theamericans | Episode discussion post: "The Summit"

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episode discussion

Episode discussion post: "The Summit"

Aired:
16 May 2018 in the U.S. and Canada

This is a discussion post for episode 608 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 eight.)

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I don't have many coherent thoughts - right now I'm just cheering and crying over Elizabeth's 11th hour revelation.

This is where Elizabeth finally reaches her limit, her line not to be crossed, twice, and I appreciate that the show presents this on two separate issues - which are separate, not the same -, while also connecting it to the Elizabeth-Philip argument from the teaser and Philip's statement that - paraphrasing here - while of course there's a hierarchy and upper level people making the decisions, the executions (often literally) are what they do, therefore the moral responsibility is on them, and that they should think about whether or not to obey orders. It's the counter "I was only following orders" argument, which you don't need the Nuremberg Trials as a reference fore; my favourite scene in Henry V. is the conversation between the soldiers in the night before Agincourt not for Henry moonlighting as a common soldier but for the actual soldiers arguing whether or not the King's cause being just or unjust would be on them or him. (Good old Hal, of course, denies it would be on the King.)

Elizabeth does employ her intelligence and personal judgment throughout the episode. It doesn't always lead her to the same conclusions - she's torn about keeping Erika's painting, it's obvious she did get attached and it has meaning to her now, but there's no way Elizabeth Jennings could justify the possession of this particular painting, so in the end she destroys it -, but on the two key issues, it does. One, whether or not to kill the Intern she'd seduced when he'd figured out what she'd used him for. From a purely pragmatic reason, she probably should have; he's capable of identifying her, and horrified enough by his realisation that he's been used to alert the authorities even if that causes trouble for him. But he also was a scared kid (just a bit older than Paige, I assume), and she let him go. (It would be ironic if mercy rather than a slip up would eventually help to bring Elizabeth down, though considering Stan in another plot thread just got another bit of the puzzle indicating her identity, I don't think so.)

The other big decision she has to make in the episode ties directly into this year's main arc. When listening to her surveillance tapes, she comes to the conclusion that the Russian negotiator she's been shadowing is not, as opposed to what General Up To No Good and also Claudia were indicating, selling out to the US but simply doing an honest job trying to get mutual nuclear disarmenment. When Claudia tells her to kill him anyway, she doesn't and instead demands a concrete reason for the execution order, which I don't think happened on the show before (though I could be forgetting something). Claudia then admits to her own awareness of the whole anti Gorbachev plot and details (some) of the plan for a coup, of which Elizabeth killing the negotiator and the falsification of her reports on him are a part.

The final argument - "Where are these orders coming from?"/ "The Centre."/ "But not the Party?" /"We're all in the Party" - goes to the core of Elizabeth's challenge here. She's always been a loyal soldier (brief s1 interlude about personal vengeance aside), but her understanding had been that the orders she was given did come, via the chain of command, from the government representing her country. Granted, there'd been coups in the past, both successful and not (which both Claudia and she would have been aware of), so various parts of the military and the secret service going against the chairman isn't exactly unheard of in the Soviet Union. But for her, until now, there hadn't been a situation where she, personally had to make a decision as to who was representing her country's best interest. That despite her own dislike of perestroika she does decide for Gorbachev to me was connected with Claudia's (and of course the pro-Coup faction in general's) earlier willingness to dismiss the fact the negotiator was not a traitor, was in fact just doing his job for his country (as Elizabeth sees herself doing) as irrelevant and wanted the man dead anyway. There's the offended professionalism (falsifying her reports in order to justify the coup, when part of Elizabeth's self justification not just for risking life and limb but for damaging and destroying other people had been the need for true intelligence). Then there's the legitimacy issue (a disliked head of goverment, as long as he's not corrupt and under the control of exterior forces, is still the head of government to her). But in the end, it does come down to what Philip challenged her with in their episode opening argument after coming clean to her about spying on her - that she has to think about what she's doing and why. And in the end, it's not just that she decides to not do something (i.e. kill the negotiator, allow her reports to be falsifed) but that she decides to actively do something (give Philip the intel on what Claudia just told her for Oleg). For all her faults, Elizabeth's temper had never been a reactive or phlegmatic one; if she does make up her mind, she acts, for better or worse.

