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theamericansThis is the discussion post for "Yousaf" and "Stealth" (episodes 2.10 and 2.11) in the group rewatch of seasons one and two. When you rewatched the episodes, was there anything you noticed that you didn't notice the first time (and any subsequent times) you saw them? What things about them did you perhaps view differently after having seen the later episodes?
You can expect spoilers for the entire first and second seasons in the comments. Feel free to join in even if you only got to rewatch one of the episodes.
You can expect spoilers for the entire first and second seasons in the comments. Feel free to join in even if you only got to rewatch one of the episodes.
Yousaf
Date: 2015-01-02 07:27 pm (UTC)Oleg and Nina do come across as mutually in love in this episode, and it's as happy as we ever see Nina, although, note Nina's reply to "you can do anything", i.e. "I know; that's what I'm afraid of", which you could read as her playacting with Oleg, too, on "better not make this guy who already proved what strings he can pull at home my enemy but have him in love with me instead" reasons. (I hope not.) Or: it could be a bit like P & E's relationship, i.e. something started on her part for professional reasons but turning into something real. In any event, Oleg's present is both cute and thoughtful (even though you have to handwave a major background gaffe, because the Young Pioneers weren't something you could choose to do or not; Oleg would HAVE to have been a member, even as the son of the nomenclatura, though of course holidaying with the parents on the Crimea instead of going to a camp is quite possible.
Nina's idealistic Young Pioneer backstory echoes Paige's wish to go to a Christian summer camp in the other plotline. After his previous outburst Philip is relenting on the idea, but Elizabeth remains hardcore. Incidentally, this time around it struck me that while Paige is initially skittish when seeing her father again, she doesn't give him the cold shoulder until the next episode, being normal towards him in this one when she asks him whether she can go to the camp. Which makes me guess that she's either not that disturbed by last episode's outburst, or pragmatic enough to swallow her reaction when she wants something. It's not until Philip doesn't back her up against Elizabeth re: the summer camp that she becomes massively hostile.
This is also the episode which shows most obviously Philip trying to help Elizabeth avoid having sex during an assignment while Elizabeth tries to help Philip avoid having to kill again. And without discussing it outright, they both know what the other is doing and accept it. However, due to Yousaf's orientation Philip can't take over having sex with him personally, so has Analise doing it, which in turn leads to a fleshing out of Analise beyond the one note bit character from 1.02. She still likes sex and the excitement of spying, and gets manipulated by "Scott" into seducing Yousaf, but here she's given an emotional reaction to it all when the full implication of what she did sinks in. (Because there is a difference to having sex with someone just because there's an attraction, or as part of a job.) Re: Philip-as-Scott's "don't you think it kills me etc." speech, on the one hand, yes, there's likely a connection to what he feels re: Elizabeth's assignments, though he's also looking in a mirror, and of course Analise to him is what Yousaf now is to Analise.
Kate for the first time protests against Philip's patronizing tone towards her, which on the one hand is understandable, but on the other doesn't help the basic problem that she couldn't establish herself towards either him or Elizabeth as someone to be respected.
Larrick further demonstrating what a dangerously competent agent he is doesn't stop me from wondering: what did he THINK would happen if he lets a couple of KGB agents into a camp? Yes, they were there to gather evidence, but he must have known such encounters as happened were a strong possibility, and how they would deal with this. Then again, he's been blackmailed for quite a while, with the hate reaching boiling point; as Claudia observed some episodes earlier, blackmail is a dangerous and unreliable tool.
Then again: it works for Agent Gaad! Mutually assured destruction indeed. The two Arkady & Gaad scenes were terrific.
