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theamericansAired:
19 March 2014 in the U.S. and Canada
23 March 2014 in Israel
5 April 2014 in the UK
This is a discussion post for episode 204 of The Americans, intended for viewers who are watching the show on the U.S./Canadian schedule. (Feel free to dive in to the discussion even if you're coming in late--and you should also feel free to start a new thread if it seems too daunting to read through what's already been posted first. If you're reading this at a point where you've already seen subsequent episodes, though, please take care to keep comments spoiler-free of anything that comes after season two, episode four.)
Original promo trailers
Episode recaps
From Vulture
From the Washington Post
From the AV Club
From Rolling Stone
From Hitfix
From the LA Times
From Collider
From the Huffington Post
From Television Without Pity
From Newsmanone
From Crave Online
From Sound on Sight
From IGN
From GAMbIT Magazine
From Geekbinge
From spoilertv.com
From tvrage.com
From TV Over Mind
19 March 2014 in the U.S. and Canada
23 March 2014 in Israel
5 April 2014 in the UK
This is a discussion post for episode 204 of The Americans, intended for viewers who are watching the show on the U.S./Canadian schedule. (Feel free to dive in to the discussion even if you're coming in late--and you should also feel free to start a new thread if it seems too daunting to read through what's already been posted first. If you're reading this at a point where you've already seen subsequent episodes, though, please take care to keep comments spoiler-free of anything that comes after season two, episode four.)
Original promo trailers
Episode recaps
From Vulture
From the Washington Post
From the AV Club
From Rolling Stone
From Hitfix
From the LA Times
From Collider
From the Huffington Post
From Television Without Pity
From Newsmanone
From Crave Online
From Sound on Sight
From IGN
From GAMbIT Magazine
From Geekbinge
From spoilertv.com
From tvrage.com
From TV Over Mind
Rambliew for this ep in semi point form
Date: 2014-03-20 06:52 am (UTC)- Philip in the Lenin beard is weird!
- Also, the addressing of the then-ongoing heavy bureaucratic interference with Jewish emigration in the Soviet Union! And dude's a physicist :D Given my handle you can see how I feel a teensy bit of a kinship with his profession. :)
- Ha! Kelli and Paige sneaking of to a Christian choir. Between this and the Jewish gentleman talking in the previous scene I guess the "religion" arc is taking off now. Aside, it's kind of adorable how ordinarily cute the whole Paige + Kelli + choir scene is.
- Elizabeth and Philip being all schmoopy is a little strange given her usual businesslike air when she's "on mission" and the way she was treating Philip for most of the last half of the first season.
- Garbage dumps as dead drops seem kind of potentially bad. What if whoever's picking up the item can't find it in all the junk?
- Philip being all "I want a new car!" X-D
- OH HELLO CLAUDIA JUST SHOW UP OUT OF NOWHERE KTHX. Looks like she's going to run an off book mission to try and find Emmett and Leanne's killer.
- Huh! The show hasn't addressed homosexuality much, but the fact was in those days, it was possible to blackmail someone just because they were in fact homosexual and in a national-security position. (-_-) Not cool, KGB. And blame deservedly lies on the US government as well for letting moral-warriorism trump removing national security threats.
- Claudia showing some humanity. That seems out of character given how firmly she's backed up the "party line" to P & E even if she privately entertains doubts to Arkady or other higher officials about assignments that might not pan out.
- Something about the way Gaad talks when he's not being totes dead srs always makes me giggle.
- *snerk!* Cotter Smith shows up as an ordinary FBI guy. If you've watched Revolution, ur'f gur hfhecre-Cerfvqrag, yrnqre bs "Gur Cngevbgf", n tebhc pbafcvevat gb sbepvoyl gnxr bire gur erznvaf bs Abegu Nzrevpn nsgre ahxvat Cuvynqrycuvn naq Ngynagn. Kind of a step down for the dude in this show! :P
- WHOA BLOWBACK STAN BOY. The intelligence committees wanna know what the hell was up with Vladimir getting killed. I think Nina would be darkly amused knowing Stan got Gaad in this much deep shit. And deep shit rolls downhill, even if Gaad personally has no hard feelings.
- I get the sense season 1 Elizabeth would have been a lot pricklier about Philip offering to take point on talking to Brad Mullin.
- Oleg, I appreciate your assessment of technology as a crucial intelligence area, but you are not gonna buck Moscow on trying to recruit an unrecruitable physicist.
- HA FUCK YEAH ARKADY. School that twerp. "I'd like to let you read those orders, Oleg Ivanovich. But I'm afraid you don't have a high enough security clearance." Arkady was SO trollfacing at that moment. :D
- Man, the KGB taught great social engineering sklls to their agents. Elizabeth's playing Brad like a fiddle, no pun intended.
- Stan's deep confession time of sorts with Philip. Interesting scene! It's like his confessions about how he feels about bumping people off got him thinking about Nina. And then just WHAM he lays it out like that: "I'm having an affair." I don't know how much of what Philip says to carry that conversation on is true, but I think it mostly is. Why lie if you don't have to?
- Stan disclosing some more of the affair puts me in mind of my comment about Annet's interview about Nina, and how Nina might see something of herself in Stan. Stan's comments make me wonder how on the nose he is about her versus how much of what he says is him telling himself what he wants to hear.
- Oleg standing in Arkady's office somehow manages to be sullenly disrespectful even if it satisfies the basics of courtesy in the culture of the Rezidentura. And of course he has an upgraded security clearance because dear old daddy called Andropov or somebody back home. The sad thing is, in another ten years Arkady's going to be out of a job and Oleg's going to be one of the new oligarchs who can buy and sell ten of Arkady any time he wants.
- Haaaaaaaa Arkady calling it all out: "It must be wonderful to have the kind of family connections you have ... very western." I love how he basically manages to call Oleg a snot-nosed prick without ever actually saying it.
