theamericans | Question of the week #35

1) I think the biggest change was in the storytelling format. The show was never a procedural, exactly, but this season had absolutely no episodes that could have qualified as standalones at all (though there were plotlines that could have). The season began with a particular storyline and it was that storyline that also ended the season.

2) Philip and Elizabeth didn't always see eye to eye on everything, but they were definitely a clear team for the entire season. This meant that it often felt like it was "them against the world," including (sometimes) the world inside their own home.

3) The lack of a consistent handler throughout the season made for a really chaotic relationship between Philip and Elizabeth and their KGB superiors.

-J

As Jae said, #1 is the change in storytelling format.

#2 - I felt the entire season had a much darker feel.

This season was supposedly more focused on family. It did have more Paige/Henry plotlines, but for me the focus was mostly on the fear for the family and the dark side of being a spy. No more cheerfully training your kids with ice cream wars.

#3 - S1 was FBI vs. KGB. Here it was more of a KGB vs. various external factions, and the FBI was playing in its own little sandbox on the side.

1. I definetely agree on the singular story arc in season two versus more contained ones in season one. As for preference, I suspect I would enjoy something of a hybrid of the two best. Season one often felt too disjointed and like the missions were random. Season two had some moments where I felt the spy story was pushing too hard and fast and not allowing the emotional story to breathe and get fleshed out. Since the emotional story for better or worse is what really interests me, it made some episodes this season fall pretty flat compared to season one. I certainly didn't have as many "can't fall asleep because I'm so excited about the episode" nights as season one.

2. I though they did a much better job fleshing out secondary characters and background characters. Some, like Kate, still seemed pretty flat, but they took Martha and Annelise, who both came across as pretty one dimensional to me in season one, and gave them more than just "likes sex with Clark/Scott" as a personality trait. Charles Duluth was also fleshed out, and Claudia, and the new characters like Lucia, Larrick, Emmett and Leanne had a little more there, I thought.

3. I felt like the major change of Philip and Elizabeth being solidly together was both a bad and a good thing. It was great for what my shipper heart wanted to see, but at the same time, less marital tension at times translated to less focus on the marriage... and focus on the marriage is what i want to see. It's that double edged sword and why I'm really excited for what the possibility of season three could mean... I don't want things "bad" for them like bringing in third parties and cheating again, but the idea of them both wanting to be married while having to navigate how to do that when you have a huge fundamental difference with your partner is a great real world problem, and would keep them both "in" the marriage while centering focus on the emotional story.

Re #3, it's interesting hot them being together wasn't like opening a floodgate of communication or scenes like that. They did communicate, but mostly in the same way they did before. A lot of it was still unspoken or through little gestures.

That said, I agree that the situation they're in now will hopefully demand different kinds of communicating (hopefully they'll still be doing it).

Very true. It's not as if either of them are particularly eager to sit down and spill their emotions at any time. It usually looks incredibly painful! The events of season one kind of forced them into a place where there was no way to get what they wanted without a little emotional honesty after a lot of years of lying and deception and I'm sure it had to feel like such a relief (especially to Philip!) for things to just be okay so they could go back to just getting what each other meant, something they're actually good at when they're not actively lying, and away from the whole having to spill your guts thing, which for him is just sheer torture.

I'm trying to think of the things that seem like significant but subtle changes--like obviously there's a change in the state of how the characters interact (P&E are solidly together; Paige is suspicious, the Beemans are estranged), but I'm trying to think of things that seem like changes in the foundation of the show.

1. Most obviously, it's more serialized with a sense that the whole season was one story. The showrunners said how they now felt like they could end a story wherever they wanted and just pick it up in the next episode, and that definitely changed the feel of things. The first scene of Yousef could have been the last scene of Martial Eagle, but it would have made the two eps very different.

2. Another biggie was the pretty surprising when you think about it splitting of the two worlds of the show. Stan was involved in his own storyline about whether or not he'd be turned and the only times he even got near an Illegals story was when it concerned the Connors rather than the Jennings. But they still dropped in reminders that Stan hadn't given up on the originals or the program. So when people inevitably accuse Stan of suddenly having remembered the Illegals, they will be wrong.

