The Americans Retrospective

kokapetl · June 4, 2018

21 hours ago, Pink-n-Green said:

I just watched an interview with Lev Gorn (Arkady) and I was absolutely gobsmacked that he has no Russian accent in real life!

20 hours ago, Umbelina said:

On the DVD extras it came out that the producers/writers/showrunners were equally gob-smacked. He came in using that accent during auditions, and of course, in all of his scenes. They thought that was how he spoke. It wasn't until much later when they ran into him at an event that they heard his actually accent, which was perfect English.

Nina (Annet Mahendru) also has no accent in real life.

Are their Russian accents flawless?

Umbelina · June 4, 2018

26 minutes ago, Kokapetl said:

Are their Russian accents flawless?

To me, yes, but I'm just a lapsed student of Russian, so I'm not a good judge.

It's funny, when I'm rewatching Russian speaking scenes now, I'm trying to not read the translations and to just pick up what I can (from faded memory) about what they are saying. The translations aren't exact anyway, but it's all just reminding me of both how much I've forgotten, and how much I never knew. I always sucked at past/present/future tenses, for some reason my first professor didn't focus on those much, so I'm immediately lost with those. There is an article the media thread, fascinating, about the translator from the show. Her story is quite similar, without the spies. She kept the translations idiomatic, using phrases and words that would be used at the time. So the writers just wrote the scenes in English (our subtitles) and she translated the MEANING more than the actual words, using phrasing of that time.

My college professor, a Ukrainian, had such a pronounced accent it was difficult for me to understand him. He also had no patience with American student's work ethics, so the goal in his class was simply to not flunk out. I think our class, which to be fair to him, was accelerated Russian, had about 60 people, but by the end there were around 14 of us left, and that was only because I talked him into grading on a curve, and patiently, respectfully, explained to him that I had four other classes, and worked full time as well. His average homework was easily 3-4 hours per night, combining a laundry list of grammar, tenses, irregular verbs, and around 100 new vocabulary words a day. It was a five day a week class, and a nightmare. It was also his first teaching job in the USA. Because of the curve grading, I did get my A and kept my scholarship, and the school stepped in and somehow stopped him from failing everyone but the top 4 (one A, one B, one C, one D, everyone else failed.)

/my memories...

Edited June 4, 2018 by Umbelina

teddysmom · June 4, 2018

2 hours ago, scartact said:

I was passively watching season 1 & 2 episodes, and in light of the series finale, it retroactively kinda makes some of the family storylines kinda sad(der) for me. In Safe House (after Philip and Elizabeth tell Paige and Henry they're separating) when Philip is sitting outside of Henry's door telling him he loves him so much is particularly heartbreaking. And in the series finale, Philip loves Henry so much he chooses to let him go.

I just watched this yesterday and was taken by how heartbreaking that scene was.

In the pilot Phillip was practicing line dancing in front of a store mirror, so the Season 6 line dancing was a good call back.

I totally forgot about Stan killing the KGB guy from the Embassy, and the Russians framing Gregory for Amador's murder, and killing the other agent's wife and taking their baby to Russia.

I didn't even finish watching the end of the episode with Gregory, I remember it and it's too upsetting to see again.

Also Gad was a bit of a dick.

scartact · June 4, 2018

On 6/2/2018 at 8:49 PM, sistermagpie said:

I mentioned this in the ep thread but it's a callback too. "We'll get used to it" is like the story of Philip and Elizabeth's life. They've said it many times and it was a good ending. And also very Chekhov. She might as well have said "We will work" - like Sonya from Uncle Vanya. They've pretty much just shouldered whatever burdens they've been given throughout life and had no one much to complain to about it. Except each other.

So I had in my mind an actual moment of dialogue where someone directly said "Blah blah" and the other responded, "We'll get used to it," and that it was a flip of the end of the series finale, where instead it's Elizabeth saying something, and then Philip replying about the getting used to it. I could not remember for the life of me where that happens because of course there's hella moments where even just the essence of the dialogue is present. Turns out it does happen in one of the first episodes of Season 2, after the Connors (3 of 4) are murdered and when Elizabeth is still on edge, and Philip is the one to say they'll get used to it. There's probably more moments like that, though.

Also, not sure if this counts, but a recurrent call back (heh) is Philip and Elizabeth on the phone with one another while on different assignments. In Duty & Honor, when they're on the phone and Elizabeth tells Philip she misses him; in an episode of season 5 (I've no idea which!), when they call each other because they miss each other and are pretty over their respective honeypots (I'm paraphrasing the context because I don't remember what happens, but just that it happens); and arguably that final call in Rififi kinda reminds me of those other two calls. But these moments as call backs feel a little like a stretch.

Plums · June 5, 2018

Rewatching the first season, and it's so interesting to me to see what the show was before it really found it's footing.

First of all, obviously the more procedural quality of the first season, with the plot of the week structure, made for some superficially more exciting episodes- I particularly liked the episode where P&E are trying to stop that German bomber from killing scientists and the cold open features them boredly blowing up a car- and there seemed to be a lot more of an FBI vs. KGB feel. The relationship/family talk juxtaposed with the espionage was more on-the-nose and felt almost like humorous device than the subtle drama it turned into. Also, the characterizations of everyone feels more exaggerated and overdramatic as well. I can't believe a character like Chris Amador even existed, he's so different from the characters post s1. Everyone becomes way more real when the show shifts to long arcs and focuses on the effects of espionage on characters and relationships rather than the espionage itself.

It's interesting to see some of those early things I totally forgot about that kind of just blow my mind given the later parts of the series when things were more established. Like, there was that pundit with the TV show that was an agent of Philip's, and Philip would meet him in public as himself, no disguises or false names or whatever. I was so surprised! No. 1, I had completely forgotten about that guy, and No. 2, that was soooooo out of line with the MO of how they operated that was established later. They didn't meet Gregory with disguises or false names either, and Philip at least thought Gregory was an agent that believed a cover story about them. Even still, it almost felt like agents that were recruited and knew they were working for the KGB and were committed to the Cause didn't get the disguises that marks got, when later on, everyone got disguises and false names regardless.

I was also aghast that they decided to go to a party at Stan's house when the whole CI division was there, and that they thought that was a good idea. like, nooooooo, omg you guys, what if they ever get sketches of you!!! I totally had forgotten about that as well. Gaad met them there! That just blows my mind.

Dev F · June 5, 2018

31 minutes ago, Plums said:

First of all, obviously the more procedural quality of the first season, with the plot of the week structure, made for some superficially more exciting episodes- I particularly liked the episode where P&E are trying to stop that German bomber from killing scientists and the cold open features them boredly blowing up a car- and there seemed to be a lot more of an FBI vs. KGB feel. The relationship/family talk juxtaposed with the espionage was more on-the-nose and felt almost like humorous device than the subtle drama it turned into. Also, the characterizations of everyone feels more exaggerated and overdramatic as well. I can't believe a character like Chris Amador even existed, he's so different from the characters post s1. Everyone becomes way more real when the show shifts to long arcs and focuses on the effects of espionage on characters and relationships rather than the espionage itself.

The fascinating thing to me is that season 1 almost immediately had the engine in place to keep the glossy procedural version of the show going for years and years -- a well-oiled operational team for the Jenningses centered around Gregory, a wisecracking partner for Stan in Amador, dueling mentors to battle for Elizabeth's soul in Granny and Zhukov -- and over the course of that first year they burned it all down. At the time I thought they were crazy, but in retrospect they were smart to kick the procedural crutches out from under themselves.

Quote

It's interesting to see some of those early things I totally forgot about that kind of just blow my mind given the later parts of the series when things were more established. Like, there was that pundit with the TV show that was an agent of Philip's, and Philip would meet him in public as himself, no disguises or false names or whatever. I was so surprised! No. 1, I had completely forgotten about that guy, and No. 2, that was soooooo out of line with the MO of how they operated that was established later.

Charles Duluth is my favorite underutilized character on the show. There's something so fascinating about this guy who's forced to live his entire life pretending to be the kind of person he despises most -- in part because of what it says about Philip's unique abilities as a recruiter that he was able to convince a guy to do that! And unlike some of the other characters from version 1.0 of the show, it doesn't seem like he got written out deliberately as the show shifted gears. He continued to appear occasionally in -- and fit in quite well with -- the overhauled version of the show, until he just sort of unceremoniously vanished.

I wonder if it was a thing where they just stopped being able to book the actor and they had no choice but to let the character fade away. (I've always thought that a plausible reason why the Mischa arc in season 5 ended with such a limp pile of nothing is because maybe originally they had planned for Mischa to come to America and contact Charles, whom his mother knew from her operation in season 1, which could've led to some tension and intrigue as Gabriel and Claudia raced both to intercept Mischa and to protect a highly sensitive asset -- but then when the actor couldn't do it the whole thing was rewritten into a boring series of phone calls and bench conversations.)

Edited June 5, 2018 by Dev F

scartact · June 5, 2018

10 hours ago, Dev F said:

10 hours ago, Plums said:

First of all, obviously the more procedural quality of the first season, with the plot of the week structure, made for some superficially more exciting episodes- I particularly liked the episode where P&E are trying to stop that German bomber from killing scientists and the cold open features them boredly blowing up a car- and there seemed to be a lot more of an FBI vs. KGB feel. The relationship/family talk juxtaposed with the espionage was more on-the-nose and felt almost like humorous device than the subtle drama it turned into. Also, the characterizations of everyone feels more exaggerated and overdramatic as well. I can't believe a character like Chris Amador even existed, he's so different from the characters post s1. Everyone becomes way more real when the show shifts to long arcs and focuses on the effects of espionage on characters and relationships rather than the espionage itself.

