Episode discussion post: "Echo"

[jae]

Aired:
21 May 2014 in the U.S. and Canada
25 May 2014 in Israel
7 June 2014 in the UK

This is a discussion post for episode 213 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 thirteen.)

Original promo trailer

"The Americans Season 2 Episode 13 Promo - Echo [HD] The Americans 2x13 Promo" (Watch on YouTube)

Episode recaps

From Grantland
From Time
From the Washington Post
From Rolling Stone
From the AV Club
From Hitfix
From IGN
From the Huffington Post: Karen Fratti, Maureen Ryan
From Vulture
From Variety
From the Tampa Bay Times
From Sound on Sight
From Collider
From Paste Magazine
From Gawker
From the Cloture Club
From tv.com
From tvrage.com
From Headline Planet
From spoilertv.com (in French)
From TV Ate My Wardrobe
From GAMbIT Magazine
From showratings.tv
From Comments Enabled
From Boob Tube Dude
From Unreality Primetime (UK)

Comments

QR's Final Episode Rambliew

[quantumreality]

BOOOYAH! LAST EPISODE! *gets popcorn*

Dis gonna be gooooood! :D

- Hmm! Fred looks like he's getting a little confused at all the rapid-fire instructions about getting the paint. Wonder if he's ever had to do anything like this for Emmett or if it was more along the lines of feeding Emmett financial and technical paperwork, things that could point the Soviets to where to look for more solid intel. Anyway, now or never, big guy. Go get 'em! Walk that floor like you own it :P

- Huh! Sandra still has good Stan-radar.

- Damn, Elizabeth had it rough at fourteen! And I guess with it being - what, 1956? Doctors might've been somewhat thin on the ground in some places (Health outcomes tended to improve through the 1960s and 1970s and then stalled out in the 1980s), and Elizabeth wouldn't have been in a position to bribe a doctor to get her mother into a hospital.

- Huh! Philip lived in some town in the ass end of nowhere called Tobolsk. And with the slow rebuilding outside of the cities it's not surprising teenage gangs probably flourished for a while before the police really bothered to crack down.

- YES ASSKICKER PHILIP! :D No wonder Henry's so fearless sometimes.

- WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO, FRED?????????? Aw, man. You tried to get wise with the guard and you got shot. And very dead. RIP, big guy.

- Paige at the anti-nuke rally!

- You do not store a 5.25" floppy disk like that without a protective covering, you silly clucks.

- The programming language looks too "modern" for the 1980s. In those days, even source code storage space was at a premium so people used short variable names and minimal indentation. That said it could be LISP or Smalltalk or ADA. However, the actual code on the screen looks like a variant of Haskell, which was only invented in 1990. ANACHRONISMS, DO YOU SPEAK IT, WRITERS?

- Haaaaaaaa OMFG Henry. You're such a kid. :P And Paige is all, "Well, we weren't the bad people! (>_<) "

- Hmm! Looks like Paige has a new cause. But her parents don't seem to be totally buying it because, well, church.

- Having read Harry Potter, I tend to be kind of skeptical when the "Greater Good" gets invoked to explain sometthing.

- Daaaaaaaaamn, Stan-boy, pilfering FBI spying cameras? Naughty-naughty! You're gonna get life in Leavenworth if they find out about that, if not the firing squad, buster.

- I'm not crazy about Philip and Elizabeth dumping all over Paige in this scene.

- And now Philip must be Clark! Wonder if shit is gonna get real here! :O

- Dun dun DUN she got a gun! :O

- And an even BIGGER DUN-DUN-DUN! Larrick is missiiiiiiiing!

- And the Jenningses swing into action!

- Stan looking extra grumpy is kind of funny, actually.

- Heh! Arkady leaves him a little advice. :P

- HAAAAAA OMFG THIS IS AWESOME. Stan's having a surrealistic dream :P

- Aside: Sandra has nice legs, NGL.

- It's kind of ironic that even as Elizabeth tells Jared a truth ("what I really look like") she's lying to him about what happened to Kate. It was nice to see her all motherly to Jared, too.

- DAMN IT LARRICK. Stop being your murderously creepy self and go kamikaze the Soviet embassy in Washington or something.

- Oh god, Gaad, get that fucking Reagan picture off the wall. It's tacky.