- It seems that Soviet culture emphasized, even more so than American culture, at least the appearance if not the reality of proletarian origins of competent high officials. Given how well that's turned out in some respects (for example, the famous comment by a Czech dissident that said the people running the country had no idea what the hell they were doing because they'd never had the education to handle it properly so why should anybody be surprised the economy's going downhill faster than a lorry with the brakes off), I think Arkady may be missing the point he's trying to make with Oleg.
- Hmm! "Forced repatriation." What the hell are you doing, Arkady?????? If you want to make the USSR look good, you don't abduct people ffs. You know, some of the absolutely boneheaded crap the Soviet Union got up to in the years of its existence boggles my fucking mind. It's like they decided to use the Captain Midnight decoder ring on Karl Marx like a bible code or something because how you get from "kick the capitalists out of the factories and banks and run them yourselves" to "set up a police state that actively pisses off parts of its citizenry and tries to grab people who've already said they'll have nothing more to do with said police state" I have absolutely no idea.
- Henry, you're not gonna get that Intellivision. And anyway, it sucks a dumptruck full of crap. Get an Atari 2600 or something.
- Oh fuck me, Oleg's got Nina's reports. Oleg, being an obviously insensitive snot-nosed prick, will no doubt use them to his advantage, and decidedly against Nina's. Why didn't the KGB stick his ass in the UK or something so he can sponge off them there and listen to the Beatles all day? Thank God Arkady managed to hide the double-agent thing Nina's got going on.
I kind of liked that Arkady doesn't try to treat Nina like a yes-person. He's been considerate enough now and in the past to not make her stand up when he comes into her office if it's not a matter of protocol he feels she needs to observe.
- I get the definite vibe Brad is gay or at any rate bisexual. I wonder if he and the other guy were lovers. Also, I wonder how much of Elizabeth's sudden reluctance is real and how much of it is faked.
- You know, finding out the physicist, Baklonov, has a girlfriend on the side puts me in mind of something that's a running theme through this series, originally stated by Willie Stark in "All the King's Men": It loosely ran that everybody has some aspect of corruption within them, some part of themselves that can be used as a lever to get what someone else wants - you just have to find it. And Philip and Elizabeth are masters of being able to do just that.
- HA PAIGE. "Don't you knock?!" She reminded me so much of Harold Finch being all "WTF" at Reese barging on into his HQ. :P I'm also *gigglesnort*ing at Paige so amateurishly hiding the religious music. :P And Elizabeth's all O_o WAT at the Bible thing.
OOH BURN. Elizabeth gets all buttmad as soon as Paige brings up the privacy thing.
- Whoa! Elizabeth mixing in the actual details of her rape with the story she told Brad, replacing Timoshev with the unnamed Navy SEAL. :O And harking to the ongoing rape problem the real-life military has, she's mixing the KGB protecting Timoshev with the Navy "protecting" the unnamed SEAL by refusing to turn him over to the civilian police. BOOM Larrick's number is up. She's got Brad, hook, line and sinker.
- Hm! Looks like Philip (as Clark) isn't even waiting for Martha to have her own point of contention with him - he's already starting in on her about calling her mom a lot. As I note below, this is probably gonna bite him in the ass.
- HAAAA Oh man, Nina being all snarky to Oleg. :P Oleg, you do not know how difficult it is when you're a man in a man's world, both American and Soviet. Do us all a favor and shut your fucking face kthx.
- OMFG ded. Paige is all like (^_^) SAYIN GRACE NAO.
- Elizabeth's rant is so amazingly filled with double meaning I have no idea how she manages to say it without comparing church to the Komosomol:
"This is what happens. They get them when they're children. They indoctrinate them with friendship and songs and cute boys cooing about Jesus."
Just replace 'cute boys cooing about Jesus' to 'cute boys wearing their uniforms trumpeting socialism' and you might as well have the same rant from an American CIA station chief based out of Moscow.
- Martha deciding she's fed up with Clark is gonna have srs ramifications!
- Whoa! Looks like the FBI was keeping an eye on Baklanov! Holy shit Philip and Elizabeth you done gone and fucked THAT up. Better get movin'!
And smash cut to black.
The show hasn't addressed homosexuality much
Date: 2014-03-20 01:53 pm (UTC)Re Brad, there's a very amusing line in the first edition of The Joy of Gay Sex warning that in Europe just because a man likes opera doesn't mean he's gay.
Re: Rambliew for this ep in semi point form
Date: 2014-03-20 03:10 pm (UTC)Paige has way more patience for that stuff than I would have. Even to piss off my parents I don't think I'd have been able to take that for 5 minutes! But then, I no doubt would have been equally annoyed by the indoctrination that Paige's mother got and Elizabeth must have loved it!
At first I thought Philip was hoping to avoid her sleeping with him, but they must have discussed her plan to use the rape to make him feel like a hero--something they probably couldn't have done the same way earlier, since Philip wouldn't have known about her personal experience.
I think he was just shy. He was pretty excited to sleep with Elizabeth. If the guy she's accusing of raping her was his boyfriend I think his reaction would be different. I think her reluctance was real in that she never really wanted to sleep with the guy, but faked in that it was all consistent with the story she was telling.
I think he had to do that that morning to get out of the house.
I guessed it was Mossad, not FBI.
Re: Rambliew for this ep in semi point form
From:Oleg
Date: 2014-03-20 04:43 pm (UTC)I think he's not used to being passed over by people and is using a power grab to keep from being passed over. One of the writers called him a member of the nomenklatura (I'd gone for apparatchik, a step down from nomenklatura), so he's definitely not used to having his suggestions ignored.
But he's had his eye on Nina for a while, he didn't know what her game was or why he'd been passed over for her opinion. Now he does. Somewhat. He might try to use her as a sounding board for his ideas, since she has an insight, but before it seemed like he was trying to figure out how to fit in with the important members of the Rezidentura (music, "what do you do for fun?", have some tickets) and now he knows he can't use those methods to fit in, he's going to have to do some serious work like they've done.