The fascinating thing to me is that season 1 almost immediately had the engine in place to keep the glossy procedural version of the show going for years and years -- a well-oiled operational team for the Jenningses centered around Gregory, a wisecracking partner for Stan in Amador, dueling mentors to battle for Elizabeth's soul in Granny and Zhukov -- and over the course of that first year they burned it all down. At the time I thought they were crazy, but in retrospect they were smart to kick the procedural crutches out from under themselves.

Season 1 is such a different show to me, and I prefer all the changes they made post-season one. Something that also struck me is that I get the impression that the more the J's and company buckled down and really focused on the idea of the impacts of the work Phil & Liz do on their marriage, family, and people around them, the less the show became invested in the FBI storylines; like, if they initially wanted to develop more of that FBI/KGB parallel (like in Covert War and some of those latter season one episodes), they sure did become significantly less interested in really doing that.

So on that level, I can totally see why people are griping and debating about how Stan and the FBI are written, but on another level I also know that I didn't care much for the FBI stuff to begin with, so I am more readily willing to shrug it off.

Plums · June 5, 2018

like, it's crazy to me how different the show becomes. The whole CI division of the FBI hatches a rogue plot to abduct and murder the fucking Rezident in a retaliatory move, and this tit-for-tat escalating spy warfare goes on with Vlad being murdered and the CIA killing people in the USSR. Meanwhile, flash forward to Persona Non Grata, and the US's response to the KGB bugging their office, pursuing biological weapons, and the former division head being murdered is to just kick the Rezident out of the country and moan about how that's all they're ever able to do and nothing changes, like a proper bureaucratic institution. Stan becomes the only real maverick in the office after season 1, and the most he does is defy Frank Gaad, who suddenly cares about the red tape, into pursuing Oleg as a source and then defending Oleg when the CIA wants to blackmail him.

I don't think they originally planned to kill Zhukov and Amador. Like you say, the dueling philosophies of Zhukov and Claudia were the Angel and Devil on Elizabeth's shoulders, with one encouraging her to be close to Philip and the other encouraging her to keep him at a distance. They both went away as mentor presences by the end of season 1, Zhukov killed and Claudia conceding she was wrong about Philip. It's an interesting callback actually, that Claudia was trying to use Elizabeth in a rogue mission to avenge Zhukov's murder, and Elizabeth walked to the very ledge of that cliff before ultimately refusing and then demanded a different handler, and the same thing basically played out in season 6 with the coup plot. Still though, I feel they were set up to be longer term presences than that, with the drama of how real or not real the marriage would become lasting a lot longer than it did. I'm less sure about their plans for Gregory, if he was going to stick around or not as a presence in Elizabeth's life representing an alternate identity for her.

That whole retaliation for Amador's murder plot was crazy to me. They try to create this huge, significant relationship between him and Stan to make it believable just how effected and particularly enraged Stan was at his death. But Amador was such a flat character, and it feels like he and Stan barely knew each other at all before he was killed. Stan had just moved to DC and joined CI at the start of the season, and Amador seemed to spend all his free time hooking up or stalking Martha when he wasn't encouraging Stan to cheat on his wife. Yet we're supposed to believe the relationship between them was so deep by the time Amador was killed that he'd have a picture of him and Stan sitting on his end table, among the pictures of his family? I definitely think he wasn't originally going to be killed off so soon.

hellmouse · June 5, 2018

13 minutes ago, Plums said:

like, it's crazy to me how different the show becomes. The whole CI division of the FBI hatches a rogue plot to abduct and murder the fucking Rezident in a retaliatory move, and this tit-for-tat escalating spy warfare goes on with Vlad being murdered and the CIA killing people in the USSR. Meanwhile, flash forward to Persona Non Grata, and the US's response to the KGB bugging their office, pursuing biological weapons, and the former division head being murdered is to just kick the Rezident out of the country and moan about how that's all they're ever able to do and nothing changes, like a proper bureaucratic institution. Stan becomes the only real maverick in the office after season 1, and the most he does is defy Frank Gaad, who suddenly cares about the red tape, into pursuing Oleg as a source and then defending Oleg when the CIA wants to blackmail him.

...

That whole retaliation for Amador's murder plot was crazy to me. They try to create this huge, significant relationship between him and Stan to make it believable just how effected and particularly enraged Stan was at his death. But Amador was such a flat character, and it feels like he and Stan barely knew each other at all before he was killed. Stan had just moved to DC and joined CI at the start of the season, and Amador seemed to spend all his free time hooking up or stalking Martha when he wasn't encouraging Stan to cheat on his wife. Yet we're supposed to believe the relationship between them was so deep by the time Amador was killed that he'd have a picture of him and Stan sitting on his end table, among the pictures of his family? I definitely think he wasn't originally going to be killed off so soon.

I had the same reaction going back and rewatching Season 1. I am not an expert on the intelligence agencies at all, but I find it SO hard to believe that the head of FBI counter-intelligence decides that they're going to murder the KGB Rezident, in Washington DC, and plans it with a bunch of FBI and CIA agents at a freaking barbecue. The responses in later seasons were much more plausible and had more emotional weight.

Everything you say about Amador was my reaction too upon rewatch. He didn't bother me as much the first time I watched the show. But seeing how the show developed, he really just doesn't fit. His character is flat and one-dimensional. The fact that Stan murders someone in retaliation for his death makes Stan seem dangerously unhinged. The fact that Amador had a photo of Stan in his house made him seem kind of unhinged too. They had to insert flashbacks to even establish the fact that he wore a ring that everyone remembered he always wore.

Edited June 5, 2018 by hellmouse

Plums · June 5, 2018

4 minutes ago, hellmouse said:

I am not an expert on the intelligence agencies at all, but I find it SO hard to believe that the head of FBI counter-intelligence decides that they're going to murder the KGB Rezident, in Washington DC, and plans it with a bunch of FBI and CIA agents at a freaking barbecue. The responses in later seasons were much more plausible and had more emotional weight.

LMAO

scartact · June 5, 2018

Season one was a wild time for the show, y'all!

That sounds kinda right on some level that maybe they wanted to initially drag out the real/unreal marriage stuff, but if that were the case, I'm glad they bagged that idea because MR & KR have wild chemistry that I wouldn't buy for a moment they weren't in love with each other. Plus, the show got much subtler about the artifice/reality stuff, which is one of my favorite things to analyze in The Americans.

Bannon · June 5, 2018

1 hour ago, Plums said:

like, it's crazy to me how different the show becomes. The whole CI division of the FBI hatches a rogue plot to abduct and murder the fucking Rezident in a retaliatory move, and this tit-for-tat escalating spy warfare goes on with Vlad being murdered and the CIA killing people in the USSR. Meanwhile, flash forward to Persona Non Grata, and the US's response to the KGB bugging their office, pursuing biological weapons, and the former division head being murdered is to just kick the Rezident out of the country and moan about how that's all they're ever able to do and nothing changes, like a proper bureaucratic institution. Stan becomes the only real maverick in the office after season 1, and the most he does is defy Frank Gaad, who suddenly cares about the red tape, into pursuing Oleg as a source and then defending Oleg when the CIA wants to blackmail him.

I don't think they originally planned to kill Zhukov and Amador. Like you say, the dueling philosophies of Zhukov and Claudia were the Angel and Devil on Elizabeth's shoulders, with one encouraging her to be close to Philip and the other encouraging her to keep him at a distance. They both went away as mentor presences by the end of season 1, Zhukov killed and Claudia conceding she was wrong about Philip. It's an interesting callback actually, that Claudia was trying to use Elizabeth in a rogue mission to avenge Zhukov's murder, and Elizabeth walked to the very ledge of that cliff before ultimately refusing and then demanded a different handler, and the same thing basically played out in season 6 with the coup plot. Still though, I feel they were set up to be longer term presences than that, with the drama of how real or not real the marriage would become lasting a lot longer than it did. I'm less sure about their plans for Gregory, if he was going to stick around or not as a presence in Elizabeth's life representing an alternate identity for her.

That whole retaliation for Amador's murder plot was crazy to me. They try to create this huge, significant relationship between him and Stan to make it believable just how effected and particularly enraged Stan was at his death. But Amador was such a flat character, and it feels like he and Stan barely knew each other at all before he was killed. Stan had just moved to DC and joined CI at the start of the season, and Amador seemed to spend all his free time hooking up or stalking Martha when he wasn't encouraging Stan to cheat on his wife. Yet we're supposed to believe the relationship between them was so deep by the time Amador was killed that he'd have a picture of him and Stan sitting on his end table, among the pictures of his family? I definitely think he wasn't originally going to be killed off so soon.

Again, I don't think the writers ever trusted the audience to hold, without a bunch of over the top violence. It was unfortunate.

sistermagpie · June 5, 2018

13 hours ago, Plums said:

They didn't meet Gregory with disguises or false names either, and Philip at least thought Gregory was an agent that believed a cover story about them.

