theamericans | Episode discussion post: "Tchaikovsky"

But I don't think it's a coincidence that Claudia becomes "family" in the season where Elizabeth starts replacing family with the work.

I disagree that Elizabeth is starting to replace her family with work. IMO, for Elizabeth, the family has always just been part of her work. That doesn't mean that she doesn't love them, but unlike Philip, I don't think that Elizabeth has ever drawn a line between the family and her job. The children were part of the job, meant to enhance their cover and breed the next generation of more perfect spies. We know that Elizabeth loves them, but she's always always loved the Cause more. Now that she's facing her own likely death, of course she hands off her daughter/work assignment to her supervisor/Claudia and says, 'if I die, you finish the project.' In fact, Elizabeth hates everything about America so much, she thinks that Paige becoming a spy is Paige's best possible fate, and handing Paige over to Claudia is the very best thing possible that she can do as a mother for her daughter. She's rescued Paige from becoming a 'weak, soft' American and fulfilled her job to breed a second generation spy.

There is so little time left in this series for Elizabeth to finally learn that it's okay to live a life that is not devoted 100% to ideology. The show is dropping suicide pill shaped anvils on her head that if she doesn't wake up and choose life for herself (and now for her daughter), she is doomed (and so now is Paige). We're also coming right down to the wire about whether or not she will be able to separate her family from her ideology.

Right from the start Philip said he would be okay with allowing his kids to live out their lives as Americans. He only wants what's best for his kids in terms of educational and economic opportunities. Happy Americans...happy Russians... he doesn't care so long as his kids are happy. Elizabeth puts ideology first. She's delighted that Paige was recruited and she's perfectly content to allow Claudia to continue to train Paige. Elizabeth wants her daughter to be an ideological reflection of herself, even if that dooms Paige to be unfit to be an American or a Russian.

I appreciate all of the characters for who they are, even if I don't necessarily 'like' or approve of them all of the time.

I started this season totally soured on Paige, but after this last episode I've totally got my Paige love back, for the craziest reason though. The show was pitching how great she's doing as junior spy and that grated on me because she's clearly not doing a great job. But this last episode with her utterly blowing her cover and running towards the sounds of the gunshots while yelling, "Mom!!!" made it so obvious that she's doing all of this out of love for her mom (whether she herself realizes this or not) was really endearing to me. Poor Paige. In so many ways, she's still just the little kid wandering around her weird house trying to make sense out of her faux-family. Poor kid.

I disagree that Elizabeth is starting to replace her family with work. IMO, for Elizabeth, the family has always just been part of her work. That doesn't mean that she doesn't love them, but unlike Philip, I don't think that Elizabeth has ever drawn a line between the family and her job. The children were part of the job, meant to enhance their cover and breed the next generation of more perfect spies.

Absolutely, but I was specifically referring to the present situation where Elizabeth is not talking to Philip, Paige has become a trainee and Henry is gone (and she doesn't go to see his game). Her personal life is far more compromised than it was before, which I think fits the description of replacing her family with work in a new way. We've never seen her this alienated from everyone and everything not work related.

Elizabeth always felt she should put the ideology first and there was a balance between how she fit her family within that, but with Philip no longer her confidante, Paige a trainee, Henry not in the picture, and Claudia the handler being a grandmother, that's a huge change.

There is so little time left in this series for Elizabeth to finally learn that it's okay to live a life that is not devoted 100% to ideology. The show is dropping suicide pill shaped anvils on her head that if she doesn't wake up and choose life for herself (and now for her daughter), she is doomed (and so now is Paige). We're also coming right down to the wire about whether or not she will be able to separate her family from her ideology.

I agree--I think this extreme situation is part of that. Because it's not just that she's coming to the time where she needs to make the right choice as has been the case in the past, imo. At this point she has made more extreme choices in the direction of ideology--just as, tbf, Philip has made more extreme choices on the side of family. But Philip in this ep, imo, is already consciously thinking about needing to get more in balance. Elizabeth shows signs of the same thing, maybe, in bringing up Paige's training with Philip, but she's gotten herself tangled up in far more lies and secrets with her choices.