3. This third one's hard since I sort of dismissed a big possibility by talking about the different places the characters were at shifting the Jennings family from P vs. E mode to P&E vs. P & H (but mostly P) mode. So what I'll say instead is that I think the show got more show less tell about the identity issues. Where in S1 Philip and Elizabeth talked openly about the confusion of their lives, saying they want things to be "real," asking "what does lying mean for people like us?" wondering if wedding vows would make a difference, etc., this season we just saw it happening with both of them saying truthful things while being other characters and seeing the conflict between who they wanted to be and who they had to pretend to be.

As for how I felt about these changes:

1. Ultimately, I think this was an advantage for that very reason of not having to spend time on set up and introducing characters in episodes. People popped in and out and you either remembered them or you didn't (plenty didn't, especially Anneleise!). But I'd be fine with one-off episodes in there too. I think another result of this was to make their world feel more paranoid--everything seemed to come back to their precarious position because everything felt like it did to them. Things that would have once just felt like variations on an ep theme seemed more like coded warnings to P&E. Case in point, compare Paige and Henry's adventures in hitchhiking last season to Henry's housebreaking this season. At least that's how it came across to me.

2. This change led to a lot of Russian intrigue, which I really liked. The Redizentura started to feel like a real office and the dynamic between Arkady, Nina and Oleg was incredibly enjoyable, with everybody being interesting in their own right, with very different points of view and background, and strong feelings about everybody else. If asked to pick which relationship was the most interesting between Oleg/Nina, Nina/Arkady or Oleg/Arkady, I couldn't.

3. This was just perfectly delicious, obviously. As much as scenes like Elizabeth laying out her relationship with Gregory for Philip are fantastic, I didn't realize last season how in control the characters still were in them until this season's identity blurring/crumbling moments. Where last season their identities seemed conflicted (Mom and Dad vs. spy and spy), this season they seem more fragmented and fragile. I think that's the word one of the showrunners used talking about BTRD, saying that Elizabeth apologized because she instinctively maybe understood that she'd crossed a line asking Philip to compromise his identity with her when his identity was so fragile.

It's funny writing that that I feel like Gregory, at least as he appeared in S1, would seem almost out of place with these people because he seemed so stalwart and coherent.

I love your third one especially. That's such a great observation about how they were able to get into a deeper level of storytelling and one that really fits naturally with where the characters would be ready to go emotionally--taking those first steps to start tslking about feelings awkwardly, and now they're kind of in a stage where they're acting on them sometimes but messily and blindly... they don't really know what they're doing and sometimes that makes a bigger mess. It's funny--I sometimes think of Gregory too but I can't even picture him fitting anywhere past the point he died. Philip and Elizabeth are just so completely different in the space of a year. Elizabeth especially.

Isn't that funny about Gregory? It's not like he's a less complex person than anyone else, but he fit so well as the person who represented a lover who embodied the same priorities. But that's comparatively really neat, as is the way Elizabeth seemed to have been able to keep the relationship compartmentalized.

Honestly I suspect part of the reasonI always feel that way about him is because we never get a really true picture--we only get Elizabeth's version, and I feel like that's a very limited view, not only because she has such trouble seeing anything that's not exactly what she wants to see (like the fact that he's not going to love and embrace Moscow the way she does just gets overwritten in her head because she just can't compute anything else) and therefore never really sees or comes to know more than a narrow fraction of Gregory. Whereas, it's kind of interesting how with Philip it's the opposite and she's so attuned to and put off by all the differences that by the time they fall for each other, there's somethin much more honest in place, by no merit or skill of Elizabeth's, just the circumstances.

