Episode discussion post: "The Deal"
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theamericansAired:
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.)
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From Collider
From Sound on Sight
From IGN
From Television Without Pity
From TV Ate My Wardrobe
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From Crave Online
From spoilertv.com
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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: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-28 05:42 pm (UTC)Because in the pilot Philip is I think very pragmatically seeing defection as a simple case of disappearing into their American lives and identities with some adjustments to bring the kids up to speed and be protected by a different government. That's something that still wouldn't have been as simple as he thought but I can see why for Philip it would seem relatively simple.
But one of the things that really strikes me about their life now is how integrated they are/are becoming--probably more than they would have been in the past. That is, they spend a lot of time these days being spies. It's not like they're actual sleepers where they live their American lives until they hear an alarm and then they're supposed to wake up and all that becomes a dream and they're spies again. These two are actually aware of themselves/thinking of themselves as spies *a lot* and that might not have always been so true. It seems like in the past, even last season, they would live as P&E with breaks for jobs and then return to their lives. Something like Timoshev in the car was unusual, and even their conversation in The Colonel about running with the kids felt like Philip and Elizabeth Jennings discussing the kids' welfare.
But now not only do they have Emmett and Leanne's murder hanging over their heads, plus missions going haywire that require days of work, plus Philip having a second fake life, but they've also got a new honest romance between the two of them--between the real man and real woman. (In the past their marriage had a lot of cover to it.) So I felt like that would have to also stir up in them--including in Philip who seems like he might have in the past disappeared into Philip Jennings and just let Misha hibernate--a constant feeling of who they "really are" even if they're not so sure about it.
The show seems to even be stressing this in a meta sense. Last season the big bad was Stan, the neighbor who threatened to discover they weren't really suburbanites. This season Stan retreated as a threat and P&E spend more time in the spy world connecting automatically with other agents from different countries--these are their people. I feel like the US characters as a whole often come across as less unwitting and more alien and threatening in everyday interactions. I think I may have even said something in earlier episodes about feeling something like relief coming from P&E when they were with other spies. (Plus of course there's the reflections of Paige and Sandra figuring out their personal identities and Stan feeling close to Nina because she's also a mole.)
I could believe that for years Philip could compartmentalize to the point where defecting simply meant being Philip without doing missions. He could go to Henry's assembly and think yeah, I could just say this pledge for real, maybe, why not? Russia was totally distant, like someone else's life. But I feel like it must be harder to feel American when you're so constantly aware of yourself doing your job or being in danger or hiding yourself from your children. And in the relationship he's now in.
So I almost wonder if for both of them, but maybe even more Philip because he shut off more completely before, their "real selves" however they exist now are now becoming more real than Philip and Elizabeth. Philip isn't in love with Elizabeth Jennings from Chicago, he's in love with Elizabeth as he knows her--and that includes the girl from Smolensk and the memories he shares with her in Russia.
For Elizabeth "soul retrieval" is about finding more to the girl she really is than her political beliefs. Just as Elizabeth is learning how to feel again due in large part to her new relationship with Philip, I think Philip is also getting in touch with parts of himself he'd shut off. Like he'd sent Misha away and now it turns out he's back--still hazy, but hazy is clearer than nonexistent. It's the parallel to Elizabeth's own emotional development to become a whole person.
I might even go so far as to say that last season Misha was so distant that he became just another persona, one Philip was briefly tempted to escape into when he was with Irina. I think MR referred to Philip as wanting to "be someone else" for a while when he slept with her, and that someone else was Irina's ex, Misha. But with Elizabeth he's something else--Misha who's now called Philip and has memories of both. Not a young man who stayed in Russia but the man he is.
All of which is really perfect just looking at the P/Y scenes, because it takes so long for Yossi to break through. Like there's no hint that Philip's at all effected at first. When Yossi brings up the icicles the second time Philip's looking out the window, not at the icicles. So it's not the mention of them but the combination of everything they talk about and current events, plus Philip sitting quietly for hours that brings his guard down just a little but not much until he's with Elizabeth despite the drive to the boat with Anton which at another time would have driven it underground again.
This season is just really awesome is what I'm saying.