Even the secret that Philip is keeping seems like something he would have immediately told until Elizabeth's attitude and hostility put him off. Not that this makes it less of a secret, of course.

so obvious that she's doing all of this out of love for her mom (whether she herself realizes this or not)

Sounds like somebody else we know. I've always thought that was at the heart of Elizabeth as well. She had to co-sign her mother's choice to "not blink" in sending her off, always feels the need to present that as just the way a mother "should be" (remember one of Paige's first questions about her grandmother was whether Elizabeth would ever do that to her).

Plus there's that memory of her mother saying that the ceremonies or soldiers weren't for her father because he was a coward. I always took that as Elizabeth learning that if she ever faltered she wouldn't be loved. Philip was the first person who didn't seem to value her primarily for being a good soldier.

I really really hope this is where they're going with the Paige story. There's, imo, very little dramatic interest in Paige being a badass spy even if Elizabeth ultimately sees she shouldn't make the same choices. Elizabeth, imo, needs the challenge of difference. Plus not only is Paige American etc. but she has a second parent who offers an alternate way, even if she instinctively responds better to her mother's.

Just saw the episode and haven't read the other comments yet..

I loved this episode! With everything going on, it still managed to be funny and tense at the same time. Funny mostly around Stan and tense around Elizabeth. Stan as the marriage counselor (of all people), and then discussing whether Sandra would stay with him if a life was at stake (not sure). Stan enjoying life after Counter Intelligence, Stan hearing that Oleg's in town.

But also Elizabeth adamantly denying that the KGB uses sex to get information and Elizabeth getting a drawing lesson.

Offering to kill off Erica - at first I thought Elizabeth was going to use that to blackmail Glenn. Though I guess she just wants to control the timing. Poor Erica.

Elizabeth infiltrating the State Department (skipping out on yet another art lesson) and preparing for this to be her last mission got me twitchy. When she said "see you tonight" to Paige, I was wondering if those were going to be her last words.

The travel agency - was this a generational thing, moving towards budget travel? Poor Philip and his "we'll always be there for you". In another decade he'll shutter up his travel agency and move to the net. Though I think nowadays his "selling an experience" would certainly work.

The previous episode was a kind of closure for the pilot episode - there was the parent threatening somebody over Paige (with all the differences people mentioned here last time), but there was also Stan hosting a meal, whereas in the pilot the Jennings showed up to welcome the Beemans. There was also going back to Elizabeth not talking to Philip, which isn't exactly closure. They barely talked this time too.

This time it was a throwback to the season 1 finale. Back then they were afraid that the Colonel was a trap. This time it was actually a trap. Did the Colonel shoot the gun? I was looking at the last few minutes through my fingers.

The travel agency - was this a generational thing, moving towards budget travel? Poor Philip and his "we'll always be there for you". In another decade he'll shutter up his travel agency and move to the net. Though I think nowadays his "selling an experience" would certainly work.

I've seen a lot of people elsewhere thinking this was a storyline about the end of travel agencies but I think travel agencies were really only killed by the internet. Philip probably can offer budget stuff too. They were already available, I imagine. But I think this story was strictly about that personal touch and not being able to hand things off and expect them to be the same--iow, the whole thing was a metaphor for Philip not being able to tell himself that Elizabeth and everything she's involved in and Russia will be equally fine without him. It matters who you're dealing with.

I don't know whether we can completely connect that to the colonel dealing with Elizabeth this time instead of Philip, but I think Philip genuinely understood the guy and wouldn't ever have thought he'd be open to blackmail.

In fact, that kind of hooks back to the whole larger plot. Arkady went to Oleg and brought up what he knew Oleg had done, but pointedly did *not* blackmail him. He approached him the same way as Oleg later approached Philip, appealing to his sense of responsibility and wanting to do the right thing rather than threats of any kind. That's what Elizabeth/the Centre went with for the colonel and he just wasn't having it.

I think Elizabeth fired the gun--though she may have used his hand to do it. He had no intention of shooting himself in the face.

It doesn't occur to me to even think about who to "approve" or "disapprove" of in terms of my own personal morality. Either the show has convinced me to sympathize with each of its characters on their own merits or not (and so far, so good).

-J

...but I was specifically referring to the present situation where Elizabeth is not talking to Philip, Paige has become a trainee and Henry is gone (and she doesn't go to see his game). Her personal life is far more compromised than it was before, which I think fits the description of replacing her family with work in a new way. We've never seen her this alienated from everyone and everything not work related.

