are her opinion - but the writers chose to put them on screen and leave them unchallenged either directly or in the form of P&E discussing potential danger to themselves, which gives them a certain level of validation. What would have been the purpose of having Claudia spout absolute nonsense and then never challenging it?

Basically, there are two scenarios in which and ending is genuinely settled: the characters die, or the writers do a flash-forward montage set sufficiently far in the future. Obviously, some "open" endings are more open than others; even on this show, Oleg's ending is much more conclusive than P&E's which is more conclusive than Paige's. But when I think back to other shows I've watched, The Americans doesn't stand out as particularly inconclusive. 

One more historical note on the coup: most of the leaders of the 1991 coup did wind up under arrest, which means history makes Claudia's statements more, not less plausible. A group of higher-ups in Directorate S getting arrested in December 1987 doesn't have to mean that the coup of August 1991 involves an entirely new cast of characters. We just have to believe that some people involved in the operation that Elizabeth foils manage to avoid being implicated. And presumably, plenty of people who weren't in a position to be "in the know" for this attempted coup would have been supportive of its aims and inclined to sign on a couple of years later.

On a narrative level, it also seems iffy to me that Weisberg and Fields would have been expecting or relying on their viewers to remember a three-days long coup against Gorbachev that happened 27 years ago. I know it was a major historical event, but...it was a while ago, and if you're not Russian and especially if you are too young to remember it, I don't think it is something on the average American's (or even the average Americans viewer's) radar. They could have safely assumed people would know that the USSR was going to fall in several years, but I don't think they could have been assuming "Everyone will recognize the strong possibility that Claudia and Elizabeth are wrong because there will be another coup against Gorbachev in three years, implying that the present coup leadership survives to take revenge on Elizabeth and Philip." And if you're a viewer that isn't aware of the 1991 coup, you really have no basis for believing P&E are in any special danger: they've won and Claudia's camp has lost. 

Re: Paige and Henry. I agree that Paige didn't go back primarily for Henry, but again, my reasons are as much narrative based as they are plot based. Paige and Henry's relationship simply didn't have enough build-up in the narrative for him being the crucial factor in her decision to have a ton of weight. I'm sure Paige loves Henry, but the tension with Paige's character was whether she was going to follow her mother or realize that this wasn't who she was and reject Elizabeth's life and world. That's primarily what she's doing in the finale, IMO.

[Umbelina]

44 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

Similarly, Claudia's thoughts on the coup are her opinion - but the writers chose to put them on screen and leave them unchallenged either directly or in the form of P&E discussing potential danger to themselves, which gives them a certain level of validation. What would have been the purpose of having Claudia spout absolute nonsense and then never challenging it?

No we don't.  Elizabeth said something in the same conversation that she thought to be true, but was not.  That the message was already there.

They had no purpose, except to do a "woo hoo!  after all the murders this year, the one Elizabeth should have committed?  Ha!  We didn't do it.  Aren't we edgy and cool?"

45 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

We just have to believe that some people involved in the operation that Elizabeth foils manage to avoid being implicated.

She knows 2.  Claudia and the General.  That's it.  Arkady knows more, but he's in no position to take them on, they are much more connected than he is. 

45 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

On a narrative level, it also seems iffy to me that Weisberg and Fields would have been expecting or relying on their viewers to remember a three-days long coup against Gorbachev that happened 27 years ago.

Sure, why would anyone remember, you know, THE FALL OF THE EVIL EMPIRE or that a coup was responsible.  They cold war ended, but nobody paid attention, after all, no big deal, right?  The USSR ceased to exist, but hey, it was to long ago to bother to remember.  A whole 27 years ago.  The entire world map changed, but how could anyone be expected to pay attention to that?

[Nash]

It may be age but a lot of my colleagues and all my friends know about the Coup. 

[companionenvy]

1 hour ago, Umbelina said:

Sure, why would anyone remember, you know, THE FALL OF THE EVIL EMPIRE or that a coup was responsible.  They cold war ended, but nobody paid attention, after all, no big deal, right?  The USSR ceased to exist, but hey, it was to long ago to bother to remember.  A whole 27 years ago.  The entire world map changed, but how could anyone be expected to pay attention to that?

Fine, I'll own up to it. I was four years old when the USSR fell. I took AP European History in high school, minored in history (albeit American history) in college, and have multiple advanced degrees. And I'll admit that I'd forgotten about the August Coup until it came up in discussions of the finale. My memory of what I'd learned (not, obviously remembered) about the fall of the USSR included Gorbachev and Perestroika/Glasnost. I knew the USSR fell in 1991, following events like the fall of the Berlin Wall and other serious blows to the integrity of the union. But no, I didn't remember that one of the decisive events in the long lead-up to the fall of the USSR was a three-day coup that actually failed - it was important in that it shifted the power from Gorbachev to Yeltsin, but the hard-liners didn't win. 

Maybe everyone over a certain age would remember this. I wouldn't know. But I'd suspect that there are some fairly well-educated Americans in their forties and up who paid a reasonable degree of attention to the news at the time and still wouldn't have had the August Coup anywhere near the forefront of their mind while watching the finale of the Americans, even if they do have memories of Boris Yeltsin shouting from a tank.