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-28 09:44 pm (UTC)That's a great analysis. We're really watching both of them draw all the pieces of themselves together into one person (or at least, maybe that's the long process.) I too have always felt Philip is kind of pushing Misha down, or maybe a better way to say it is he's stepped so completely into Philip Jennings that he's kind of let Misha fade away. Part of that would be to assume the identity for work purposes, and I guess we don't know enough about his past to say if there's another reason, but we've all kind of speculated maybe there's something painful there that made it so distancing himself from Misha made things easier.
And you're right that it's so great in the same way the relationship with him is kind of helping Elizabeth to get in touch with that part of herself that is scary and has been hard to access, she's doing the same thing for him, both "rooting" him in the relationship where she's the less slippery one, and also providing that focal point that gets him back to his original identity only she knows. They're really so great for each other in that way and while they have points of disagreement in the relationship too, there's also so many ways that they're just fundamentally good and healthy for each other, each nurturing an area the other struggles with.
That's how I see it too. And maybe another factor is it's also just now becoming something he can access and have something good associated with it. Not even thinking of his past before as a factor, Elizabeth refused to talk about their "other lives" so it would've been just a source of more loneliness. It was only once the pilot happened that talking about their Russian lives became this tender little intimate thing that was just for the two of them and no one else. And it was only once they got through the lies of the old "cover" marriage that they finally were in a place where it could feel completely safe sharing.
Yes! There was a moment or two early on I was worried, but they've been building to something great all along and this episode really tied it together in a great way.
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 02:53 pm (UTC)The repercussions of that trait for the life he's ended up in are not incidental. The Misha "core self" that he shed like a snakeskin sometime in the middle of his illegals training and then literally left behind by leaving his home country is not just very far away geographically from the Philip life he's been living, it's also chronologically distant from his new life. And while the Philip Jennings identity has been permitted to take in new things and learn and grow and change, the Misha core self hasn't done any of that and been forced to stagnate as a result. It's a little bit like what happens to any immigrant who leaves his home and chooses to live within a new society: with every passing year, he gets further and further away from his old life, until the old place starts to feel strange to him (even if he never fully embraces the new one). But as a result of both Philip/Misha's malleability and his chosen career, this sort of thing is going to have a much, much bigger impact on him than on ordinary immigrants. Because in a way that would feel very real to him, he hasn't been living the life of Misha-who's-been-becoming-American, which is more like what he would have done as an ordinary immigrant--he's been living the life of Philip Jennings, an entirely different person with a different history and different personality traits and different beliefs. In the midst of all that, it would be almost impossible for someone like that not to lose track of his core self.
I definitely do think Elizabeth is a tie back to his Misha core self in many ways, even if she never has "met" him--her very Russianness is a factor in this, as I've mentioned, and also the fact that she's also had to go through the motions of leaving her core self behind but has never done that fully. But even Elizabeth is not going to be able to perform the Herculean task of "reintegrating" Philip with Misha in any fully articulated way, especially if they continue to live the lives they do. I mean, not only is he off playing house with another wife as Clark, the two of them even still call each other Philip and Elizabeth in private, even when they're absolutely certain that no one else is around to hear them. They never, ever speak Russian with each other, either, even as they allow themselves to occasionally dwell briefly on who they were before they became Philip and Elizabeth Jennings. And maybe for Elizabeth that's all just a sop to following orders, nothing more, but for Philip it would be something more significant and something more fracturing in an ongoing way.
Does this make any sense?
-J
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 07:27 pm (UTC)So it’s like they have to create a new everyday identity that takes pieces from more places. If the marriage is "real" than it's not these two people playing the roles of Mr. and Mrs. Jennings, suburbanites. Of course they've also always interacted as partners as well as spouses, but it's a whole new thing what they're doing now, one that brings more aspects of their spy life into their home life and even more importantly, adds bits of their backgrounds, the most important and first part of that being Elizabeth's rape. Knowing that info puts the whole current woman in a different perspective as does knowing about Gregory.
But your post really makes me see the episode as even more beautifully cohesive in the way it's set up--which I will of course now elaborate on to great length!
Elizabeth is now "learning to feel again" but recovering that part of herself isn't going to resurrect the girl or the feelings of the girl she was at 17. She's been changed by experience and age. It's kind of like you said re: Philip--there's stagnation and she has to learn to do it again. With Philip, I don't think there's a core self who's the guy he was when he was 17 either, but it seems like what he's learning to do (or maybe will start to learn to do—he’s not doing it yet) where Elizabeth is learning to feel is to learn to be somewhat authentic, which he maybe doesn't know how to do anymore either. "Authentic" in this case doesn't mean Russian or Misha, but it does incorporate those things in ways he probably hasn't done in a while, except in certain situations.
