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

What about Paige's life is 'really wierd'?

[lovingboth]

Yes, her parents are Soviet spies, but the point of the programme is that she (and everyone else apart from their bosses) don't know that. Yet.

She lives in the suburbs and goes to the local school. Both her parents work. They're a bit square. They sometimes go out or away because of work. They don't tell their 'just teenage' daughter everything. This has lead her to think about their sex lives, ewww. They've had trouble in their relationship, but they're back together. They're friendly with the neighbours, but not in and out of each others houses all the time. Erm, isn't all this within 'normal'?

With the possible exception of 'Mum was away for a while recovering from something, and I couldn't visit her', 'we don't have an extended family' is it, isn't it? Is that really weird?

Stan's family has been wierder, with him away for a loong time. His wife knows that he was working undercover, but did the rest? Now he can come in and say he's got a medal for killing someone...

Going back to the first para and to my guess that Philip was responsible for denouncing his father... Prediction: this will be shown at the point when Paige will at least be considering denouncing at least one of her parents.

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really weird'?

[jae]

I don't know, Ian, the very fact that Paige is so suspicious and so devoted to uncovering "the truth" suggests that there have been a LOT of little things that have added up to one big question mark. We've seen some of them, but I suspect there have been a lot more. Some of what those things might have been:

• Paige and her brother have VERY STRICT RULES about not ever bothering their parents at night, no matter how bad their nightmares are.

• The house is very quiet at night in a way that often makes it feel like her parents are not even there. This has been happening for years and years, and coupled with all of the other stuff, it's felt very strange.

• Her mother spends an awfully long time in the basement doing menial tasks like laundry--no one spends that much time doing laundry, so what else might be going on down there?

• Her mother suddenly had to go away for a very long time to take care of an aunt who they'd never heard of, and she didn't even say goodbye to them before she left.

• Since she came back, her mother has been staring out windows and jumping at shadows.

etc. etc. etc.

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really weird'?

[soupytwist]

Dammit, while I was typing a reply you did it better! :)

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really weird'?

[quantumreality]

I think that really kind of nails it. Especially the tendency to unexplained absences and sudden "urgent trips" that have a surface kind of validity, but add to the subtle sense of wrongness about what should be just a 9-5 Monday to Friday kind of job running a well-functioning travel agency.

Paige herself reflects that assumption when she says "my dad doesn't really do anything."

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really weird'?

[sistermagpie]

I forget that line--what's the context of her saying her dad doesn't really do anything? What's she referring to with that?

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really weird'?

[quantumreality]

She was talking to Matthew when Stan had to be out of the house a lot when Reagan got shot.

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really weird'?

[sistermagpie]

Oh! The one where she's saying her dad does nothing dangerous. Right.

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really wierd'?

[soupytwist]

There is more than that though! Paige and Henry get left, often at no notice and in weird ways/places. They get left alone in the middle of the night. (This is one I think Paige is specifically aware of as maybe being Weird - that's why she was checking the bedroom door, seeing if they were in the house.) They have some really bizarrely strict house rules. They've had at least one time where Elizabeth is clearly really worried/panicked, but doesn't explain why and instead is all "we're going to a movie! ...oh wait, I need to leave you at a movie!" The Jennings don't just lack a family, but they lack any friends at all on top of that. (Unless you count the Beemans, and they're new.)

Any single one of those could easily have any number of explanations. It's the combo of all of them that equals Something Is Up. :)

And I really hope Philip didn't denounce his dad (but it's definitely possible). I don't think Paige is going to get as far as denouncing, though. At least not until the very end of the show, and that would be such a sad way to end!

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really wierd'?

[quantumreality]

Hmm, assuming Philip is 40ish in 1981/2, then he lost his father circa 1946 or 1947 - which is kind of in the right time frame for some paranoid idiot at the MVD to decide his father talked too much to British or American soldiers and whipped him off to the Gulag.

(Yes, this happened IRL - the sheer absurd insanity of Stalin's notions that any Soviet soldier who talked to an American or a Frenchman or a Brit, or was even in a German POW camp, was possibly unreliable and needed to be thrown into a labor camp back home. If I could do one thing that would preserve the state of affairs post-WW2 and yet ease a lot of people's suffering? I'd make Stalin have a heart attack or something in late May, 1945. His successors would almost certainly have refused to continue such an asinine policy.)

Philip's family

[soupytwist]

Yeah, I was thinking that it wouldn't take much at all - little Philip mentioning the wrong thing to the wrong person without even knowing what he was doing would be completely possible.

Re: What about Paige's life is 'really wierd'?

[sistermagpie]

I think it's a combination of a thousand things that only now as a teenager she's putting together as a pattern. Others have mentioned the fact that Paige seems to get that it's weird they're not allowed to bother their parents at odd times, like at night.

But I really liked how she summed it up to Kelli, saying, "It just seems like there's always something going on." That's a more vague thing that she's picking up on. She probably couldn't point to all the little bits of evidence that lead her to that conclusion, but it's exactly right. It's like...there's somebody who said "There are no secrets" like in a family. It was referring to something where, for instance, somebody found out that their parents weren't their parents (Mom had an affair and he was their father, for instance, or they were adopted) and once they find it out rather than being simply shocked there's a feeling of "Oh, THAT explains it." Like they'd picking up on little signals for years.

So for Paige, like she said, she just always has the feeling that there's something going on that her parents aren't telling her. Sure at their best they can casually say they're just late at work and if Paige called they'd have an excuse where they were. But just in the past few months she's seen her parents quite obviously preoccupied with something, distracted, upset, and yet there's absolutely nothing she can see to explain it. And when she tries to ask questions they're brilliant at deflecting them.

Like, Mom goes away for 2 months to take care of a distance relative and the kids can't even see her all that time? How do you give a really good explanation for that if the kid doesn't totally want to believe you? It's not even about having a relative you didn't know about--though that adds to it, but also Paige just getting the feeling that that's not why her mother went away. That's why she checked out the address. In the back of her mind she wonders if Aunt Helen exists because something about her parents' behavior has conditioned her to believe they might be completely lying.