The coup was not the only event that led to the fall of the Soviet Union. It may have been the final, precipitating event, but there were already serious signs that the USSR was in trouble, and the idea of dissolution was already on the table. The treaty whose signing was prevented by the coup was already intending to radically reshape the USSR, which would formally have become the Union of Sovereign States. It would have preserved the union in some form, but allowed considerably more autonomy to members. And this treaty was an attempt by Gorbachev to forestall the total breakup of the USSR, which had become an increasingly likely scenario. Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Georgia had all declared independence before the coup. While the coup itself is seen as decisive in preventing Gorbachev's half-measure treaty from succeeding, leading to the quick and inevitable fall of the USSR, it didn't happen that day or that week; Gorbachev survived and even briefly resumed his position. The December dissolution of the USSR was finally the result of a legislative vote in which the leaders of the coup decidedly did not participate. So it isn't quite the same as forgetting a successful revolution that replaced the leader of the old regime with a member of the insurgency, and I'll maintain that you can - regardless of age -- have a basic grasp of the tensions surrounding the fall of the USSR, not to mention be aware of the fact that "the USSR ceased to exist and the entire map of the world changed," without recalling the August Coup or who fomented it. 

Edited July 6, 2018 by companionenvy

[Nash]

It’s a factor of a lot of things - age, interest in politics, memory and even whether you associate tv entertainment with the real world. 

My ears pricked up when the Coup was mentioned and thinking of the dates, I thought it was what I’ll call a “proto Coup” ie not the real coup but writers licence using probable hardliner concern about Gorbachev even in 87, to create a plot device. 

[Plums]

30 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

1 hour ago, Dev F said:

To me that speaks volumes about the relationship between Henry and the rest of his family -- that he doesn't want his parents to know when he feels afraid and vulnerable, but he'll confide in his big sister about it. It seems like that would give her a different perspective on what it means to leave him behind in America; whereas his parents ultimately decide that he's independent and well-adjusted enough to handle it, Paige knows about the part of him that's secretly not so strong and confident, that might be terrified of the people who, in Elizabeth's words, "would tear him to pieces" like a wild animal. So she knows she has to be there for him, like she was there for him in that tent.

That also got me thinking about how, in the finale, Paige hears Philip tell Henry he needs to be himself, which obviously reminds her of the time in season 3 when he told her the same thing and she had no idea what he was getting at. Originally, I assumed that moment was about Paige finally realizing what Philip was talking about, and wondering whether she really was being true to herself by following her parents back to their homeland. But now I'm thinking that it's also about Henry: she knows that he's not going to understand it either, and the only one who can help him come to terms with it and everything else he's going to be going through is her, because she's already gone through it herself.

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. 

[Plums]

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. 

[Nash]

That illustrates just how diverse this forum is :-) put it this way, I remember the Falklands War. 

In a loosely related story, I read that back in 1982, the British naval attache in Moscow was summoned by an admiral in the Red Navy and was loudly carpeted for the “imperial capitalist aggression etc” fir sending the Task Force. The Admiral - of Claudia’s generation -  then said more quietly “now, that’s done, you make sure you give those fascists the kicking they deserve”. 

And that was a very good analysis of Paige and Henry, bravo. 

[Erin9]

50 minutes ago, Plums said:

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 only time I studied the Soviet Union itself in any depth was when I took a class in college on Russia from late 19th century-present. I got a lot out of the course, and I do remember the generalities of what caused the fall. But I don’t recall the specific details. It’s been awhile. 

It was always a struggle to really even cover Watergate in most general history classes I took. Forget the 1980s in any depth. If at all. 

I was a kid when the USSR fell. Beyond the fact it happened, that was about all I knew. I don’t think the showrunners expected the average viewers to know the details. Just that it happened  in 1991.

I read Zlata’s diary in middle school too! But I was old enough to have a globe that had the USSR on it- why I remember that- I have no idea. Lol 

Here’s kind of a funny side note- I was talking about European trips with my parents recently. The Czech Republic came up. I can’t tell you how many times they kept calling it Czechoslovakia.lol 

[Nash]

Ahem. I call it that too.....

[Erin9]

37 minutes ago, Nash said:

Ahem. I call it that too.....

It’s deeply ingrained. :) 

I was old enough to be familiar with USSR  geography. Not old enough for it to really stick. 

Edited July 6, 2018 by Erin9

[Nash]

Yes, growing up in the 70s meant that in between playing d&d we were reading and watching the various Cold War threats and crises.  At one point the UK and USSR were expelling each other’s diplomats on a daily basis; Georgi Markhov getting assassinated, defectors, spy swaps. Non stop Cold War mayhem. 

Reading about it later is very revealing - and quite worrying - my home town had three nuclear targets. the Able Archer exercise almost kicked off WWIII because it fitted the profile of what the WarPact expected pre war prep moves to look like. At the time we were quite like Henry, getting on with teenage life - most Saturdays our parents only had a vague idea of where we were. So the “where’s Henry” thing isn’t that silly really. Trust me, I was there :-) 

[sistermagpie]

10 hours ago, Umbelina said:

I think Paige is the only possible person in the world who can understand nearly exactly what Henry is feeling right now.  She went through it herself with the same parents.  She does know quite a bit, and by the time the FBI finishes questioning her, down the line they will get specific about Martha, about the murders, etc. to try to tie up cases and see if they hit another clue to use, she will know a hell of a lot more.