Homosexuality
Date: 2014-03-20 04:47 pm (UTC)(I had wondered if Emmett's agent was gay and crushing on Emmett or if they'd been lovers.)
Re: Homosexuality in the Soviet Union/KGB
From:Re: Homosexuality in the Soviet Union/KGB
From:Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
From:Re: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
From:Re: Homosexuality in the Soviet Union/KGB
From:Re: Homosexuality in the Soviet Union/KGB
From:Re: Homosexuality in the Soviet Union/KGB
From:KGB agents seducing someone of the same sex
From:Re: Homosexuality
From:Re: Rambliew for this ep in semi point form
Date: 2014-03-20 07:23 pm (UTC)Very good point :-)
- Claudia showing some humanity. That seems out of character given how firmly she's backed up the "party line" to P & E even if she privately entertains doubts to Arkady or other higher officials about assignments that might not pan out.
I don't know - she wants revenge. And despite all her "I don't want to lose anybody else", if they leave this Larrick guy alone, then nobody else will get hurt. Assuming it's really him.
- HA FUCK YEAH ARKADY. School that twerp. "I'd like to let you read those orders, Oleg Ivanovich. But I'm afraid you don't have a high enough security clearance." Arkady was SO trollfacing at that moment. :D
End with slamming the door in his face :-)
- Hmm! "Forced repatriation." What the hell are you doing, Arkady?????? If you want to make the USSR look good, you don't abduct people ffs.
I can understand abducting somebody who escaped the country, but in this case, we're talking about somebody who was probably given permission, for some obscure reason. This story doesn't seem very probable in any direction.
- Henry, you're not gonna get that Intellivision. And anyway, it sucks a dumptruck full of crap. Get an Atari 2600 or something.
But it's INTELLI-vision! I'd like to see a kid trying to convince his parents now that playing video games is good for the mind.
- Oh fuck me, Oleg's got Nina's reports.
Which I hope will teach her to be less descriptive next time.
And smash cut to black.
I actually thought this was the first ep where they didn't cut it so suddenly.
"Forced repatriation"
From:Re: "Forced repatriation"
From:Re: "Forced repatriation"
From:Georgley's initial episode thoughts
Date: 2014-03-20 12:09 pm (UTC)- Love that they keep showing that Philip is aware that Elizabeth isn't okay but that he accepts her word when she says she is. I feel like as her husband, he just wants her to stay home and recover while he takes care of things. But as her partner, I think they would have had an understanding that if one of them says they are okay, the other one will back them up.
- Did Philip and Elizabeth just figure out for themselves that Stan was having an affair or have they been told about his affair with Nina by the Center?
- I felt like Paige saying grace was really to annoy her parents given the way they reacted to seeing the Bible. Also, I laughed out loud when Philip suggested they start eating dinner later so she's too hungry to say it. And Elizabeth's comeback of "stop being so reasonable!". Heh.
- That was probably the first time that Elizabeth has ever actually spoken to anyone about the details of her rape and even then it was clouded with half-truths. That was a great scene.
Stan's affair
Date: 2014-03-20 07:26 pm (UTC)I was also wondering about that. I thought at first maybe Sandra said something? I don't remember.
But it makes sense that they'd be notified about such things.
Paige saying grace + Elizabeth talking of her rape
Date: 2014-03-20 08:17 pm (UTC)/That was probably the first time that Elizabeth has ever actually spoken to anyone about the details of her rape and even then it was clouded with half-truths. That was a great scene./ - Indeed, the best lies are based on the truth, aren't they? LOL at first I didn't even realized she was actually talking about her real experience. Such a subtle, intelligent show! ♥
How Philip dealt with Elizabeth not being quite okay
Date: 2014-03-20 11:12 pm (UTC)I loved this too! I mean, he clearly didn't accept her word in the sense of believing her 100%, because he kept checking on her, but he still trusted her to know her own limits, at least, and he let her be to deal with it the way she was going to deal with it. It was the best available way to walk that line between protective and careless.
-J
While watching thoughts
Date: 2014-03-20 01:39 pm (UTC)Argh no, Kelly is part of a happy clappy church rather than being used by the KGB. Probably :)
'(Speaker) would rather die than betray his new homeland'. Ha, he may get the chance.
Paige cannot lie convincingly, can she?
Oooh, what an unexpected encounter.
Philip comments that the cover for the kids was pulled off.
Claudia: 'We owe it to them' - yes, Elizabeth does.
Oooh, office politics in both the FBI and Soviet embassy.
Ha, at Elizabeth's seduction technique. Did US record shops still have listening booths then? They died out in the UK at some point in the 70s, eventually replaced by individual CD listening stations.
Ha, at Stan and Philip doing the male bonding thing. Two such contrasts - the office politics and the two at work - together is not a coincidence on the part of the writers. Does Philip know who Stan is having the affair with? I don't remember him being told. (Later: Oh, Philip and Elizabeth did know about the affair.)
Ha, I like the unseen string pulling to get the higher security clearance. And the dig about picking up American values.
I still think Nina is going to get rid of Oleg, and now she has even more of a motive to do so.
Yep, from their reaction to Paige's leaflet either Elizabeth and Philip don't know anything about Kelly or she's not KGB.
What a good way to get at the target...
Naughty Martha, and what an interesting look from Philip when he's out the door.
Ha, at the new dinning table routine, and that the discussion about it is in a car, rather than home. "Will you stop being so reasonable!" :)
Ooh, I did think the kidnap wasn't very efficient. Why isn't the mistress looking out the window wondering what all the noise is?
Ha, at the very end. Nice cliffhanger.
Later: this is another episode where someone in the production team is feeling very pleased with themselves about the title.
