theamericans | Question of the week #37

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treonb posting in

Do you think Stan can salvage his marriage?

You can expect spoilers for the entire first two seasons in the comments.

(There's no expiration date on these questions, so if you're reading this post months later and feel like jumping in, please do.)

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From:

katiac

I guess I'm the oddball, sort of. I feel there is a 95% chance Stan's marriage is over and done with because let's face it, Stan has screwed the pooch on that one big time.

But I won't say it's impossible it could be salvaged for three reasons.

1. They have a kid together, which can be a pretty huge motivator to fix things, though Matthew is older than Paige and Henry.

2. At the start of season two I was one of the people saying no way in heck could they ever get me to buy there was any way Stan Beeman might ever do anything remotely close to betraying his country. And yet he did and it was believable. So I could conceive of a way it could still be written.

3. If we're going to talk about screwed up marriages, our two protagonists have managed to come out okay after not being in a much better place not too long ago. Apparently before Stan went undercover they had a good marriage. P/E basically never had a relationship both felt happy with, Elizabeth was having an affair of more than a decade and lying through her teeth about it, neither chose the other, but they overcame those obstacles when something changed: both wanted to make it work. And that's the key thing that would have to change with the Beeman's. Stan would have to pull his head out of his behind, realize he'd been a jerk, realize he'd been messed up by his time undercover and needed help, and seek to fix things. And if he did those things, I think Sandra would still be willing to salvage things because when you think about it, he's a lot like a spouse coming home from war having trouble adjusting to life not in the army--having had friends go through that, it can be an adjustment even in a previously good marriage.