Henry will likely feel betrayed by Paige as well, since she knew and didn't tell.  I think Paige will expect that though, and handle it fairly well.  Again, she's been in those shoes.  I think for quite a while they will be all they have in many ways.

Really though?  Paige wanted no part of going to the Soviet Union.  Maybe she actually read a newspaper after all.  It was a nightmare at that time, and about to become even worse.  She's an American kid.  Do I think she thought of Henry?  Yes.  Second, not first.  Paige will always be first for Paige.

 

9 hours ago, companionenvy said:

Re: Paige and Henry. I agree that Paige didn't go back primarily for Henry, but again, my reasons are as much narrative based as they are plot based. Paige and Henry's relationship simply didn't have enough build-up in the narrative for him being the crucial factor in her decision to have a ton of weight. I'm sure Paige loves Henry, but the tension with Paige's character was whether she was going to follow her mother or realize that this wasn't who she was and reject Elizabeth's life and world. That's primarily what she's doing in the finale, IMO.

That's where I land on it too. I do think that Paige is thinking of Henry plenty in the finale, but in ways that reflected her feelings about herself and her parents, the people she was primarily obsessed with. I don't mean she wasn't also genuinely thinking about Henry too, but not because Henry is an important figure in her actual life.

 

5 hours ago, Plums said:

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. 

See, these are all these things I also think of when I remember their relationship and imo they don't support them having a particularly strong relationship at all. In fact, it's the opposite. Even beyond them not seeming to have anything in common or liking to hang out--although that's a factor too. 

The moments when they're actually together in a bonded way are all in Season One when they're very young. They're  allied with each other the night the parents split up--but even then Henry quickly withdraws while Paige gets in her mom's face. That's also the season with the hitchhiking thing, and there again it seems inaccurate to introduce the word comfort there to put Paige in a caretaker position. Paige simply offers to wash his pants that he wet saving the two of them. They're bonded more by having a secret than Henry appreciating Paige's ability to comfort him--or even Paige appreciating Henry's ability to save them.

She does babysit plenty of times but again the show never uses those times to show the two of them developing anything like a dependent relationship. It seems usually more about Paige self-consciously being mature. The word "comforting" seems again misplaced regarding the Sandra Beeman picture. Iirc, Paige finds the picture and Henry's embarrassed.  She yells "What are you, in love with Mrs. Beeman?" He says that's "disgusting" and the picture isn't even his. She realizes she's humiliating him she gives the picture back silently and just backs out, never mentioning it again. It's nice of her not to mention it again, but she's not being sweet and comforting--nor did he want her to be be. Henry just made a better hiding place. That's Henry's pattern throughout. It's why it always seems odd to set him up for hurt/comfort stories. (And why I really like how in the last moment we see in the finale Henry is turned away from Stan.)

The beer moment is one of two where Paige uses Henry as an excuse to drop by Matthew's. He's very handy in the beginning of their relationship because when Paige talks about Henry in a motherly way, like by saying how great Stan is with him, she makes herself and Matthew seem like contemporaries and adults in comparison. Paige is nice to Henry, but so is Matthew.  

5 hours ago, Plums said:

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 that there's enough of a relationship--even if it's not even about the two of them relating to each other--for Paige to be horrified at the idea of blindsiding him this way. That I don't disagree with. They'll always have a bond as the only two children of these crazy parents when it all comes out. But I do disagree that the show's ever made a point of showing they could always rely on each other. Especially since it would have been so. easy. to do that. In fact, when the subject comes up it seems like that's mostly what we have is examples of times when the show *could have* shown Paige and Henry having a strong reliance on each other that reflected their parents' but did not. 

I mean, Paige happening to not be against Henry going to boarding school is not the same as using the boarding school story to show Henry relying on Paige or Paige being Henry's big supporter. Her opinions on the matter are really more used as ways for her to talk about herself and her parents to them than they are much to do with Henry. The show actually uses the story to show something wholly different, that Henry is not relying on anyone in the family at all. They're all just bystanders.

When Henry's home for Thanksgiving he and Paige do seem to both notice the obvious tension between Philip and Elizabeth, but it's Philip Henry talks to about it, not Paige. Paige doesn't even stay with him when both parents leave--earlier she wanted to go with Elizabeth to Chicago. Iirc, that's the first and last time Henry are ever even together in S6 and it's not used to establish them relying on each other--or even being mildly happy to see each other--at all. 

When Henry got to the age Paige was in S1 and started noticing Something Not Right he didn't go to her about it. He got himself to higher ground and networked like hell. Obviously Henry isn't completely self-sufficient as a 16-year-old kid whose parents have just disappeared in a puff of smoke. His life isn't going to completely carry on like it did before with him barely noticing the change. But it just seems like sometimes he gets put into a role he's never fit into because it would be a lucky match for Stan and Paige right now.