Post-second-viewing: Jae
Date: 2014-03-20 02:58 pm (UTC)I decided to wait to post my thoughts this time around until after I'd watched it again while working out this morning, because there were some things I wanted to check before writing down my thoughts about them. So, slightly less bleary than usual, but still in point form:
• I was quite fond of Philip's new disguise in the first scene. Also of the fact that the show touched on the rampant anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. Also on the fact that it was brought up in the same episode where Paige starts getting interested in Christianity.
• I was spoiled for Claudia's return, and I think in this case those scenes did make less of an emotional impact on me as a result. I still loved the look on Elizabeth's face when she crossed the street in front of them, though. Also, the fact neither Philip nor Elizabeth is even trying to disguise the fact that they don't trust her and in Elizabeth's case at least, have outward contempt for her. Claudia has most of the power in that relationship, but they have a certain kind as well.
• I found it interesting that the Center has done a risk/benefit assessment and decided that it's not worth trying to solve the murders of two of their longtime illegals. It's shocking in a way, but it's also indicative of what a huge bureaucracy the KGB really was.
• Philip says that the person/people who were tailing their kids was pulled. That seems to be a definitive "no" in response to the question we were discussing last week about whether Kelli was somehow involved with the KGB. Anybody still arguing this side of that? :)
• On first viewing, it seems like Gaad was just going to be gone now, i.e. that he was being removed from his post or something and we just wouldn't see him again. But upon second viewing it seems to me that there's just going to be someone else directly supervising his work from now on. Is that everyone else's read? Any thoughts on how that's going to affect the FBI side of the story? Also, the joint inquiry of the House and Senate intelligence committees: that's almost certainly going to be a big part of the FBI plot this season--anyone have any thoughts on that?
• My favourite scenes this episode were all about Elizabeth with Brad Mullin the Navy source from Wyoming (more on that in a moment), but the scene in the bar between Philip and Stan was a very close second. Bonding over work! Bonding over marriage! Bonding over extramarital sex and killing people (sort of)! Both of them saying things that are, in effect, truths, despite the fact that they're couched in lies! I had so much love for them both--and for their friendship--in this scene.
• There was a question on Twitter last night about whether the illegals end of the KGB side knows about Stan and Nina or not. I vote for not--Philip will have figured out simply through observation and intuition that Stan has been having an affair, so their conversation would have been taken as confirmation of that. Since Stan didn't confide the part about "oh, and she's a Russian spy," there's no reason for them to have figured that part out. Not that they need to know, of course; they have bigger things to worry about (and the legal agents at the Rezidentura have a pretty firm grip on things anyway, I'd say).
• Speaking of Stan, it was interesting to get confirmation through that conversation that a) he really is taken with Nina, not just playing her, and b) he is fully aware that they can't actually "be together," and that their relationship, whatever else it may be, has a built-in time limit.
• On the other hand, given the fact that this is Stan and he's not thoroughly incompetent as an agent, I do still think there's some element of "playing her" still there, even if it's been blurred by his very real feelings. Which is the second example this episode of the fake being blurred by the real and vice versa. Oleg's conversation with Nina later suggested that he suspects that there might be a level on which this is true for Nina as well: "It's not so hard to deceive with the eyes, the smile, the things we say. But the body--the parts of the body that can love--they want to tell the truth."
• And this brings us to the episode's third example of the fake and the real blurring: the role Elizabeth dons in order to hook her source. I've talked before about how Philip is usually the one who slips entirely into a full-fledged role in order to do the work he does with his various sources--even his one-shots are actual people--while Elizabeth usually gets away with a half-assed "sexy woman" role and uses generic sex appeal instead. But this episode showed that she's just as masterful as he is at choosing the exact sort of role that a potential source will fall for and then exploiting it to the fullest. And the way this particular role used not just the concept of feelings that a younger version of herself would have gone through under a different name after her own very real rape, but the actual details--that was so brilliant and so exquisitely executed (so exquisitely that there were people on Twitter who were convinced that these were her real, current-day reactions). She doesn't usually use that arrow in her quiver because usually the situation doesn't call for it, but she clearly can if she has to. It comes at a cost, though: it's clear by the final scene that it also took an emotional toll on her, which means that the deliberate blurring of the real into the fake came back to haunt the real again in the end. When you blur those lines, it cuts both ways. And in the scene later with Brad in the car, the moment where we see her over his shoulder and she breaks character--heartbreaking.
• And then there was yet another example of the real blurring into the fake and vice versa: Philip with Martha. Yes, this was Philip picking a fight with her in order to get out of the lazy morning he'd promised and get back to work, but it was also Clark (and, through Clark, Philip) being legitimately annoyed about things that he would actually find annoying about living with her.
• I have to say, Oleg pulling strings to get just enough clearance to read Nina's reports of her relationship with Stan is sheer brilliance in long-term storytelling that will affect the way everything plays out this season between them. Just generally there are so many levels on which this storyline is fascinating and awesome: the level where Nina is humiliated enough that his knowledge complicates her relationship with her co-worker (though she got in a dig with "I'm being sincere."/"The strain must be terrible."), the level where there are things that he's going to figure out about her due to the details of how she came to be running an FBI agent as an unwitting double agent. I'm now with the folks who suggested that Oleg's "scalping" lesson from earlier (where he brought up the notion of "you sell the tickets and pocket the money") was actually a fishing expedition to gauge her reaction, not a coincidence.
• On a lighter note, I loved Arkady's positively precognitive "I think Yuri Andropov will be General Secretary someday." Also, the way this show is slowly giving him a personality (and an ideological orientation), little by little and layer by layer. The way he uses layers of meaning in his conversation with Oleg was delicious: at first he says he doesn't have an issue with Oleg using his connections, but in the next line, he says in a more subtle way (by talking about how KGB agents often develop western values) that he's really not thrilled with this development.