Meanwhile, it looks like the eventual pay-off for all the travel agency scenes this season might be the impending demise of poor old Stavros. At least that's what I started to suspect in the scene where a guilty Philip shows up at Stavros' doorstep re: the dismissal and Stavros at the very end mentioned never having told anyone "about what was going on in the back room". It would be ironic that just when Elizabeth finally came to a line she wouldn't cross Philip decides to kill someone he's known and liked for years. He doesn't do so in this episode, but I think it might be on the table now. Because much as Philip likes Stavros and is sick of killing, if it's Stavros versus discovery (and jail time now not only for himself and Elizabeth, assuming she doesn't poison herself upon arrest, but now also Paige), I suspect Stavros will go. Stavros, buddy, I don't know what you thought was going on "in the back room" - but I doubt it was P & E being KGB agents, because you aren't that suicidal. (Maybe he thought they were secretly running an illegal immigration ring, or even doing some drug smuggling?) Incidentally, I think it's very credible that Stavros, who worked with the Jenningses for decades, did figure out something was fishy about the them, just not what.

Philip renting a Russian movie at the video store (though in disguise) and watching it at home is the kind of risk they've not taken for decades. It's probably about various things - the need to reconnect with the country and people he hasn't seen for so many years (and has in recent months made a major decision for, e.g.), up to and including Elizabeth's having mentioned early in the season watching Russian movies with Claudia and Paige, but this being Philip, I do wonder whether it's not also partly self destructive, not consciously, but subconsciously.

Meanwhile, at the FBI: Stan only gets a "maybe it's her, maybe it isn't" identirfication of Elizabeth when he tries Gregory's old contact, but he does get the information the mysterious woman Gregory was seeing was a chain smoker, and he only recently was reminded that Elizabeth is one. He also gets told to keep eyes on the priest who married Elizabeth and Philip and whom Philip was just told to meet, so methinks Stan's moment of having his suspicion confirmed will be soon upon us...

Edited 2018-05-17 07:07 (UTC)

I think that Elizabeth's distinct between the Center and the Party tied directly to Philip's comment that they 'believed in something so big.' Those 'big' ideas were the more idealistic goals of the communist party, not the brutal way that the politicians enforced them at home and abroad. She and Philip had been soldiers for the oppressive, political side of communism for so long that they'd lost touch with the values they thought they were fighting for. Having Philip essentially tell her that she was losing/had lost her humanity because of this was a huge affront to her but it was enough of a jolt to make her question why the Center was asking her to murder an innocent Party member.

True. With Gennady and Sofia, she could tell herself that they betrayed both country and cause to the Americans. But this man wasn‘t, and together with Philip reminding her what they originally had signed up for and how following orders always was a choice she really had the question staring her in the face - how was this murder of a comrade (literally) in any way justified by her old ideals?

It‘s also a generational difference, I think. Gabriel followed orders even if that meant killing a friend he knew to be innocent. He lived to regret it, but he did it, like anyone in the Stalin era who remained within the system and survived. And Claudia was formed by the same era. Philip and Elizabeth are a generation later - that brief glimpse of Gorbachev on tv reminded me of him mentioning in his memoirs that the rumors about Chruschev’s speech at the 22nd Party Congress denouncing Stalin were one of THE big experiences/revelations for him as a young man.

The 20th Party Congress, actually. I don't know to what extent the content of the speech was known within the USSR at the time (its official existence was only acknowleged in the late 1980s, IIRC).

P&E almost certainly would have seen references to it in American literature though, and might well have been curious enough to read the translation.