8 hours ago, Umbelina said:

No we don't.  Elizabeth said something in the same conversation that she thought to be true, but was not.  That the message was already there.

 

To be fair, that one particular thing is a good example of something that is challenged because we know what Elizabeth doesn't, that the message isn't there. But since it is there at the end I can understand people thinking that Claudia's opinions about the result of that are accurate once it occurs.

[Nash]

It’s just occurred to me that the FBI did have an intelligence led success here. I suspect I’m the last one to realise that it was Op Teacup - gennadys courier pouch that gave the Feds the X-ray of the circuit board mcguffin thus leading them to the Chicago mission and thence to Harvest (and the somewhat late realisation that it ain’t just women who can entrap men....).

so only a short time after Aderholt wondered just what the heck Teacup ever gave them, the answer is Harvest, The Priest, the Jenningses and a whole lot of worried illegals. 

I think as well that a dead LEGAL KGB agent with a silenced weapon (looked like a welrod type pistol) on the streets of DC will take a lot of explaining..... 

[Nash]

On a note of more or less  unrelated nostalgia, Georgi Markhov was killed by a ricin tipped umbarella. For years my friends and I joked about being nervous around umbarellas. Some time in 87, say, we are all having a beer and someone is messing around with Tim’s (no, not that one) collapsing brolly, not realising it had a trigger. Took out a very large glass ashtray. I think it went about 6 foot across the bar before gravity took over. 

[sistermagpie]

59 minutes ago, Nash said:

so only a short time after Aderholt wondered just what the heck Teacup ever gave them, the answer is Harvest, The Priest, the Jenningses and a whole lot of worried illegals. 

 

Was that down to Teacup? I might not be remembering it clearly, but my impression was that they had many little clues that all had a connection to the sensor--especially the warehouse murders. Putting all these things together they realized they all had this one thing in common.

[Dev F]

On 7/5/2018 at 11:28 PM, sistermagpie said:

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.

You're probably right that I was overreading their connection. You may have noticed that when examining an exciting new bit of textual evidence, I sometimes have a tendency to charge in with a very aggressive interpretation that I then immediately have to walk back into something more nuanced.

But even if there isn't much evidence that Paige and Henry were especially close or that he regularly confided in her, I do still think Paige has some insight into her brother's particular vulnerabilities -- simply because, like you said, they're in this very weird situation together, often without adult supervision, and she can't help but see the parts of him he's trying to keep hidden, whether it's his fear of bears or the contents of his spank bank. The saga of Mrs. Beeman's photo is particularly indicative of their relationship, I think: Paige only finds the picture because she's taken it upon herself to do everyone's laundry in her parents' absence, but because she's not actually an adult with real parenting skills, she doesn't know how to react to it and ends up embarrassing Henry horribly. And then she feels really bad and just gives the photo back without saying anything else, deciding that there's nothing she can do but leave well enough alone. In other words, she sees aspects of her brother's life that ideally a parent would be around to help him navigate, but she's just a kid too, so there's not much she can do but bear witness.

And, really, Henry's story wouldn't be the same if he had a super close relationship with his sister, because then he wouldn't have to constantly look outside the family -- to Stan, to Saint Edward's -- for support.

On 7/6/2018 at 2:18 AM, Umbelina said:

I actually started to detail all the times they said "we left it up to the viewers" and the "we're looking forward to the fan fiction" was only said once that I found.  Then I thought...fuck it.  It's not worth the effort.  Until I did though, I found them saying it about Stan, both children, the futures of Liz and Phil and of course, about Renee.  Some of them are here:  http://ew.com/tv/2018/05/30/the-americans-showrunners-series-finale-interview/  The only link I kept open.  AV had some as well, and you can read practically any show runner interview about the ending and see similar comments. Or, another favorite "we don't want to say."

Regardless of how many times the authors say they left many possible interpretations open, it doesn't imply they left every possibility open. That has literally been my argument all along.

Indeed, the article you linked to has several instances in which the authors do exactly what I suggest they did in the episode itself: even as they tell the interviewer they want the viewers to make up their own minds about where the characters will end up, they wave her away from particular possibilities they don't think the writing justifies. Will Stan end up having to see a therapist? "He's not really the kind of guy who would jump into therapy." Will Paige end up in prison? "I don’t think we can say for sure, but our instinct is, she probably hasn’t gone too far down a road that she can get caught for. . . . I don’t think we imagined her walking off to jail."

It's also possible, I think, to read too much into the writers' "It's up to you to decide what it means!" talk. I'm not totally sold on the idea that they're suggesting, "We wrote it so it could mean whatever you want it to"; they could just as easily be saying, "We wrote it with particular implications in mind, but it's up to you to interpret what they are." As I've said before, they may simply be reacting to the fact that holding your viewers' hands and walking them through exactly what you're trying to say is super tacky. The writing should -- and in this case, I think, does -- speak for itself.

