Where are they now? Thirty years later. Phillip and Elizabeth, their covers blown, manage to flee the country with their daughter Paige. Henry, realizing something is amiss, gives them “the slip” and gets to the authorities. They have to leave him behind. Stan writes a book, “The Spies Next Door”, and it’s a best seller. Phillip becomes a “spy emeritus” and helps to train new agents. Elizabeth dies of natural causes, perhaps of some ailment that could have been treated in the west. Paige, an American citizen, becomes a “cause celeb” and is eventually allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Henry becomes an FBI agent. There is understandable reluctance on the part of the Feds to hire him but after he makes an impassioned plea that he wants to take the place of the agent his parents killed, they relent.
I’ve got no guesses about the status of Martha and Nina, assuming that they’ve survived that long.
Wow! That is some great imagination you have. I’m not doubting any of it.
Although, I wonder why would P&E go back to Russia when they could have stayed in the USA and become quite wealthy. I can see several pros and cons and so maybe E would have chosen to go back to Russia.
But, wouldn’t P’s natural proclivity have been to stay in the USA?
And Paige. Wouldn’t see prefer to stay in the USA? I can see that if you suggest that Paige accepted what her mother told her that working for Russia was working for the greater good of the entire world, I could accept that Paige would have believed that.
But, I’m impressed with your wonderful imagination and I’d love to hear more if you ever want to post more.
I wanted to know if “rents” was an acceptable shorthand for “parents” and so I Googled “shorthand for parents” and found a list of words and terms and their shorthand equivalents. However, the words and terms were described as those needed by parents to understand their children.
I can imagine how Paige could have come to the belief that working for Russia was working for the benefit of the entire world - whether she came to that belief on her own or because her mother suggested that to her.
In thinking more about Paige, I have concluded that that she is really not as clever as we originally thought. AAMOF, Paige seems easily led to certain beliefs by other people. She seems to want to follow other people and let them do her thinking. IMHO, that is a very tragic character flaw and does not bode well for Paige’s future. I would guess she will likely be doomed to a very unhappy life. Looking back at some of her decisions, I think she has made some very foolish decisions and will likely make more without good guidance - like guidance from her parents - and definitely **not **from the church and not from the KGB.
But the question is not “what percentage of teenage boys kill their families”. It’s “what percentage of teenage boys, who were raised by spies, and who are now being sexily recruited by a sexy spy, and who then want to work doing spy work, and who then get into a huge shouting match with their parents about it, and who have access to a gun, kill their families”.
Furthermore, we don’t know whether there were warning signs or anything. We did see Jared looking cool as a cucumber as he came back from swimming and then looking genuinely horrified, and I agree that that is in retrospect a weak point, but not one so weak as to ruin the entire plotline, at least for me.
Speaking for myself, when I was 16, the woman recruting me would not have to be all that sexy.
Kate was a very pretty woman. She was not a real hot sex lady. But she sure didn’t have to be. I almost lost my mind when I met a rather plain girl but one who was willing to have sex with me. I was a goner. I would have done anything for her. Maybe not murder. Not murder of anyone - let alone my parents. But there would not be a whole lot of difference there. I would not have murdered anyone - never mind whether they were my parents or not.
However, I would have given up most anything and trashed most anything that I held dear or important to me to have been with this girl. I don’t know how to explain it exactly. But I had def lost my mind. I was willing to do most anything in this world to have remained in a sex relationship with her.
I was in first year university at that time and completing my university degree was probably the most important thing in the world to me at that time. But, if she told me that she needed me to move with her to Moscow, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. I would have been on the next airplane to Moscow. No doubt about it.
I don’t know if that is typical of 16 year old boys or not. She was the first sexual gf that I ever had and I was just … what is the expression … Coo Coo for Coa Coa Puffs! Is that it?
Well, that pretty much describes my state of mind at that time.
