Episode discussion post: "The Summit"

[jae]

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.)

Original promo trailer

Watch on YouTube

Comments

Re: My review

[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.

Re: My review

[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.