If he had shot his parents and sister, and then backed out of the room horrified at what he had done, it would still be very, very hard to believe.
But to shoot them all, leave them sprawled across the bed in a pool of blood, bop on down to the pool and swim a few laps, bop back up the hallway without a care in the world, and then fake being horrified?
No sale.
Oofa, shark has been jumped. That was just awful.
Someone upthread commented about the parents might not immediately go into asskicking mode when their son pulls a gun out. Agreed with that. However, they must have been standing in a line so that one single bullet killed them both, otherwise there’s simply no chance he gets the second shot off.
If Paige pulls out a gun and points it at Philip with Elizabeth (and the son) in the room, then somehow kills Philip (which I deem unlikely, but whatever) then she’d not only have no chance to also kill Elizabeth and the son, she’d have about 1.5 seconds of life left before Elizabeth ended her.
Yeah, that was a really nice touch.
No sale, LOL…well said once again.
Yeahhhhh…it’s a tough one, I gotta admit. The writers did not cover themselves with glory here.
I think you’re right about the fact that anyone shaping a show would want to control the degree to which people are distracted by Guessing The Next Twist. (It must be frustrating to see viewers get mired in that mindset. And The Americans is not that kind of show–Shocking Reveals aren’t really the point.)
Even so…
Good catch about the pastor’s calm reactions.
I’m trying to think back to what that character’s dialogue has been…does he ever talk about Jesus and/or God? Hmn…
Stan not committing high treason to save Nina makes me dislike him even more. I’d much rather see Nina next season instead of Stan, but the best case scenario for her is life in a Siberian gulag (& not a luxury science gulag either). More likely she’d get a bullet to the back of the head. Then again I was Claudia was going to be sent home (at the very least) after her fiasco with her lover & thought Jared as a killer was ridiculous. So far all I know next season we’ll find out Nina’s the illegitimate daughter of Yuri Andropov or her plane crashed & she escaped into the Canadian wilderness.
Gosh, what is the best age to tell your kids that you and your wife are Russian spies? Too young and they’d blab to somebody the way kids do, too old and they’re too Americanized to want to go into the family business.
I missed the bit about Martha stuffing files into her purse during the dream sequence. (Maybe I was in still thinking about Vlad and Mrs. Beeman!) Does this mean, that at some subconscious level, Stan suspects Martha?
I, too, am stumped as to why Jared killed his family. Half of his dying words were not understandable, although I will say being shot through the neck, with your arteries pumping out huge amounts of blood might make clear speech difficult.
I also thought Larrick’s actions after getting to P&E were completely out of character. Here’s a guy who mows down anyone who gets in his way in a heartbeat, but he decides to turn in P&E. But as was said before, that would have made it hard to have a third season!
I feel badly for Paige. She’s done nothing but go about her life, and now she’s being pegged to become a KGB spy. Her life as she knows it may about to be over, but this twist in the story sets up a possible epic battle between P&E in Season 3. We immediately saw that briefly in the series premier when Phillip suggested they defect. He clearly is enticed by the lifestyle the USA has to offer. Plus, I think he’s beginning to question “The Cause”, unlike his wife, who is a textbook example of blind loyalty.
As for Paige, she’s in a difficult spot. I see several possible outcomes:
Unfortunately, in two of the three scenarios above, Paige may wind up dead. The only way out may be if, once she is told, she decides to blow the whistle on her parents, and run to the FBI, which offers protection.
My personal hope is that Phillip prevails in convincing Elizabeth to not force Paige into the KGB.
On a side note, how about that “second generation illegals” concept? Forcing unsuspecting kids to suddenly abandon the lives they have known, turn against their country and join the KGB? The only word to describe it is evil.
Really? I thought it was brilliant, even though it was a big twist, it seems that there was speculation out there that the kid did it. Even my husband asked “do you think the son did it?” He didn’t say why he felt that, it’s just that the timing of him finding them dead was convenient.
My understanding is that Emmitt and Leeann were told about the 2nd generation spy program for Jared and said no way, just as Phillip and Elizabeth first reaction about Paige. The centre doesn’t take no for an answer, so Kate was brought in to recruit Jared. Recruting methods that KGB female operatives know too well, Jared was seduced by Kate. A young kid getting mind blowing sex while being indoctrinated into the KBG ? Yeah, it doesn’t seem like a huge stretch to commit a heinous act. His parents had him live a lie for all of his young life. I think about his age, his immaturity, and the world his parents brought him into.
Hell we’ve got FBI lifer Stan having second and third thoughts about committing high treason over Nina, so a 16 year old falling in love with a fantasy of betrayal for a higher cause seems plausible to me.
I just can’t get over how mind-blowingly idiotic it appears to try and start recruting those kids as late in life as their teenage years. By that time the damage is already done, so to speak. Those kids are US – Americans; no ifs, ands, or buts. And their spy parents have to take their chances by hoping that the kids’ assumed loyality to family trumps their entire cultural upbringing. But you’re basically rolling the dice in every case.
They should have started soviet indoctrination as early as baby’s first word. At a time when children soak up every word their parents say. Because of the way the brain is wired at that age. At that age you are a learning machine, and everything your parents tell you, you absorb and make a part of your reality. Like, it becomes such a part of their reality that it is inexorable.
As the saying goes: „Give me the child until he is seven and I care not who has him thereafter.“
The KGB in this show should have learned this lession from, you know, each and every religion/cult ever invented.
The only reason he was suspected is because of the conservation of characters. It’s bad writing to spring a surprise villain on us at the very end we’ve never heard about before, so the murderer has to be a character we’ve seen. The only real options were Jared, Larrick, and possibly Claudia. Of the three I would have preferred Claudia. That could at least be explained in a non-stupid way.