The Renee storyline, I'd say, lends particular credence to this idea. The writers are very coy about whether Renee is a spy and if they even knew the answer themselves -- but if they really just wanted to leave everything open to every interpretation, couldn't they just say, "We don't know whether Renee is a spy either; she's whatever you want her to be"? The fact that they can't just say that suggests to me that they wrote the character with a particular interpretation in mind, and they just don't want to spell it out anymore than the show already had.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Dev F

[companionenvy]

2 hours ago, Dev F said:

Will Paige end up in prison? "I don’t think we can say for sure, but our instinct is, she probably hasn’t gone too far down a road that she can get caught for. . . . I don’t think we imagined her walking off to jail."

This quotation also confirms to me that the writers aren't primarily concerned with realism, because as several posters have pointed out, Paige has absolutely gone far enough to be in very serious legal trouble, and there are plenty of ways she could potentially be caught, even if we were to assume that she becomes a good enough liar overnight to totally snow the authorities who will doubtless question her. It isn't like Paige had just hung out with Liz at Claudia's apartment and taken some poli-sci classes. 

So, to me it sounds like the writers are more invested in the idea that Paige had never really crossed the moral event horizon (say, by killing someone herself) or fully committed to the life with open eyes. Thus jail isn't, in their eyes, a narratively appropriate ending for her. Which supports the idea that tone is stronger evidence of their intentions for the characters than pure logic or real-world probabilities. 

[sistermagpie]

13 hours ago, Dev F said:

You're probably right that I was overreading their connection. You may have noticed that when examining an exciting new bit of textual evidence, I sometimes have a tendency to charge in with a very aggressive interpretation that I then immediately have to walk back into something more nuanced.

I notice it when I do it myself all the time! :-)

But yes, I agree with what you're saying about the kids. They chose to not have them be a team that discussed and experienced everything together. They were always meant to deal with their situation in completely different ways that separated them.

But they are both kids in this situation--and just kids in general--and that gives them a different perspective on each other. They're also both American kids with similar upbringing so they have sometimes a better idea of what their normal is. Philip is, imo, correct to think that Henry is just independent and grown up enough that it would be cruel to take him away from his life just because he's a kid. But at the same time he probably can't have a real perspective on what this means to a kid with Henry's background. Paige does have that. She and Henry, whatever weird hours their parents kept, grew up with a general feeling of security that didn't prepare them for their parents and all sorts of support to not be there. 

The more I think about Henry the more I can actually see a lot of his behavior as coming from a place of fear or vulnerability. Like, on one hand I can read his wanting to go to boarding school as sensing something wrong and wanting to get away from ground zero so he'll be set up elsewhere away from the blast area. But I can also read it as something a little like sticking his fingers in his ears and shutting his eyes to make the thing not happen. He didn't like Paige throwing her suspicions in his face as a kid and I feel like maybe he deals with his own anxiety by turning away and imagining it's not there. His own version of Paige's attempts to normalize things. 

For instance, I go back to when Paige and Elizabeth were almost mugged and Henry was concerned. When he cornered Philip about it he said, "So they *didn't* get mugged?" And he seemed to be saying it that like that not just to assure himself that they were okay, but because Paige was acting like something more traumatic had happened (and it had). So it makes me feel like where Paige sensed something deceptive going on that might be connected to affairs etc. Henry, maybe because he was also seeing it reflected in Paige, saw something potentially dangerous or tragic. 

People talked about thinking Henry was punishing Philip after Thanksgiving because every phone call we see after that, iirc, has Henry either not there to take the call or rushing off the phone because something else is going on. But I could also potentially read that as symbolically, at least, showing Henry's anxiety as well. Like on some level he's aggressively not picking up on--refusing to pick up on--anything that could be too much bad news for the family. Like, he's fine dealing with his father's money troubles--doesn't want to add to them, would love to be able to fix them etc. He can wade into the stickier area of potential marital troubles where Philip's problem is Elizabeth's weird behavior and sadness despite having a good life. These are bad things, but they're something he can deal with. The very fact that he can see them clearly means they're okay. They're well within the normal range. 

Even his complaints to Stan could be a sort of whistling in the dark where he's aggressively saying they've just always been this crazy, etc. It's always just been that they work too much. Henry's never made these explicit complaints to Stan before. He could be making them now because he's annoyed at being left (even if he said he wasn't when Philip left), or maybe he's kind of hoping complaining to Stan will give him reassurance. 

But maybe he doesn't completely miss the heaviness of Philip's good-bye at Thanksgiving, the same heaviness that Stan is concerned by--we've seen Henry pick up on both Philip's and Elizabeth's sadness in earlier scenes. Maybe he does connect, either unconsciously or not, that his telling Philip about Elizabeth's very OOC phone call has led to Philip going off to her and now Philip is sad too. So maybe those times he seems the most clueless--laughing at Philip seeming over-serious about leaving at Thanksgiving or asking if Philip drank too much at dinner in their final phone call--are more of an automatic panic reaction. This is a kid who dealt with his father getting an apartment by burying the keys once.

All this would give him even more reason to never want to talk to Paige about it because he knows she'd make fears he might not even admit to himself real. In the convo with Stan he happily talks about the business troubles. Stan says, "He told you about that?" like that's significant. Both of them seem to sense that the business issues, as stressful as they would be to an ordinary person, are the cover story. Some people have said Philip should have chosen something else, like marital troubles, but I think anything he said (but the truth) would have had the same problem.