That's why I think it was such a big moment when he even says something like "I like the cold." This is a character who is so completely the opposite of consistent Elizabeth. She can be so clear about her motivations and perspective and beliefs. She explains exactly where she's coming from and why as best she understands it. It's got to be intentional that Philip is so the opposite of that, so even his flashback ep says nothing about him. His true motivations sometimes seem even hidden to himself. So the few times he actually expresses a personal preference or hurt with no pragmatic reason seems so important. And this ep just seemed to underline in so many ways that he was accessing something that was very new--like not just the things he was feeling were new but the reasons he was feeling them were new.
To support that idea I go to the larger themes in the ep that came up over and over. There was a big trend in this ep of people trying to understand and claim their identity for no one other than themselves. Paige seeks places to "put it all"-i.e., make sense of all her feelings as a consistent whole, Elizabeth is trying to learn how to feel again, Sandra is doing soul retrieval to find parts of herself that are lost. Sandra wasn't doing it to win Stan back, Elizabeth wasn't doing it to be a good wife, Paige wasn't doing it because of her mother. Really everybody in the ep except those strictly involved in advancing plot (which I'd say Stan, Oleg and even Nina and Arkady mostly were) were wrestling with these questions of fragmented and lost identity and looking for ways to organize their whole selves in different ways—Elizabeth played out some things with Brad, Paige turned to organized religion, Sandra was drawing.
But at the center of the whole dang thing we have Philip NOT doing that. On the contrary, he’s avoiding it. Maybe doesn’t even get it. Granted, he’s not in the best situation to be doing so—he’s very much at work. But it’s more than that. And let’s face it, even when he’s at home he doesn’t express interest in it. Writing this now I actually find myself wondering—has Philip even ever agreed with Elizabeth’s desire that the marriage be “real?” I mean, putting it in those words? The one time I remember him talking about it was at the end of D&H when she asked if it could be real and he said “I don’t know.” We know he loves Elizabeth and wants her to love him, but does he have the same concerns about it not being “real” in the context of the “fake” marriage? It doesn’t seem to bother him. Maybe that’s actually a common misunderstanding of that line. People took it as Philip saying he didn’t know if he and Elizabeth could make this work when he really meant that of course they could, but he didn’t know if anything was real, because he maybe doesn’t know if anything can be real or what that means.
So again, at the center of this whole ep is Philip—in fact, there’s multiple Philip’s and lots of moments set up to show how he’s perceived by different people. (Not that this is limited to Philip in this ep—we also have Stan bemused by Sandra, Elizabeth by Paige, Elizabeth by Brad, Jennifer by Martha etc.) But it seems most intense with Philip. Kate fangirls him and he doesn’t even get why she’s talking about him. Then we’ve got Jennifer and Martha talking about Clark.
Martha specifically brings up how Clark is contradictory. I mean, let’s marvel for a second at the beautiful complexity of the scene, which is like a set of nesting dolls. Martha thinks she knows Clark. Elizabeth, who knows who Clark ‘really’ is shows up as Jennifer. Jennifer and Martha have a conversation where they both at different times claim superior knowledge of Clark—Jennifer as his sister knows how he’s “always been” and how he “is with everyone.” Martha as his wife knows how he is in bed which Jennifer of course “wouldn’t know.” If we stopped there the joke would be that of course Jennifer does know, because she's slept with Clark--the "real" Clark--Philip.
But instead Elizabeth’s thrown for a loop when Martha gives details. Suddenly Elizabeth’s having someone else tell her about her own husband in ways that surprise her. In some ways she’s just as in the dark as Martha!
Then we’ve got Anton who has his own view of Philip as a monster, someone with no humanity. We see that Philip does have humanity, but it’s unclear what Philip thinks about the actual charges here. We know he doesn’t like being cruel, but Anton’s line about “whoever you once were” is obviously chosen to echo the slightly different theme of a core identity/soul.