Small point--I believe Stan was following a different priest, Father Viktor, not Father Andre. But obviously that's still pretty close.

That's a great sum up of Elizbeth's choices. It's really a brilliant idea for her final conflict because not only was this exactly what Philip was talking about as a moral issue, but Claudia made it a practical one. If "we're all the party" then there's no official party and everyone must choose their own side.

Claudia really made a mistake--the same mistake she made in the past, and the one Elizabeth makes too. They're very alike, but in some key ways they're different and sometimes they assume they're the same. Claudia is on board with deciding herself that Gorbachev has to go because he obviously isn't one of them--he's too new, too forward-thinking. But for Elizabeth, even if she herself would be happy judging Gorbachev as terrible personally, she's going to have a problem with her intelligence being intentionally faked and using the summit to get rid of him. In the end she's got more in common with the good soldiers, the ones who are trying to have integrity. Oleg, Philip, Nastryenko, Gorbachev, Elizabeth.

I wasn't sure about Stavos getting killed. It seemed like he should be, but think I thought he was a parallel to Jackson in that he was spared.

Barely any time has passed since the last episode, then.

Finally there's the confrontation over their two missions.

"And..?"

He's not mentioned the 'and stop her' bit yet.

Love her look away when he reports praising her.

Some echoes over discussions / arguments over other betrayals in a relationship.

For once, this looks like a genuinely unexpected meeting of a target!

I'm not sure I would let Paige watch a programme with Gorbachev..

Love the look when he says he's quitting the only reason Elizabeth's there. She's going to kill her more efficiently, isn't she?

The kiss was nice, but I am surprised she didn't have a more gentle way of doing it. And I hope she tidies up before letting him back in!

What's she going to say? Ah, yes, "She's gone" rather than 'the deed is done'.

Followed by 'please go away while I snoop through your stuff'.

Good job she's using an estate car this time! I wonder if she'll destroy it, out of his sight. Ha, it's what she wants and doesn't want to do, but - having removed it from the frame - it's easy to roll up. Ha, then do it anyway.

(It's a very nice way of showing her internal conflicts!)

Yes, you do want to corrupt him. I'd expect him to look at the gift (bugged?) case more closely than one he'd had for ages.

Presumably he has other photos with P&E, so is he pondering the comparison with the drawings that are indeed still up, or getting rid of photos of Sandra?

'Please put this bug in the room. I've sealed the box...'

I was expecting to hear Henry's voice saying 'I'm not here' for a second.

Ah, it was finding photos of them he was doing.

Ha, smoking may well kill Elizabeth!

'Please return the bug, I want to listen to it.'

Is Philip considering killing him now?

The bands have come off the box. And he's not looking happy. 'Come on, I need to take you somewhere where no-one will see me kill you'.

She looks almost reluctant to do it.

She IS reluctant to do it!!

This is not normal for Elizabeth, is it? He'd normally be dead within seconds of the car stopping.

Pointed comment on the smoking.

And she doesn't say how she died, even though him (trying to) give her an overdose would be a serious blackmail opportunity.

I thought it was a bookshop for a second. I didn't recognise a video rental store because it's been so long since they were a thing. I wonder what the Cary Grant film was.

Ha, I was expecting this new Elizabeth not to kill this one. Amongst everything else, she has heard the tape.

Ah, that's what he was getting. Can't have Russian food in the house, but can have a Russian film...

"I didn't do it" vs 'I couldn't do it'. And yes, it was down to having listened to the tape.

'After you've killed him, we'll lie about why. Oh, and start a coup.'

Ha, Party above all.

Philip's watching Russia, Stan's watching Philip's house. It would have been slightly better if Elizabeth had returned before Renee invited Stan to bed.

Come on Elizabeth, you're either on the same side or not..

.. and yes, she is.

Ha at the absolution comment, because it's not (just) Philip who needs it.

