Episode discussion post: "The Great Patriotic War"

[jae]

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

This is a discussion post for episode 605 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 five.)

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While watching thoughts

[lovingboth]

The previously is screaming there will be more on the sex plots - Paige and Kimmy.

I'm surprised they're not already in Oklahoma.

A quick jump to conclusion from Elizabeth about someone else's motives.

Was 27 million the official figure for Great Patriotic War deaths at that point?

Oh ghod, not another 'I was at Stalingrad'. Anyone would think that there weren't any other battles or campaigns.

Stan bringing food in an 'I am visiting a safe house' way again.

Love the difference in the enthusiasm in watching ice hockey. 'Huh, what? Is it still going?'

Elizabeth is right about the presentation of history though.

'Oh, by the way mum, I happened to ignore your advice / instructions...'

Why on earth would anyone want to separate from him? :)

Is that a blatant guard standing outside the building?

'Are you suggesting we have sex?' look on Philip's face when she asks if he's more work to do.

How long has it been since she giggled like that?

'Were you using me?' look on Philip's face..

.. followed by a 'Are you fucking serious?' one as Elizabeth tells him the 'let's kidnap Kimmy in Greece' idea. Why does he need to go? They know what she looks like.

"I haven't asked for much.." apart from involving Paige in the work.

If you're going to kidnap her, why not do it now??

Not a good idea to go down dark stairways if you're defecting. Yes, it was a guard...

Ha at the friend's charming help. Time to demonstrate the self-defence? Ha yes. Elizabeth won't be too impressed at drawing attention to herself, but I was cheering her.

That was a very telegraphed kiss... and I was wrong.

Philip still doesn't want to do it though.

'Hey, you could clean the toilets at the Bureau...' Personnel wouldn't be a bad place if she is an agent.

"There's someone in there who knows how to see.. that's what time is for". Given the number of things Elizabeth does without thinking, it's interesting that this one is so hard for her.

Like the way he doesn't answer the "We have engineering schools".. and the way they're both saying they're honest when they're not, until later in the conversation when they don't need to say it.

"Fine." "Yep."

Be careful about who you annoy. True for Oleg and anyone near Paige.

"What's going on?" Ha, I knew she'd be annoyed.

"What??"

"Why would I sleep with them if I didn't like them?"

"Well, that's just great" - Philip has spent most of the episode saying one thing and meaning another.

Why close the window? She may need to leave in a hurry, and.. ha, they're having a reunion.

Do American safe houses normally have that much space to hide behind the fridge?

Why she doesn't want to kill both of them, I don't know. She's prepared to do it, obviously, but she wasn't going to do it.

Ha, I like the look on her face when she realises that their child is there.

I wonder if the contrast between Elizabeth breaking in to kill someone and Philip asking to come in to talk to his daughter is deliberate.

"Do you.. want anything?"

Bonus points for Philip for not saying how naive Paige is. Just showing her.

Well that was an interesting visit, and the second one he's made where he leaves feeling dirty.

I wonder if Elizabeth phoned the police.

First time in a while Stan's been reminded that this is a dangerous game.

Well, that's an interesting training session.

Stan at the door? Yes. Philip being told what Elizabeth was up to by Stan first is nice.

Ghod, Paige is naive. Of course you'd have sex with someone for food.

I thought Philip would back out of the Kimmy operation. Especially after everything else this episode.

"You're going to be ok" has loads of meanings, followed by what's the biggest betrayal by Philip yet to try and make sure she is...

Re: While watching thoughts

[saraqael]

I think 27 million is a fair estimate of Soviet casualties in WWII when you add in all the civilians that were killed by the Germans and the Soviets. Maybe half were soldiers, the rest were civilians. Elizabeth was correct when she told Paige that the Soviets defeated Germany on the Eastern Front, not the US/British allies who fought on the Western Front. The Soviets broke the German war effort and made it possible for the Allies to reclaim Europe from the Germans.

