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

Re: Will Paige go to prison?

[andy73]

My assumption is that since the FBI now know what to look for, it will be trivially easy for them to prove that Paige was at least superficially involved in missions, even if she never did anything truly heinous

Why? There aren’t evidence on Paige.
Paige has to tell them only “I didn’t know!!!! My parent spies???? WTF, it is incredible!” Or something like this….

Stan only could link her… but he really can’t…

Re: Will Paige go to prison?

[sistermagpie]

I think Paige's life has a pretty big Elizabeth-shaped hole in it that would be obviously suspicious. She'd have a lot of time unaccounted for by anyone else, and others might be aware of how often she was with her mother. And that's leaving aside the show she put on in the bar that showed she had had self-defense training. Sure, she could say that was just for personal self-defense, but training from her KGB spy mom isn't going to help her case.

Once they start asking her about where she spends her many afternoons and nights out, she's going to have a hard time coming up with answers that would stand up to any scrutiny at all. It would be even harder if she was going to try to lie about even knowing her parents were spies since it started affecting her life a 16. Besides, we've seen that her instinct is always to tell the truth anyway, like she did to Stan. She's not a great liar at all, and this would require coming up with a detailed alternate life to keep straight.