Re: Yousaf
Date: 2015-01-03 03:54 pm (UTC)Which opens up some interesting questions about how the two of them might go about trying to work on Paige next year. Elizabeth's always gone the hard way with Paige, so she's liable to have success if she finally starts being understanding to her. Plus if Paige is now so into the idea of wanting to do things for others, she would respond well to people making demands on her. Philip being softer could quite possibly just turn her off more, since he's proved that in a pinch, in her pov, he's always going to cave anyway. Like here, his being on her side about the camp doesn't help--it's Elizabeth who even gets to be the good guy about the nuclear protest after she refused to give an inch earlier. Basically what I'm saying is I think Philip might have to rethink his approach because right now Elizabeth's in the perfect position to begin Operation Paige. Philip's always really seemed to have a more passive view of parenting--that parents are mostly there to be supportive and protective rather than actively guiding the kids into the type of person they ought to be, but Paige is obviously open to the other type of parenting, which is what Elizabeth prefers.
It's so weird that they make that mistake about Oleg being a Young Pioneer for many reasons, but especially that there is a chance here to remind us that Young Pioneers was barely a choice for them.
Re: Yousaf
Date: 2015-01-03 08:08 pm (UTC)*nods* Mind you, I don't think Paige did it before because this entire situation is something new, but she definitely comes across as always having been a Daddy's Girl who is used to him fulfilling her wishes if she urgently wants something. (Exception: moving back to the house right away in the separation last season, and back then she could blame it on Elizabeth.) And she is emotionally aware enough to figure out that cold shouldering him is a way to make him feel guilty when he doesn't come through. As I said, this is different from how she acts with Elizabeth, where she asks for a rational explanation as to why she can't go, even if she doesn't get it. With Philip, she's using pure emotion (the camp is harmless, the camp is good, she wants to go so badly), with Elizabeth, she tries reason (please tell me what you have against the camp, make me understand your point of view), which is the reverse from gender clichés about men and women but fits with how both are parenting her.
Also, I'm still toying with the idea that not only one but both of Philip's parents were dead during most of his childhood or at least adolescence and that at any rate he didn't get much direct parenting. Whereas Elizabeth did get that from her mother, and while it was the old fashioned type (see her "do you have any idea how my mother would have reacted if I had..." to Paige last season), it must have been also very there and affectionate, given how much listening to those tapes from her still means to Elizabeth. And she wants to reproduce that with her and Paige, which aside from the different society and country Paige grew up in has the major obstacle that Elizabeth is lying to Paige about something very basic and Paige is old and smart enough now to be aware of this. So it can't be, at least not how Elizabeth wants it to be.
Re: Yousaf
Date: 2015-01-04 12:53 am (UTC)Of course anything we think about Philip could wind up being jossed, but it does seem like they've made a point of always showing him as so isolated. We know Elizabeth consciously tries to model herself on her mother's parenting but Philip's version is harder to place. I could easily believe there's a whole fantasy aspect to it, that he's giving his kids the life and parent he'd have wanted to have, or maybe he just created the character of Philip the Dad when Elizabeth started trying to get pregnant.
I even found myself randomly thinking yesterday about Philip's interrupted story from Echo and wondering if we'd come back to that, like if that story is important to his backstory. Like that it's more than just a story he started to tell in the moment because it somewhat matched Elizabeth's.
Basically, yes, I feel like Elizabeth's position with Paige has been really laid out beforehand so we understand why she'd want to do things this way, and think it was best for Paige. But with Philip it's almost like you just pointed out about his conversations with Paige--all we have is strong emotions with no rational explanations of his position. If they're actually going to discuss it I wonder how long Philip could avoid bringing up his own history.
Re: Yousaf
Date: 2015-01-04 09:40 am (UTC)Re: Yousaf
Date: 2015-01-04 05:00 pm (UTC)-J
Re: Yousaf
Date: 2015-01-04 05:25 pm (UTC)Stealth
Date: 2015-01-02 07:57 pm (UTC)It's interesting that Paige, denied the summer camp, uses different tactics with her parents. With Elizabeth, she tries to have a rational discussion and asks "why", asks Elizabeth to explain and just give her a reason she can understand. (Unfortunately Elizabeth's improvisational skills at spying desert her at parenting and she falls back on the one thing that NEVER works, i.e. "because I'm your mother".) Whereas with Philip she's relentlessly cold-shouldering him, and Philip's attempts to disarm her by cheerful friendliness get increasingly desperate. The thing is, it does work in as much as Philip is pleading her cause once more to Elizabeth, so methinks Paige has her parents' people manipulative gifts.