Edited 2018-05-17 08:49 (UTC)

So, Philip bought his funeral suit, Elizabeth showed pity and defied a direct order, Claudia dropped her nice Granny facade, and Stan got a solid maybe? on his hunch about Elizabeth's link to her ex-lover Gregory. There are only two episodes left of this show but I'm not ready for it to end. Even though I've been expecting everything to crash down on the Jennings since the start of the show, to see it finally happening is hard to watch.

I wonder what it was exactly that made Elizabeth finally go against all of her training and demand to be given a real explanation for why she's been ordered to kill someone who seems like a decent person? Nesterenko wasn't a traitor. Unlike Gabriel, who years ago betrayed his own friend to be murdered by Stalin, Elizabeth wouldn't - couldn't - just murder an innocent fellow Soviet. Was it the vicious argument she had with Philip? He wanted her to think about her actions, not just plot the best way to carry out her orders but to actually think about why she doing it. 'We believed [past tense] in something so big', he said. 'They tell us what to do but we're the ones who do it.' If her orders now were going against the values that they used to believe in, he wanted her to question those orders and not just obey like a robot. She was furious that he thought that she'd become inhuman, but .... she did not tell Claudia about this argument or about the fact that Philip had betrayed her to Oleg. Considering that she'd previously betrayed him to the Center simply because she suspected that he liked the US lifestyle too much, the fact that she didn't tell Claudia that Philip had tipped their plan to Gorbachev's people was a massive shift in her thinking and her loyalty. As furious as she was that Philip had 'betrayed' her, I think that she was just as equally shocked that Philip of all people, the person closest to her in the world, would think that she had become inhuman. That cut her deeply, but it also made her think. She knows that she can trust Philip to tell her the truth, even when she doesn't want to hear it. Having him hold up a mirror to herself and say, 'yeah, I actually am concerned that you've stopped thinking and have lost your humanity' was a huge wake-up call to her.

It would be poetic if the last murder that Elizabeth commits in this series was her mercy killing of Erica. I hope it is. Every time she appeared in her nurse disguise I thought about the time she told Paige that if she hadn't become a spy, she might have become a doctor so that she could alleviate suffering. Here, she finally did end someone's suffering. Her murder skills finally served some good purpose.

I was surprised but relieved when she decided not to murder the intern, even though not killing him meant that a motivated witness who could easily identify her was now running free. She didn't tell Claudia about that, either. Intern Jackson will never know just how close he came to being murdered. Did she let her emotions override her common sense or did she think for herself and decide to take a calculated risk that the intern wouldn't run to the police to blab about her?

Philip is acting like a dead man walking. If that suit he picked out wasn't meant to be his burial suit, I'll be quite surprised. Far from hiding any hint of being Russian, he rents a Russian movie (Garage) and sits in the dark in his house watching it. Like, who cares if the FBI broke down the door at that point. He doesn't care. He knows it's all over. It's only a matter of time. He apologized again to Stavos and said it was for the best that Stavos got out early before the business went under. I wondered at that point if Philip fired Stavos on purpose so that Stavos might be spared from being caught up in the inevitable FBI raid on the business.

And speaking of the FBI, I was so not expecting to see Stan reach out to someone from Gregory's gang, but it showed that Stan still suspects Elizabeth. From the way that Stan reacted to the 'smoked like a chimney' comment, I think that Stan had secretly been hoping that Curtis would rule out Elizabeth as a suspect. [As an aside, I wondered if Curtis' comment about Elizabeth having terrific hair was an in-joke about Keri Russell's previous role in Felicity, since all I ever heard about that show was her fabulous hair.]

Last thoughts:
- I still hope Elizabeth slips the cyanide pill into Claudia's tea.
- I wish the show would just stop with the is she/isn't she a spy tease with Renee.

I was really disappointed when she didn't kill him. He's not on side and he's an active threat to her, both long-term and when it comes to he work around the summit. At this point, she doesn't even know what's on the tape.