Or at least we know Stan senses the business issues are a cover story--it's my theory here that while Henry wouldn't admit it, he feels that way too. It just seems fitting to me narratively speaking that we start out establishing that Philip and Henry talk all the time but after Thanksgiving they don't manage to connect. Thanksgiving being the time where Philip in many ways admits his experiment in retirement isn't working and the holiday where Henry is confronted at every turn with evidence of some coming storm. I don't think he's punishing his father so much as afraid of him on some level.

11 hours ago, companionenvy said:

So, to me it sounds like the writers are more invested in the idea that Paige had never really crossed the moral event horizon (say, by killing someone herself) or fully committed to the life with open eyes. Thus jail isn't, in their eyes, a narratively appropriate ending for her. Which supports the idea that tone is stronger evidence of their intentions for the characters than pure logic or real-world probabilities. 

Yeah, to me it seems like they're talking about that as well. They say they can't say for sure, and that almost sounds like an acknowledgement that yes, OF COURSE she's committed serious crimes that she could absolutely go to jail for. Goodness, Oleg is in jail simply for being caught with spy stuff on his person. Even if Paige did just meet with Claudia she'd be in trouble.

But it seems like what they more mean is that prison isn't the end of Paige's story the way it is Oleg's, because the whole point with Oleg was that he risked everything for his country and paid for it. He's Sydney Carton (only with more hope and he's done plenty of noble things in the past etc.). With Paige I think they just think it's more important that she's a young woman who's been making a lot of mistakes and the challenge for her is how or if she'll get her head on straight rather than her paying for crimes she committed. Because she was doing all this stuff in a condition of such willful ignorance if she did go to jail she'd be going to jail somewhat for that willful ignorance. Which is a valid thing to happen, but it's probably not the place where they envision her working things out for herself. It might just a case of them thinking it's more fitting (if not more realistic) for her to have to face the world having had the crutches she's leaned on for so long kicked out from under her. 

[Nash]

In terms of a general retrospective, something that just struck me was how effective Americans was in getting me onside with the various and diverse protagonists. 

By way of background, I watched The Wire back to back and then tried to watch S1 of The Sopranos. I found that the Wire had made me “Real Police” and that while I’d followed Omar, Bodie and Big Chris over the series, my full viewing loyalty was with the Police. So, i found myself absolutely rooting against the mobsters in Sopranos, I had zero sympathy and just wanted them infiltrated and arrested. Or just suicided by cop.

 

Now, with Americans, I found I related to the Illegals (how are they going to infiltrate POTUS’ laundry and switch labels with the one with a radio bug? I related to the FBI - what would they need to break the network? And I related to the Rezidentura - damn those FBI who are trying to break our network.

what I found painful wasn’t so much the killings of the random security guards but the way that someone was getting subborned, seduced, betrayed by someone they like, love or trust and who isn’t who they think they are. Some times I couldn’t watch that. 

I never wanted the Jenningses to go to the chair or be broken under brutal interrogation. But I did want the FBI to break the network.

doublethink in action - and good writing and acting.  I wanted Stan to work it out and for Phillip to get away. Elizabeth, somewhat less concern there tbh. And I could see how Oleg and Arkady wanted to turn in a good job and keep the Management happy. And spread World Communism of course. 

Maybe that makes me far too morally plastic. Or something. 

[Erin9]

I think The Americans did a great job making you care about and relate to characters that generally Americans would be hard wired to just hate. 

I always rooted for P/E to make it, not get caught. I rooted for Arkady and Oleg too and their missions. I knew their time as spies in the US would end. But I wasn’t rooting against them. At least Philip anyway. Elizabeth needed a reality check in the end, which she got. But I still didn’t want the FBI to kill her or catch her. 

For me, what made it work is several things: spying is something all countries have and need imo. It’s a dirty, dark business, but it is what it is. So- I accept the need for people to do it. And I doubt many are cut out for it. Also- the writers gave P/E likable qualities- their love for each other, their kids, love/duty towards country/people back home, how they questioned orders/showed the job wore them down/had a conscience , etc. They did the same for Oleg, Arkady, Gabriel. And for Stan, Gaad, etc. 

There were a few killings that bothered me, but generally only in cases where we’d seen enough of the character to care or ones that were just vengeful: like the mail robot lady, the Russian couple, Vlad, the CIA guy, Annalise etc.

The manipulations that were truly sad were the ones that had a visible, lasting  impact on the character: like Martha or Young Hee. Though some of my sympathy for Martha is muted because she knew all along she was spying-she just assumed it was for the US-so not so bad and let it go, and later did it for love. Sad, but she made a choice. I’m sure there are other examples. They’re just not coming to me now. 

Also, the US/Stan wasn’t presented as perfect. They weren’t always operating on the moral high ground. Whether it was the original plan to kidnap and I think kill Arkady resulting in Vlad’s murder or the plan to blackmail a principled man (Oleg) because they could. And Stan himself was no saint. I have a feeling one of the reasons he changed so much after the pilot was to make him human, flawed, not the all American perfect hero you were just dying to see catch P/E or ruin the Soviet missions. And it also made him more interesting. Lol 

I never cared much about the FBI shutting down the illegals operation. Partly because that meant the show was over. So I was in no hurry for it.  Lol Partly because I knew somehow it would in the end anyway- at least for P/E.  And maybe because I already knew the USSR itself would fail. 