Oh, I see. I misunderstood your comment the first time. I agree with what you've said here.

I think that Elizabeth would like to be more in harmony with Philip and I'm certain that he still wants to find a way to tell her that she's in danger even though he was quite flabbergasted at the way she snapped at him. Married couples do take out their frustrations on each other, but I'm sure that Elizabeth revealed some of her real feelings to him, too because she is so frayed. (Particularly when she said she didn't want to hear about his job or about Henry.) I hope that their love for each other draws them together again. I'm not sure it will be enough to save Elizabeth though. Even if she does have a breakthrough and realizes that she has a right to just live out a normal life like everyone else, there's no guarantee that will happen.

One more thought about this, but I think this is also underlined in all the Paige/Claudia/Elizabeth scenes where they're literally trying to teach Paige to love Russia and hate America, whether or not one would put it in such an extreme way. There's a pattern of focus on all the ways Paige can be like them and none on how Paige might be independently.

Even the music conversation starts with Elizabeth saying Paige's preference about music and Claudia dismissing it and being sure she just needs to hear this music. It's a cliche thing for an older person to say about a younger person, but in this case there really is an aggressive molding going on here, and an erasure of anything about Paige that could conflict with that.

Paige herself responds better to stuff about her mom--she remembers seeing the Nutcracker and the character in the movie reminds her of her mother. She apparently has taken to Claudia too, but that might be mostly because of how she's connected to her mother.

Yes I agree that Elizabeth is equally motivated by love for her mother and wanting to make her proud as she is by being a 'true believer' in Soviet ideology.

I totally sympathize with them but I still disapprove of things they've done. I disapprove of murdering anyone over ideology. I disapprove of breaking apart families over ideology. I love these characters but they've done some very bad things. Whether the character believes that they did something awful to serve the greater good is irrelevant to me.

I still want them all to have a happy ending though. :P

I come at it from the opposite end of things: what I personally believe about what is right and wrong is irrelevant because the show isn't about me. I want to understand the characters' psychologies and motivations for what they believe and what they do, and for the duration of the show at least, I don't even think about my own.

-J

Even if she does have a breakthrough and realizes that she has a right to just live out a normal life like everyone else, there's no guarantee that will happen.

I wonder about Elizabeth's exact head space now. That is, is it that she doesn't think she has the right to live a normal life? Or that she doesn't value one? It seems like at the moment her justification isn't guilty at not doing this but the idea that it makes her life superior to others. (I mean this is what she's telling herself rather than necessarily what she really thinks.)

Of course we've seen that she can value normal life. It seems like maybe that's where she's gotten the real joy in her lie. But she's in a bad place now, probably doubling down on all the decisions she's made to get here, and that's the sort of thing that's coming out of her mouth. Like when she can't believe the artist would waste her life making art--though she seems almost afraid of the art.

It may seem like the difference doesn't matter but it makes a difference to how she works through it. Especially if, as was mentioned in the above comments, at the heart of it is the feeling she's not worthy of love if she lets go.

On one hand I usually like to just look at whatever anybody's doing and why, but sometimes they'll be a character that does personally irritate me. Probably usually when whatever is happening in the text or what's being said about them seems to conflict with how I see them, I've noticed. :-)

I absolutely want to understand the characters' own moralities first and foremost. There's no point to me in watching or reading fiction if it only serves as a mirror back to confirm my own beliefs or morality. But at the same time, if a character does something that I think is immoral, I'm going to note that action and pay attention to it to see what it tells me about that character. I want to know if the character thinks that what they just did was moral or immoral.

It can throw you out of your comfort zone when a character you think you've figured out does something that conflicts with what you thought you knew about them. I tend only to get irritated at characters when they're written poorly or inconsistently. And then, I really just irritated with the writer(s). So far, all of the characters on this show have been consistent. The new things we've learned about them have been consistent with what we already knew about them.

True, I can't think of any time when a character's really gone against their personal mode of behavior. I was recently talking with someone about how I don't think Stan's undercover period with the white supremists ever seems part of his character to me, but Stan himself is consistent.

That is, is it that she doesn't think she has the right to live a normal life? Or that she doesn't value one?
Maybe her entire self-image is so centered on being an ideological warrior that she simply can't see any point to just being herself. It's not that she doesn't value a normal life. Perhaps she doesn't value herself living a normal life. She sees no value or purpose in just living a normal, ideologically uniformed life. She cannot figure out why the artist wasted her life making art but respects the husband who is actively supporting his political agenda (even if it is opposing her agenda).