No, he didn't. Gregory and Charles were exact parallels. They were both recruits of Elizabeth and Philip respectively who were trusted enough that they knew them without disguise and called them by their "real" names etc.

12 hours ago, Dev F said:

Charles Duluth is my favorite underutilized character on the show. There's something so fascinating about this guy who's forced to live his entire life pretending to be the kind of person he despises most -- in part because of what it says about Philip's unique abilities as a recruiter that he was able to convince a guy to do that! And unlike some of the other characters from version 1.0 of the show, it doesn't seem like he got written out deliberately as the show shifted gears. He continued to appear occasionally in -- and fit in quite well with -- the overhauled version of the show, until he just sort of unceremoniously vanished.

Yes, it seems like Philip just didn't rely on him as much because he could see the life was getting to him. But he was still there. Btw, I got a fanfic story for Yuletide one year where I asked for a story because I loved him so much too. They give him a backstory etc.

1 hour ago, Plums said:

That whole retaliation for Amador's murder plot was crazy to me. They try to create this huge, significant relationship between him and Stan to make it believable just how effected and particularly enraged Stan was at his death.

Yeah, that so didn't work. They even had to stick in a flashback to try to prove they actually were friends when they didn't seem that way at all.

The good thing about that story in the first season was that by having Philip and Elizabeth break up then they couldn't really do it again. So you knew they weren't going to rely on that "let's break them up for drama!" stuff.

Erin9 · June 5, 2018

24 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

No, he didn't. Gregory and Charles were exact parallels. They were both recruits of Elizabeth and Philip respectively who were trusted enough that they knew them without disguise and called them by their "real" names etc.

Yes, it seems like Philip just didn't rely on him as much because he could see the life was getting to him. But he was still there. Btw, I got a fanfic story for Yuletide one year where I asked for a story because I loved him so much too. They give him a backstory etc.

Yeah, that so didn't work. They even had to stick in a flashback to try to prove they actually were friends when they didn't seem that way at all.

The good thing about that story in the first season was that by having Philip and Elizabeth break up then they couldn't really do it again. So you knew they weren't going to rely on that "let's break them up for drama!" stuff.

lol- I remember a review saying just that: the upside was Philip and Elizabeth couldn’t break up again. On that topic, even as far apart as they were in most of S6, breaking up never seemed to be an option.

I think the Americans did what a lot of shows do- establish the basics in S1 and did deep with the characters over time. A lot of shows start light and more procedural- like in terms of stories and go deeper, have big story arcs, and frankly lose their sense of humor over time. (Suits is a good example of this.)

This show started with a much lighter tone in terms of the feeling of ultimate destruction and constant misery you felt later. At the start everyone mostly just did their jobs. I liked that. I liked that they dug in later, but I also like and appreciate that whole show didn’t function like that. It didn’t need to be that dark the whole time.

Sex and the City is another show that added a lot of depth over time. The basic premise of friendship and relationships stayed the same, but the show got deeper into the characters over time. It wouldn’t be remembered nearly as well imo if it was in S6 basically what it was in S1. That pretty much holds with The Americans. It always centered around marriage and family. It just got deeper into the effects of spying on everyone’s lives.

Amador was killed off before we had time to like him or care about him. He basically seemed like a jerk most of the time. Who really cared that he died? I really wonder why they wrote him like that. Maybe they realized what they were doing wasn’t working and instead of fixing the character, they killed him for drama.

The added flashbacks said it all. He had no real relationship with Stan that we’d seen prior.

I liked the fallout of his death though, even if they poorly established Stan’s motivation to flip out. It led to a lot of interesting drama that was felt for years- maybe even to the end with Stan. But- because of how I felt about his character- I’m glad Stan didn’t reference him in the end.

sistermagpie · June 5, 2018

13 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

lol- I remember a review saying just that: the upside was Philip and Elizabeth couldn’t break up again. On that topic, even as far apart as they were in most of S6, breaking up never seemed to be an option.

Yeah, there was another review of this season that I think said that the fact that they were so not together almost proved how real the marriage was. This wasn't something they thought about quitting any longer. They both wanted to work their way back to each other.

Still, it's amazing that there's only one love scene in the whole season that I remember and it's the time Elizabeth reaches out to Philip and then asks him to kidnap Kimmy when he's still happy about it.

15 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

This show started with a much lighter tone in terms of the feeling of ultimate destruction and constant misery you felt later. At the start everyone mostly just did their jobs. I liked that. I liked that they dug in later, but I also like and appreciate that whole show didn’t function like that. It didn’t need to be that dark the whole time.

Yes, it's fun to go back and have fun with the spy games (Games Without Frontiers is such a fun ending) when it's ramping up but it's basically what happens to the characters. They add a little more and more and more until it's just too much.

I like that it does really go back to the beginning for the ending scene. In the pilot we saw Philip and Elizabeth arriving in the US and it ends with them arriving back in the USSR--older, wiser, sadder and totally connected, but still in some ways the same two kids who were batted around back then.

SusanSunflower · June 5, 2018

Reading today's posts I am struck by how much they made Phil a "perfect man" .... endlessly in love, endlessly patient with Elizabeth (somewhat less with Paige and Henry) but nonthreatening ... he wasn't going to hit or abandon anyone. He might be a bit glum and/or grumpy, but who can blame him.

It made me curious as to audience demographics (about which I found nothing) but I wonder about how the size of the female share, reassured weekly by Phil's reliable decency .... Men and women love to look at beautiful (and beautifully clad and coiffed) women, so the draw of Keri Russell is considerable (not to mention Felicity!!!! -- more wholesomeness and decency). There's not a lot of sex on TV in the things I watch (I have mostly basic cable and Netflix and Amazon and watch so little I don't think my opinion is worth anything), but the sex on the American's was mostly again in reasonably "good taste" appealing (by my guess) to women as well as men ... lots of men and women on these boards, but I wonder a bit about how men view endlessly patient Philip whose wife honey-pots for a living, etc.

note: I mean no snark or in any way to diminish Phil, I just hadn't realized how extraordinarily "accommodating" and understanding he was ... (in addition to letting Elizabeth largely rule the roost). I've thought that "The Centre" likely would have blamed Phil if Elizabeth (or he) and decided to end the partnership (separate from the marriage) but I don't know .... anyone?

Edited June 5, 2018 by SusanSunflower

Umbelina · June 6, 2018

Another odd thing about that entire retaliation thing in Season one between spy agencies?

American spies and Soviet spies did NOT kill each other. I've read a ton of books by spies, and listened to interviews from spies from both sides, and read articles by the dozens. There was a "gentleman's agreement" about that, it simply did not happen. Other countries spies certainly did. But the USA and USSR spies simply did not do it. Many bemoaned the end of the cold war, and miss how relatively civilized and safe it was between agencies back then, at least of the two major players. ETA I think the Brits had similar unspoken agreements.

In face, the whole "US spies and Soviet spies kill each other!" arc was so "out there" I'm surprised their "spy card" carrying co-producer let it happen. He always says he's a stickler for accuracy as much as possible, and this was highly inaccurate.

Going back, this is the way it played out.

the KGB has hired a West German contractor to kill American scientists, but has changed its mind and cannot recall him. With unwitting help from Philip's informant Martha, an FBI clerical worker, the Jennings track him down and eliminate him. However, he has already rigged a time bomb that kills a scientist and three of his FBI bodyguards (My note: In real life, the contract killed would have been told not to take out US spies, or maybe Center never even considered that likely, since until Philip blew up that warning bomb in the car, US scientists were not guarded. So far, so good, because viewing it as an "accidental spy-war makes more historical sense.)
Amador, on his own, investigates Martha and confronts and pulls a knife on Philip. Philip accidentally stabs him, and does try to save him, but he dies.
In retaliation for Amador and the 3 dead FBI agents, Gaad decided to go after Arkady. Arkady hurt his hand, so doesn't do his usual run. Stan, on his own, decided he had to capture one of them to find his partner Amador, and takes Vlad.
Stan tries to use Vlad to secure Amador's release, and calls and threatens Arkady that if Amador isn't released, Vlad won't be either.
Gregory and team is used to clean up the dead Amador mess, they drop Amador's body near his apartment, clean out the car, and take it to the corrupt dump operator. While cleaning out the car, one of them finds the ring Amador hid in the wheel well of the car, and pawns it.
Through the pawn, Stan and the FBI trace it back to Gregory's "drug gang" and Stan breaks pretty eyes with the "we are both Goddamn American's right?" pitch, letting him know that Gregory has been using him for the KGB, not for drugs at all. This is why Stan is so convinced Amador was killed by Gregory, because they prove that Gregory and gang were involved.
Claudia assists in the framing of Gregory for Amador's death.
The CIA assassinates three KGB officials in Moscow, including Elizabeth's mentor, General Victor Zhukov. (This just would NOT happen, and I don't think we are given much of an explanation why it did. Anyone?)
Claudia assassinates the CIA official who gave the direct order for the above. Again, this just was not the way the CIA and KGB conducted business with one another. Of all of the above though? I can believe Granny going rogue and disobeying orders more than any of the rest of this far-fetched story. Why? I believe Granny is an old warrior, and the bond/love she formed with Zhukov in the absolute hell of the war in Stalingrad, as well as later reuniting as lovers as they both joined the new (cold) war as fellow KGB officers? Claudia is nearing the end of her life, I can't believe she didn't really give as shit, and wanted revenge, probably correctly assuming Moscow might rap her on the knuckles, but wouldn't likely otherwise punish Claudia in the after-Stalin world.

