Episode discussion post: "The Walk In"

[jae]

Aired:
12 March 2014 in the U.S. and Canada
16 March 2014 in Israel
29 March 2014 in the UK

This is a discussion post for episode 203 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 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 two, episode three.)

Original promo trailers

"Next On: The Walk In" (Watch on YouTube)

"The Americans: Exclusive Scene from Episode 3" (Watch on YouTube)

Episode recaps

From the Washington Post
From Vulture
From Hitfix
From the AV Club
From the Huffington Post
From IGN
From Collider
From Television Without Pity
From Sound on Sight
From tv.com
From TV Ate My Wardrobe
From the Houston Chronicle
From spoilertv.com
From showratings.tv
From The Cloture Club

More to come once they're available!

Comments

[shapinglight]

Late and brief comment on a fantastic episode - the whole Aunt Helen thing blew me away with how well planned it was. I'm glad Elizabeth didn't give Jared the letter (I was pretty sure she wouldn't) and Oleg is a total creep.

FWIW, I expect Philip's father did die when he was six - probably in the war (ie. WW2).

[sistermagpie]

Wouldn't that make Philip too old to be six when his father died in WWII? He'd have to be born in, like, 1939 at the latest and be 40 by 1980.

[wendelah1]

That sounds about right. If Elizabeth was 22 when they arrived in 1965, that would make her 38 or 39 in 1982. Philip could be 42.

[sistermagpie]

It could, but the FBI agents in Trust Me put him at 39. I think they're the same age so they're going through the same things at the same time, for the most part. I guess it just seems like even more time to me because I think of Elizabeth losing her father in WWII before she was even born and for Philip to be 6 makes it sound like a more significant age difference than it would have to be. I guess it just makes me feel like they had very different experiences of the war if Philip was old enough to be six when his father was dying in it.

How old is Philip?

[jae]

Well...the agents put Philip Jennings at 39. That doesn't necessarily mean that Mikhail Whateverhislastnameis is also that age (the KGB didn't fabricate entire new identities whole-cloth, they stole them from real dead Americans), though it's almost certainly in that ballpark, give or take a few years.

-J

Re: How old is Philip?

[sistermagpie]

Right, I know that whatever age he's got as Philip it's not going to be his actual birthday. It's more that it just seemed instinctively wrong to put any significant age difference between them. Three years isn't that significant, I guess. I think there's 2 years between MR and KR. But I like the idea of them both teenagers when they're stuck together.

Also, just realized that both ages we're talking about come from Philip's fake backstory anyway, so there's just as much reason to take the ID of somebody the same age as Mikhail as there is to have Philip's dad die when he was the same age as Mikhail.

Actually, this reminds me of a funny comment I saw somewhere. There was an interview on The View where they watched the scene where they meet in the flashback. The View people ask KR how old she is in that scene. She says about 19. Then they say, "And you?" to MR. He says, "Um, 36?"

And a few people took that literally and talked about how wow, this changed everything that they had this significant age difference! Not getting that MR was totally joking about his inability to pass for anything close to 19.

Re: How old is Philip?

[jae]

Oh, fandom. Rule of thumb: take everything Matthew Rhys says with a smile with a HUGE grain of salt. It will serve you well.

-J

[wendelah1]

I haven't seen "Trust Me" since last year so I have no idea what you're referring to or why FBI agents would know Philip's true age if he's an illegal. Anyway I'm only up to episode four in my rewatch so, yeah, totally confused.

We don't know yet if anything Philip said to Paige about his father is true so it's kind of a moot point. And I don't have an opinion about their ages being the same--or not the same. They might have had different experiences of the war. I have no idea at this juncture.

If his father is dead, the man could have died from war injuries or from natural causes or been murdered or suffered an accident. It's all speculation and I wouldn't rule anything out or in.

[sistermagpie]

Sorry, I just meant that in the scene where the fake FBI agents talk about Philip Jennings they say he's 39. Which is not the literal age of the real guy since Philip is a fake identity, but at the time that was taken as a sign of his actual age just as the death of his father at 6 was. Iirc, Elizabeth saying her father died at Stalingrad gave her an age that people felt was contradicted by what she said about her age later on.

I can't rule anything out or in either, but I was surprised that I found I actually cared about the issue for reasons I couldn't quite understand. But the thread made me think about it--I think I now have some ideas about why that was, but they're more about me than anything factual on the show.

[shapinglight]

You're right. I guess I was confused because Philip and Elizabeth are probably the same age as me and my father fought in WW2. But no, obviously Philip's father couldn't have died that long ago.

ETA: should clarify that, when I say P&E are the same age as me, I mean I was their age (or slightly younger) in 1982.