Most of all we’ve got Yossi who tackles this issue straight on. He continually compares himself to Philip as a spy: Yossi knows where his home is, he goes home for Passover, he knows where he’d want to be buried, he references his mother and his family history, he doesn’t hide who he is. Over and over he tries to draw Philip out about his “real” identity and hits a total brick wall—until, of course, we get this surprising statement from Philip that’s a) the most basic of personal preferences, b) specifically attached to the Soviet Union by context c) specifically tied to his early memories in later context and d) seemingly said more for himself than for Yossi. Sure one could argue that it’s in response to Yossi’s statement about the weather in the USSR, but Philip feels no need to say something similar about Soviet Communism. Plus the way it’s delivered and followed up (by Philip relapsing into his own silent thoughts and non-reaction to Yossi’s further taunts) and Yossi’s own somewhat startled reaction really marks it out as different for me. And that’s even before we add the show’s rare objective (imo) validation that something else is going on here (because with Phil we really need it) with the Russian flashback music. All of which leads up to Philip later offering up a unique memory about childhood.
In light of that, I feel like his “I remember” is really significant. Obviously it’s a rejection and a correction to his earlier “I don’t remember” regarding the exact same thing to Yossi. But in a larger context I feel like it’s not so much just something he can admit only to Elizabeth as his partner but almost the start of something new. Because for years “not remembering” has been his every day state—he’s Philip and Philip doesn’t have that past. But him saying the words now is like...well, it could be just revealing that even the person who avoids his true self actually has one, the end. Or (my preference) it could also be like Elizabeth’s confession to Brad that she’s trying to learn how to feel again, but she fears she’s too old. It’s a tentative step rather than just the “real” answer about who Philip is and what he remembers. Does that make sense?
Because given how clearly Philip seemed to be marked out in this ep as having lost touch with “whoever he once was” or “who he is,” coupled with how clearly he’s marked out as the one person who seems to be not asking himself that question, it seems like it would be more of an ongoing thing rather than Philip “discovering” himself or "revealing" his true self through a simple memory about icicles. It’s like what Philip discovers in the ep isn’t his “real self” but the idea that this could be something he could have—or that other people have that he could be missing. His sword fighting memory is less “this is who I am” than “I found a piece of something and I don’t really know what to do with it.” But he keeps it--with Elizabeth's blessing--and it means something, even as he starts another day as Philip. By sharing it he doesn’t just let it go again.
All of which is like the opposite of what I felt was the idea of Genevieve’s version, because that seemed to be saying that Philip totally knew who he was and had a true self, and he just knew that true self didn’t want to be in the KGB and felt more American. But I think it is in line with what you’re saying, that this goes to the heart of the type of person Philip is and the effect this kind of living would have on him (and why he’s so good at it). He would always have been like this, but this makes it even more extreme. It’s not just that Philip isn’t American because he’s Russian, it’s that any time you say anything too definitive about what Philip is you’re likely wrong.
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 07:36 pm (UTC)Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 08:15 pm (UTC)they're neither of them in love with the Philip and Elizabeth that their neighbors know. They're in love with the person they know, who is a spy.
I think this is exactly right. I think they each think of the other as Philip Jennings/Elizabeth Jennings--which explains why they use those names even in private. But as you point out, it's not the same Philip/Elizabeth that everyone else in their American lives knows, it's one that's informed by knowledge of the hard and sometimes even cruel things each of them has done, the training they've each gone through, the ways in which they each think like a spy...and also by their respective pasts, and their mutual knowledge of not just one shared culture but two of them. That's not the same thing as a marriage between Misha and Nadya, but it's not quite a marriage between "Philip Jennings" and "Elizabeth Jennings", either. It's sort of a sum of both of those parts.
Or (my preference) it could also be like Elizabeth’s confession to Brad that she’s trying to learn how to feel again, but she fears she’s too old. It’s a tentative step rather than just the “real” answer about who Philip is and what he remembers. Does that make sense?
It totally makes sense--and in fact, it's in line with what I was already thinking about that bit, it just takes it another step further. I do think it's a real memory, but the fact of him bringing that memory into his current life and his relationship with his wife is hugely significant and a step toward bringing that past part of himself into who he is currently.
It’s not just that Philip isn’t American because he’s Russian, it’s that any time you say anything too definitive about what Philip is you’re likely wrong.
This is exactly right. It's not that there's NOT a core self there, but he's been too many other people since he left Misha behind, seen and experienced and learned too much to ever be him again. He contains multitudes, and all of the multitudes are equally accurate.