• And then there's my third-favourite bit of the episode: the conversation at the end between Philip and Elizabeth with respect to their different ways of coping with Paige's foray into Christianity. Neither one of them is happy with it, but Philip takes a pragmatic approach and Elizabeth an idealistic one. Also, it's clear that Paige rubbing the "praying at dinner" thing in her parents' face is reciprocation for the way they reacted to the Bible, but more generally I just love the fact that Paige has intuited that her parents aren't going to be happy with her dabbling in religion: that she'd have to lie about going to church, hide her Bible, etc. All of the little things she must have picked up on that front over the years: little remarks, little looks shared between them in reaction to other people--it plays so precisely into where Paige's head is this season. But Henry, too, was picking up on things, watching his parents carefully as they exchanged an unhappy look when Paige prayed at dinner.
• One additional related point, there: I'm sure Elizabeth's overreaction at the end was in part the toll the particular role she chose this episode must have taken on her, but it was also just the cumulative effect of everything. She's still recovering from her injury both physically and emotionally (the little toss of her head in the scene with Claudia where she says "I'm back" after Claudia brings up the last time she saw Elizabeth really betrayed this) and she's also been completely knocked off-kilter by the murder of her friends in "Comrades" and the feelings it's brought up about her own children and their vulnerability. Add to that cocktail the new layer of fear for Paige's ideological safety that had just come up again, and you've got a recipe for a whole lot of simultaneous anguish on so many fronts.
• And one additional related point: I loved that Philip kept checking on Elizabeth throughout the episode. "Why don't I take this one? Are you sure you're okay with this? How's it going?" And yet, as Georgley mentioned in her own comments above, he still leaves her with her agency intact and lets her call the shots. That was absolutely the right call, and I love him for it.
• A little thing: Philip said that "George" had traced Anton's number. Is this someone we've seen/heard of before?
• I'm worried about this little form of Martha's and the truth she's going to tell on it while Clark is off being Philip instead of phoning her back! Just, eek!
• I had to rewatch the final scene and take notes to figure out everything that was going on, but this is what I got out of it (corrections/additions/comments more than welcome!): 1. Philip grabbed Anton after he kissed a dark-haired woman at the door, and anaesthetised him.
2. Elizabeth pulled up in the car and popped the trunk.
3. Elizabeth got out to help Philip put a now-unconscious Anton in the trunk.
4. A dark-haired woman (the same one Anton was kissing? yes? no?) appeared out of nowhere and hit Philip.
5. An older guy in a black jacket also appeared out of nowhere and attacked Elizabeth.
6. Philip fired his gun, shattering the car's windows.
7. They each attempted to fight off their respective attackers, and during the fight the attackers were using very similar techniques (which suggests that they're either KGB or Israeli Mossad, who apparently have a very similar fighting style to the KGB's systema).
8. Elizabeth got a good look at the guy, then hit him hard enough to hurt him and kept going, really going overboard.
9. Philip realized she was going overboard and stopped her.
10. The woman pulled off in the car, leaving them carless and with the still conscious guy.
I will be watching it again tomorrow morning--this is not an episode I will tire of anytime soon! And just generally, man, this show. I love everything, everything about it: its subtlety, its consistency, everything. Total braingasm!
-J
Re: Post-second-viewing: Jae
Date: 2014-03-20 03:15 pm (UTC)Even though Arkady's more "Soviet" than Oleg, obviously, Oleg's attitude about it just really is annoying even to me, a dyed-in-the-wool Westerner, and it starts to make me wonder how much of the 1970s and 1980s anti-Westernism in the USSR was more about overreacting to younger people basically being irritating younger people, than any long-term ideological purity.
I like that the show actually can legit make you sympathize with Arkady who wishes his "westernizing" agent would at least think about how he's coming across to everybody else and how Oleg abusing his family connections to grease the rails in the KGB is going to just screw things up down the line, because eventally Oleg is going to get a post somewhere he can't just get dad to bail him out for if something goes wrong.
Also, I was kind of laughing in surprise at how easily Philip and Elizabeth got totally pwned at the end because they weren't paying enough attention to the guards and the car. Well, they've got one guy, so they can question him to see where the safe house is, but I think they may have to call that mission off. The car has P&E's fingerprints on it and the woman's seen their faces.
Stan-boy is gonna have an illegal-gasm at that.
Oleg and his dad
From:Who were the man and the woman at the end: FBI? KGB? Mossad?
From:Re: Who were the man and the woman at the end: FBI? KGB? Mossad?
From:Re: Post-second-viewing: Jae
From:Re: Post-second-viewing: Jae
From:Re: Post-second-viewing: Jae
Date: 2014-03-20 03:27 pm (UTC)That was my feeling--and it will probably be very interesting from Martha's perspective. Stan's actions have probably brought down some annoying consequences for his work life. Just as the KGB has Oleg offering a different type of KGB guy, I think this will bring in a new type of FBI guy.
What I tend to feel about Elizabeth's roles is that their less generically sexy (though usually that's all she needs) and more just more clearly in her comfort zone by being aspects of herself. In this case what was cool was that she was basically playing a part of herself she doesn't show a lot. Instead of being very put together (as she usually is with either sexy woman or buttoned-up librarian type) she was showing the cracks underneath.
Yet still her manipulation comes down to other peoples' desire not to be weak. Just like saying she wants the one guy to be "stronger" so he brags about his CIA secrets, here she knows to play to Brad's hero side. Men really fall for that on this show. I wonder if that's another reason why one of the angriest Elizabeth has ever been to Philip is when he started to go caveman too.
Anyway, the thing that's so fascinating with this for me is that it always centers around weakness which is Elizabeth's actual hotbutton.
Elizabeth's roles as facets of herself
From:Re: Elizabeth's roles as facets of herself
From:Re: Post-second-viewing: Jae
Date: 2014-03-20 04:52 pm (UTC)Re: Post-second-viewing: Jae
From:Re: Post-second-viewing: Jae
From:George the phone link guy
From:Re: George the phone link guy
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From:Re: Post-second-viewing: Jae
Date: 2014-03-20 07:58 pm (UTC)• Philip says that the person/people who were tailing their kids was pulled. That seems to be a definitive "no" in response to the question we were discussing last week about whether Kelli was somehow involved with the KGB. Anybody still arguing this side of that? :)
Nope ;-) Unless they're setting us up for a complete twist on twist.