As for Claudia's 'I was at Stalingrad' comments...That actually makes me respect and understand Claudia. The assault on Stalingrad was the biggest, bloodiest and most deadly battle in modern warfare (maybe in all of human history). It's no wonder that Claudia became such a hardcore Soviet enforcer. Elizabeth was born and raised in the immediate aftermath of that war so it's understandable why she is also so dedicated to defending her country. But Paige has zero connection to Russia or these memories. Paige is sympathetic to the suffering that Claudia experienced because any rational, sensitive person would be sympathetic. But Paige will never be able to truly understand what Claudia experienced and she'll never feel the same zeal for the motherland that Claudia and Elizabeth do.

Great Patriotic War

[lovingboth]

Yes, it is a fair estimate, but the Soviet version of the figure has varied a lot over the years.

There's been someone else at Stalingrad in this series talk about being there. Now obviously, lots of people were, but vastly more weren't (and a big chunk of those who were died!) Cynical me thinks it's because it's the only bit that most viewers will have heard of.

Here, she's claiming to have been in the city at the time of the battle. If I had a better copy, I'd see if the photo is of something like the tractor factory or Pavlov's house...

She'd have to have been in the bits that stayed under Soviet control because surely someone who'd been on the wrong side of the lines wouldn't be trusted to get to the position she has.

I'd prefer it if she said Leningrad, for example. Or that her family died in one of the 1941 encirclements.

Re: Great Patriotic War

[sistermagpie]

Iirc, she'd already said she was there. That's where she met Zhukov. He was standing over the body of a Nazi he'd just killed there.

Re: Great Patriotic War

[saraqael]

I'm sure you're correct in thinking that they had Claudia refer to Stalingrad because that's the single Russian battle that everyone in the West (except for Paige!) has heard of. Bringing up the Battle of Leningrad would have opened up a whole different aspect of the war: civilians were reduced to eating sawdust bread and wallpaper paste and they died in masses of starvation. There were reports of cannibalism and murders for food, though how widespread that was, I don't know. In those circumstances, I could easily believe that Claudia would trade sex for food. I believe that some of the leadership was purged and executed after the war because of their sheer ineptitude.

Now you have me intensely curious to go back and look at the photo that Claudia showed Paige to see if it was one of the landmark battle sites.

Re: Great Patriotic War

[lovingboth]

Looking, it was at the end of S1 that Elizabeth's father was supposed to have died there. That wasn't the first time the battle was mentioned either.

Obviously - to me - you trade sex for food if you're starving.

The Leningrad leadership got shot after the war because they a) it was Leningrad and Stalin never liked the place and b) he was jealous of the way they were rightly seen as heroes, to the point that someone declared their efforts during the siege were "a myth designed by anti-Soviet traitors trying to diminish the greatness of comrade Stalin."

Re: Great Patriotic War

[saraqael]

Killing them because they did a good job makes it even worse.

Photo

[treonb]

Found it!

https://incredibleimages4u.blogspot.com/2010/05/battle-stalingrad-daily-diary.html

last pic on the page, captioned "Building from the ruins after the battle was over". You can google search and find it elsewhere online, mostly in Russian

ETA, here's a better one:
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-digging-near-damaged-train-tracks-during-the-battle-news-photo/3241690

"Women digging near damaged train tracks during the Battle of Stalingrad, USSR (now Russia), during World War II. Many of the women wear babushkas and skirts. On the hill behind them are destroyed buildings. January 01, 1942"

Re: Photo

[saraqael]

Oh wow! Good detective work.!You win the internet today. Thanks!

Re: Photo

[lovingboth]

The Battle of Stalingrad didn't start for almost nine months after 1st Jan 1942!

Apart from that, I wonder where it was taken. Most of the city was still in German hands on 1st Jan 1943.

Re: Photo

[treonb]

I looked up the dates, and didn't even notice that

My guess is that it's from an unknown date in 1942, so they entered 1/1 into the system

Re: While watching thoughts

[sistermagpie]

If you're going to kidnap her, why not do it now??

The idea was that it wasn't supposed to be a kidnapping. Jim would convince Kimmy to take a side trip across the Iron Curtain. Once there they'd plant drugs on her (despite her not even smoking much anymore) and throw her in prison. Then they'd tell Breland she'd rot there if he didn't give them info.

Do American safe houses normally have that much space to hide behind the fridge?

You'd think a safe house would be a lot more safe. It was totally easy to follow Stan to it, break in, hide, kill everyone, and sneak out. A fire escape? Really?