I probably wouldn’t like The Sopranos. There’s nothing good about the mob or as a result of it. Nor am I interested in the mob world. (Spies at least interest me.)  I’d likely be 100% rooting  against them all the time. It’s a similar hesitation I’ve had about breaking bad and drug trafficking. Basically- the premises behind both bug me. I also  couldn’t get past episode 1 of House of Cards because the leads just seemed like totally awful people, despite finding the show itself to be interesting.(It’s not fair to judge the show on one episode, but it bothered me.)

Side note: I’m on S5 of Justified, and what a great show. S2 might be the fave so far. Between MM being so incredible as Mags and orphan Loretta being such a great addition, along with the regular cast, it was a stellar season. Great storytelling. 

[Nash]

I managed, I think, one and a bit series of House of Cards but then dropped it. I simply could not empathise with the leads. 

i don’t think I wanted the FBI to break the network to end the series either; I wanted them to do so because during the FBI scenes, that is what they were trying to do and the writing and acting made me invest in the characters. 

Having watched the end s6 FX panel on YouTube, I am still hugely conflicted over the ending. In one sense it is a gift in that we can write our own ending. In another it’s a curse as canon has the beauty of being a finite conclusion. I got over the endings of Blake’s 7 and Sandbaggers as a teen and I’m sure that had say, E&P been shot or taken by the FBI and the end showed Paige being shown into a Moscow flat by Arkady, I’d have got over it. 

Noah Emerich commented that the future of the characters belonged to everyone not the writers or actors. That’s a very diplomatic thing to say; part of me still thinks that the writers managed to cop out of answering tough questions. 

To think of the Wire, the end montage settled the fates of the characters and provided solid closure. I miss that - though the ambiguity here does reflect some of the moral ambiguity of espionage. 

[sistermagpie]

3 hours ago, Nash said:

To think of the Wire, the end montage settled the fates of the characters and provided solid closure. I miss that - though the ambiguity here does reflect some of the moral ambiguity of espionage. 

But to be fair, the central point of The Wire was that bureaucracy was failing society. The ending wasn't just giving us the fates of these characters, it was showing that the system creates the same cycle over and over and that's the tragedy. Their individual stories were essentially erased as they were pushed into the role the system forced them into. There was never any question as to what their fates would be, no matter what individual qualities they had.

Where as The Americans was I think intentionally going for an ending that echoed Chekhov and avoids resolutions. Philip and Elizabeth will go on the way they've always gone on, getting used to the latest situation they've been put into.

[Bannon]

I am now watching Breaking Bad for the 2nd time (I prefer to wait a few years before a re-watch), and I was again struck by the fullness and consistency in character in Hank's  portrayal, in contrast to Stan's in The Americans. Hank is never used as a plot advancement device. He is a complex human being whose behavior is consistent with his life.  I just wish the writing for Stan had been better.

I don't root for characters. I just want them to be interesting as human beings. That's why pure sociopaths bore me as central characters; they just aren't interesting. Tony Soprano, as awful as he was, was capable of shame, remorse, loyalty, and empathy, and was definitely not a sociopath. Bobby Quarles was the least interesting seasonal villain to me, in Justified, because he was a nearly pure sociopath. None of the major characters for more than a season in Breaking Bad were pure sociopaths, but I'll give Jesse Plemens credit for his portrayal of a neo-Nazi in the last season,  for coming about as close as possible to making such a character compelling. Fortunately, The Americans never went the full sociopath route for any major character, and the closest they came,  when they put off, until the very end, showing Liz having notable psychological deterioration, in response to having murdered so many people, was kind of a writing mistake.

[Roseanna]

On ‎6‎.‎7‎.‎2018 at 11:44 AM, companionenvy said:

On a narrative level, it also seems iffy to me that Weisberg and Fields would have been expecting or relying on their viewers to remember a three-days long coup against Gorbachev that happened 27 years ago. I know it was a major historical event, but...it was a while ago, and if you're not Russian and especially if you are too young to remember it, I don't think it is something on the average American's (or even the average Americans viewer's) radar.

You may be right about the Americans but as a Finn I remember it well how I sat in a bus when it hit me: if they couldn't stop Yeltsin to climb on the tank and appear in the TV around the world, the coup will fail and Soviet Union will be finished. 

[Roseanna]

On ‎6‎.‎7‎.‎2018 at 11:44 AM, companionenvy said:

I don't think they could have been assuming "Everyone will recognize the strong possibility that Claudia and Elizabeth are wrong because there will be another coup against Gorbachev in three years, implying that the present coup leadership survives to take revenge on Elizabeth and Philip."

The coup leaders couldn't have taken revenge on E&P in 1991, because they couldn't simply produce literally nothing: as all then saw, they themselves were drunk in the TV, and the rumor has it that the tank drivers weren't even given a proper map of Moscow. In short, it was completely a hopeless undertaking.