I think you would find many works of fiction that are generally well-regarded (as ‘literature,’ ‘good writing,’ ‘classic,’ ‘the canon,’ etc.), would have to be reclassified as Bad Writing if your attempt at a rule were to be enforced. (That is, if plot developments with a 0.2% chance of happening were to be called acceptable in Good Writing, but plot developments with a 0.000002% chance of occurrence were to be disallowed.)
It’s human to wish that things we don’t like would be acknowledged by all as being Objectively Bad. That is, it’s a human characteristic to want to see our own personal tastes elevated and enshrined as The Rules (of ‘good writing’ or of anything else, really).
It’s human and understandable to want this. But that doesn’t mean we can reasonably expect to get it.
Your attempt to classify the Jared plot development as Objectively Bad Writing with the rationale that fiction can judged by its adherence to statistical likelihood, is doomed by the long list of well-regarded fiction that contains statistically unlikely situations and developments.
And don’t forget, successfully hide and also retain the murder weapon. That was the gun he had in the season ender. He was carrying it the whole time, apparently, yet he couldn’t have had it when he was interviewed by the police. I’m sure the police would at least consider him as a suspect. So he was able to hide it, and yet retrieve it before he left.
He’s quite the criminal mastermind. If the next season showed him to have the full support of Kate in the planning and execution (heh heh) of the crime, that would help make it more believable.
It’s certainly possible that even if Kate didn’t collaborate with him regarding the planning of the murders, they had been spending two weekends a month for 6 months having 6-hour sexy-time-plus-tradecraft-training sessions, and he already had lots of information bubbling around in his brain about that kind of stuff.
At some level I guess it just comes down to what level of plausibility you’re willing to accept, and how you feel about that-isn’t-explained-but-I-can-fanwank-it vs that-isn’t-explained-and-can-not-possibly-be-fanwanked. There are shows that are a lot less “real” than The Americans where implausibility just drives me up the wall (Sherlock, for instance), but for whatever reason this particular incident gets a pass from me. It probably helps that the scene outside the hotel room was 20 episodes previous to the revelation of what happened, meaning that many of the precise details about how Jared acted had faded in my memory. And if that’s a technique that the writers used in order to be able to get me to enjoy a plotline despite a level of implausibility that might otherwise have bothered me, well, hey, more power to them, because it worked.
I don’t see any way this analysis applies to either one of us more than the other. Your desire to see this thing you like acknowledged as objectively good is over the top, even going so far as to compare it to great literature.
You don’t seem to understand how statistics work based on how you tacitly equate 0.2% and 0.00002% as both being “statistically unlikely.” They are not both statistically unlikely. One is “common”, and the other is “every newspaper in the world is running the story.”
Buillshit.
Bear in mind that what essentially happened in the show is that a known (secondary) character turned out to be a serial killer despite the show not being about or even related to serial killers.
Jared was not a serial killer, of course, but in terms of how extreme a psychopath he must be based on how the show presents him, we’re talking Ted Bundy / Jeffrey Dahmer level psychopath.
On a show like Hannibal or L&O: SVU where psychopaths are what they’re about, sure, fine, whatever. The Americans is not one of those shows. May as well have Spiderman come swinging down from the trees to save Phillip & Elizabeth for how believable it is to have Jared turn out to be a family-murdering psychopath.
EDIT: A better example than Spiderman – which is clerly hyperbole – would be if Crosby’s wife Jasmine turned out to be a KGB agent on Parenthood.
So a work of fiction that features a serial killer is respectable ONLY if the serial killer is one of the “main” characters (however you define “main”)?
Is that really the ‘rule’ that you’re trying to establish?
You need to clarify that point if we’re to continue. Your post is all over the place–discussing shows that are “about” serial killers, yet Jared not being a serial killer, and when Spiderman might swing down from trees and…well, it would be just as unkind to call it “buillshit” as it would be to highlight your typo (since we all make typos from time to time). So, I guess my request is: are you standing by what seems to be your claim that:
a work of fiction that features a serial killer is respectable ONLY if the serial killer is one of the “main” characters (however you define “main”)?
And in re your edit: *The Americans *isn’t a comedy (or even a “comedic drama” as I’ve seen Parenthood described). *The Americans *is often dark; violence and death are frequently-seen elements.
