Episode discussion post: "The Deal"

[jae]

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

"Next On: The Deal" (Watch on YouTube)

"The Americans: Exclusive Scene from Episode 5" (Watch on YouTube)

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

Comments

Re: "I like the cold"/"I remember"

[katiac]

Love all these thoughts!

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.

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.

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.

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.

This season is just really awesome is what I'm saying.

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.