Episode discussion post: "Urban Transport Planning"

[jae]

Aired:
11 April 2018 in the U.S. and Canada

This is a discussion post for episode 603 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 six, episode three.)

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Comments

Re: My review

[saraqael]

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.

Re: My review

[selenak]

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.

USSR breaking up

[treonb]

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.

Re: Non-Russian Soviets

[sistermagpie]

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.

Re: Non-Russian Soviets

[treonb]

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.

Re: Non-Russian Soviets

[sistermagpie]

Right, they said she was born in Vladivastok iirc.