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: Paige's "Crazy Life"

[treonb]

Relatively speaking her life is incredibly stable compared to plenty of kids.

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"

[sistermagpie]

True, but I'm not saying she's wrong to feel this way. She feels what she feels. But plenty of the kids at school probably do feel like they're lives are just as crazy and actually quite possibly do deal with this sort of thing. Paige already knows Matthew with the undercover dad and Kelli with the parents who send her on six hour bus rides because Dad doesn't get her on a night that isn't his per the custody agreement.

Re: Paige's "Crazy Life"

[wendelah1]

I actually think knowing that there are other kids out there who are also having family problems does make Paige feel less isolated, even if it doesn't make her feel safer.

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"

[sistermagpie]

I think it's well-established that Paige knows on an intuitive level that something's very wrong in her family--and the fact that her life isn't crazy as I would define it (but that's subjective) I think actually adds to that. When she went to her aunt's I think she was actually really hoping to find something wrong that she could handle. For instance, if it was actually a man that Elizabeth ran off with. That might be hard for her to deal with, but it would really be a relief because she would *know*. She could at least start to cope with it.

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"

[wendelah1]

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.

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.