Perhaps 'mere' human love isn't as important to her as her love of the Cause. I'm sure she feels like she is worthy of being loved, but perhaps love isn't enough for her. Her job demands that she put the Cause ahead of her family, always.

Philip is being put in an ideologically driven spot, too. He's being asked to put his love for Russia ahead of his love for his wife.

Wow, this sent me down a whole new rabbithole wondering exactly how Philip sees it. Because I see what you meant about love for Russia over love for his wife because by spying on her he's lying to her. But that also makes me wonder if he equates love for his wife with allowing her to do something that he saw as hurting the country? Especially since it kind of seems as if he's already losing her by not being engaged in spying at all.

I almost feel like she'd be more relieved at Philip being involved because at least he's not just living that ideologically uninformed life. It would certainly give her an excuse to talk to him!

I always keep Stan's undercover history in mind when he's in the story. Stan knows what it takes to create and inhabit a false identity. He knows how hard it can be to keep a false identity consistent and he'd be constantly alert for slip-ups. His first instinct was to suspect the Jennings. All it would take would be one tiny slip-up and Stan would realize the truth.

I honestly can't think of a single moment on the show that was about Stan knowing exactly what goes into creating and inhabiting a false identity. I also can't think of a single moment that shows his own lingering. He spent years as a white supremacist but there's no moments where that behavior accidentally comes out. Even his relationship with Aderholdt seems completely consistent with an ordinary white middle aged guy in the 80s rather than an ex-neo Nazi. He's sometimes been violent, but it never seems to cross a line that fits with the FBI guy.

I see plenty of scenes that show Stan having been away in a stressful job for years, but it seems more consistent to someone who was fighting a war or something rather than a guy who was undercover, much less specifically being a Nazi. Even the times when he's got a hunch it doesn't seem to need the undercover past to explain it.

His original suspicion of the Jennings to me seems best explained by paranoia and their car because otherwise it's too much like him being a psychic detective.

This isn't a problem for me with Stan at all--like I said I find him as a character totally consistent. I just mentally usually change "deep undercover" with "away on a hard assignment."

Of course, Philip's first instinct was to tell Elizabeth, not to lie to her or to spy on her. I'm sure he thought that if he could only warn her that she was mixed up in something very bad, that she would see reason and then together they'd figure out what to do. And by 'see reason' I don't mean she'd defect or suddenly decide to join him and work with Oleg. I mean she would recognize that being contacted outside of the normal Directorate S channels was a clue that something was very, very wrong with her assignment and she should go over Claudia's head to get confirmation that her task was authorized.

Right now, she's too exhausted and too vested in doing a good job for her to hear anything he has to say. That doesn't mean that Philip will just give up and turn on her though. I think he'll keep tabs on her for her own good as well as for the good of Russia. (And she'll try to push him away for exactly the same reason.)

Edited 2018-04-09 04:01 (UTC)

I honestly can't think of a single moment on the show that was about Stan knowing exactly what goes into creating and inhabiting a false identity.
I agree that they haven't shown this through his actions on the show to date. We saw his hyper sensitivity to the Jennings in the first episode but nothing since. He was merely presented with this as a fact about his background.

Interesting! I now see it elsewhere in the episode. Elizabeth tries to hand off Paige to Claudia, telling herself her daughter will do just fine. Stan is being pulled back into counter-intelligence, the one case he's still working with Aderholt, because he can't just hand his agent off. Maybe Glenn handing off his wife's mercy-killing to Elizabeth. He's misled to think things are going to be better that way.

Episode discussion post: "Tchaikovsky"

Re: Claudia

Re: Claudia

Re: Paige

Re: Replacing family

Re: Paige

Treon's thoughts

Re: Treon's thoughts

Re: Claudia

Re: Replacing family

Re: Paige

Re: Paige

Re: Claudia

Re: Claudia

Re: Replacing family

Re: Approving of characters

Re: Claudia

Re: Approving of characters

Re: Approving of characters

Re: Replacing family

Re: Replacing family

Re: Approving of characters

Re: Approving of characters

Re: Replacing family

Re: Approving of characters

Handing things off