It would have been better if she killed Erica and him, because then her failure to carry out the order to kill Nesterenko would have been more meaningful.

I hadn't considered that killing the intern would have made her failure to kill Nesterenko an even more powerful moment. That's an interesting point but I think it would have changed the dynamics of what she was going through mentally. I looked on the events in the episode as more of a curve, as Elizabeth went from a mercy killing to her making an informed decision to spare the intern [she is starting to think for herself by weighing the risks of letting him live] to her flat out defying an order to murder someone unless Claudia could justify the killing to her.

It was like watching her wake up. Killing Erica upset her because Erica was innocent. It rattled her enough to cause her to start thinking about what she was doing instead of merely performing on auto-pilot. Having Philip tell her that she was losing her humanity also rattled her terribly. With the intern, she weighed the risks and let him go. By the time she got to Nesterenko, she could no longer just kill mindlessly because the Center said so. I liked seeing that progression in her thinking.

Edited 2018-05-17 21:41 (UTC)

I took this as Elizabeth reasoning through her own personal sense of morality for the very first time (as she had previously never wanted to think of herself as having a personal sense of anything). Who is it okay (from her own personal sense of morals) to kill, and who is it not. And yes, I thought her three decisions in this episode along those lines were extremely consistent.

-J

I agree. I think that for most of her life, Elizabeth didn't view her actions in terms of moral/immoral. I think she viewed her actions as being merely expedient. Anything she did served a higher, purer purpose in her mind. Even though a lot of viewers think that Elizabeth is some sort of heartless monster compared to Philip, she's not and never has been. Just like Philip, she gets distressed at the thought of harming innocent people. We've seen how it bothered her in the past. The only difference is that Philip was much more verbal about how much it bothered him, and he got to the point where he couldn't do any of it any more because to him, 'the ends don't justify the means.' Elizabeth has always been the opposite, practically non-verbal about her own feelings, which isn't the same thing as having no feelings. Even back with Young Hee we could see that she struggled with harming innocent people. She's just hit the same point that Philip already went through of realizing that doing terrible things and adding to the misery of the world now isn't going to magically bring about a better future later. If the team she's on is trying to sabotage that better future, then she's done playing for that team. Doesn't mean that she's going to defect and become an American team player. It just means that she's going to decide for herself what to do.

Which is so great...but there are only two episodes left so we're not going to have much more time to see what Elizabeth does with her newly awakened morality.

It occurs to me too that they really built up to this breakthrough because in the past often the people Elizabeth was most distressed about were people like her, with whom she could identify. Not in a tribal sense, but more that she maybe saw them as standing for similar values. Like with these people she saw them as the people she was fighting for even more than most. That always made her question more than usual--how could hurting this person be a step in the right direction?

Nesterenko is the culmination of that. Claudia sees him as bad because he's standing for the wrong path but Elizabeth can't help but identify with his passion and his motivation and his goals. Even if she thought he was doing the wrong thing she respects that.

And maybe she never would have gotten to that point if it weren't for her relationship with Philip because that's something that more than anything else taught her first hand that someone can disagree with her on a lot of things and have a very different temperament but still be counted on. More than counted on--needed and good.

This made me think of how Philip used that same phrase when he was trying to explain why he saved Martha. Elizabeth was talking about him liking her--iow, he was putting his personal desires above the greater good. He insisted that she was a human being. I think that's the term he used. Iow, saying that she ought to be treated like a human being.

That's essentially what Elizabeth was thinking about with all these deaths, that these were human beings like her and she was ending their lives. With Erica she had good reason to kill her but didn't want to. Literally she didn't want to since she had no reason to--for her purposes it was better if Erica was alive and her husband was still going to meetings. But she killed her because she was in pain and her husband was asking her. Then Jackson was someone she wasn't sure about but she erred on letting him live. By the time she got to the negotiator she felt strongly that not only should she not kill him, but he needed to be protected.