-J
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 10:23 pm (UTC):)
LOVE THIS!
I really like the way you put this. It's like we're watching both of them put the pieces back together, in one way, except that the pieces aren't the same as they used to be and there's no picture on the box. Like I don't think Philip himself even knows exactly what/who he is and I think thinking about it too long would probably be unnerving for him, which is as you mentioned, a reason Elizabeth would be a huge draw in her personality. She's so sure of who she is. And then the same thing is kind of going on from her end where she's having to figure out how to feel things, and Philip is kind of reassuring in that way. He's never really had a problem feeling and showing emotion, being warm around her and the kids, telling her he loves her. He can be hurt when he's hurt and get past it rather than having to push any feeling down until it explodes like in "Covert War." He's not threatened by the idea of her being "soft" and she doesn't have to hide that side of herself with him. For both of them, it kind of touches on the area that feels safe and secure to them to be reached out to in that way--Elizabeth for that connection to Russia and for the strength of her personality, and Philip for softness and an emotional connection he's always wanted with her.
That's an interesting question, and certainly in the moment it happened, Philip was in a pretty awful place (a little like this one) forced to question everything he thought to be true. Elizabeth betrayed him with the reporting. Irina betrayed him with a lie one way or another. He slipped back into Misha for a night out of having no other safe port, and had just been physically tortured. He definitely was put through hell, and once again that was kind of glossed over with all the focus on Elizabeth and how was *she* affected by it all. I could see it having both meanings, in a way, the deeper level ones you're saying, and the more basic ones because I do think it seems like Elizabeth's primary motivation in asking was for the sake of making the relationship official and defined, where it hadn't been before, rather than that she was necessarily thinking along the same lines he would've been at that point. I need to think about that some more because it's an interesting thought.
And I think this is the real crux of it--less about the sex itself and more the uncomfortable punch in the gut that she might not be on the innermost circle, which of course with Philip, might be something she's always going to feel. And maybe she's okay with never being completely at the level of knowing him *he* is as long as she's closer than any other person, but to think Martha might be getting to see something she's walled off from would be the real injury just as it was when it was revealed in reverse about Elizabeth last season.
Yes, I like the way you put this. He's kind of just as lost as Elizabeth is trying to figure out who she is beyond just "loyal to Moscow."
Love this!
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-30 12:51 am (UTC)Ahahah that is a brilliant idea!
The things you said about the Duty and Honor scene is very thought provoking. It's like Philip has been so good at compartmentalising, but when he's not expecting it or lets his guard waver, bits of one compartment seeps into the other and its not necessarily good or bad, just more interesting to watch. Not to say everything was clear cut and unambiguous before, only that his fractured selves and multiple identities are kind of diluting each other. Katiac I like your puzzle metaphor!!
With the 'real or not real' (Omg it sounds like the hunger games now), when Elizabeth says she wants it to be real, are they both in the realisation that it will never be truly be but Elizabeth is content with the 'close enough' and Philip is saying he really doesn't know if anything will ever be real again so he can't promise her that it will be. So it's like Philip is in full realisation that nothing is real, and tries not to deal with it as much, whereas Elizabeth is more stubborn in that even though she it's not real, her reality with Philip is enough for her that she accepts as reality. I think I used to word 'real' in this paragraph 1234927394871 times.
I like what you say about every other character in this episode actively trying to fit the pieces of their identity together, or at least voice their self-confusion, whereas he is avoiding it, or wading through the by himself, at least until the final scene. The more we talk about this episode the more I love it.
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 11:08 pm (UTC)Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 03:09 pm (UTC)I have to start bookmarking some of these comments man.
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 05:55 pm (UTC)Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 03:16 pm (UTC)Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 03:31 pm (UTC)Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 03:32 pm (UTC)-J
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 05:33 pm (UTC)http://www.etonline.com/awards/135190_Matthew_Rhys_The_Americans_Emmy_Interview/
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 06:28 pm (UTC)It seems my memory of the exact line was a little inexact, and the real quote is "I tried to allow the moments with Elizabeth be Philip at his most vulnerable -- as close to the real man as we're ever going to see." That amounts to the same thing, though, I think.
-J
Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-29 09:16 pm (UTC)Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"
Date: 2014-03-30 12:02 am (UTC)