Scattered thoughts--everyone else's comments are so great.
I think my favorite image of the whole show will forever be Philip and Elizabeth asleep in the back of Arkady's car as he drives, like two kids being driven home by dad. That's basically what they were in a way. Children of the motherland when they were sent out and now they're just exhausted and can feel safe because it's Arkady--who's somehow always been like an unknown protector to them--who's at the wheel. And they can finally snuggle together like they couldn't do on the train or the plane.
Elizabeth's dream was also fantastic. Not just seeing Gregory again, but the way she had herself smoking (a final note on what that means to her and a nod to her smoking like a chimney with him) and when he motioned to her being pregnant saying, "I don't want kids anyway." Then that painting and the similar picture of Henry and Paige. Of course she never said such a thing, but she remembers not wanting kids and how they got to her like the painting did.
Also someone else pointed out that that picture is almost recreated in Elizabeth putting her hand up to the window to watch Paige disappearing into the distance.
Like I said above I spent a lot of the ep feeling just sad--and not in a good way--for Paige trailing after her parents to the USSR. When she got off the train it was like the healthiest thing she'd done in years. She was finally a person. The whole "Paige as junior spy" was like Elizabeth going to the church group, only Paige tried to get it.
Philip telling Henry to be himself was also the one thing he told Paige to be after her baptism, praising her for doing what she wanted despite them not liking it. Neither kid understood how important it was to him and what he meant by him. But that's finally what Paige did. And she did it after Philip made the same case for Henry. And hearing his speech to Stan.
That also leads to a little theory of mine. I've always been frustrated by lack of Philip backstory. I've also always noticed that when their real names are mentioned they almost always use the full version of her name and the shortened version of his name. With her it makes sense--she would be sensitive about who used a familiar form of her name. But Philip was almost always Mischa except when he got married and when he told his real name to Martha--but there he quickly deflated to "But everybody calls me Mischa."
I thought of it here because Father Andrei did the same thing which is bizarre. He had one scene using their real names and used full names for both. He doesn't know Philip better. So why Mischa?
My thought is that the whole thing with Philip--and this goes along with the irritating choice to not give us his story--is that he really has never been able to form his real self. Elizabeth clung to a version of herself that might have been too rigid and not completely true to who she was, but it was important to her.
Philip never became that fully formed person. It makes sense his name was shortened--it's only the name "everybody" would have called him as a child before he was formed fully. In the last scene Elizabeth imagines herself running a factory (just like the woman in the movie who Claudia said she might have ended up like!), she also mentioned wanting to be a doctor. But when she imagines fully-grown Russian Philip she's got nothing. There's no career that immediately springs to mind.
Even Philip in his speech to Stan says he's just a failed travel agent...only he isn't. Yeah, he isn't. He was working again, the travel agency wasn't an expression of his true self. He said he felt stuck and wanted to do something good. Working with Oleg seemed the thing he liked most.
So yeah, I think the idea was he'd never really gotten a chance to explore who he was outside of what he had to do--exactly the kind of thing the EST guy said. He was Mikhail only when he got married (a true expression of himself). With Martha maybe he wanted to stand up for himself but was still unsure.
Loved Elizabeth's final line, breaking the English barrier so they could speak Russian with each other at last. And of course "we'll get used to it" has been the story of their lives, the conversation echoing the one in the motel back in 1965.
Philip's speech was masterful (I was reminded of it because he seems to intentionally not set a date on how long he's been in the US.) Like all his best spy triumphs it's true...but also utterly careful. Stan give him the "You were my best friend" opening and he goes right in, painting himself as the wimp and the fool he's always subtly been compared to Stan. He even makes sure to give Elizabeth full credit for "figuring out" the Gorbachev plot that in fact Philip told her about--Elizabeth got the details from Claudia. But it was important that Philip not be so clever here. Especially after he hadn't dropped his mask yet and Stan yelled at him to STOP MOVING because he totally was angling to disarm Stan somehow.
And I love how before he starts it all he hangs his head as if in surrender but imo he's also thinking quickly. None of this means he's just lying to Stan here, but this is Philip's signature move as a spy. This is why he and Elizabeth are such a good team. She'd packed a gun. She's been using force all season, trying to force people to do things. But here it was the last of Philip's devoted sources who decided not to give him up. Like Martha didn't. A lot of people thought Kimmy was going to tell her father about Jim's last phone call but nope, she protected him too. It's Philip's dark superpower. One that he would never use on the kids.
I wonder if Paige realized at all what she was seeing there. I do think she has stopped believing the lies--when they reflexively claimed they never killed anybody I don't think she believed them any more than Stan did. But I wonder if watching Philip and watching Elizabeth watch him she realized that even if there was truth to what he was saying, he had a forked tongue.
So many Russians were separated from their children. Philip and Elizabeth, but also Igor from Oleg and Oleg from Sasha. Man, I grew to love love love Igor. His final flinging up of his arms in a gesture of helplessness/hopelessness was fantastic. It was like his shooting his pistol at his other son's funeral.
I guess that's why ultimately it was so right for this last conflict to be all about "fucking Russians" as Philip called. Stan kept saying he didn't care who their leader was, and even if of course he could understand that this should matter, it still made perfect sense as an FBI agent to not care about it in that moment. But it was great that the Russian characters really did care. It foreshadowed that they could actually have a purpose in the USSR that they believed in.
When Stan's telling Henry the truth you can plainly see his uniform with JENNINGS on the back. Ouch.
I also like how none of these relationships have been tested except for P&E. But warm feelings now don't give any indication how anyone's life might go or how they might deal with all this. Especially the kids.