On first viewing, it seems like Gaad was just going to be gone now, i.e. that he was being removed from his post or something and we just wouldn't see him again. But upon second viewing it seems to me that there's just going to be someone else directly supervising his work from now on. Is that everyone else's read?
I don't think he's going away, but a new char involved, I don't know how much he'll be involved anymore. Maybe he'll be pushed to another sub-department.
Oleg's conversation with Nina later suggested that he suspects that there might be a level on which this is true for Nina as well: "It's not so hard to deceive with the eyes, the smile, the things we say. But the body--the parts of the body that can love--they want to tell the truth."
That sentence actually seemed menacing to me.
• On a lighter note, I loved Arkady's positively precognitive "I think Yuri Andropov will be General Secretary someday."
This past week I was trying to figure out the order of Soviet leaders in The Americans era, and since I did not have wiki handy, I knew I was missing somebody. So with this line I had my lightbulb moment.
A little thing: Philip said that "George" had traced Anton's number. Is this someone we've seen/heard of before?
Based on the subtitles: no.
4. A dark-haired woman (the same one Anton was kissing? yes? no?) appeared out of nowhere and hit Philip.
I thought it was the girlfriend too.
Were Anton's girlfriend and Philip's assailant the same woman?
From:Re: Were Anton's girlfriend and Philip's assailant the same woman?
From:Re: Were Anton's girlfriend and Philip's assailant the same woman?
From:Re: Were Anton's girlfriend and Philip's assailant the same woman?
From:Re: Were Anton's girlfriend and Philip's assailant the same woman?
From:Re: Were Anton's girlfriend and Philip's assailant the same woman?
From:"I think Yuri Andropov..."
Date: 2014-03-20 10:10 pm (UTC).. but this was just a show-off one liner.
risk/benefit assessment
Date: 2014-03-20 10:44 pm (UTC)If they weren't killed because they were illegals, investigating who did it is not going to help. Let the police do it.
If they were, and it was the FBI who did it, then why hasn't the son been dragged in to tell what he knows about his parents?
If they were, and it was someone else, a big investigation is going to be noticed. Plus, if the killers were really that dangerous, they'd have got the son by now.
Re: risk/benefit assessment
From:Apolla's Very Short Response
Date: 2014-03-20 04:28 pm (UTC)2. "Very Western" - the look on my face...what a burn!
3. Am I allowed to swear here? I mean, the show is rated mature, but..
Well, just to be safe: http://apolla-savre.tumblr.com/post/80172286519/arkady-ivanovich-to-oleg-igorevich-you-have
I NEED NEXT WEEK'S EPISODE RIGHT NOW. MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT COHERENT.
Re: Apolla's Very Short Response
Date: 2014-03-20 05:12 pm (UTC)Re: Apolla's Very Short Response
From:Swearing on the comm
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From:sistermagpie's thoughts on first watch - A Little Night Music
Date: 2014-03-20 04:32 pm (UTC)Paige's new friends would be annoying to anybody, imo, but she really struck gold in terms of annoying her parents. Go Paige!
Also interesting that while Elizabeth is worried about the ideology Philip is very focused on the lying. People have pointed out the irony of him scolding Paige about that, but I think it runs just as deep as Elizabeth repulsion about the religion. He doesn't want Paige to wind up like him who lies as easily as he breathes. It's becoming second nature to her and I think he feels responsible for it, like they've modeled it without meaning to do that.
On the religious aspect, Philip, too, has expressed a distaste for it but it's interesting that he's not as freaked out as Elizabeth, even when they're alone. I think part of it is understanding, again, how things "work" in the US. Religion is just a thing; it's not always a cult.
I also wonder if Philip is beginning to make connections between his own indoctrination and the type of things Paige is getting into, so seeing it as not so different. Elizabeth, of course, is able to rant about this sort of thing completely unironically, but this isn't the sort of thing Philip would bring up to her. I wonder if he really agrees with Elizabeth that they know who they are--or at least that he does.
There's a lot of things he won't bring up to her. Other posts in the thread really nail it. He's checking her, he's noticing the problems, but as her partner he's trying to handle it the respectful way.
Though this also led to another funny thought I had during the ep. There was a point where I thought, "Philip's the wife." Which is a totally sexist way of putting it and too reductive, but what I meant was that Elizabeth often gets treated in the way that male characters more often get treated (and there's nothing wrong with that). The combination of her stoic-ness and obvious vulnerabilities in a man is often what's referred to as "man-pain." That man-pain has actually interfered with their work several times. Yet the KGB seems to consider her a really valuable asset to the point where Grannie is concerned about keeping her running, we know Zhukov also took special interest.
Meanwhile Philip is just sort of expected to do his job, step in to balance when necessary without pointing out that he's done so when he's done so. Dude spent 2 months *by himself* running missions, raising the kids, keeping Martha satisfied and also running the travel agency--apparently quite well because they had a good 2 months. Philip can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan! But it's not really remarked upon. We see Elizabeth struggling with the kids alone during the separation, but the two months with her gone isn't even broadcast. (For obvious reasons, but the result is the same.)
So many scenes were fraught with...stuff in this ep it was amazing. Some I remember...
The moment where Elizabeth turns off the radio. Philip says he was listening to it and she I think kisses him and says "I know." But she says it really fondly. I couldn't help but wonder if in the past his listening to country music annoyed her like so many other of his American interests, but now she sees it as a non-threatening quirk that's part of the guy she loves.
That also makes me think how country music, while not always overly Christian, is not shy about calling on the Lord. I wonder if they thought of that when they stuck in that moment. Not to indicate that Philip's any more interested in religion, but just as part of the way he gets how it's part of the culture.
In fact, I'd really love to now see Philip play a religious character, just to channel more stuff into his work.