I like how this opening convo mirrors the one at the start of the season when Philip tried to talk to Elizabeth. In both of them she both cuts him off and won't let him talk and sneers about how much he likes to talk. And yet, they've barely spoken all season...and now she finds out he's actually been keeping a secret.

Elizabeth says if Philip really wanted to talk he would have, but really the problem was it wasn't until now that she would have listened. If he'd have told her about Oleg the first couple of times he tried she would never have listened--which is why he stopped.

Plus then it's reflected again in the scene where she learns Claudia is also lying to her. Yet the contrast between them probably makes Philip's sincerity all the more obvious. What he is doing and what Claudia are doing is so different she almost has to see Philip's team as the good guys.

I know this is Elizabeth's big revelation episode but I was so all about Philip in it. I guess because the stuff with Elizabeth was so much more straightforward. Great, but laid out in action as it had to be. The summary of it above is so great. The showrunners really came up with a fantastic way of writing the Jennings' differences of opinion into real world things for them to do--and so also see their common ground.

Someone else pointed out that "the summit" is the place from which you can see everything clearly from a distance. And it's reflected in that scene in the park where Claudia and Elizabeth literally split off to take different paths.

it's still hilarious watching Paige try to come up with something to say in response to things Elizabeth and Claudia feed her. Umm...did you ever meet Gorbachev? It's so weird that he's here!

Some excellent visual symbolism in this ep: Philip's scene with Stavos is about Philip not being loyal to Stavos the person who's been more loyal to Philip than Philip even knew. In previous weeks Philip tried to do the strict capitalist thing by letting him go because he was unproductive. He literally reduced him to numbers in a ledger. In this ep there's a moment where Philip is once again hunched over a calculator and looks up to see...an office almost devoid of people. Symbolism!

Though I will say I think Stavos is pushing it. Maybe instead of just feeling entitled to pay because you're keeping your boss's secrets without him knowing you could be better at the job you've done for 20 years? Maybe that's just the capitalist in me speaking.

Some people think Henry is blowing Philip off out of resentment over Thanksgiving--that was weeks before, though, so I think it would be a bigger deal if he was. Anyway, I thought in this ep they didn't want to include a convo between the two but wanted to show us that Philip wanted to talk to him--before his potentially impending death. I wonder if they've put off having the two of them have a real conversation onscreen because when they do Henry is going to mention Aunt Helen. Seems like P&E have to get a heads up about the FBI so they can try to escape.

MR is so good in this ep. I'm most impressed at the way he watches that movie. It's a rule he's never broken, and he does it because again I assume he thinks he's going to die. (Love again how P&E literally never talk to each other after that tense opening conversation so it took me a bit to put together just what was going on with Philip in his scenes as counterpoint to Elizabeth. They even set up the convo with Claudia to make it seem like Elizabeth might tell on him.)

Anyway, when he turns it on he just opens his eyes and his expression as if he's opening all the windows or something and letting it in passively. It's not eager or wary it's just like...whelp, it's me again.

I mean, as always there's something so perfect in how Philip is watching this movie alone, especially after a season of Elizabeth and Claudia doing this kind of thing with Paige--we started with them watching a movie. Only with them it had an agenda and they weren't really just open to it. Paige was self-consciously performing her reactions to some extent, trying to find ways of relating to it. Elizabeth and Claudia have a ton of complicated stuff going on.

Someone elsewhere said they thought that movie was a bad one to inspire Philip but I thought that's exactly what he would pick. He doesn't want some weepy WWII epic that's about manipulating patriotic and protective feelings. He wanted a movie about normal, goofy life where people act like idiots a lot of the time. Plus as a comedy it was playing up many of the things Gorbachev was trying to address.

Also, I like that with the close-up on his face it subtly shows you he's not reading the subtitles. Of course he's not, but it's nice to see that and think about it.

Elizabeth doesn't even say anything about the movie. Things are so weird now what's a few tinny Russian voices coming from the living room, after all?

