Episode discussion post: "Comrades"

[jae]

Aired:
26 February 2014 in the U.S. and Canada
2 March 2014 in Israel
15 March 2014 in the UK

This is a discussion post for episode 201 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 if you're reading this later and have already seen subsequent episodes, but please take care to keep comments spoiler-free of anything that comes after season two, episode one.)

Original promo trailers:

"The Americans - Rules" (Watch on YouTube)

"The Americans - Paige & Henry" (Watch on YouTube)

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Episode recaps:

From Vulture
From The AV Club
From Hitfix
From IGN
From Think Progress
From Rolling Stone
From TVLine
From the Huffington Post
From zap2it
From Collider
From spoilertv.com
From Sound on Sight
From showratings.tv
From uinterview.com
From screenrant.com
From Television Without Pity
From The Atlantic
From multimediacritics.com
From tvrage.com
From Unreality TV (UK)

Comments

[jae]

There was a number of times in this ep where people were asked if something was wrong, and that seemed to hint at the overall idea that things were cracking, that things were too big to completely cover up, so even civilians were seeing it.

Yeah, and in some ways you can say it's because they're off their game, but I suspect it's mostly just what you say--the cumulative weight of all of the crap that's gone down in the past few months has gotten too big to contain.

They see each other on missions and have had some wonderful connections during those times, but otherwise they're cut off.

Yeah, that's what it must be. They must have been based in a completely different part of the country that made seeing each other regularly impossible (as opposed to Robert, who was right there in Boston and then Philly).

The only thing that surprised me was Leah seeming to almost know that P&E were having problems, but then, Elizabeth seems to have made it clear to everybody that she has problems with Philip over the years so...They might have discussed the separation when they first got together on this mission.

I just had such a hard time imagining direct conversations about her issues with Philip fitting into what we know about Elizabeth, you know? But maybe it was less direct, maybe it was just the occasional remark--or even just what Leah observed.

The Jennings were very much *not* the typical US TV-parents who were now just as flustered as she was.

I was delighted with this. It wasn't at all what I expected based on the spoilers, and I was so pleased that it was so well thought through! Because of course they're going to think of sex differently from other people, on all sorts of levels. They really were more worried about what it meant for their secret-keeping than what it meant in terms of Paige seeing her parents as sexual beings.

Wonder if that lady at the cabin will show up again.

I hope so!

On a completely different note, do you happen to know where the heck people are getting the term 'sleeper' from? It's never used in the show--and in fact, KGB/SVR illegals aren't sleeper spies at all (sleepers are spies who actually live completely normal lives for a long time until at some point they're 'activated' and start carrying out missions--at which point they're no longer sleepers). The early episodes of season one have given us the impression that their jobs used to be way easier pre-Reagan, but they were always doing work and therefore were never sleepers.

-J

[sistermagpie]

I think people are getting sleeper from reviews, even though the word's totally wrong. Since we don't know the last name of their friends, and there's a focus on the "normal" American lives that they're living (kids going to college and being cheerleaders) that just was the word people used and it got picked up. Illegals is a much better word, but the domestic angle probably makes "sleeper" seem more fitting for them than it would for Robert. But really it just seems to be a thing that infected reviews and has now infected me too!

I was delighted with this. It wasn't at all what I expected based on the spoilers, and I was so pleased that it was so well thought through! Because of course they're going to think of sex differently from other people, on all sorts of levels. They really were more worried about what it meant for their secret-keeping than what it meant in terms of Paige seeing her parents as sexual beings.


Seriously, the whole thing was so wonderful and so not how it seemed from what people were saying. There was nothing gymnastic-y going on, no big OMG moment, and P&E were just so not reacting the way Paige did. It was almost like another little hint about that cultural difference. Maybe in a good way here, since Philip and Elizabeth freaking out wouldn't have made things easier for Paige. But also another little hint at the gulf between them as adults and kids, spies and civilians, professionals vs. amateurs (sexually speaking). That's also what I mean about Leah kissing Elizabeth's scar. It's like...that's kind of weird and intimate, but maybe in their way just a nice gesture since obviously they're already comfortable with the sexual aspect. Meanwhile Henry goes "Oh, gross!" at just kissing while Paige is thrilled with that bit, but uncomfortable with the rest.

And likewise there's the parallel between how Paige is freaked out after walking in on her parents where the Jennings and their friends have one of their most relaxed conversations after the two dudes interrupted the women in a threesome.

I just had such a hard time imagining direct conversations about her issues with Philip fitting into what we know about Elizabeth, you know? But maybe it was less direct, maybe it was just the occasional remark--or even just what Leah observed.

Yeah, I honestly couldn't figure out quite how it would work. Maybe they'd been in contact with Philip a bit while she was gone since they'd have needed to do some set up for this little sting. It might have come out that Elizabeth was recovering, and he might have mentioned that they'd been living apart briefly before that. So maybe Leah's questions were like a comrade checking in on their partnership meaning the whole picture for them, since even the marriage is professional.

[quantumreality]

Hmm! You know, I remember watching some clips from Soviet films of the 1970s and 1980s, and one thing that stands out is that they're astonishingly unconcerned with showing nude bodies. It seems like the censorship went more in the direction of making sure nothing "political" was sneaking through that shouldn't be.

If this attitude prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s then it's easy to see why Phil and Elizabeth weren't that flustered upon seeing Paige.

[sistermagpie]

According to the show's producers, also, Philip and Elizabeth would have been through sex training as part of their KGB program as well. That's how they can use sex so well as part of their work. (Their words were that basically both of them are sex abuse victims.) Specifically hitting the west in the sexual arena was a conscious decision, as I understand it. The US is so Puritanical and hypocritical about the subject they embraced the other direction. (Though I've also gotten the impression that lots of countries were more comfortable with nude bodies than the US.)