To have a ‘comedic drama’ character suddenly be a spy…well, perhaps that could be played for comedy, but it would be black comedy at best. Certainly that sounds like a complete change of tone for Parenthood.
But for The Americans–in which the protagonists’ concerns over their children are a major theme–to have a ‘parallel’ family in which a teenage child turns out NOT to be ‘fine’ (as Philip and Elizabeth hope their children will be), but instead deeply damaged–how is that a change in tone? How is that a departure from the themes of the show?
Whatever else you can say about them Phillip and Elizabeth are, in essence, working two jobs, that adds up to a lot of parental neglect. Add on top of that the lying that being spies entails…
I was ambivalent about the resolution, but the FBI is still looking for the killers so who knows if that might lead somewhere.
I don’t know what some of you are watching but “serial killer”? You’re denying all the subtlety and nuance in the show.
Kate recruited Jared after his parents refused. She turned him into a fanatic in months – which, as was alluded to, can happen if the person is looking for something. We saw Jared’s focus in his final moments (about what to tell Kate, and the Centre (of him essentially dying for the cause)).
When his father threw him up against the wall, in what was an ongoing and intractable family feud, the neo-fanatic took over and he killed his parents “for the greater good”. The second generation would of course be far more important than simple illegals. As the fanatic said “My parents didn’t love me. My family was a lie. My parents didn’t understand”. Kate had indoctrinated him completely. There was no remorse because he had done the right thing.
The thing I remember most about S1 is that marvellous montage at the end (Games without Frontiers) but this one, with the children being brought into play after so much time and effort has been spent of shielding them, was so smart. Jared, and now Paige, “belongs to the cause”, and that’s beautifully chilling.
It is and this is an excellent summation. It is a completely plausible explanation. Rather than going down the rabbit hole of serial killing, that the naysayers want you to believe happens hardly ever in a lifetime, even though we continue to have mass murders that happen both randomly and domestically, one only needs to point to what extremism does to entire generations of young people who get indoctrinated to kill and die for a cause.
I think in the end, Phillip will prevail in the battle for the future of Paige, and—tempted by the life America has to offer—defect, as he wanted to do in the first episode. That is unless Elizabeth doesn’t kill him first when she learns his intentions. Since she is so fanatically dedicated to the cause, she would do so if so ordered by The Center. Remember, she’s already ratted him out once.
Phillip will go on to be an informant for the US government. He will remain friends with Stan.
Elizabeth will either be caught, and spend the rest of her life where she belongs…in an American prison…or she will be killed at some point in the series’ final episode.
Paige and Henry go on to live typical American lives. Paige as a political activist, and I like the idea of Henry becoming an FBI agent.
Stan finishes his career at the FBI, retiring following his capture of Elizabeth–possibly with Phillip’s help. Phillip, having been repulsed by Elizabeth’s willingness to make Paige a KGB agent, will have no problem turning her in.
Nina will be eventually executed by the Soviet authorities for treason.
Martha will be dead, likely murdered by Clark.
Gaad–actually one of my favorite characters in the show–is retired after serving as Director of the FBI.
You have made some very interesting predictions. I’m going to refrain from making very many of my own. I sure would like to make some about Paige. But I fear that would take up a whole lot of spcce.
The one thing I would ask you to consider concerns the show co-creators - Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields. Seems to me they have some deep-seated issues with the CIA and FBI - especially with their intelligence programs.
As a result, if this show has enough advance notice of their ending, so they can plan the finale, I seriously doubt the American government would win out on most of the issues as you have predicted. I think the two co-creators would want to have this show end on a note of warning about the American agencies. At the very least, the results would probably be mixed.
I seriously doubt the American agencies would come out ahead of the Russians in most every category.
There is ZERO chance that the son of a known deep-cover Soviet spy could become an FBI agent. Some kind of consultant on psychological issues in which is childhood comes in handy, maybe, but I guarantee that the US government will NEVER put classified or sensitive information in his hands if they know who he really is.