So, it kind of falls apart and becomes quickly a show where you simply have to suspend disbelief, and go with it. Much like the KGB using extremely valuable agents on routine things like break ins, assassinations, and the rest? Let it go and go for the ride. Which? I happily did.

It wasn't even close to reality though, no matter what that guy helping shape this series says. He might have got the gadgets correct, the disguises correct (and he did) but the basic operations between the CIA, FBI, and KGB? Fantasy from the jump. Certainly the many of jobs the Jenningses were given would have never is a billion years be given to embedded deep cover agents. At all. They would be given Young Hee type operations, but never the mail robot factory, they would be given the traitor assassination because they had to appear to be Americans to ensure they had the right woman, but never the warehouse break in this season. They might have been given the wheat, but never digging up Williams body.

Basically, anything and everything they did that didn't require appearing to be an American? Would simply not have happened. The KGB regularly flew in teams that specialized in all of that stuff. The Residenturas are also equipped with people for things that didn't need a believable American accent and cover.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Umbelina

sistermagpie · June 6, 2018

7 hours ago, SusanSunflower said:

note: I mean no snark or in any way to diminish Phil, I just hadn't realized how extraordinarily "accommodating" and understanding he was ... (in addition to letting Elizabeth largely rule the roost). I've thought that "The Centre" likely would have blamed Phil if Elizabeth (or he) and decided to end the partnership (separate from the marriage) but I don't know .... anyone?

I remember back in the first season people often theorized that he had a really abusive childhood to put up with her. She slaps him on the pilot and it's like he doesn't notice. This is where some backstory would have helped. We were so naive then thinking it would come. The showrunners were asked about it once and acted as if they were equal this way and just weren't big talkers. Only Elizabeth was already explained.

I guess in a way Philip's with Elizabeth like she is with the Centre. Only she actually does love him back. She has his back and appreciates him the way the Centre really doesn't her.

Btw don't know if anyone else saw but someone wrote a letter to the president since he's on a pardon kick to free Oleg.

Another interesting convo I was having with somebody was about how few songs on the show are American. Some are but a lot aren't which fits with what I was listening to then at least.

Edited June 6, 2018 by sistermagpie

Erin9 · June 6, 2018

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

I remember back in the first season people often theorized that he had a really abusive childhood to put up with her. She slaps him on the pilot and it's like he doesn't notice. This is where some backstory would have helped. We were so naive then thinking it would come. The showrunners were asked about it once and acted as if they were equal this way and just weren't big talkers. Only Elizabeth was already explained.

I guess in a way Philip's with Elizabeth like she is with the Centre. Only she actually does love him back. She has his back and aporeciates him the way the Centre really doesn't her.

Isn’t that one reason MR got the part? He had no reaction when KR slapped him during the audition?? I think I read that.

I just figured his lack of response had something to do with spy training.

I think Elizabeth FINALLY gets how little the Centre appreciates them. It makes me wish the FBI hadn’t been onto them immediately after Elizabeth learned to think herself. I would have liked to have seen what happened next.

SusanSunflower · June 6, 2018

I don't think that a stone-cold fox like Elizabeth had the "job security" issues that Phillip did ... YMMV ...

I'm not going to fan wank that Philip understood that a stone-cold fox like Elizabeth really needed a safe-space where men (generically) were not constantly hitting on her and lusting after her, when (or course) they weren't raping (or trying to rape) her. Again, ymmv, but Phillip is and was an exceptionially "woke" male in many ways ... Matthew Rhys being a dreamboat helped ... ymmv.

Edited June 6, 2018 by SusanSunflower

sistermagpie · June 6, 2018

24 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

Isn’t that one reason MR got the part? He had no reaction when KR slapped him during the audition?? I think I read that.

I just figured his lack of response had something to do with spy training.

Yup. This abuse idea was early on, though. People seemed to drop it after a while. I think it is part of spy training and maybe he got slapped around as a boy in general without it being at home.

He does tell Paige that his mother was "tough" as we see Elizabeth destroying Young Hee's family so he probably does see something there he saw in his mother. But that doesn't mean she had Elizabeth's general demeanor. You can be tough without being Elizabeth.

Plums · June 6, 2018

1 hour ago, sistermagpie said:

7 hours ago, SusanSunflower said:

note: I mean no snark or in any way to diminish Phil, I just hadn't realized how extraordinarily "accommodating" and understanding he was ... (in addition to letting Elizabeth largely rule the roost). I've thought that "The Centre" likely would have blamed Phil if Elizabeth (or he) and decided to end the partnership (separate from the marriage) but I don't know .... anyone?

I remember back in the first season people often theorized that he had a really abusive childhood to put up with her. She slaps him on the pilot and it's like he doesn't notice. This is where some backstory would have helped. We were so naive then thinking it would come.

I think we did get a little bit of backstory with Philip. We know he was abused as a child by other kids and that he and his brother were shunned and sneered at by men in the town due to his father being a prison camp guard, we know he didn't know what his father did at the time that caused the clear resentment from other people, we know his father was extremely distant and barely spoke and died when he was six, leaving his family destitute and starving, we know his mother was tough, we know his violent rage issues began in childhood when he beat a bully who would steal food from him to death, and that this memory haunts him, we know at some point he showed promise in school and the KGB decided to recruit him for training when he was a teenager, that during that initial training is when he had the relationship with Irina, and she broke up with him when she became pregnant because she knew he would stay with her rather than fulfill his dream of completing this training and becoming an officer. We know he didn't ask questions. We know that he tore up a picture of Irina and threw it away like nothing when he was assigned the partner that would be his cover wife, and that when he saw her he fell in love immediately and internalized the role of her husband as if it were real, which is not at all how Elizabeth processed the situation.

There's a lot to work with there. I feel like we got a lot of childhood flashbacks with Philip, even if he didn't get as many pre-1981 America or training flashbacks as Elizabeth got.

crgirl412 · June 6, 2018

22 hours ago, Dev F said:

Charles Duluth is my favorite underutilized character on the show. There's something so fascinating about this guy who's forced to live his entire life pretending to be the kind of person he despises most

He is mine too!!!! He was waaaayyy underutilized!! I wanted to see him again and even wrote in one of my posts that I wanted to see what was going on with Martha, Misha and Charles (though I couldn't remember his name).

I think I like the character so much because I am a Conservative and it makes me wonder if any of the Conservatives in the media presently or in the past are spies!!!!

scartact · June 6, 2018

1 hour ago, Plums said:

I think we did get a little bit of backstory with Philip. We know he was abused as a child by other kids and that he and his brother were shunned and sneered at by men in the town due to his father being a prison camp guard, we know he didn't know what his father did at the time that caused the clear resentment from other people, we know his father was extremely distant and barely spoke and died when he was six, leaving his family destitute and starving, we know his mother was tough, we know his violent rage issues began in childhood when he beat a bully who would steal food from him to death, and that this memory haunts him, we know at some point he showed promise in school and the KGB decided to recruit him for training when he was a teenager, that during that initial training is when he had the relationship with Irina, and she broke up with him when she became pregnant because she knew he would stay with her rather than fulfill his dream of completing this training and becoming an officer. We know he didn't ask questions. We know that he tore up a picture of Irina and threw it away like nothing when he was assigned the partner that would be his cover wife, and that when he saw her he fell in love immediately and internalized the role of her husband as if it were real, which is not at all how Elizabeth processed the situation.

There's a lot to work with there. I feel like we got a lot of childhood flashbacks with Philip, even if he didn't get as many pre-1981 America or training flashbacks as Elizabeth got.

I do think though that the difference between the flashbacks Philip got and the ones Elizabeth got was that often Philip's were strongly emotive shots, whereas Elizabeth's were often much more concrete. Like, I don't remember Philip's flashbacks being particularly dialogue-y at all, but Elizabeth's would be relatively more dialogue-heavy. At least, that's how I recall the flashbacks, but I could be wrong! But, somewhat amusingly, those flashbacks in a way echo how I know each character to be too (if that makes sense).

My speculation about that is a little bit of me thinking the writers had to provide more context for Elizabeth since she's the more difficult character to like/understand, but also I lightweight think the writers just liked writing more of Elizabeth's background than they did Philip's. In that every episode ranked list Vulture published, they mentioned that one of the more "subversive elements" of the show is that it's always been about Elizabeth and I kind of agree to an extent.

Umbelina · June 6, 2018

My issue was that Philip's past was far more interesting historically than Elizabeth's. Also, his had a few mysteries, like, just HOW did his father die, what became of his mother, why were there crutches there, what's the deal with his brother, and most of all, what was it like growing up in a Gulag town?

Once again, despite endless EST scenes, we never got the story.

We got all of Elizabeth's.

Plums · June 6, 2018

6 hours ago, Umbelina said:

My issue was that Philip's past was far more interesting historically than Elizabeth's. Also, his had a few mysteries, like, just HOW did his father die, what became of his mother, why were there crutches there, what's the deal with his brother, and most of all, what was it like growing up in a Gulag town?

