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theamericans2014-03-26 07:45 pm
jae) wrote in theamericans2014-03-26 07:45 pm
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Episode discussion post: "The Deal"
Aired:
26 March 2014 in the U.S. and Canada
30 March 2014 in Israel
12 April 2014 in the UK
This is a discussion post for episode 205 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 you should also 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 five.)
Original promo trailers
Episode recaps
From Grantland
From The New York Times
From Time
From Vulture
From The Washington Post
From Rolling Stone
From The AV Club
From Hitfix
From the Huffington Post
From Collider
From Sound on Sight
From IGN
From Television Without Pity
From TV Ate My Wardrobe
From Geekbinge
From showratings.tv
From screenrant.com
From GAMbIT Magazine
From Crave Online
From spoilertv.com
From tv.com
From Unreality Primetime
From Newsmanone
26 March 2014 in the U.S. and Canada
30 March 2014 in Israel
12 April 2014 in the UK
This is a discussion post for episode 205 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 you should also 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 five.)
Original promo trailers
Episode recaps
From Grantland
From The New York Times
From Time
From Vulture
From The Washington Post
From Rolling Stone
From The AV Club
From Hitfix
From the Huffington Post
From Collider
From Sound on Sight
From IGN
From Television Without Pity
From TV Ate My Wardrobe
From Geekbinge
From showratings.tv
From screenrant.com
From GAMbIT Magazine
From Crave Online
From spoilertv.com
From tv.com
From Unreality Primetime
From Newsmanone
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
Unavoidably, her dad must have been continuing his relationship with Martha while Elizabeth was gone, requiring more absences. He was still running other operations while she was gone, too. Now that she's back, her mother gets these urgent phone calls and has to leave at all times of the day or night--to do what, Paige must be wondering. Her mother is supposedly a travel agent!
What was it Paige said to the girl on the bus? "It just seems like there's always something going on. I'd just like to know what it is."
Children are remarkably adaptable. It wouldn't be ideal but if both of her parents were openly working a second job to make ends meet--because the travel business wasn't going well for example--that would be an easier situation for the children to cope with. That's why they came up with the story about Philip having to travel more out of town for work. But without a more rational explanation to fall back on, Paige is going to assume the worst thing that she can think of--that her mother is seeing someone else.
These things are relative. But having your parents separate and then having your mother gone for a couple of months and unavailable to you doesn't sound like a stable home life to me. She doesn't need to see her family situation though someone else's eyes to feel confused.
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
What Paige said to Kelli I thought summed it up well--she feels like there's something always going on and she wants to know what it is. She feels like there's craziness going on somewhere, but her own life seems pretty stable. It's her parents' lives that seem to have stuff going on even to her, but they're still there and involved with her more than probably plenty of kids in her class.
None of which makes her anxieties or feelings invalid or her truly not feeling like a mess. Recent events could easily have sent her into turmoil even if the cover stories were real, and her suspicions add a whole "Girl on the Milk Carton" aspect to it--that was a popular YA book in the 90s about a girl who's at lunch in the cafeteria one day and sees her own picture on a milk carton, throwing her identity into question. If Paige finds out her parents her spies, that would be crazy. But her parents separating with her not knowing the details and her mom being away for an extended period doesn't seem that crazy to me. I mean, she's got it less crazy than Matthew across the street whose Dad spent years with white supremists and now barely lives at home but they act like that's normal.
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
But her friends at school probably don't deal with that stuff. It doesn't help that there are kids 'out there' who suffer more.
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
I disagree with your assessment of her family situation as being stable. Even on a surface level, it's not stable--it might not be unusual--I think something like 40% of children from two-parent families will have their parents separate by the time they turn 16--but that's not the same thing as stable.
I remember from last season Elizabeth saying to Philip that she felt that no matter what happened, Henry would get through it. But she thought that Paige was fragile. All children are unique, all children have different tolerances for stress. We don't understand why some kids manage to thrive in truly chaotic family situations--drug addiction, homelessness, physical/sexual/verbal abuse--that cause others to act out. We don't understand why one child in a family can cope while their sibling falls apart.
In any case, I don't think she's only being stressed by what's on the surface. Her parents wanted to believe that they could shelter their children from the effects of the life they chose. Of course they did. Seeing the daughter of their friends, their comrades-in-arms, murdered in cold blood, seeing the son orphaned and grieving, shattered that illusion forever. Her parents now have to maintain an extra layer of illusion when they're interacting with their kids--they have to pretend that everything is hunk-dory when they know it isn't and it probably never was.
You may disagree but I think on a deeply intuitive level she knows something is terribly wrong with her family. Paige knows her parents are hiding something. She just doesn't know what it is. Being lied to about it is only making her feel more and more confused. Because she wants to believe them. She wants to believe that everything is fine and back to normal, or at least what passes for normal in the Jennings' household.
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
Instead I think she's over the years noticed a ton of little things that are now coming together into an actual shape that's impossible to make out but not something she can ignore. But it still seems to me like Paige almost used "crazy life" as a cover for what she wished the problem was--parents who are divorced or use their kids to fight is terrible but you can see it. In Paige's house everything is "normal" besides a brief separation that was actually pretty healthy for the marriage in ways that maybe even Paige can see and her mom taking care of a relative for a while. I think both of those things would be stuff she could handle if not for the other looming threat she can't name.
I honestly feel like Paige's real feelings at this stage isn't that her life is crazy but that she feels like she's going crazy and paranoid, but we know she isn't.
So for me it's like a central contradiction--her life has been stable, but she's got just as much or more legitimate reason than most to feel anxious and fearful because she's picking up on something not being what it seems. Her parents have parts of themselves that she doesn't know that would scare her--but she's not scared of them because they're pretty consistently loving to her.