Sistermagpie's Thoughts on START
I think my favorite image of the whole show will forever be Philip and Elizabeth asleep in the back of Arkady's car as he drives, like two kids being driven home by dad. That's basically what they were in a way. Children of the motherland when they were sent out and now they're just exhausted and can feel safe because it's Arkady--who's somehow always been like an unknown protector to them--who's at the wheel. And they can finally snuggle together like they couldn't do on the train or the plane.
Elizabeth's dream was also fantastic. Not just seeing Gregory again, but the way she had herself smoking (a final note on what that means to her and a nod to her smoking like a chimney with him) and when he motioned to her being pregnant saying, "I don't want kids anyway." Then that painting and the similar picture of Henry and Paige. Of course she never said such a thing, but she remembers not wanting kids and how they got to her like the painting did.
Also someone else pointed out that that picture is almost recreated in Elizabeth putting her hand up to the window to watch Paige disappearing into the distance.
Like I said above I spent a lot of the ep feeling just sad--and not in a good way--for Paige trailing after her parents to the USSR. When she got off the train it was like the healthiest thing she'd done in years. She was finally a person. The whole "Paige as junior spy" was like Elizabeth going to the church group, only Paige tried to get it.
Philip telling Henry to be himself was also the one thing he told Paige to be after her baptism, praising her for doing what she wanted despite them not liking it. Neither kid understood how important it was to him and what he meant by him. But that's finally what Paige did. And she did it after Philip made the same case for Henry. And hearing his speech to Stan.
That also leads to a little theory of mine. I've always been frustrated by lack of Philip backstory. I've also always noticed that when their real names are mentioned they almost always use the full version of her name and the shortened version of his name. With her it makes sense--she would be sensitive about who used a familiar form of her name. But Philip was almost always Mischa except when he got married and when he told his real name to Martha--but there he quickly deflated to "But everybody calls me Mischa."
I thought of it here because Father Andrei did the same thing which is bizarre. He had one scene using their real names and used full names for both. He doesn't know Philip better. So why Mischa?
My thought is that the whole thing with Philip--and this goes along with the irritating choice to not give us his story--is that he really has never been able to form his real self. Elizabeth clung to a version of herself that might have been too rigid and not completely true to who she was, but it was important to her.
Philip never became that fully formed person. It makes sense his name was shortened--it's only the name "everybody" would have called him as a child before he was formed fully. In the last scene Elizabeth imagines herself running a factory (just like the woman in the movie who Claudia said she might have ended up like!), she also mentioned wanting to be a doctor. But when she imagines fully-grown Russian Philip she's got nothing. There's no career that immediately springs to mind.
Even Philip in his speech to Stan says he's just a failed travel agent...only he isn't. Yeah, he isn't. He was working again, the travel agency wasn't an expression of his true self. He said he felt stuck and wanted to do something good. Working with Oleg seemed the thing he liked most.
So yeah, I think the idea was he'd never really gotten a chance to explore who he was outside of what he had to do--exactly the kind of thing the EST guy said. He was Mikhail only when he got married (a true expression of himself). With Martha maybe he wanted to stand up for himself but was still unsure.
Loved Elizabeth's final line, breaking the English barrier so they could speak Russian with each other at last. And of course "we'll get used to it" has been the story of their lives, the conversation echoing the one in the motel back in 1965.
Philip's speech was masterful (I was reminded of it because he seems to intentionally not set a date on how long he's been in the US.) Like all his best spy triumphs it's true...but also utterly careful. Stan give him the "You were my best friend" opening and he goes right in, painting himself as the wimp and the fool he's always subtly been compared to Stan. He even makes sure to give Elizabeth full credit for "figuring out" the Gorbachev plot that in fact Philip told her about--Elizabeth got the details from Claudia. But it was important that Philip not be so clever here. Especially after he hadn't dropped his mask yet and Stan yelled at him to STOP MOVING because he totally was angling to disarm Stan somehow.
And I love how before he starts it all he hangs his head as if in surrender but imo he's also thinking quickly. None of this means he's just lying to Stan here, but this is Philip's signature move as a spy. This is why he and Elizabeth are such a good team. She'd packed a gun. She's been using force all season, trying to force people to do things. But here it was the last of Philip's devoted sources who decided not to give him up. Like Martha didn't. A lot of people thought Kimmy was going to tell her father about Jim's last phone call but nope, she protected him too. It's Philip's dark superpower. One that he would never use on the kids.
I wonder if Paige realized at all what she was seeing there. I do think she has stopped believing the lies--when they reflexively claimed they never killed anybody I don't think she believed them any more than Stan did. But I wonder if watching Philip and watching Elizabeth watch him she realized that even if there was truth to what he was saying, he had a forked tongue.
So many Russians were separated from their children. Philip and Elizabeth, but also Igor from Oleg and Oleg from Sasha. Man, I grew to love love love Igor. His final flinging up of his arms in a gesture of helplessness/hopelessness was fantastic. It was like his shooting his pistol at his other son's funeral.
I guess that's why ultimately it was so right for this last conflict to be all about "fucking Russians" as Philip called. Stan kept saying he didn't care who their leader was, and even if of course he could understand that this should matter, it still made perfect sense as an FBI agent to not care about it in that moment. But it was great that the Russian characters really did care. It foreshadowed that they could actually have a purpose in the USSR that they believed in.
When Stan's telling Henry the truth you can plainly see his uniform with JENNINGS on the back. Ouch.
I also like how none of these relationships have been tested except for P&E. But warm feelings now don't give any indication how anyone's life might go or how they might deal with all this. Especially the kids.