Episode discussion post: "START"

[jae]

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

This is a discussion post for episode 610 of The Americans (the season and series finale), 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.)

Original promo trailer

Watch on YouTube

Comments

Elizabeth's dream

[jae]

Elizabeth's dream was also fantastic.

Agreed! I know dream sequences are clichéd and overdone, but man, did that one pack a whopper. It even tied up some narrative and emotional loose ends, as you say with Gregory, but also with the connection between Gregory as a lover of art and the way she herself had come (too late) to love and understand art over the course of this season. It was incredibly clever and also deeply moving.

This is a really good piece about that dream: http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/the-americans-finale-dream-sequence-decoded.html

-J

Re: Elizabeth's dream

[sistermagpie]

I just tead a comment that took the dream to mean she preferred Gregory and would leave Phikip soon. Obviously I think that's silly but it made me think how after Philip has always been the one more in love this last ep gave all tge romantic gestures to Elizabeth.

She takes the rings. She tosses her old ring and gives him his (love that this isn't a reveal for him as if he's surprised she did it). She imagines an alternate life where they were fated to meet and fall in love as themselves without the work. Gregory is in the dream not as a rejection of himself but as a symbol of her earlier doubts about the kids. The fact that he's so nonthreatening as a rival in the dream really solidifies her feelings now.

Elizabeth the romantic?

[jae]

Ha! I hadn't really consciously registered that, but you're so right. It's like the encounter with art not only opened up a sense of herself as an individual, but it also put her in touch with her up-to-then hidden romantic side.

Although I'm sure a part of her is wishing she could have spared some of that for Gregory way back when, too. I thought a lot about how she would have been wishing she could tell Gregory she was starting to get his "art thing".

-J