I'll bet Paige's group has a really annoying youth pastor that the Jennings will totally hate.
Stan and Philip was probably my favorite conversation just because...wow. I love looking at Philip through Stan's eyes and then remembering who he really is. Like when Stan was talking to him about killing people and I remembered oh yeah, Philip can actually relate to that. And would probably love to talk about the times he didn't feel good about it.
It's also just so fun how consistently Philip listens to people while revealing almost nothing. In this convo iirc he did say some real things about his marriage, for instance--though I think he was at times wondering if he should pretend to have also have had an affair (half pretend?) or not, and then just went with a clever avoidance: "You think about it..." He just listens really well and Stan blurts out all sorts of things: I killed somebody! I'm having an affair! My wife and I live separate lives!
And what does Stan really know about Philip? Really not much that we see. I mean, not Misha!Philip but Philip Jennings. He spoke in fairly vague terms even about his problems with Elizabeth. I don't get the impression Stan has a detailed idea of how the separation occurred.
Unlike Elizabeth who this week dipped into the specifics of her rape. When Philip first offered to do the job for her I thought he was just trying to avoid the standard stuff of a honeytrap, but now I realize they must have discussed what she was planning to do and that probably made him all the more nervous about it. That's why he was saying there were other ways to get to him.
I think, actually, that his nervousness about her has made him less likely to challenge her than he would be otherwise.
I almost wondered if Claudia wouldn't talk to him. Not that he'd talk to her about Elizabeth, but they've both clearly come to the same conclusion about what's going on with her, that she's scared and getting jittery and trying to power through it when maybe she should rest and come back later. It might be smart for her to drop some ideas to Philip that he won't acknowledge to her but would still hear. But then, she probably doesn't trust Philip still or something.
Oh, and so back to Stan/Philip for a second, it's kind of summed up in that fabulous Philip/Elizabeth exchange where she asks him how he "got" Stan to admit about the affair and he just says "We're friends" and she's confused.
Oleg's "warnings" to Nina about the sex were wonderfully complex in context of this show. Because yes, there are times when things get mixed up, like with Stan/Nina, Elizabeth's story to Brad and maybe even Philip/Elizabeth in some ways. But Clark/Nina isn't confused and Elizabeth/Brad ultimately did seem to be all about Elizabeth being disappointed that she had to go for the handjob, I think.
Also, Arkady is fast becoming a real go-to guy for me. I love his alliance with Nina against Oleg.
I'm also glad Vlad continues to haunt Stan--interesting of course that the FBI is not letting this go while the KGB, working in the shadows, has decided to just not check out who slaughtered their agents.
The anti-Semitism foundation laid early on is also really interesting, especially since I wondered at the beginning if young Lenin--err, I mean Philip in his excellent pointy beard--would find himself uncomfortably identifying with the scientist who built a life for himself in the US. So far he seems comfortable compartmentalized and not questioning the ethics of kidnapping.
I wonder if the show will delve at all into whether of not Philip or Elizabeth has any feelings about Jewish people themselves. I don't know how the overall anti-Semitism in the USSR would manifest in individual people.
Interesting that this was also the ep that brought up the KGB blackmailing someone for being gay, what with current issues in Russia regarding homosexuality obviously echoing the discrimination and oppression mentioned here regarding Jewish people. (Elizabeth's story also kind of echoes recent controversy about rape in the military too, I guess.)
I don't think it was meant to be a big hammer on those connections or anything, but it does seem right that this ep includes Paige getting into Christianity (which has its own biases against many people including Jewish people, gay people and Communists depending on the church), Soviet anti-Semitism, 80s homophobia, Soviet anti-religious bias...
In fact, I wonder if looking through it we'd find everybody paired up in terms of a bias presented and the people biased against also presented. Like we got Elizabeth ranting about Christians and Paige's Christian teen friends. Elizabeth ranting about commercialism and Philip and Henry's desire for a new car and Intellivision. Anton's talk about anti-Semitism with Anton himself (and I suspect Israeli agents). We didn't see gay people (that we know of) and didn't hear anti-Communist stuff from the Christians. But I suspect this will be a longer-running theme they're just starting on. Larick, if we meet him, will be an actual gay person. The kids in the church group might absolutely talk about how sad and immoral people are if they don't believe in God. And Paige probably would love to throw that back at Mom. I and others thought it was implied that one of the workers at the Travel Agency was gay, and of course we started the season with the Afghanis saying they were united with the US against the godless Communists--though of course today suddenly the differences between that God as perceived by the two countries are very very important.
Philip's the wife
Date: 2014-03-20 08:02 pm (UTC)Ha! Poor thing :-)
Actually, with the way he handled everything so smoothly while Elizabeth's gone, I wonder if she's feeling she's not really needed.
Philip: "You may find yourself..."?
From:Re: sistermagpie's thoughts on first watch - A Little Night Music
From:no subject
Date: 2014-03-20 05:04 pm (UTC)And Claudia's "I don't want to lose anyone else" was so moving!
Sigh, the Martha situation is going to resolve itself into a mess... And OMG the final scene, so intense!
Martha and her form
Date: 2014-03-20 07:33 pm (UTC)-J
Re: Martha and her form
From:Re: Martha and her form
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From:Treon's thoughts
Date: 2014-03-20 07:07 pm (UTC)And so, in no particular order...
- I liked the Refusenik aspect :-) Though I don't get why would the KGB think any of them would be recruitable of their own free will.
- With that rape story, I was sure Elizabeth was grooming Brad to kill their suspect. Turned out she just wanted files.
- Brad was so cute - but though Elizabeth is attractive, she's his mother's age! God. And he also uses 'like' in his speech.
- It looks like I was wrong about Kelly, and Paige is sneaking off to church! Couldn't she be like every other normal kid and do drugs or something? Next thing you'll know, she'll start being kind to her brother and stuff.
- Amazing how she started making stuff up about where she was and P&E are all "oh, yeah, we don't really care".
