theamericans | Episode discussion post: "The Summit"

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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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From:

selenak

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 Date: 2018-05-17 07:07 am (UTC)

From:

saraqael

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.

From:

selenak

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.

From:

quantumreality

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.

From:

sistermagpie

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.