I love how Philip protects Oleg. Also he apologizes for betraying Elizabeth, which she pointedly never did after her reporting on him came out. Which led to Irina etc. etc. etc. Philip learned his lesson there--he might not have told her about this right away but he did tell her. (Claudia only talked because she was caught.)

That picture Elizabeth took always reminded me of her mother. I loved the sight of her trying to get it into her car. They made it very clear she wasn't just taking that thing to placate the husband. She also is wearing a hot outfit while burning it--poor Paige and those terrible silhouettes she's had lately!

My favorite symbolism moment--when Philip is buying is suit for his own burial there's a close-up of him buttoning his jacket. The camera shoots his reflection instead of his real self, so that when you look at him he appears to be wearing his wedding ring on his right hand--where his real wedding ring is worn.

It had honestly never occurred to me that Philip's suit-buying was connected (in his head) to his impending funeral. It certainly explains an otherwise puzzling scene, given that Philip had previously told Stavos the firm was in trouble.

Absolutely wonderful episode in every way. The scene of Erica's death left me in tears. So tough to watch. I agree that it started (or helped on, the conversation with Philip started it) a process in Elizabeth that then progressed through the picture burning scene - very, very significant that at first she stuffed it in her locker then changed her mind - which then led to her sparing the intern (I think his trembling lower lip that did it) and ultimately Nestorenko.

I have no idea now how this is going to end. None. I just know I don't want Elizabeth to swallow that cyanide pill.

That Philip was picking out a suit to be buried in was my instant reaction to that scene. Stan suspects them of something, their cover story business is failing, and Elizabeth is on a suicide mission. Most important, he knows that he'll die to protect her from whatever she's caught up in. Because she's who she is, she see her mission finished to the bitter end and then swallow her cyanide like a good solider, and he'll die to save her from that fate because he loves her.

Plus he'd just told her he was spying on her for shadowy forces, Soviet or no. He couldn't rule out that he would be killed by them.

Not that I think it was just a case of him practically assuming he would die. But he'd just risked ending everything so it seems like he'd feel like that in general.

The movie he rented seemed to point to that even more than the suit to me!

Edited 2018-05-18 19:49 (UTC)

Well, now I've just read a Vulture article in which the J's said it was all just 'retail therapy' because Philip's become so Americanized, and Americans react to stress by buying things. LOL. I'm still going with funeral suit.

http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/heres-the-story-behind-that-russian-movie-on-the-americans.html

Yes, I heard that and sorry, they're just wrong. I know it sounds silly to say writers are wrong about what they wrote, but come on. "Americans" do not react to stress by buying things. Some do, some don't. You can't just show someone buying something when stressed in the US and expect it to be understood as retail therapy. Obviously, since I haven't seen a single person in the American audience who even thought of it!

Characters who do retail therapy either have a habit of it or it's established that's what they're doing in some way. Having Philip getting fitted for a suit while looking grim-faced can't read as retail therapy any more than Philip stuffing his face at a diner would have read as stress eating just because Americans do that. (That probably would have read as a last meal.)

That's especially true when the scene's surrounded by Philip trying to talk to his son who he's let down, Philip begging forgiveness of someone he wronged and Philip deciding to just rent a Russian movie to watch at home...dude, it's a funeral suit.

Honestly, I think when they saw so many people spontaneously interpret it as Philip buying a funeral suit they should have just taken credit for it instead of admitting they wrote what was essentially shallow "stress" filler and a joke only they got.

Also Elizabeth's still got a far more extensive designer wardrobe than her husband.

That's another thing - when writers or showrunners will deliberately give out misleading information to obscure future plot points, or give absurdly pat answers to questions. That's an insult to the audience's intelligence. As well, I think in some cases (not wanting to stir a huge meta-pot of debate, though) this kind of misdirection has profound ethical implications.