Re: While watching thoughts

[saraqael]

What Elizabeth had planned for Kimmy was essentially a kidnapping, it was just to have been prettied up by having Philip lure her across the border where 'someone' would plant drugs on her. I'm quite sure that both Kimmy and her father would have been killed afterwards, and damn the consequences. There's no way that the scheme Elizabeth suggested would have ended with Kimmy safely returned to American soil.

You might think that a safe house would be a lot more safe, but actually not, I suspect. There was a safe house in the subdivision where I lived as a teen in Northern Virginia. It was just a house like any other house out there. [This I know, btw, because of a hilariously brief article in the local paper all those years ago, about a woman who was pulled over by police for apparent drunk driving, only to turn out to be an agent who'd been drugged in the safe house and was now trying to get back to HQ. I kept that article for years because it amused me so much. There was a "secret" CIA location in that town, too (which everyone gossiped about so it wasn't so very secret after all.)]

Re: While watching thoughts

[sistermagpie]

Right, but I meant that's why she wasn't just kidnapping her in the west somewhere. They'd lose the figleaf cover of her being in jail for drug possession.

That plan would have ended about as well as the one with Gaad in Thailand. Worse because it would have created a major international incident.

Re: While watching thoughts

[lovingboth]

Yes, Kimmy was going across the border whether or not she wanted to.

Re: While watching thoughts

[sistermagpie]

I don't think she was, actually. That's why they wanted Jim. They were trying to create a fake story where she was arrested behind the Iron Curtain.

Re: While watching thoughts

[lovingboth]

Do you remember the terrible S01E09 where Philip and Elizabeth had stabbed and captured Amador who they knew has info about the FBI's plans to kill someone in the KGB but barely ask him about that, never mind start torturing him?

How would that go down with their superiors? "Well, yes, we did have an idea, but we were too busy giving pain relief to someone who we knew knew more than they were saying to actually make him talk...' Book the Siberian holiday now.

Ditto 'Well, yes, we were told by someone in a position to know that the local head of the KGB was planned to be killed, but once we knew he was alive, we didn't need to actually tell him directly...'

Ditto 'Well, yes, we had been told of a mole earlier, but although we had someone who may well know who it is, we didn't bother to ask...'

Stan is sure Amador didn't tell them who it was, but he doesn't even bother to say that perhaps he was never asked!

Here, what would be the response to Philip coming back from Greece, saying "She didn't want to go to Bulgaria.."? Would Elizabeth go "OK, you tried"? I think not!

Philip would be told to get her over the border willingly or unwillingly.

Re: While watching thoughts

[sistermagpie]

Iirc, Philip stabs Amador in self defense and it's only when Amador himself *tells* them that there's a plan to capture Arkady that they know anything about it. And he waits until the plan would have already happened before he says anything for that reason. So there's not really much reason to torture him. Not that it would have worked, probably, since he's already dying.

Philip would be told to get her over the border willingly or unwillingly.

Elizabeth didn't say anything about Philip kidnapping Kimmy by force--that would require a plan beyond just telling Philip to do it. She wanted to send him so that Kimmy would go to Bulgaria willingly. She didn't give him any instructions about how he's supposed to smuggle her across borders on his own--that's hard to do and probably not something he could have done himself.

Philip himself seems to be going on that idea when he tells Kimmy not to go to Bulgaria with anybody. Once she's in Bulgaria there's police ready to arrest her and plant drugs. There was no kidnap plot in case in Greece.

Re: While watching thoughts

[lovingboth]

Philip was just leaving Martha, having been told about the assassination plot, when Amador confronted him. So they knew about it, and who Amador was, before they kidnapped him.

Philip getting into Bulgaria with Kimmy in the boot / trunk would be easy. You got checked entering the East, not leaving the West, and obviously they're on board.

Re: While watching thoughts

[sistermagpie]

Philip hears they're planning to kill some KGB agent. They question Amador the whole time they have him. He tells them Arkady is the target when the time has past. They tell Claudia. Not sure what they're supposed to be doing wrong. He's in pain and dying and they're questioning him. Torture wouldn't make much difference.

If anybody can just throw Kimmy in a trunk and drive her to a Communist coutry then Philip's warning to her becomes meaningless. He would have warned her not to go to Greece at all.