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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Comments

Bar scene

[lovingboth]

I see it in context of who gets hurt in this episode. You can - and Elizabeth would - argue that Gennady deserved what happened to him, but with the exception of the bar pair, no one else did.

Re: Bar scene

[sistermagpie]

I'm not sure the second guy in the bar deserved much. He hadn't done anything to Paige than have a jerk friend and she sucker punched him.

Re: Bar scene

[(Anonymous)]

The funny thing is, if Paige had been anyone but Paige, we'd be writing it off to her reacting in the heat of the moment and not really being overly concerned with her emotional maturity. She's 19 and she's just been creeped on and been grabbed in an unwelcome way. Then the boy who likes her tries grabbing her in a similar way, unintentionally retriggering her fight reflex.

So all said, people would buzz a bit about the badass quiet college chick who laid a couple of guys out flat, and then it would die down.

But Paige the spy is supposed to act in ways that maximize her forgettability, not her memorability, and while I think Elizabeth was being a bit excessively paranoid, she does have a point in that if Paige goes back round to that bar, people will remember her face, and if, later, she does get an FBI/State/whatever internship, the last thing she'd want is for her background check to flag up anything unusual, and a bar fight where she showed unusually crisp fighting tactics would maaaaaybe ping on the radar.

Re: Bar scene

[sistermagpie]

I actually think Elizabeth was being far less paranoid than she should have been. Sure this once incident might not be a dealbreaker, but it was very very egregious and basic. Plus it's part of a pattern of all Paige's mistakes, that she's not approaching this with any real understanding of the danger of the job, not putting whatever mission she thinks she's on first. It's all about her asserting her identity and her mother.

Here again in this ep Elizabeth and Philip (who recently threw away stew because it came from a Russian recipe!) were horrified at her announcing to a lot of people, including those who know her, that she has secret self-defense skills she shouldn't have and make her memorable. Paige is still completely blase about the whole thing--she'll just not go back to that bar and it's solved. Then she's back to arguing with her mother about trying to be the boss of her and mad that her mom criticized her for wanting to do amateur spying with an intern.

When it comes down to it Paige always does what she wants to do as Paige Jennings, not as someone with a cover to protect.

Then Elizabeth basically rewarded her for it with that drunken afternoon at Claudia's. She turned it into a fun spy trick lesson about not being drunk and let the real issue--Paige's entire attitude and the danger it poses--fall by the wayside. She keeps reinforcing Paige's impression that this is all about Paige's relationship with her mom and little else. Even Philip's darker warnings got dismissed. He's just "not like her."

Re: Bar scene

[quantumreality]

Previous post was me, PS.

Re: Bar scene

[saraqael]

Did Gennady really deserve being murdered like that? Didn't Claudia say that he had to be killed just to spare the government back home from embarrassment if people ever found out that a well liked hockey player had defected? He was killed simply to preserve the illusion that Russia is a happy, shiny place.

Re: Bar scene

[lovingboth]

I suspect the number of 'really deserve' murders in the series is rather low - there have been plenty of people in the wrong place at the wrong time, including Sofia - but Elizabeth certainly thinks killing him was justified.

Re: Bar scene

[sistermagpie]

I think Elizabeth would say Sophia did too. She's the one who was the original traitor.