I guess I just never took any of that stuff as a mystery or worth knowing in the context of this show or this character. It was easy enough to infer what his life was like from the glimpses we got of it. Also, I think in terms of their childhood, what we learn about Philip and Elizabeth is pretty comparable.

Chaos Theory · June 6, 2018

21 hours ago, scartact said:

Season 1 is such a different show to me, and I prefer all the changes they made post-season one. Something that also struck me is that I get the impression that the more the J's and company buckled down and really focused on the idea of the impacts of the work Phil & Liz do on their marriage, family, and people around them, the less the show became invested in the FBI storylines; like, if they initially wanted to develop more of that FBI/KGB parallel (like in Covert War and some of those latter season one episodes), they sure did become significantly less interested in really doing that.

So on that level, I can totally see why people are griping and debating about how Stan and the FBI are written, but on another level I also know that I didn't care much for the FBI stuff to begin with, so I am more readily willing to shrug it off.

The problem is you can’t make the FBI or Stan too good at what they do. Season 1 they came thisclose to catching P&E and if that happened every season finale it would get old fast. So you have to slow them down somehow either by changing their focus or simply slowing their investigation somehow. The show did both season 2 by making the FBI think the illegals they were chasing died/left the country and then gave them a new mystery to solve. Of course it all led back to P&E eventually but it did give the writers room to breathe for awhile.

sistermagpie · June 6, 2018

12 hours ago, scartact said:

I do think though that the difference between the flashbacks Philip got and the ones Elizabeth got was that often Philip's were strongly emotive shots, whereas Elizabeth's were often much more concrete. Like, I don't remember Philip's flashbacks being particularly dialogue-y at all, but Elizabeth's would be relatively more dialogue-heavy. At least, that's how I recall the flashbacks, but I could be wrong! But, somewhat amusingly, those flashbacks in a way echo how I know each character to be too (if that makes sense).

They pretty much have no dialogue. The only pre-US flashback he has with dialogue is the one with Irina where the dialogue is totally generic. Philip was just Young Man With His Girl.

4 hours ago, Plums said:

I guess I just never took any of that stuff as a mystery or worth knowing in the context of this show or this character. It was easy enough to infer what his life was like from the glimpses we got of it. Also, I think in terms of their childhood, what we learn about Philip and Elizabeth is pretty comparable.

It's not that it's a mystery--although unfortunately that's exactly how the show presented his flashbacks in S5. We finally get these little flashes of Philip's home that shows extreme poverty and it turns out to all be clues leading up to...his father (who he barely remembers) having a different job than he thought.

It's not, imo, that there's a mystery but that we're not given context that could have been really rich. What we learned about Philip was not comparable because the important stuff of Elizabeth's childhood was her relationship with her mother, the lessons her mother taught her and how she internalized them. When Elizabeth remembers an incident they dramatize what we're seeing now. Philip gets that only with the milk story--and there it's about how now he feels guilty about it along with all the other murders. It's like he only remembers something when he can re-purpose it.

It's plenty to work with to write our story, sure. But the stuff we make up to connect the facts we know isn't necessarily stuff that was on the show. With Elizabeth her flashbacks are about who she is. With Philip they're often just plot stuff--the Irina flashback is totally unnecessary and just serves to start the present-day story in Duty and Honor. The flashbacks in S5 are about Philip projecting the stuff he's already feeling onto the father he never knew.

Obviously the show just didn't want to show it and that's fine, but they're not equal at all. Also it's not just about flashbacks. Elizabeth talks about her past a lot. When she tells a story from her past she's usually sharing a story that's totally relevant to what she's doing then, although she herself doesn't know it. After a while we can watch a flashback--like the one about her father being a traitor--and understand how it affects her.

I mean, if we only knew these same type facts about Elizabeth that wouldn't be the same as all. There's a big difference between knowing she and her mother didn't have much money and that very first flashback in In Control.

Plums · June 6, 2018

@sistermagpie You're perspective is really interesting to me because I actually prefer Philip's flashbacks to the ones we get for Elizabeth, in terms of how it establishes their characters. Like, I get that there's more concrete "This happened to me" or "I had this converstation with this person" and "this is the lesson I took from that" in Elizabeth's flashbacks, and I don't dislike them, but it's all a little on the nose for me, in the ways they relate to what she does in the present in the episodes where she has them. Philip's flashbacks to his childhood are much more about the feelings and the atmosphere, I guess, which I kind of like. He was miserably impoverished, beaten, fearful and angry, he had a father who was a stranger to him and died when he was very young, and he starved a lot. Those extremely harsh roots run soul deep in him, and it comes up a lot in the disconnect between the life he wants to live as Philip Jennings, not just never worrying about basic necessities but carefree indulging in luxuries too, and the reality of how he can never be that man because it's not compatible with his foundation. idk, I just really like it.

sistermagpie · June 6, 2018

4 minutes ago, Plums said:

@sistermagpie You're perspective is really interesting to me because I actually prefer Philip's flashbacks to the ones we get for Elizabeth, in terms of how it establishes their characters. Like, I get that there's more concrete "This happened to me" or "I had this converstation with this person" and "this is the lesson I took from that" in Elizabeth's flashbacks, and I don't dislike them, but it's all a little on the nose for me, in the ways they relate to what she does in the present in the episodes where she has them. Philip's flashbacks to his childhood are much more about the feelings and the atmosphere, I guess, which I kind of like. He was miserably impoverished, beaten, fearful and angry, he had a father who was a stranger to him and died when he was very young, and he starved a lot. Those extremely harsh roots run soul deep in him, and it comes up a lot in the disconnect between the life he wants to live as Philip Jennings, not just never worrying about basic necessities but carefree indulging in luxuries too, and the reality of how he can never be that man because it's not compatible with his foundation. idk, I just really like it.

To be honest, I love that about it too. I think his flashbacks often are far more resonant because they're kind of pure emotions. I loved looking at the pictures of his house set. The only flashback of Philip's that I didn't love and didn't resonate for me was the one about Irina, which was the one with dialogue. I don't remember Elizabeth's as clearly and I didn't react to them as emotionally.

I mean, I *love* the flashes we get in S5 of that house and those moments and that last flashback outside the communal kitchen was so great! I think it was potentially a great choice they made in S3 to keep his flashbacks silent--the milk story mostly is, the house, playing with his father, the sex training, scraping the porridge pots.

I honestly just wish there were more of them that hit some of the other aspects of his life with his family. I wouldn't necessarily want the kind of scenes that we get with Elizabeth. Those fit more for her too because she's always going to remember things that support her beliefs. I believe she's didactic even in her own head. I don't think Philip would have memories like that, like his mother saying, "You know, Little Mischa, it's not nice to hurt innocent people!" or whatever. But I really would have liked more of the type we got that would have given us stark emotional moments about other things, especially his relationship with his family. We'd probably still be left with big holes, but I could live with that.

Of course, it doesn't have to be done in flashbacks. I remember at one point I imagined a conversation where it came up that Philip's mother had once sent tapes but then she died and Elizabeth realized that Philip, who'd gone to all the trouble to send her to Germany to say good-bye, hadn't even told her when his own mother died because that just wouldn't have been a thing for him to do. Other times I imagine she died and he and his brother were already on their own. I don't always mind having options to choose from without having to stick with one. But I think they would have worked a bit better if he could have had some flashes of warmer emotions. I can imagine him repressing a lot of it, but once he's with Elizabeth I think they would come out.

I assume, for instance, that "I like the cold" and "We used to have sword fights with them" are essentially flashbacks we don't see that are of this type. Much more interesting than listening to EST gobbledegook spoken by someone else. They said they wanted to send him to therapy but it's like they did that and then the only parts of the therapy we see are the doctor saying saying, "Mmm hmm."

Umbelina · June 6, 2018

6 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Obviously the show just didn't want to show it and that's fine, but they're not equal at all. Also it's not just about flashbacks. Elizabeth talks about her past a lot. When she tells a story from her past she's usually sharing a story that's totally relevant to what she's doing then, although she herself doesn't know it. After a while we can watch a flashback--like the one about her father being a traitor--and understand how it affects her.

Yes, Elizabeth's past is fully fleshed out. We know exactly how she was raised, and about her father and his desertion resulting in the family shame, and even about why she was chosen and why she joined the KGB as a teen. We know her mother, her father, her first sex, her perspectives as a child that influence who she is now. We know even that her mother was sick, and the disease she had, and that Elizabeth spent a long time caring for her. We know that her mother taught her she must "stand on her own" and not accept help from men, because there is always a price. Hell, she even takes a trip to visit dear old mom!

Philip though? Has BLOCKED his horrific childhood, that's a big part of why he goes to EST. He's rarely talked about it on screen. We don't know anything about his mother, or about his father, or his brother (who is shockingly STILL ALIVE) or why Philip doesn't know that, or have any contact with his own brother. We don't even know if his mother is still alive. We get a glimpse of life when his father was alive, but nothing about how they lived after he died, let alone HOW he died.

Did they remain living in a Gulag town? How did they get there to begin with? Did his mother never, ever talk to him before he joined the KGB?

5 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

I mean, I *love* the flashes we get in S5 of that house and those moments and that last flashback outside the communal kitchen was so great! I think it was potentially a great choice they made in S3 to keep his flashbacks silent--the milk story mostly is, the house, playing with his father, the sex training, scraping the porridge pots.

I loved what we got too, but, especially compared to the fully-fleshed out life of Elizabeth prior to, and during her KGB training?

