theamericans | Episode discussion post: "Urban Transport Planning"

In Svetlana Alexejevich's Zinky Boys, about the Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan and after, one of the many aspects that caused an utter disconnect and alienation among the surviving Afghanistan veterans was that when they had left, full of the usual propaganda, there had been a Soviet Union, and when they returned, there simply wasn't anymore. There were Russia and several other states, but the Soviet Union was gone, and the war they fought wasn't regarded remotely like The Great Patriotic War everyone had been taught to revere but like something shameful and lost. During that scene with Elizabeth and Philip in the kitchen, I had to think of those passages in the above named book.

Regardless whether they end the series dead or in prison, the country and the cause for which they as young people signed on for, killed, betrayed, risked their lives and gave up their physical autonomy for will be irrevocably gone. And it's not like Philip will be proven any more right in his hope/belief about what "the people" want than Elizabeth will be - yes, there will be a few years of openess, but the corruption will be even worse than it used to be (how much money did Yeltsin and family squirt away to the US again?), there'll be an oligarchy, not a democracy awaiting, and then you get Putin and his promise of restored "strength" stripped of any of the ideals young Nadeshda and Mischa once had. It's more obvious with Elizabeth that she's motivating herself via a phantom Russia she thinks she's recreating in Claudia's kitchen and living room, but Philip's Russia isn't any more real, either, in the end. (And is it Russia he's hoping for? With Arkady, at least, and probably Oleg, I suspect they want something along what Gorbachev did, which was not a dissolved but a reformed Soviet Union. Which was an illusion, too.)

There's a lot of disconnect despite attempts to connect through the episode. In the season opener, Philip hanging out with his staff and joining them at square dancing might have looked like connection and successful assimilation, but in this episode, his attempt to be the ultimate American motivational speaker for his employees comes across as downright embarrassing, and the reaction among the staff is bewilderment and apathy. Philip Jennings, travel agent, might be who he wants to be, but it's not really working out right now, not with his mind half at matters back home, "home" meaning both his famiily and his country of origin. He can be good at being a travel agent. But what he really is, is a spy.

Elizabeth in the episode talks about the disconnect with Pilip to the Russian priest who married them and actually does talk to Philip, telling him bits and pieces about what's troubling her (just enough to confirm what Oleg told him about her possible assignment) yet stopping short of going against orders. But her attempt to draw Philip into that phantom Russia via shared food (an echo and counterpart of him bringing her caviar a few seasons back, which did connect them then) does not work out the way she wants to, and not just because he's already eaten (yet at least gets a taste). It's because they have very different ideas of what Russia/the Soviet Union is or should be about these days, and what its people want.

(BTW, have to repeat what I said in the review of the season opener - this is far more interesting than if it was a self conglaturatory US versus USSR finale we're steering towards.)

Now, when they both point out that the other hasn't talked to anyone from back home in more than two decades (and each does not mention General Up To No Good and Oleg, respectively), I'm assuming they really meant "someone not in the spy business" anyway, because of course they did talk to other Russians - but spies or former spies like themselves. (Or the occasional dissident whom they either killed or ruined in other ways, let's not forget those.) And given that I doubt whether we'll see Philip's son Mischa again, chances are they won't any time soon. They can only guess and hope they're right.

Philip eventually decides to go through with Oleg's request (and not a moment too soon for dramatic purposes, yet another episode of him in Hamletian vein would have irked), and there's the sad irony that him returning to spying for the good of the mother country would, in theory, be something Elizabeth would be very proud of - but what he sees as good is no longer what she sees as good, and it will be directed against what she works for. Given their collective experience at spying, I wonder how long before she catches on?

Then again, this season shows her as quite capable of delusion where her family is concerned. The anger that burst through at Paige's panicking (which was also directed at herself) gets eventually surpressed in favour of yet more declarations that Paige is good at spying (to the priest). And well, she's not. Anyone who at age 19 is still naive enough to buy "it was a suicide" under those circumstances really should stay the hell away from the intelligence business.

Meanwhile, the Oleg & Stan reunion: basically asks for an AU where there's bitter reunion sex in addition to that conversation. Only half kidding. Also, I loved that scene. And can understand why Oleg doesn't really buy Stan's declaration of innocence (despite the fact Stan's not lying in this case), because a) Stan made that tape in the first place, and there could only have been one intended purpose, and b) this is actually what Oleg and Arkady were planning to do to Stan via Nina. But for that same reason, he's also not really displeased at Stan seeking him out again, and, methinks, not just because Stan is the only person with whom he can reminesce about Nina.