[sistermagpie]

8 hours ago, Roseanna said:

You may be right about the Americans but as a Finn I remember it well how I sat in a bus when it hit me: if they couldn't stop Yeltsin to climb on the tank and appear in the TV around the world, the coup will fail and Soviet Union will be finished. 

I wasn't sure if this was intentional, but Elizabeth often seemed to be in a similar situation in S6 where she kept trying to hold herself in tighter and tighter control while she'd actually lost control of everyone.

[Roseanna]

On ‎3‎.‎7‎.‎2018 at 9:07 AM, Umbelina said:

 

• Elizabeth would not have told Claudia she wasn't going to "do it" and she most certainly would have killed Claudia, because Elizabeth is too smart and experienced to allow Claudia to warn all of the Coup members, and then, rush herself and Philip back into that dangerous hornet's nest = Philip and Elizabeth not being in danger in the USSR
• ----

Since the writers deliberately included all of those things, the tone they conveyed to me was "DANGER!" and not a present danger, future danger for all of them.

I don't see those scenes as "realistic". Instead, the writers wanted Elizabeth and Claudia to say aloud her opinions and values. And Claudia herself thought that she, not Elizabeth, was in a danger in the Soviet Union after the coup failed. In the universe of this show, after P&E brought evidence of the coup attempt, Gorbatchov could fire the top officials of the KGB.   

Many people here also thought that Philip was in a mortal danger when he revealed to Elizabeth that he had spied on her. But in this show he made Elizabeth to change her mind.

[Roseanna]

On ‎3‎.‎7‎.‎2018 at 8:29 PM, Umbelina said:

Oleg will probably not be traded, as was explained on the show, no diplomatic cover, and many of the most powerful members of the Coup are KGB.  They are not stupid, they will realize why Oleg was really there.  I just hope they leave his dad alone.  It's also been established that tapped phones in the USSR are to be expected.  Since his father is the only one he contacted? 

I think there is a good chance Oleg will be released since he is completely innocent of spying on the US during his present stay. This can be proved if he is given a leave from Arkady to open the ciphertext. He originally refused to do it because it would have endangered Philip who had put himself in danger on his request. Of course, if he cipher is used by other Soviet agents in the US, Arkadyt could continue to want to protect them and leave Oleg in jail.

Remember that when we saw Arseni to tell Oleg's father, he believed that Oleg's mission had failed. After P&E returned and brought evidence, the situation changed completely and Gorbatchov could fire the top officials of the KGB and put them to jail for treason. 

[Umbelina]

13 hours ago, Roseanna said:

I think there is a good chance Oleg will be released since he is completely innocent of spying on the US during his present stay. This can be proved if he is given a leave from Arkady to open the ciphertext. He originally refused to do it because it would have endangered Philip who had put himself in danger on his request. Of course, if he cipher is used by other Soviet agents in the US, Arkadyt could continue to want to protect them and leave Oleg in jail.

Remember that when we saw Arseni to tell Oleg's father, he believed that Oleg's mission had failed. After P&E returned and brought evidence, the situation changed completely and Gorbatchov could fire the top officials of the KGB and put them to jail for treason. 

Even the writers said in an interview that Oleg is in prison for good.  He had NO diplomatic cover.  He most certain is guilty of espionage here, it doesn't matter that he did it for an underling of the KGB.  Even if some miracle happened and he was released, he would be killed back in the USSR, just like Philip and Elizabeth.

History shows that years before the real coup, Gorbachev was powerless at home, and hated by most of the people in power, ham-strung.

13 hours ago, Roseanna said:

I don't see those scenes as "realistic". Instead, the writers wanted Elizabeth and Claudia to say aloud her opinions and values. And Claudia herself thought that she, not Elizabeth, was in a danger in the Soviet Union after the coup failed. In the universe of this show, after P&E brought evidence of the coup attempt, Gorbatchov could fire the top officials of the KGB.   

Many people here also thought that Philip was in a mortal danger when he revealed to Elizabeth that he had spied on her. But in this show he made Elizabeth to change her mind.

Elizabeth is not Claudia.

Claudia is a clear and present danger to him, his children, and his wife.  Why?  Because the writers wrote those idiotic scenes. 

Much like not telling us about Stan's new wife, and completely dark scenes in the warehouse, and hole digging, they thought it would be edgy or "cool" to not do the expected.

[Roseanna]

9 hours ago, Umbelina said:

Even the writers said in an interview that Oleg is in prison for good.  He had NO diplomatic cover.  He most certain is guilty of espionage here, it doesn't matter that he did it for an underling of the KGB.  Even if some miracle happened and he was released, he would be killed back in the USSR, just like Philip and Elizabeth.

How can Oleg be guilty of spying in the US when he didn't spy against the US but the against the Soviet spies? 

[Umbelina]

11 hours ago, Roseanna said:

How can Oleg be guilty of spying in the US when he didn't spy against the US but the against the Soviet spies? 

It's still espionage.  He worked with an embedded Soviet spy, and he left and collected dead drops.  Aside from all of that?  All they have is his word for it, but it doesn't matter anyway.  Spying is illegal without diplomat cover yhou are screwed, as Arkady explained to him.  Spies lie.

I feel sorry for his dad, by now everyone knows his dad took coded messages.