- Also, in all seriousness, I cannot stand the way Reagan is idolized for playing John Wayne against the Soviets while domestically undertaking policies that have possibly permanently changed the distribution of income and wealth in the USA unfavorably for people at the bottom of the economic ladder.

- And now the FBI know Jared's missing! The tension gauge ratchets up! :O

- O HAI LARRICK.

- And Paige has finally had it. She just wants off the damn merry-go-round, heh.

- Jared is stumbling around the edges of the truth about Kate! :O

- Oh, damn it, Larrick showed up. Party pooper.

- HA FUCK YES LARRICK IS GONZO. Bye-bye, asshole.

- Oh, no, Jared got hit in the crossfire :(

- Aw, man. He was just a teenager with a crush. :(

- HOLY CRAP JARED OFFED HIS OWN FAMILY??????

- Welp, Stan-boy finally reached the limit of what he was willing to do just to keep Nina alive. I do believe this is the end! :(

- Nina's definitely shaken, and even Arkady looks somber as he leaves.

- Aw @ Paige and Henry sleeping in the car! I also rather liked the scene at the picnic table. Paige is reluctantly enjoying the outdoors while Henry, oblivious to all the undercurrents, happily flies his kite.

- "Can't wait to do that again." *cracks up, is ded of LOL*

- Oleg is having a sad as Nina gets kicked out of the KGB!

- Y HALO THAR CLAUDIA.

- "They want Paige to be next"! HOLY CRAPCAKES I DO NOT EVEN. :O

- And it looks like Kate pushed Jared to act, and sent a KGB mook over to bump off Emmett, Leanne and Amelia if they wouldn't let Jared join the "second generation illegals" program.

- And yep, just like Emmett and Leanne, Elizabeth and Philip are all like "HELL NO," even though the KGB is now using their children against them.

- DAAAAAAAAAAAMN Philip! :O Laying the law down to Arkady! :O And then Elizabeth rationalizing getting Paige to become a Soviet agent anyway! :O

tl;dr: Talk about a wham episode!

The program

[lovingboth]

It's MATLAB - it confesses to being such in comments. Although the commercial version wasn't out yet, it was available at universities (contains at least one error - Pascal predates Algorithms + Data = Programs to the point that the compiler in the book is labelled as a subset of it!)

I am going to pass on whether it's valid early MATLAB.

Re: The program

[quantumreality]

Ah, thanks! :)

Lying to Jared about Kate

[lovingboth]

Is she? As far as everyone knows, Kate is 'missing' and she tells him that she'll let him know when she knows for sure.

Re: Lying to Jared about Kate

[quantumreality]

That's lying by omission, since P & E act far more like they're sure she's already dead, since they know what Larrick is capable of.

Re: Lying to Jared about Kate

[jae]

I think they're both pretty sure she's dead, and that became clear by looking at her apartment. I do understand why they wouldn't want to tell a dying kid that his girlfriend is probably dead, though.

-J

Re: Lying to Jared about Kate

[lovingboth]

It is highly likely that she is dead, but if she were killed by the same person or people as did for George the answering service, why didn't they leave the body? George was left dead in an outbuilding of a family home, doubtless soon be discovered. Kate lived alone so there's less risk of an early discovery, and carrying a body around / kidnapping someone does tend to attract attention, so if she died there, it'd be easiest to leave here there.

As the audience, we know it was the same person, and we saw him break her neck, but we still don't know what's happened to the body.

Re: Lying to Jared about Kate

[jae]

My read was that Larrick took care of the body so that the KGB wouldn't immediately be alerted to the fact that she was dead, and be hot on his tail.

-J

Reagan picture

[lovingboth]

The surprise is that it's not been up since January 1981.

Re: Reagan picture

[treonb]

There's several pictures of Reagan around the office.

Re: QR's Final Episode Rambliew

[thesquawk]

"Also, in all seriousness, I cannot stand the way Reagan is idolized for playing John Wayne against the Soviets while domestically undertaking policies that have possibly permanently changed the distribution of income and wealth in the USA unfavorably for people at the bottom of the economic ladder."

to be fair I don't think the show is doing it on purpose - that's the way things were at the time. but the two are so totally interlinked - the whole idea of communism is an existential threat to the conservative religion that was behind Reagan and probably is still most of the controlling interest in American society today... (This is obviously separate from the domestic terrorism / dictatorship of Stalin, though that was also generally over by the time of the show)

which is why I really have no trouble rooting for P/E :P