And with Gregory himself I picture him one of two ways, either kind of emotionally stunted like Elizabeth, which might explain why he thought she was really going to leave her kids like he wanted and run off with him, or simply that he never caught on the degree to which she'd been lying to him about what really mattered to her over the years, which had to start early on and just grow greater and greater as they grew ever further apart. Her feelings for Phil I can buy warming up that quickly, but it's not like the same would be true of Henry and Paige. The only way Gregory could make that comment in the car would be if he's a complete selfish jerk who doesn't care what it would do to Elizabeth to never see her kids again (which is hard to believe) or he honestly doesn't *get* that they're actually important to her because in many ways Elizabeth was just as much a liar with him as she was with Phil.

It's complicated question, you're right! Irina makes the same suggestion to Philip--and this while she claims to have a child herself (albeit one where it's unclear what relationship she's claiming to have ever had with him).

I always figure that part of the issue with Gregory was that he and Elizabeth got together presumably while she was pregnant with Paige or at most they'd have met right before, since they met in '68 (interestingly this means that Elizabeth would have had quasi-consensual sex with Philip before taking the step to actually consensual sex). At that time it seems like she would have been in full ambivalent mode, having made the choice to go ahead with the pregnancy but still not wanting to do it. So their initial relationship would have been probably based around him being the person she could share those fears with--which she couldn't totally with Leanne because Leanne warned her not to tell the Centre that and had done it herself.

So I always imagine that just as her feelings about Philip and the family would have slowly changed with time, so too would her relationship with Gregory. She would only have to see him on her own terms, and may have (based on what we see must have) always talked about her problems with her cover life with him, maybe even using him as a touchstone for who she "really" was with in ways she couldn't with Philip since Philip was bound up with the cover life. Over the years the Elizabeth Gregory saw would have just become a smaller part of the real woman, requiring maybe a little more artifice. But since she didn't resent the relationship with Gregory she probably didn't mind it.

So yeah, it's interesting to think about just how much the two of them are in denial about who the other one is at this point or ever was. Plus, of course, their whole relationship was always based on the idea that the cause came first, so by definition they never promised or wanted the other one to put their affair over orders. It's funny, actually, because while Philip was the relationship that was mandated by the Centre, it's the one that encompasses far more than the job, while Gregory, the secret love she took for herself, seems likely to fall apart without the cause. That's the thing they have in common.

1. More Russian/Rezidentura

Almost every week we had a Rezidentura plotline with more Russian. I loved this change, I also loved the expansion of the role of the Rezidentura.

2. Fewer childhood flashbacks in favor of spy-life flashbacks

This disappointed me a bit, because while they were important, I didn't really care about Leanne and Emmett whereas I care about P&E and their history. I want to know how they came to join the KGB, why they made the choices they have, and the secrets that they've kept from each other. Most of the stuff between Emmett and Leanne (or really, Leanne and Elizabeth) seemed like common knowledge for P&E - or at least they would have a vague notion of it happening (like that Elizabeth and Leanne worked a job together, the promise, etc.)

It also changed the marriage factor. In season one, they were dealing with the marriage and dealing with who they were/want to be/what they can have and so it was really about both sides learning about the other, which helped the audience care about them and learn about the characters. The marriage intact/more recent day flashbacks took away from the marriage, I felt.

3. Stan...Stan was very distanced from P&E.

Instead of having his personal life (friends and neighbors) and his work life (unknowingly) involve P&E, this time his connections were friendly/neighborly. The tension went down, which was good on one hand (do we really want Stan to forever be on their trail? He needs to be more than a one trick pony) but on the other hand, the distance sometimes felt too wide.

Stan was kind of the one character I felt had a less compelling story this season versus last. And maybe there was no way around that. I understand the predicament they are in where he can't get too close to P&E without looking dumb or ending the story too fast. But I found it made me feel very disconnected from him and the storyline with Nina just made him feel like a huge sleaze to me. With nothing on the flipside to soften him as a character, I spent all season disliking him more and more instead of being able to sympathize with him at all.

Agreed, wholeheartedly agreed, I found myself disliking most of the FBI agents.

Except for Martha, who concerns me what with where they might take the gun storyline in S3.

I agree with all of these (I love that we even get Nina doing the "Previously on The Americans").

It's really interesting how they went ahead with the P&E relationship, I mean the way it didn't involve lots of childhood flashbacks or reminiscing, yet those scenes when they happened were favorites (with me, anyway).