On this rewatch, it struck me how much the Jared plot is a preparation for the Paige plot. Because Elizabeth now feels so guilty for not having given Jared the letter, for letting him find out the truth about his parents from strangers. And in the very same episode the penny finally drops for her re: Paige being motivated by the same thing she was, the ideal of wanting to serve a greater good. Both emotions lay the groundwork for what's to come at the end of the finale.
Philip's Ted the Vietnam Veteran persona is so convincing I'm still a bit sorry that he spills the beans relatively quickly with his target, but then he's under schedule pressure. BTW, the cancer-causing paint is such an 80s thing for me because it reminds me of a subplot in the tv soap Dynasty. (*reveals bad 80s viewing habits*)
re: Henry's "My Hero" questionaire: I think it was a genuine class assignment but also that Philip pointed Henry Stan's way because he needed an excuse to drop by and suss out whether or not the FBI was onto them. Not that Stan would have told him, of course, but he can read Stan well enough that Stan's manner would have given it away. The Henry and Stan scene reminded me of the fact that the very first time Stan reached out to Philip was after observing him playing with Henry. I suspect Henry reminds Stan of the era when he still could talk to Matthew (i.e. that fabled time Sandra mentioned last season when Stan knew the names of Matthew's three best friends, before his undercover assignment, years ago). Child!Stan with his FBI comic books, btw, based on Stan's age, strikes me as having been a bit behind the general trend among kids - weren't the FBI-as-pop-culture-heroes more a thing of the 30s and 40s, whereas Stan would have been a boy in the 50s? But very fitting for Stan. Who is very clear on the fact he's not the hero he wanted to be. (BTW, even if he weren't currently getting blackmailed by supposedly Oleg, I think that would still be true.)
Arkady telling Oleg both about Nina's original misdemeanour and about the new instructions from Moscow, should the Turning Stan operation not work out: definitely comes across to me as Arkady wanting to tip her off while retaining plausible deniability for himself. As he says, he can't tell her, he doesn't have a cover. But Oleg, privileged kid with family connections, definitely can and does. Unfortunately, this does not help Nina.
Kate for the first time shows she does have spying skills of her own by realising something is off in her house when she enters it and finding a way of leaving a message to help Jared before she gets captured and tortured by Larrick. Incidentally, during my initial first watching of the show, I still had no idea at this point what her connection to Jared might be or why, as Elizabeth observed, she was in the habit of meeting him (sans disguise).
Re: Stealth
Date: 2015-01-03 04:19 pm (UTC)FBI vs. bank robbers does seem like a very 30s/40s thing--Though I think there would still be the G-Men idea in the 50s. We do know that Stan appears to have rejected the whole counterculture thing in the 60s, since he was one of the young men who joined the establishment and felt he should have gone to Vietnam, so he's an interesting individual who probably doesn't fit a stereotype either way.
Interesting, too, that Philip's line about a travel agent not being a hero can't help but remind us that Philip is a hero in his own country, but not only has to hide that from Henry, but would be considered the villain in Henry's country. Plus we see Stan seeming to have a romanticized view of Philip's life this season, so it's nice to remember that Philip is having his own problems as a father at this point too. He's currently not being a hero to either Paige or Henry, and Henry's school assignment (which I agree is real) again brings up this question of the kids looking up to adult heroes who aren't their parents.
It's not the same as with Paige, but again it brings up that passive vs. active thing. Philip spends so much time hiding various parts of himself that he winds up being trapped by his own persona. His position on the Paige issue, based on the character and what the actor has said, is about *not* telling her what to do, but he'll have to find a way to present that as a positive alternative rather than just the absence of something. Plus his view is against the KGB so he'd have to hide from them too.
Re: Stealth
Date: 2015-01-03 07:57 pm (UTC)If Henry thinks about KGB agents at all, he definitely thinks of them as the evil guys in James Bond movies or something like that. I can't imagine how he'd react at this point if someone told him his Dad was one. He'd just refuse to believe it, point blank, at first.