Jared gunning down his entire family is just stupid.
I think it’s “bad,” not “badly.” Badly is an adverb that modifies the verb to feel, as in, you’re trying to feel for Paige but you’re doing a bad job of it. Bad is an adjective that describes the feeling you have for her. Substitute sad/sadly and it becomes more obvious.
/Obnoxious SDMB nitpickery
What a disappointing conclusion to the season.
Larrick is an unstoppable commie killing machine, executing Kate, their communications guy, and the woman who ran Jared’s rural safe house. But suddenly it becomes real important to him to bring in Phil and Elizabeth (and Jared too I suppose) alive? If he specifically wanted a prisoner to turn over for interrogation he already had Phil, why’d he need Elizabeth alive too? Plus he specifically stated that his motivation was revenge for the American servicemen they killed when they were only suppose to target the Nicaraguans. So why not just kill them both like he did to every other commie he’s had contact with?
I think if P&E were going to start trying to convert Paige, step one would be to admit that they were secret communists, WITHOUT admitting that they were KGB or Russian at all, and see how that goes. If they can convince her of the noble and ultimately inevitable success of global communism (which it would make sense as Americans that they would have kept secret) then step two can be “oh, and there’s one other thing…”.
I agree completely. Plus, he turned his back on Jared. Good SEAL tactics there, buddy! I didn’t even know Jared had a gun, and I was yelling “don’t turn your back!” But did he listen?
I was rooting for Larrick to kill them both, but then, I view the show as the struggle of a few under supported, underfunded, slightly less-than-competent FBI agents trying to stop the destruction of our way of life by hordes of ruthless, brutal, murdering Commie infiltrators. Stan and Larrick are the heroes, E&P are the villains.
It makes perfect sense. The only American who might have been interested in interfering with Nina being sent back to the USSR was Stan. She had zero value for the agency at this point. Had Stan interfered, two things would have happened: he would have immediately been considered a rogue agent by the FBI, who would want to know why he acted outside his authority; and the Russians would have made certain that the FBI knew exactly why he was interfering, which could have landed Stan in prison. Stan was smart to just let her go, and to choose heartache over what would surely have turned into a continuing blackmail effort by the Soviets. He may still take heat for what he did give them, but it was low-level stuff and probably not worth the Soviets’ time to go after him for.
That certainly makes very good sense to me - excellent approach, actually.
E-Dub discussed the best age to tell a child their parents are KGB agents and are hoping the child might also be interested in joining the KGB. I found that discussion very intriguing.
Aeon made the excellent point that if they are too young, children will invariably talk to their friends and tell them about their parents belonging to the KGB. But if they are too old, they will likely reject the concept of becoming a secret communist agent because they believe themselves to be American.
I don’t know the answer. But if I was a secret agent (for any government) and living in another county and I wanted one of my children to do the same, I would start at a very early age explaining how the government is fallable. I’d explain how bad leaders can cause very bad policies and that can lead to terrible results. I’d tell them it’s important for people to come to their own conclusions as to which government they chose to support and which system of government they chose to support.
Then, if I sensed they agreed it was up to them to choose, I would discuss the pros and cons of Capitalism vs Communism and see how the child reacted. I think that is the key. It all depends how the child feels about it. If they tend to lean towards a particular system (such as Capitalism vs. Communism), then there is a chance they could be converted to that system. But if they reject a system out of hand, it seems to me it would be a mistake to take the discussion any further because there’s a good chance they would turn around and report me to some federal agency as a suspected spy.
One of the creators of this show worked for the CIA and apparently, he did not just have a desk job but had some experience in the field. So, if this sort of thing has ever been done, I’d guess he would know how it was done in the past.
But, it would be very interesting to find out whether it has been done in the past and if so, what are the odds it can work? I would guess that it’s pretty tough to get this to work as most children seem to be influenced by their friends much more so than by their parents.
Maybe one good approach might be to find some older kids that the child will look up to and arrange to have them befriend the child and then work at them using these older “friends”?
Oooh, good idea. Yeah, I really like this, good call. Hopefully the writers are reading…although bummer for you if they just take your idea and don’t pay you!
This reminds me that at one point during the episode where Larrick was doing his best Terminator impression, I started thinking, unintentionally and out of the blue: “Fuck yeah! USA! USA! USA!”
Duh, because killing them would get him completely out of the mess, while turning them in would result in them being interrogated, and inevitably exposing his own treason to US authorities.
Oh wait…
Wait, what? The KGB (i.e. Claudia & Co.) knew about him regardless. They could have send him new handlers or a hit squad after him whenever they felt like it. Him killing the Jennings wouldn’t have changed a thing on that front. He was still an asset.
Mind you, him suddenly trying to come clean didn’t make sense at all. First of all, like mentioned upthread, from the moment he returned from Central America, up untill his very last scene in the show, Larrick was being portrayed as going on a straight-up “I’m taking everyone down with me in a fireball of glory” revenge mission. Going AWOL, giving no fucks what happens afterwards. And now he wants to cooperate with the authorities?
Second of all, if that’s the case, why wait till he got to the Jennings? It would have been a munch better idea to lead the FBI to the telephone cellar and the com officer therein. That guy knew much more than Phil and Lizzie. Like all the cover identities of the spies in his range (given that Elizabeth always introduced herself as Mrs. Jennings when speaking to him on the phone).
Sure, Larrick was the hunter - must catch them with my own bare hands - type and all. But he (the writers) clearly didn’t think this through.