I guess that also applied to the few Stan scenes where he was with the Jennings. They were great when they happened.

I agree with almost all of the above, really, and it's difficult to pick which are the two biggest to go with..

There was no 'insult to the viewer's intelligence' episode in S2 in the way that there was in S1.

What was the insult to the viewer's intelligence episode?

S1E9 "Safe House"

There's some nice relationship wrapping at the start and end, but the middle has so much stupidity and so many plot holes.

I think S2 had its own brand of stupidity and plot holes, especially when it came to wrapping up the plot and anything featuring Claudia. I feel that in S2 it was worse than S1. I don't remember anything in S1 that I felt I had to pretend didn't happen.

Obviously I think my ending was better than their one :) and I am not convinced by the 'I fell for someone and..' Claudia storyline, but neither one hurt.

Yeah I basically appreciate that episode for the fried chicken scene and not much else. Well, maybe the scenes with Elizabeth and the kids. Those were nice too in a ghastly parenting in dulcet tones sort of way.

The closer relationship between P&E is appreciated but it seems very sporadic. I liked the fact that Elizabeth seemed to be the one who is really making the decisions about what Paige does and Phillip just goes along. Some (Matthew's) expressions and eye movements are very telling when E makes a decision. He's very good at that.

Still, that is what makes this relationship so delicious...it is so volatile and unpredictable, and 'weird' as Keri suggests. Such tension, electricity, chemistry, and the subtlety that we love. And as season 3 approaches, we have no idea what to expect.

The closer relationship between P&E is appreciated but it seems very sporadic. I liked the fact that Elizabeth seemed to be the one who is really making the decisions about what Paige does and Phillip just goes along. Some (Matthew's) expressions and eye movements are very telling when E makes a decision. He's very good at that.

Still, that is what makes this relationship so delicious...it is so volatile and unpredictable, and 'weird' as Keri suggests. Such tension, electricity, chemistry, and the subtlety that we love. And as season 3 approaches, we have no idea what to expect.

CA
sorry I thought I posted CA the first time :(

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It is really fascinating the way that dynamic works, particularly when you consider Elizabeth's canonical ambivalence about having children to begin with. Yet she clearly has these set ideas about how the kids should be raised and we don't know what Philip's ideas are and how they were formed. (Plus he goes along anyway, like on the issue of them not having any "real friends.) It's just funny when you see it happening so blatantly, like when Elizabeth takes the hardline about Paige's involvement with the church but then gives her permission to go to the nuclear protest on the spot.

The interesting thing about Elizabeth, to kind of twist your words around just a little for fun, is that I don't think it's so much that she has a set idea about how the kids *should* be raised but rather that she has a whole lot of strong, screaming, overpowering influences all around her in how she thinks they *shouldn't* be raised so she and Philip just make one sloppy course correction after the next. Like I think she never pictured the idea of raising her own daughter and once she had to do it, the circumstances were so unideal I think she disengaged to an extent. I think she spouts a lot of what *kids* in general should be doing but almost seems more impersonal whereas even in the short flashback scenes and recorded scenes with her own mother that isn't the way their relationship comes across.

Wow, I hadn't thought of that but you're absolutely right. She really is probably often thinking about correcting more than anything else. I mean, I think she genuinely associates parenting with teaching--and we do see in the flashback with her mom, for instance, where her mom is explaining to her how gifts come with strings attached, etc. But both of them can be very much roused by the kids doing something that they feel genuinely makes them "other." Even Philip, when he really freaked out on Paige, did it in response to her seeming to reject him for other people. Most of the time he was able to follow the kids along their American way, but the church is a place he can't follow.

And a lot of Elizabeth's corrections to Paige really do tend to be about how her life is different than her mother's.

I think the biggest change that stood out was definitely getting to see inside the Rezidentura - seeing how the Soviets "tick" and how they interact with one another.

Another smaller change was Oleg becoming less of an abrasive douchebag and more nuanced through the season.

Question of the week #35

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