Vasili and Anton
Date: 2015-01-04 09:53 am (UTC)And it lays the groundwork for Nina - who until now was telling us she's going to be executed if she goes back to Russia. Without Vasili and Anton, starting S3 with her still alive would have seemed like cheating.
Re: Vasili and Anton
Date: 2015-01-04 02:05 pm (UTC)Re: Vasili and Anton
Date: 2015-01-04 04:57 pm (UTC)-J
Jared and Paige
Date: 2015-01-04 05:03 pm (UTC)It really is, and it was done so cleverly, too.
I find myself hoping that those similarities continue to resonate not just forward from Jared, though, but also backward to him. With what's likely to be coming in season three, it seems that Jared would loom large as a cautionary tale.
-J
Re: Jared and Paige
Date: 2015-01-04 06:23 pm (UTC)So I feel like both of them are going to have him as a reference point and where I can see Elizabeth's arguments already laid out, I don't know about Philip's besides "devastation ensues!" He had very little to do with Jared personally, so I try to read into the few exchanges he had with him: running away from his screams and being the one to ask why Jared killed his sister. I think that's important because killing Amelia was very much, imo, proof that Jared was acting out of despair and anger to the revelations about himself, killing his sister before her own world was shattered and erasing the family that was a lie.
I feel like also there's two things that get conflated but are very different, which is telling Paige the truth and recruiting her. Because Philip was the one that was planning to tell the kids back in the pilot, but in that case I think it was part of a whole "fresh start" he had in mind, as if the kids, like him, could simply embrace a new identity and be fine. Where as Elizabeth's plan is doubling down, telling Paige in order to keep the cycle going and get her deeper in. So I hope they don't forget that and make it as if it's only about telling the truth, but what they do with that truth.
Re: Jared and Paige
Date: 2015-01-04 07:30 pm (UTC)It's interesting that they're likely kind of at odds on both of those things separately. Philip may be apprehensive about telling her, but his real objection is to recruiting her. Elizabeth, on the other hand, may have qualms about telling her, but finds the idea of recruiting her really tantalizing.
-J
Jae's thoughts on Yousaf
Date: 2015-01-04 04:56 pm (UTC)I don't have a whole lot to say about this one, as it turns out. I will say that I liked it much more this time around than the first two times I watched it (in rapid succession) last year, though. I was really frustrated by the sloppy Young Pioneers error, but even more than that I remember feeling like I didn't understand why this semi-standalone episode had been inserted into a tightly packed season with a clear arc. I liked it more this time, though: no, the main plot wasn't as much a part of the overall arc as the rest of the season had been, but all of the character stuff certainly was, and there were even bits of plot that moved the larger story forward. And I found the Jared stuff so well done in retrospect--so sneakily written.
I also loved the line (re Paige, from Elizabeth): "She's never going to be ready for the real world if we don't get her ready." That resonates strongly with where things are likely to go in season three, and I wouldn't be at all surprised with this particular set of writers if they were already anticipating those resonances back then.
-J
Jae's thoughts on Stealth
Date: 2015-01-05 12:57 am (UTC)• The interaction between Paige and Elizabeth where Paige said "Can you give me one good reason why?" and Elizabeth responded with "Because I'm your mother!" is kind of hilarious because that actually is a good reason!
• It struck me once again here that one of the roles that Philip and Elizabeth play for each other is always validating the other one's work choices, especially when they feel insecure about them.
• I know lots of you are totally convinced of Nina's feelings for Oleg, but I admit that I am not yet. I think she certainly isn't repulsed by him, but she's very crafty, and I wouldn't put it past her to do exactly these same things simply because it could help get her what she wants/needs.
• The conversation between Arkady and Oleg struck me totally differently this time around. I read Arkady laying Nina's dire straits out on the table as him saying: "I can't help her at this point, so if there's any way you can, you should."
• Stan has only been an FBI agent for 14 years. What was he doing before that?
-J