- Loved the P&E scheduling, and then bickering. "Would you stop being so reasonable?" - hee! I had to go back to understand his logic, though.
- Was there a point to Clark getting upset at Martha? Was that just to get out of the house? He's going to be in so much trouble now.
- The ending - wow! Threw me back to the pilot. Forced repatriation is not P&E's strong point. (and now they definitely need a new car)
- I wouldn't have gotten the name of the episode without the subtitles
- Oleg is getting on Arkady's nerves. *is looking forward to showdown*
- Gaad :-( I hope he's not going away.
- Claudia was a bit too over-dramatic for me, and with all her concern for Elizabeth, she seemed to deal with things quite well.
- Now Philip's into country music?
and now they definitely need a new car
Date: 2014-03-20 08:00 pm (UTC)Re: and now they definitely need a new car
From:Re: and now they definitely need a new car
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From:"Forced repatriation" or recruitment?
From:no subject
Date: 2014-03-20 08:15 pm (UTC)I really liked that episode but I feel like everyone else has said a lot of the stuff I would.
Philip TOTALLY likes country music, and that is awesome/hilarious to me.
I don't think I get quite how badly Gaad is in trouble? Like, I get he's being supervised, but does that mean he's, like, on probation?
I can't even BEGIN with the feels about Elizabeth using her own experience in that way. That was masterful. I am weirdly proud of Elizabeth, because that was a whole new level of pro, to me. I felt similarly proud of how well Philip used his own annoyance in the fight with Martha - although omfg that is apparently now going to come back and bite him. Because they presumably SERIOUSLY INVESTIGATE spouses of applicants for those kind of jobs. OMG.
Talking of omg, it took me a second to realise that "at work" and "married", in the context of Stan, wouldn't include MARTHA.
GRANNIE IS BACK. That makes me so happy. I find it totally interesting that the Center apparently don't think it's worth properly investigating on their own account here - they must surely know something that indicates it's not a threat beyond just "well our other agents aren't dead yet", right?
I did not think I would like Arkady as much as I do right now. He tried to do his best by Nina, and "I'd love to give them to you. But you don't have a high enough security clearance. My hands are tied." *DOORSLAM!* was epic and hilarious.
(omg poor Nina though. poor, poor Nina. luckily she's levelled up brilliantly so far and I think she'll continue to do so, because I think we are clearly supposed to think Oleg is gonna keep on investigating.)
I loved the Paige subplot - I love that she clearly knew right from the start that her parents would flip about it. She's such a TEENAGER now! Love it. And I thought all the issues about indoctrination and how we learn were done so well - especially, as other people have mentioned, when put in a context of antisemitism and the very reasonable reasons why people might want to make a new life somewhere. (And not want to be FORCIBLY FRICKIN REPATRIATED.) I think Philip's understanding of that - "Not recruitable. Never will be." - was done beautifully in contrast to Elizabeth's OMFG THEY'RE TURNING MY CHILDREN INTO RELIGIOUS CAPITALISTS moment. Elizabeth's not wrong - her children ARE learning to be very, very different from her, in some understandably scary ways - but neither is Philip when he points out that you've got to deal with what you've got.
I felt like there was a lot of set-up, though - obviously for that cliffhanger, but also for the future plot. Cannot waaaait!
"Use what you know"
Date: 2014-03-20 11:01 pm (UTC)My comment on Twitter about both of these moments was that clearly the KGB were experts on method acting. "Use what you know!" *g*
-J
no subject
Date: 2014-03-25 10:26 pm (UTC)I assume the two P&E ran into at the end were Mossad agents?
Also, I have a horrible feeling that it'll turn out Claudia is behind the deaths of Emmett and Leanne. I feel it can't be coincidence that Emmett name-dropped her when talking to Philip.
I hope I'm wrong. I have a sneaking liking for Claudia and don't want her to be evil evil.
Claudia
Date: 2014-03-25 10:36 pm (UTC)Re: Claudia
From:Re: Claudia
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From:Elizabeth's confession
From:Re: Elizabeth's confession
From:(no subject)
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From:Late to the party; new thread
Date: 2014-03-27 06:14 am (UTC)Since the very first episode of the season, one question has been deliberately left open: Did Elizabeth come back to work too soon?
Her caregiver thought she was: "I wish they would listen to me." And Elizabeth's response: "I'll be fine."
Philip has repeatedly asked her if she was ready. He's been her partner for over 15 years and presumably knows her better than anyone. She seemed off her game to him or he wouldn't have asked. Claudia said what Philip must have been thinking: Elizabeth was back but she wasn't back. She was afraid, too afraid.
No matter how good his intentions may have been, I don't think Philip did Elizabeth or the cause any favors by not pressing her harder. Her lack of readiness was the indirect cause of their mission going south.
Their mission: forced repatriation aka kidnapping a Jewish scientist who'd left the USSR to escape religious persecution made it difficult to watch. To be honest, my hope is that he'll get away. Some people mentioned that they thought the man and woman who thwarted the kidnapping might be Mossad. If that is the case, perhaps they were trying to recruit him to work for them. Perhaps he already was. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
I think Elizabeth's mission with the seaman was ill-advised. I think it exposed her and their core mission unnecessarily. I think Claudia was wrong to suggest it, especially if she believed Elizabeth wasn't up to full strength.
I'm with Philip on the Paige question. They should wait and see what happens. Maybe she's going through a phase. But Elizabeth is right too: they have not been paying enough attention to either of their children.
Stan is in deep shit. So is Nina. So is Martha. (So is ____. Fill in the blank with nearly any character in the series.)
I can't stand that slimy Russian science guy.
This show is a tragedy in slow motion.
Re: Late to the party; new thread
Date: 2014-03-27 08:30 am (UTC)I don't see how it was. Philip was the one tailing the scientist, he's the one who didn't pick up on the fact that somebody else was tailing him too.
Re: Late to the party; new thread
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