We got nothing about Philip, except things were so horrible that apparently he's blocked it completely from his mind. So, OF course I want to know what that is.

hellmouse · June 7, 2018

2 hours ago, Umbelina said:

We don't know anything about his mother,

The only thing I remember about his mother was the story he told Paige - that he had a job making rakes, and the boss didn't pay him. So his mother went to the boss and got all of his pay. But who knows when that was. Knowing how grim his life was, he could have been making rakes at the same agr he was when scraping the porridge pots.

Maybe after his father died his mother sent him to live with relatives in a city so he could have a better education because he was so smart, and so he lost contact with his mother and brother. Or maybe after he killed that boy with the rock his mother sent him away so he would not go to prison for murder. Maybe that was part of why the idea of Henry going away to school made him sad. WHO KNOWS. Grr. .

Umbelina · June 7, 2018

Yes, much like our "endings" (ahem) for all of our questions, Philip's life is open to any and all speculation, as long as it's terrible.

I always thought Philip's mother fucked the boss for his money. Honestly, I did. What possible status could she have to threaten someone? The lowly, extremely former wife of an extremely low level KGB guard.

Plums · June 7, 2018

Re: Stan-

Something else I've just noticed is that, in a sense, they foreshadowed him letting them go. Consider when he's in the car with Henry, and Henry tells him "It's important to take care of family when the chips are down", and Stan says "I hear that." In that same conversation, Henry refers to Stan as "Uncle Stan". He actually says it kind of sarcastically, lol, but not in the context of him not really considering Stan family, but in the context of him not having any other actual blood family. And there are other times in the series when Stan is compared to family. Paige says he's practically a member of the family in season 4 when she talks about how often he comes over. Stan himself is overjoyed at the idea of Paige and Matthew eventually getting married and them literally becoming family. He jokes about them moving in with each other and being "one big happy family". It's all a lot of throwaway lines that in the moment serve as "Poor Stan" dramatic irony, but that's exactly what happens in the finale. When the chips were down, Stan took care of his family. And Philip did too (because Renee is totally a spy).

sistermagpie · June 7, 2018

16 hours ago, hellmouse said:

The only thing I remember about his mother was the story he told Paige - that he had a job making rakes, and the boss didn't pay him. So his mother went to the boss and got all of his pay. But who knows when that was. Knowing how grim his life was, he could have been making rakes at the same agr he was when scraping the porridge pots.

And that his mother told him that she and his father met at a movie. He doesn't know why his mother let him think his father was a logger. He suggests she "didn't approve" of him being a guard but that seems to imply he thinks prison guards were considered scum by the townies and I'm not sure why that would be.

Quote

Maybe after his father died his mother sent him to live with relatives in a city so he could have a better education because he was so smart, and so he lost contact with his mother and brother. Or maybe after he killed that boy with the rock his mother sent him away so he would not go to prison for murder. Maybe that was part of why the idea of Henry going away to school made him sad. WHO KNOWS. Grr. .

Well, we know he was still in Tobolsk 4 years after his father died because that's here he killed those kids. Elizabeth suggests they might be the sons of the men who glared at him, also implying they're in the same town. (Which would imply that even as a child he was disconnected from his own past in ways other kids in the area weren't!)

I would say that if he was sent away to relatives you'd think we'd hear about them (as we heard about of some of Elizabeth's relatives) but then, we barely heard about the brother who was there from the start!

Edited June 7, 2018 by sistermagpie

Erin9 · June 7, 2018

Elizabeth seemed to like remembering her past. It reminded her of who she was.

Philip really seems to have just largely blocked his out. He didn’t seem to want to think about it or remember unless pushed. That’s no excuse for the writers not dealing with it more directly though. All I can assume is it was almost pure misery from the literal scraps we got.

I wish we knew why they chose to make him so clearly impoverished on a much deeper level than Elizabeth. His life seemed much harsher than hers- though that was never discussed.

I know a lot of fans didn’t like the Irina angle. But I at least liked seeing Philip at a time in his life where he seemed excited, happy, ambitious about his life and career. I also liked knowing there was someone before Elizabeth. And- Irina had a lot in common with him as it turned out. They both burned out over hurting people. They both saw the centre for what it was- didn’t care about them. (Though like Elizabeth she put duty over family too.)

I've read some reviews that seem to take a positive view of more focus being on Elizabeth. That might be one reason behind the lack of interview questions on why Philip’s background was neglected: they liked it that way.

sistermagpie · June 7, 2018

13 hours ago, Erin9 said:

I wish we knew why they chose to make him so clearly impoverished on a much deeper level than Elizabeth. His life seemed much harsher than hers- though that was never discussed.

I would imagine that some of this might be him being in Siberia? Smolensk would have been far more damaged in the war but maybe as a bigger city it was more modern. That was why I thought it was a bit jarring when Elizabeth said she and her mother ate rats. Not because I didn't believe they would have, but the one thing Philip was always associated with was the hunger issue. Elizabeth talked about her mother giving her more food than herself. Philip seemed to have no food.

But then, with a life of pure misery that also raises the question of how he turned out so well. Is he just one of those "dandelion children" who grow up in circumstances that usually keep people from succeeding and do anyway? That might work--though then we've got his brother who also seems fine. He's not a superstar KGB agent but he's still alive, he's married, has a kid, seems perfectly normal, has an apartment. He's not in jail.

This is why I always expected some flashbacks, even if they were purely emotional, about his family being loving because that seemed like it was probably the thing that made him healthy. A guy who can remember a childhood that impoverished and still smile wistfully about having sword fights with icicles is the same guy who can be in despair in the US but still enjoy line dancing. Like we've said, he's good at living on scraps--even scraps of affection or joy.

Erin9 · June 7, 2018

@sistermagpie I might have overstated the “pure misery.” I was mostly thinking of the extreme poverty, hunger, his father’s death, and bullying. Which would be reason enough to not over think the past.

But- you’re right- both he and his brother seemed to have turned out okay. Something must have gone right at home.

I like your analogies between his childhood and adulthood- appreciating and enjoying little things while dealing with big problems.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Erin9

sistermagpie · June 7, 2018

1 hour ago, Erin9 said:

@sistermagpie I might have overstated the “pure misery.” I was mostly thinking of the extreme poverty, hunger, his father’s death, and bullying. Which would be reason enough to not over think the past.

Oh no, I totally get it. I guess that's why I always tended to imagine his external life as really harsh but that he still experienced love and kindness at home. That would fit with the way he viewed the world. Elizabeth tended to link being loved and accepted with doing her duty. Philip seemed to feel connected to kind people. Him having love at home would go a long way to explaining how emotionally healthy he was (relatively).

Erin9 · June 8, 2018

I was watching The Oath and The Colonel. The conversations between Claudia and Elizabeth were fascinating at the time, but they resonate even stronger now.

In those episodes, Claudia finds out P/E have gone over her head to check that their orders are real. Then, she finds out they requested a new handler.

What’s truly fascinating is Claudia’s sum up: Elizabeth has been in the field too long, is disregarding procedure- and most importantly: that the centre is losing her.

Well- it took a few years, but here we are. They did lose her. Claudia completely lost her.

It’s interesting because Claudia always saw her and Elizabeth as so much alike, but even then she saw core differences. She just didn’t realize the problem would not be “remedied” to her satisfaction.

Side note: Claudia saying she had to fill out a 27 section report was hilarious. MM was amazing.

Dev F · June 8, 2018

On 6/5/2018 at 11:31 AM, hellmouse said:

I had the same reaction going back and rewatching Season 1. I am not an expert on the intelligence agencies at all, but I find it SO hard to believe that the head of FBI counter-intelligence decides that they're going to murder the KGB Rezident, in Washington DC, and plans it with a bunch of FBI and CIA agents at a freaking barbecue. The responses in later seasons were much more plausible and had more emotional weight.

There's definitely a big shift, but the thing that I find interesting is that they don't just pretend that the earlier cowboy shit didn't happen. There's a whole storyline in season 2 where Gaad is almost fired for all the stuff that went down in season 1, and from then on he's much more cautious. It becomes part of the arc for the FBI characters: they start out a little too ready to rumble, thanks to the new Reagan administration's rhetoric and their new division chief's cozy relationship with black ops types (Gaad is introduced in the pilot as being "detailed to a CIA counterintelligence task force at Langley"), but soon realize they can't actually get away with poking every hornet's nest.

On 6/6/2018 at 9:54 PM, sistermagpie said:

And that his mother told him that she and his father met at a movie. He doesn't know why his mother let him think his father was a logger. He suggests she "didn't approve" of him being a guard but that seems to imply he thinks prison guards were considered scum by the townies and I'm not sure why that would be.

Well, while they all had so little, he was apparently killing political prisoners and bringing their clothes and whatnot home for his own family. That couldn't have endeared him to his neighbors.

Edited to add: Looking back over the transcript of the scene in question, it's actually more straightforward than that: Philip says of the men that didn't like his family, "They were lowlifes. They spent time in prison, I think." So either they actually knew Philip's father in the gulag, or their time in prison made them unappreciative of guards in general.

22 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

But then, with a life of pure misery that also raises the question of how he turned out so well. Is he just one of those "dandelion children" who grow up in circumstances that usually keep people from succeeding and do anyway?