Lastly: I'm still in the dark as to what the point of the Gennardy subplot will be, other than to show Stan is anxious not to lose another asset and this time to fulfill his promise of extraction above potential further use.

I actually thought Philip's travel agency spiel was interesting. He's a spy, and he knows (or should!) how to read people and connect with them. And given that the US economy as a whole is in an expansionary phase, it's perfect timing for him to want to motivate his staff to sell more travel packages and find ways to get more money from customers.

And I don't get the vibe that he's ever been a bad boss - but his employees clearly are pretty diffident types for the sales and travel world. I wonder if he originally hired people who he knew wouldn't ask a lot of questions about his comings and goings and it's biting him as he tries to get the money rolling in.

So hopefully motivational!Philip gets some extra $$ coming in. :)

(Aside: I did wonder if he was manufacturing that financial problem for extra realism with the school, but it is indeed equally likely he'd rather not have the Centre subsidizing Henry's education.)

I wonder if part of the point here is that some of the stuff he talks about that aren't naturally connected to his upbringing will never come that naturally to him. He's not a big salesman, even manipulative as he is.

So he's got the books that people read about business and tries to follow them, but it's not a natural fit.

Likewise, even five or so years in, he's still incapable of speaking naturally about emotions as if he's a human who's learned things. He still always has to reference these "meetings he sometimes goes to" and then tell the person (usually Paige) what THEY say.

And then, to make it even more ironic, he responds to Paige's actual question about his experience by saying he has no idea how he got through it. He just sucked it up, buttercup.

That said, I think he connected with Paige on a more natural level than Elizabeth did. He gets the spy life, but he's not willing to run roughshod over Paige's feelings when she's just seen a man get shot and her mother covered in blood from it.

EST was good for him and some of its teachings could help Paige process if she intends to continue the spy life the whole hog.

Oh yeah, I agree. He was trying to talk to her as a person there--I think that was obviously meant as a contrast with Elizabeth claiming she was "talking to" Paige when she was yelling at her.

But at the same time, what Elizabeth was saying was just as important.

(Aside: I did wonder if he was manufacturing that financial problem for extra realism with the school, but it is indeed equally likely he'd rather not have the Centre subsidizing Henry's education.)

The thing is, it just makes no sense that this is an issue AT ALL. Henry was given a full scholarship last season and he should absolutely still have it. That's how those private schools work. He has an academic scholarship which means his grades have to be kept high and they are. Plus he's a hockey star. Ivy Leagues would already be courting him and Philip wouldn't be paying anything. That school would never consider letting go.

They're just making Philip look bad to play out the financial worries story as if he's some overreacher capitalist when he isn't.

During that scene with Elizabeth and Philip in the kitchen, I had to think of those passages in the above named book.

I feel like both of them in their own way knows they'll never go home. Elizabeth is basically planning to die and maybe Philip is too now.

Though I think Philip understands his position more realistically. He probably could go back to Russia and make a life for himself just as he could in the US. He just wouldn't completely belong in either place, but he's used to that. Elizabeth needs to believe she represents the USSR. Personifies it almost.

(BTW, have to repeat what I said in the review of the season opener - this is far more interesting than if it was a self conglaturatory US versus USSR finale we're steering towards.)

Absolutely. Elizabeth seems to be really projecting all her frustrations on the US, blaming it for changing the USSR, even, as well as all her personal unhappiness. But as the general said when she said her country was in trouble, "Who's fault is that?"

I'm assuming they really meant "someone not in the spy business" anyway, because of course they did talk to other Russians

To me the line really means "someone who lives in Russia now" as well. Claudia would consider herself someone from back home, but she's just as disconnected as they are. Oleg and General Up-To-No-Good are knee deep in the conflict there.

I do actually wonder if Elizabeth's being happy that Philip is "doing something" for the motherland could override her anger at his working against her ideas of what's good for the motherland.

The anger that burst through at Paige's panicking (which was also directed at herself) gets eventually surpressed in favour of yet more declarations that Paige is good at spying (to the priest).

It occurred to me, too, that both Elizabeth's reactions to Paige's mistakes were the same, although they had opposite expressions. She killed the Navy guy to protect Paige from the ugly side of the business. She yelled at Paige for exposing herself to the ugly side of the business--she didn't want Paige to see her hunched over a fresh kill.

I will not be surprised if Elizabeth slaughters the Courier couple next week. She's got to keep up her weekly tally!

Elizabeth needs to believe she represents the USSR.

