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

Paige's Bustrip to Harrisburg PA

[wendelah1]

I'm trying to move on but I'm stuck on how long it would take in real life for a girl to get from suburban Virginia to Washington DC and then up to Harrisburg, PA by bus. I don't see it. It's 3 hours by bus just to Harrisburg, so that's already six hours rt. I'm thinking the writers have never traveled via bus in their lives but if Paige did the research necessary to organize this trip she would have known she was never going to make it home in time, even if Philip hadn't gotten home early. I'm also not sure they did the necessaries to make her journey believable psychologically. Maybe there's a missing scene somewhere in which she asks when they'll get to meet this aunt and her parents put her off? We know she's curious but this was reckless--daring--rebellious behavior.

Lying, cutting school, challenging authority. Sounds like an American teenager to me. Poor Philip and Elizabeth have no idea what they're in for.

It never occurred to me that the girl Paige met on the bus trip was anything other than another girl, but--she's out of school, too, heading on a bus alone to see her father. Paige swallows her story whole but I can't decide if we're meant to or not. I'm assuming it's meant to be ambiguous. We know someone is watching the kids. We surmise someone alerted "Aunt Helen" that Paige was on her way. The door was left open on purpose to lure her in. The "Aunt Helen" cover story was elaborately planned--probably well in advance--and not improvised on the spot after Elizabeth was injured as I had worried it might be. This was oddly reassuring.

Her confrontation with Philip at the end. I've read through some of the comments. I don't think the emotional charge during that conversation necessarily has anything to do with Philip's real life story. What Paige did potentially put the entire family in mortal danger--and Philip is all too aware of that. He's angry at her and he's afraid that what happened to his friends and their children could happen to him and Elizabeth, to Paige and Henry. I think those are the losses he's reacting to, that is the dead family in his mind's eye, people he felt strongly about and identified with, his comrades-in-arms, not his family back in the USSR.

Re: Paige's Bustrip to Harrisburg PA

[sistermagpie]

I was trying to figure that bus ride out too. It's really an amazing journey for Paige to contemplate making. Even if she'd planned for being a little late. Iirc, didn't Kelli mention the time it took being 6 hours? So I think they were using that time frame, it was just pretty amazing that she could not only get there and back but find this woman's house and get there.

Maybe there's a missing scene somewhere in which she asks when they'll get to meet this aunt and her parents put her off? We know she's curious but this was reckless--daring--rebellious be

Elizabeth did say that the kids weren't even allowed to visit her those two months (for obvious reasons) so I think the idea was that she really was just checking up on her mother's story because she believed she'd find something other than a great aunt there.

I don't think the emotional charge during that conversation necessarily has anything to do with Philip's real life story

That's how I read it. His father's death could be true, half-true, or not true at all, but I think all of Philip's emotional focus was on Paige and anything he was saying about losing his father was really a way of talking about his real situation--that he'd left behind everyone he'd ever known and he'd recently watched his good friends gunned down with their child. Paige was taking risks beyond what she even knew she was taking, and he could channel his emotions about that into reacting to her being entitled about the family she had.