I always saw that as part of the point of the "beating a bully to death" flashback. For someone who had to endure so much misery, he was remarkably insistent that the world ought to be treating him better than it was. Unlike Elizabeth, who saw it as a sign of strength that she and her mother were able to bear up under all their hardship, Philip's response to suffering was to say "No more" and beat it to death with a brick.

To me that also seemed like was one of the reasons Philip was better suited to America than Elizabeth was -- because her understanding that life is suffering is such a stereotypically Russian way of looking at the world, while Philip somehow stumbled into a stereotypically American view of the world: Life should be fair and manageable, and if it isn't, I'll kill you!

Quote

This is why I always expected some flashbacks, even if they were purely emotional, about his family being loving because that seemed like it was probably the thing that made him healthy. A guy who can remember a childhood that impoverished and still smile wistfully about having sword fights with icicles is the same guy who can be in despair in the US but still enjoy line dancing. Like we've said, he's good at living on scraps--even scraps of affection or joy.

We do see a flashback to that effect, don't we? In "Dyatkovo," Philip is moping about how Henry wants to run away to boarding school and eating McDonald's with his fake son Tuan, recalling happy memories of his dad playing airplane with him when he was a little kid.

And this is after Gabriel has informed him that his dad was a KGB officer, so bound up on all that must be the thought that these childhood experiences were part of what made him into his father's son. It seems like it sort of sets up an opposition, between Philip having nice memories of his father and thereby inheriting his darkness, and Henry seemingly wanting to get the hell away from his family and thereby escaping their curse.

Edited June 8, 2018 by Dev F

Inquisitionist · June 8, 2018

On 6/5/2018 at 1:35 PM, Erin9 said:

I think the Americans did what a lot of shows do- establish the basics in S1 and did deep with the characters over time. A lot of shows start light and more procedural- like in terms of stories and go deeper, have big story arcs, and frankly lose their sense of humor over time. (Suits is a good example of this.)

The first few episodes of Justified made me think it was going to be a procedural, but things shifted gears around episode 5 (which introduced Raylan's fraught relationship with his criminal father) and they were off to the races from there. I don't think Justified ever lost its sense of humor, though. And it had a kick-ass finale.

Erin9 · June 8, 2018

9 minutes ago, Inquisitionist said:

The first few episodes of Justified made me think it was going to be a procedural, but things shifted gears around episode 5 (which introduced Raylan's fraught relationship with his criminal father) and they were off to the races from there. I don't think Justified ever lost its sense of humor, though. And it had a kick-ass finale.

I haven’t watched it, but it’s a show I’ve been considering giving a shot.

Inquisitionist · June 8, 2018

13 minutes ago, Erin9 said:

I haven’t watched it, but it’s a show I’ve been considering giving a shot.

It was executive-produced by Graham Yost, who also played that role for The Americans (though I don't think he has as much creative input for the latter). I've recommended Justified to several people who share my taste. Give it until at least the 5th episode before making up your mind -- as I said, that was a turning point for me -- not that the previous episodes were bad, just more episodic.

Season 2 of Justified is damned brilliant, and features Margo Martindale.

Plums · June 8, 2018

1 hour ago, Inquisitionist said:

1 hour ago, Erin9 said:

I haven’t watched it, but it’s a show I’ve been considering giving a shot.

It was executive-produced by Graham Yost, who also played that role for The Americans (though I don't think he has as much creative input for the latter). I've recommended Justified to several people who share my taste. Give it until at least the 5th episode before making up your mind -- as I said, that was a turning point for me -- not that the previous episodes were bad, just more episodic.

Season 2 of Justified is damned brilliant, and features Margo Martindale.

I still haven't seen Justified either, but it's been one of those, "Everyone says this show was great, I should watch that show sometime" shows that's been my list ever since I watched Deadwood. I'm finally determined it will definitely be the next show I watch. To bring it back to The Americans, I didn't know Margo Martindale was in it either, so now I'm really looking forward to it! FX seems to have quietly been the channel putting out the best prestige dramas that most people haven't known about in the last few years.

Like, everyone was all hyped up when Mad Men was airing on AMC and hyping up all those other AMC shows and building up the channel as the basic cable answer to HBO and other premium channels, and while I watched and loved Mad Men, the entire back half of the series felt like a chore to get through a lot of the time, and I was over all the grimdark focus on Don, because he had long since stopped being a compelling character to me. I tried watching The Killing because I bought into the AMC hype, but it felt like unrelenting darkness for the sake of unrelenting darkness, and for not other purpose. Even with the HBO shows that are all hyped up as great prestige drama, I gave up on Game of Thrones mid season 3 because I thought it was hacky, terrible trash, and Westworld is starting to lose my interest in season 2 because I don't really care about the characters, and the overall plot and themes aren't being told in a way that is all that engrossing to me. Whereas FX seems to be making really great shows with great writing, great acting, and most importantly great, dimensional characters dealing with truly compelling conflicts, telling stories with complete thematic and character arcs, and it's all just flying under the radar in the popular consciousness in ways stories that are not as well done aren't. For me, The Americans is one of the best, most complete and well told dramas I've ever seen. I'd put it up there with The Wire.

sistermagpie · June 8, 2018

12 hours ago, Dev F said:

Edited to add: Looking back over the transcript of the scene in question, it's actually more straightforward than that: Philip says of the men that didn't like his family, "They were lowlifes. They spent time in prison, I think." So either they actually knew Philip's father in the gulag, or their time in prison made them unappreciative of guards in general.

Wow, I completely forgot that line! There might have been any number of reasons they didn't like his family. Not even just that his father was a guard. Elizabeth asking if those other kids were their sons always seemed too neat to me, like she was trying to make a simple solution where there really didn't need to be any. Those kids might have beaten up lots of kids and Philip was just the kid that killed them. (When he first talks about the situation he says there were gangs in Tobolsk--maybe Elizabeth just doesn't want to think of the place as being lawless so she'd prefer it if these kids were outliers.) Philip thinking about it might not have been a sign that this was a clue that he was a guard and so disliked by criminals (there were lots of guards, after all) but that his father had a whole life he didn't know about as a kid.

12 hours ago, Dev F said:

always saw that as part of the point of the "beating a bully to death" flashback. For someone who had to endure so much misery, he was remarkably insistent that the world ought to be treating him better than it was. Unlike Elizabeth, who saw it as a sign of strength that she and her mother were able to bear up under all their hardship, Philip's response to suffering was to say "No more" and beat it to death with a brick.

To me that also seemed like was one of the reasons Philip was better suited to America than Elizabeth was -- because her understanding that life is suffering is such a stereotypically Russian way of looking at the world, while Philip somehow stumbled into a stereotypically American view of the world: Like should be fair and manageable, and if it isn't

But to be fair, that's allegedly what Elizabeth is fighting for too. She romanticizes suffering in ways that Philip doesn't, and that's really highlighted in S6 when she and Claudia love talking about their suffering and are almost angry at the idea that people might have fast food instead. But the point of the revolution is supposed to be that everything is fair and Elizabeth seems to believe it can happen even after Philip thinks they're not bringing it about.

But I think that's another reflection of how they work as a couple too. Elizabeth more often has her eye on universal justice and unjust systems; Philip has more feel for personal justice and individuals being treated justly. She grew up always being taught about justice in the world and trying to apply that on the family level; he grew up being taught about keeping the family protected and applied that on the international level.

But neither of them expect this level of justice for themselves. They have moments where they think they should be treated better personally, but in the end they're both ready to just get on with it without complaint.

Quote

We do see a flashback to that effect, don't we? In "Dyatkovo," Philip is moping about how Henry wants to run away to boarding school and eating McDonald's with his fake son Tuan, recalling happy memories of his dad playing airplane with him when he was a little kid.

That was a scene I thought of as a possibility but it isn't really the kind of scene I was thinking of. First because it's about his father who died when he was six so he's not a presence most of his life--earlier he mostly remembered his father being tired at home. But also because I thought it had such a specific meaning in context. Philip's learned that he was a guard, but he also has a memory of him being loving at home, so he could be both things, potentially, just like Henry's dad is.

But I do also think that there's hints that this is the correct view of his family and that that scene wit his father is part of that pattern. (I never doubted that that wooden airplane Philip is playing with in the first flashback was made for him by his father). Some of it comes from MR's performance. He always tended to play wistful when Philip thought about his country and in the one scene where he talks about his mother he does seem to be describing her as exactly the kind of person he wanted to be--going out and fighting to protect her kids. That story is told over a shot of Elizabeth also being "tough" in case we maybe didn't get that they're the same. Maybe that's why Philip is actually good at seeing that Elizabeth really not a cold person at all.

Quote

And this is after Gabriel has informed him that his dad was a KGB officer, so bound up on all that must be the thought that these childhood experiences were part of what made him into his father's son. It seems like it sort of sets up an opposition, between Philip having nice memories of his father and thereby inheriting his darkness, and Henry seemingly wanting to get the hell away from his family and thereby escaping their curse.

But then, Henry would also have nice memories of his family--far more than Philip has of his father. I admit I was disappointed by the whole "father was a guard" storyline not because I had a problem with that revelation in itself but because it just seemed like a fake out. It wasn't really about Philip's past, it was him figuring out something about his biography and adding it to the pile of things he beat himself up about in the present. Like actually suggesting that he was chosen to be an Illegal because his father was also a KGB monster. So I like the revelation in general, I just wish there was more done with it than that.