It won't kill anybody if they ask for an interview to be embargoed until Day X, or if they say, "Unfortunately, at this time answering that question could unintentionally spoil major plot points in upcoming episodes, so we'll decline to answer."

That would be way more respectful of the audience's intelligence.

Edited 2018-05-19 02:53 (UTC)

They might literally be wrong. They don't have main writing credit on that episode (plus, you'd have to ask Katie Irish what her intentions were on the designs of the suit). They're the big bosses, but they don't know the intentions of absolutely everyone involved in the show at all times.

I'm personally not convinced that Philip would care what his corpse wore after his death, though.

-J

Oh, I don't think anybody considered it, like, a fashion issue. More just a way of acting rather than just being acted upon. There's a dignity in preparation, no matter what preparing is going on. (And as Betty Draper knows, that is something that's going to have to be decided by somebody!)

Also, in my mind even if this interpretation is correct I don't think Philip would have literally thought of himself as doing it. Just like I don't think he'd have literally been thinking, "Well, I'm going to die so I'll break the rules watch a Russian movie in my living room. I'll never see the place again in person." But it's obviously a huge thing to do.

That reminds me something from another ep that I don't know if i ever mentioned, but it's when Philip is with Tuan and he's thinking of his father and the song "Cranes" is playing. I originally assumed the song was from the 40s so it was one he'd associate with childhood. It's a song about WWII. But I only recently discovered the song's from the late 60s--so after Philip left. He probably wouldn't even ever have heard it. Yet they used it--the only Russian song ever--for him. A song about soldiers dying on a foreign battlefield and never going home.

IA that it was a funeral suit. It's double-breasted, and looks *way* too fancy on Philip. In fact it looked almost too big on him and I wonder if that was deliberate - to show how he's been trying to fit into the capitalist ideal of a small business owner, and failing at his blending-in.

Edited 2018-05-19 02:52 (UTC)

I didn't understand at first why Philip feels the need to confess to Elizabeth all the time, but turns out it was a good idea, because Philip's 'inhuman' comment hit the spot. At least Elizabeth will end the show with some humanity.

Was Philip preparing for his funeral? Why would he think he's about to die? And if he thinks so, is he really going to die? I'm back to not being sure who's not going to make it.

Philip had told Elizabeth that he betrayed her so probably had good reason to think he might be killed for it, if not by Elizabeth by someone she told about what he did.

I don't know if that means he will die, but it just seemed like everything he was doing in this episode, whether he knew it or not, was like someone preparing for death.

When he was confessing I remembered how in the first season they separate in large part because he lied to her. He really learned his lesson there. All his other secrets he's wound up telling her rather than being caught.

Here, though, I thought it was because of what he was thinking at the end of last week's ep. He was sorting through what his beliefs were and he knew he valued his marriage so he decided he would feel more right being truthful with her. It's like that EST thing again in Darkroom--he doesn't know where he is but instinctively feeling his way forward in the dark he moves towards her.

I'm wondering what Stavos did> overhear, and what conclusions he drew from that.

Akin to Paige's first suspicions, he probably has assumed P&E are using the business as a front to launder drug profits, and assumed that P&E have become distracted because they were tipped off that Johnny Law is looming in the distance.

From that leads a natural assumption that he's collateral damage as P&E cover their tracks.

Heh. Honestly, if he thinks Johnny Law is on the way he *should* be glad to get out early!

I think the same thing, that he assumed they were using the business as a front or maybe using travel stuff to smuggle something or whatever.

Elizabeth seemed so shocked to hear that the orders she was getting were coming from the Center and not "the Party". But who did she think her orders were coming from? Already in Mexico she was told of a plan for a coup.

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Episode discussion post: "The Summit"

Probably too late

My review

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While watching thoughts

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Elizabeth's morality

Human beings

Sistermagpie's Thoughts on the Summit

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Philip's funeral suit

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What did Stavos hear and what does he think?

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Elizabeth and the Party