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
I agree that it's what she can't see that's most threatening. She's being lied to constantly by her parents, the people she needs to be able to trust, and on a deep level she knows this. She knows all is not as it appears. And yeah, I agree, she does think she might be going crazy.
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
I think part of the issue with Paige is that it's not just the events that are happening... it's that her life has been so remarkably normal... almost boring, up to this point, and then suddenly she's getting hit with all of these things out of left field. It's the instability of it in combination with how unprepared she was for it. I can see the argument for drama queen too. Because really, a lot of kids have it a LOT worse. But part of the problem with Paige is the degree to which her parents have always sheltered her and she's never had reason to worry.
Her parents argued, but then some people are just loud/arguers. My grandparents were like that and were married 50 years, very happily for the most part. Paige's parents had been like that as long as she could remember, and nothing had changed in 13 years. But suddenly, they tell her over fried chicken dinner that they're separating. To viewers, it seems like the next obvious step, but to Paige who has no idea why anything is different or even THAT anything is different, this came hugely out of left field and had to turn her radar up to a state of constant alarm with "how the hell did I miss this and what else could I miss if I don't pay attention???" Them being spies and being so good at pretending to be perfectly fine over the years made it that much worse for the kids. And then suddenly Philip is moving back in, mom has disappeared without even saying goodbye or calling, and then is gone for 2 months. Even if the thing itself is not the end of the world (which it's not, really), the effect on Paige is that much sharper because she's just simply unprepared for it.
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
Perhaps it was the delivery of the line, but I just am not recognising what, beyond an instinctive feeling of suspicion, makes her think this.
Paige leads a confusing life, she may have feelings of being lost and may feel like things around her are getting more complicated, and yes this 'unknown' that she can't put her finger on is very unsettling to her and rightfully so. But I do think she's being a drama queen if she genuinely thinks her life is "crazy." Maybe she just used that word to get Elizabeth to sit up and pay attention?
She's obviously right to feel this way (confused and lost) and maybe it's cos she lives in a household where she feels that she can't ask for answers and or demand the truth about her suspicions with her parents. I never really thought about it but I think some teenagers' default reaction would be to just pester their parents for answers rather than going on a hidden quest not even confiding in your brother about what you're feeling. So yeah Paige is probably feeling dazed with bottled up feelings. But it's still different from saying that the sheltered life your parents have created for you is becoming crazy and uncontrollable and damaging and ....
I definitely agree with what you are saying about how all this stuff (separation + aunt) came out of nowhere and all at once and shocked her. I mean at the end of the day, most parents do keep things from their children, in order to protect them, and give them the happiest care-free life possible. So the fact that Paige sees through this and does feel something bigger is going on shows her intuitiveness.
Still for example with the fact that Philip had to keep up his relationship with Martha during the 2 months that Elizabeth was away, we are still supposed to suspend our disbelief because if Paige had realised her dad left every other night and didn't come back till morning, I couldn't believe that she has stayed silent - to her brother, to her father and to her mother about it....This conversation is doing my head in. I could accept calling her life 'crazy' if it was an conscious exaggeration on Paige's part but if it wasn't, I would disagree with her definition of crazy.
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
My guess would be that it wasn't quite that often and that on nights he had to be gone, Philip would be sure to leave after they were asleep and come back before morning. When Elizabeth was gone I think he probably couldn't spend the full evening/morning there unless he claimed to be going on a business trip and got Sandra to watch the kids... and I think that starts getting suspicious fast.
I think with Paige the word "crazy" may just be early teenage years and the way that lends itself to exaggeration. That's the age of statements like, "You're the worst mom EVEEEERRRRRR!!!!!" and slamming doors and tears and "My life is RUINED." And it's not just spoiled teens who act that way. Kids that age kind of see the world as revolving all around them instead of viewing themselves as a part of it. So even though adult viewers can watch Paige and just kind of laugh a little, to her it may actually seem like that.
It's interesting because in one way Paige's reaction isn't entirely unlike Elizabeth's. Paige was blindsided by something that was traumatic to her. She had no power to stop or influence it. She had no voice in what came next. Paige tried to get answers from Elizabeth about the separation and assuage her feelings that something wasn't quite right, but Elizabeth shut her down every time. A few days before Elizabeth disappeared, she finally gave her one semi-honest answer in their conversation in the kitchen, but then there was the weirdness of her "doing laundry" in the middle of the night... and then the next day she disappeared without even saying goodbye, and so did their dad. And then it had to be weird when dad returned a few days later and things were all patched up with him and mom, but mom hadn't even called. And then like wendelah said, mom is 3 hours away and they can't even visit? There's a lot of strange things.
Elizabeth doesn't take being lied to very well (to put it mildly.) I think Paige has that trait too. She's demanding truth. When Elizabeth is forced into something and has no recourse, she pushes back, much like she shut out Philip when he was forced on her by the Center. Paige has no recourse against some of the things being done to her (no answer from her parents that can explain the above peculiarities to her satisfaction, no she's not allowed to read the bible, no she can't have privacy) and so she's pushing back in any way she can trying to regain some sense of control (much like Elizabeth did.)
Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"
Besides:
A. I grew up in a home business, and I actually remember having this "why are you doing X in the middle of the night" conversation, and not because I was suspicious of anything. Of all things, why would it seem suspicious to do laundry in the middle of the night? Isn't her mother working most of the day?
B. I do miss her not talking to Henry about her suspicions. She might get an "I don't care" response from him, but she should still be asking. And he might even help her out in finding out information.