It also, of course, works as a parallel to Henry. Philip also got the hell away from his family, after all, when he was only a few years only than Henry, probably (he didn't get the boarding school option until later but all his flashbacks showing him being very independent at a young age). He managed to give Henry a childhood free of the hardships that he had, but in the end they basically end up the same. Henry, too, will be an adult realizing that he never actually knew his family, trying to reconcile the memories he has of a loving, gentle father with the reality of his job and probably wondering what he may or may not have inherited there.

Throughout the show there's a lot of foreshadowing of Henry's fate with Philip trying to protect him from his father's dark side so much that he finally has to break from him completely here. (Of course, Elizabeth's other extreme doesn't fare any better--she tries to make Paige exactly like herself and get her to understand everything about her experience and Paige winds up being the one who has to separate herself.)

Oops! Thought I was in a different thread and it turns out this is the place where I could list some foreshadowing of this.

After Philip finds out about his father he talks about having known his family and that's when he and Elizabeth take Paige, and not Henry, to meet Gabriel. As if Henry already doesn't have that chance.

There's Harvest's last words about being glad he never saw his son of a bitch father again coming after Philip said good-bye to Henry at Thanksgiving--the last time they will ever see each other.

There's the many times where Philip is unable or unwilling to imagine a future for Henry or nail down his character (reflected in Elizabeth not being able to imagine an alternate Philip at the end too).

Philip having two scenes where he thinks he's saying good-bye to Henry forever and trying to give him something in that moment and Henry being completely unaware of it and so missing it. He's never going to understand those moments until it's too late.

Plus the many times in the show where Philip and Henry are shown to be paralleled, often without either of them knowing it: Henry watching the neighbors through a telescope in the same ep Philip watches Elizabeth and Larrick through the telescope on his gun, Henry breaking into the neighbor's in the same ep Philip breaks into Charles' apartment. Henry hitting the threatening creep with a bottle as Philip hits the bullies with a rock. Henry crying over how the neighbors will now think he's a bad person because he was caught in their house when he didn't mean to be bad. Philip being the smartest kid in the school and so being sent to Moscow; Henry getting into St. Edwards. Both being good at math. In Philip's first scene he's talking about hockey; Henry plays hockey etc.

Edited June 8, 2018 by sistermagpie

Plums · June 9, 2018

Been rewatching it lately, and it strikes me that the part in Philip's garage speech where he's describing the irony of the operation that finally got them caught being about a KGB plot and how nothing to do with the Americans ever amounted to anything important or useful, while masterful emotional manipulation on Philip's part, is also not quite a lie either, the way that whole speech is. Because look at some of the hardest, most haunting and draining shit they ever did-

-The propeller plans they went to so much effort to steal in s2 were a fake batman gambit by the US government that led to a soviet submarine sinking. And in that same season, they spent basically the whole time super paranoid and tensed up thinking someone was going to find them and kill their whole family, and they got involved with Larrick in the first place because of Claudia's suspicion that he's the one who killed Emmett and Leanne and might have made the spy network, which almost got them killed and led to Larrick actually making the spy network. Then it all turned out that Jared killed his family, because the Center was trying to recruit the kids of their officers behind their backs.

-Martha eventually was caught because she drew suspicion copying William's surveillance logs, and it completely destroyed her life. Elizabeth had finally formed a genuine friendship with Young Hee and respected and admired her marriage and her family, and she completely destroyed all of it and hated doing it so much she actually showed hesitation in following orders for the first time and asked the Center to reconsider the plan. This was all in service of getting William an access code to an area beyond his security clearance, for which he got his hands on exactly one virus before the FBI arrested him and he killed himself, and then Elizabeth lost Hans as well exhuming his body for a sample. So many lives ruined and so much effort wasted all for one horrific biological weapon that wasn't even used defensively, like the Center told them it would be, but was used as an offensive weapon in the field.

-Elizabeth had to kill a kind old lady and make it look like an accident, which involved slowly torturing her death, and it completely emotionally gut punched her, not just because she was an innocent bystander who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because she was of a generation when the US and Russia were allies. Her husband fought on their same side in WWII, and you know how much Elizabeth respects that. And that whole "that's what evil people tell themselves when they do evil things" totally left a c**** in Elizabeth's armor. This was all in service of bugging the mail robot, which yielded absolutely nothing of value at all.

-The entire wheat plotline. Yes, it led to them inadvertently finding a valuable source into the CIA, but the entire thing was all a bullshit wild goose chase. They had to get close to this other family they planned to destroy, which involved a whole elaborate fake life and emotionally torturing this kid enough so that his mother would take him back to Russia, they had to constantly travel back and forth to Kansas in service of it, neglecting their actual family in the process, they murdered an innocent lab tech based on the false information they were given about the the wheat plot, and the whole entire operation fucked up and burned out Philip so much that he quit active spy work. And it strikes me even more, when first rewatching it, that the Center knew the whole bug thing was complete bullshit the entire time. They were probably hoping it would yield some reports they could alter in order to create anti-US propaganda for the Russian people to explain why they had no food. When the guy Oleg was working with in the KGB told him right off the bat at the beginning of the season that the reason why there was no food was due to systemic corruption and incompetence.

-The Harvest exfiltration failed, and they lost Marilyn and had to chop off her head and hands.

-Elizabeth killed a shit ton of people in season 6 because she was on a super rushed time table to get a part for a weapons system that was never going to be traded away in the first place, and she was being used by higher ups in the KGB as a pawn in a coup the whole time.

Like, there were some operations that yielded good, actionable intel, like the Weinberger bug (another rush job that ultimately almost got them caught because of the incautious, sloppy execution that was all they could come up with in the unreasonably short amount of time the Center gave them), Yousef, the Breland bug, sometimes Martha, but by and large, the huge, elaborate operations that took them away from their family and emotionally damaged them the most were in service of utter bullshit.

Bannon · June 9, 2018

On 6/8/2018 at 8:54 AM, Plums said:

I still haven't seen Justified either, but it's been one of those, "Everyone says this show was great, I should watch that show sometime" shows that's been my list ever since I watched Deadwood. I'm finally determined it will definitely be the next show I watch. To bring it back to The Americans, I didn't know Margo Martindale was in it either, so now I'm really looking forward to it! FX seems to have quietly been the channel putting out the best prestige dramas that most people haven't known about in the last few years.

Like, everyone was all hyped up when Mad Men was airing on AMC and hyping up all those other AMC shows and building up the channel as the basic cable answer to HBO and other premium channels, and while I watched and loved Mad Men, the entire back half of the series felt like a chore to get through a lot of the time, and I was over all the grimdark focus on Don, because he had long since stopped being a compelling character to me. I tried watching The Killing because I bought into the AMC hype, but it felt like unrelenting darkness for the sake of unrelenting darkness, and for not other purpose. Even with the HBO shows that are all hyped up as great prestige drama, I gave up on Game of Thrones mid season 3 because I thought it was hacky, terrible trash, and Westworld is starting to lose my interest in season 2 because I don't really care about the characters, and the overall plot and themes aren't being told in a way that is all that engrossing to me. Whereas FX seems to be making really great shows with great writing, great acting, and most importantly great, dimensional characters dealing with truly compelling conflicts, telling stories with complete thematic and character arcs, and it's all just flying under the radar in the popular consciousness in ways stories that are not as well done aren't. For me, The Americans is one of the best, most complete and well told dramas I've ever seen. I'd put it up there with The Wire.

Graham Yost is better when he has great source material to work with, be it Stephen Ambrose's history of Easy Company, or the novels of Elmore Leonard. Where Justified really excelled where other Leonard adaptations failed is capturing Leonard's humour, and Leonard's brilliant habit of making even the most minor character a real person, instead of a mere plot advancement device.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Bannon

Umbelina · June 10, 2018

Holly Taylor was good in season 3. She excelled at bratty, immature, and loud hysteria as well as lack of common sense and fury, for example, screaming things when Henry was just down the hall. She nailed that well.

I still maintain there is no way Henry never heard any of that, and didn't hear Mrs. Pastor screaming downstairs. ;)

Dev F · June 10, 2018

On 6/8/2018 at 12:09 PM, sistermagpie said:

That was a scene I thought of as a possibility but it isn't really the kind of scene I was thinking of. First because it's about his father who died when he was six so he's not a presence most of his life--earlier he mostly remembered his father being tired at home. But also because I thought it had such a specific meaning in context. Philip's learned that he was a guard, but he also has a memory of him being loving at home, so he could be both things, potentially, just like Henry's dad is.

To me the interesting thing about that flashback is how it resonates with other elements of "Dyatkovo." That's the episode where Stan gives Henry a tour of the FBI and Henry is suitably impressed, suggesting that he's being swayed away from his father by the kindness of the "enemy." And of course the main plot is about Philip and Elizabeth tracking a Russian woman who became a Nazi collaborator when she was a teenager, singled out for special treatment and coerced to kill for "no reason" -- echoing Gabriel's description of Philip's father in an earlier episode: "He was nobody. We were all nobodies." That's why to me the flashback isn't just about how Philip's dad could be both loving and cruel but about the same cause and effect we see in those other storylines -- that his dad's kindness could've initiated him into a life of cruelty.

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