Yes, I think that's what her entire self justification is build on, and if you take that away, introduce doubt, she will break down. BTW I agree with Elizabeth's conviction she'll die a death-for-the-cause, the show is bound to give her instead survival and having to live with witnessing the destruction of all she believed in, of all her certainties, too. And even retrospectively her life's justification. She always told herself that giving her life (in a metaphorical as well as a literal sense) for her country, commiting any number of crimes was worth it because in the long term, she'd be one of the people ensuring that the Soviet Union and Communism not only survives but wins its historic struggle. And very soon, instead if will feel that it will all have been for nothing, that not only any future purpose is gone but any past purpose and justification never existed.

re: courier couple - yes, that would give those scenes a point. Especially since Elizabeth (in disguise) was the whom Stan actually physically struggled with before, and he might recognize her - not as Elizabeth but as the female half of the couple he was pursuing some years back - if he comes across her going after the couple, which would motivate him to go back into the evidence he collected way back when, only this time it might finally lead him to the Jennnings. Alternatively, of course, this could happen if he ever comes across a Philip and Oleg sighting.

The more Elizabeth goes on about dying for the cause, the less likely I think it is that it will happen.

It's interesting that she seems to see that noble death looming so close and has decided to use her last days to make sure her daughter is the next red shirt for the cause. She's not frantically training her so she'll be prepared either. She just keeps telling everyone and herself that Paige is so good at this and will have a special cushy spy job where nothing bad is demanded of her.

Now I'm concerned for Paige. That would be quite an ending

Regardless whether they end the series dead or in prison, the country and the cause for which they as young people signed on for, killed, betrayed, risked their lives and gave up their physical autonomy for will be irrevocably gone. And it's not like Philip will be proven any more right in his hope/belief about what "the people" want than Elizabeth will be - yes, there will be a few years of openess, but the corruption will be even worse than it used to be (how much money did Yeltsin and family squirt away to the US again?), there'll be an oligarchy, not a democracy awaiting, and then you get Putin and his promise of restored "strength" stripped of any of the ideals young Nadeshda and Mischa once had. It's more obvious with Elizabeth that she's motivating herself via a phantom Russia she thinks she's recreating in Claudia's kitchen and living room, but Philip's Russia isn't any more real, either, in the end. (And is it Russia he's hoping for? With Arkady, at least, and probably Oleg, I suspect they want something along what Gorbachev did, which was not a dissolved but a reformed Soviet Union. Which was an illusion, too.)

I agree that what Arkady, Oleg, and Philip have in mind is likely a more reformed Soviet Union, not a broken up Soviet Union. The difference between them and the hardliners is how much tolerance they had for loosening social freedoms and reforming the existing economic structures to jettison all the corruption that was killing their economy. I'm sure they all love Russia, but they are citizens of the Soviet Union. Any of the Russian characters who survive the finale of the show would be blindsided once the Soviet Union breaks apart into individual nation states. The Soviet Union was a superpower. Then individual components? Not so much.

Yes. I remember a Russian who a few years back when the Scots had their referendum about independence and people expressed relief that they chose to stay within the UK (Brexit wasn't even considered a possibility among the people discussing this) said that yeah, fine, but he had been told by the Westerners now angsting about the UK to happily accept the Soviet Union breaking apart and everyone going independent, instead of feeling devastated, which he was; that growing up he never ever considered as much as the possibility, and that it still feels like he lost the country he identified with for good. But then of course he was Russian, not from one of the states that went independent.

I'm trying to think whether any of the Russian (well, Soviet) characters on the show ever mentioned being in fact Georgian, or Ukrainian, or from Belarus etc., but can't think of an example, and I doubt they'll introduce one this late in the game.

I'm trying to think back to that time.. I don't think people expected the USSR to break up. There were the countries that had been conquered/taken over after WWII - like Poland or the Baltic states and they were always agitating for freedom, but the rest had been the USSR forever.

Edited 2018-04-13 05:22 (UTC)

I don't remember any either. Although it was pointed out to be somewhere that Natalie, the woman they executed for her WWII crimes, had a Ukrainian name. She wasn't from Ukraine in the plot, though.

Probably there's a reason for some of this--we're seeing Illegals and top KGB personnel and they might usually be Russian. Especially Illegals. But yeah, we rarely see them dealing with people from other parts of the USSR.

We saw Jews, who aren't from elsewhere, but aren't Russians either.

Nina could also have been non-Russian, though plot-wise they made her Russian. Though I just looked up where - she's from the most remote part of Russia you could get.

Right, they said she was born in Vladivastok iirc.

Episode discussion post: "Urban Transport Planning"

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