What part of my post said anything about commies? You’re just home-schooling them in history, and instilling a distrust of the American government, which my Republican friends seem to think is extremely compatible with patriotism. You mention commies only when they’re approaching college age, IF you judge that the indoctrination has taken, and that they’re very likely to be receptive to the idea.
Tony:
From a previous post—#858 to be precise—responding to your comment that the Paige storyline is unrealistic:
I guess we are all talking about it because, within the alternative reality that is The Americans–it’s a major story line.
In the real world, though, I agree with your assessment that the KGB would have taken a different path altogether. They would have made some attempt to instill some sort of Russian/Soviet loyalty from the get-go…perhaps with both Paige and Henry.
For me, one of the funniest lines of the series comes from an early episode of the show. Henry is pretty jacked up about seeing one of the American astronauts who went to the moon, and Elizabeth says something like “being first to the moon is great, but Russia being the first into space was an accomplishment, too.”
Priceless!
Yes. This is really bothering me, as I think so highly of the show–and want it to have a successful fourth season. If any critical remarks I make dissuade any potential viewer from giving the show a try, I would feel regret. But I’m so annoyed by the fact that the Paige storyline is a classic Idiot Plot. It can move forward only through the colossal stupidity of the main characters.
Philip and Elizabeth are well aware that their daughter is not only invested in the usual trappings of an American capitalist life, but is also emotionally involved–deeply!–with a man who is bound to oppose the aims and goals of an atheist nation (the USSR or any other).
They are also well aware that their daughter, like virtually all fourteen-year-olds, may be a nice enough person fundamentally, but is currently handicapped in her reasoning capacity by the fact that she is totally self-absorbed. She is simply unable to see anything from a viewpoint other than her own. If her parents are Mean To Her, there can be no explanation other than that they are MONSTERS! (etc. etc.)
Yet they decide that things will work out just swell if they put their very lives into her hands. They somehow believe that she will magically put aside her allegiance to Pastor Tim and to Jesus and that she will suddenly realize that she isn’t the center of the universe and that she needs to be careful with her new knowledge. Instead (as I’ve said earlier in this thread), she will “reason” that if she says to Tim “you can’t tell anyone,” that will mean that he won’t tell anyone.
Of course he will tell. He’s an American and he will see it as his duty. The fact that he wants to make the USA a better place (by questioning American military actions) does not mean that he is pro-USSR. (How could anyone have thought such a thing?)
Elizabeth and Philip had to have known all this. But the writers chose to have them hold the Stupid Ball anyway.
They could have had P&E tell Paige “just enough”…P&E could have implied that they are working for a covert agency “to make the world a better place” (something that from P&E’s point of view is quite true)–but they could have implied to Paige that it was an American agency. There was no need to bring Russia into it until after enough time had passed to see how Paige would react to the ‘we provide intelligence to help make the world a better place’ disclosure.
But: no.
It seems obvious that the writers are setting up a situation in which Philip–recently established as being soul-sick over the murder part of his job–will be confronted by Pastor Tim. Tim will probably go to P&E before going to the authorities (as that would provide more drama than would a straight ‘Tim calls the FBI and then P&E are arrested’ storyline).
And there Paige will be, looking all guilty/self-righteous over having told Tim, and Tim, looking for clarification before proceeding to call the cops, and Philip–confronted with the need to commit violence once again. (If not kill Tim outright, then kidnap Tim’s wife and threaten to kill her if there’s any hint that Tim has gone to the cops.)
It all seems to be what this show has successfully avoided for so long: contrived.
I very much agree with that excellent analysis, Sherrerd.
The USSR are also engaging in the arms race so that bad mark cancels out the one against the US. Combine that with Christianity being essentially illegal in the USSR as well as the right to protest in the first place makes it insane to think that Tim will be ok with Russian spies. I was 19 in 1983 so not much older than Paige. This way, way too late in history for even the most anti-US government Americans to think that the USSR was the better of two evils.
I’m sorry but I don’t recognise anything here as being of Paige.
The daughter forced an admission out of her parents. She only knows they “help their people”. Russian people. Not surprisingly she can’t handle the size of the lie - it’s most of her life.
Paige is basically in mourning for a life she never had. She feels pain and anger and confusion. Hell, even the old lady she went to Europe to try and bond with was a cold, non-English speaking alien.
But really, she is in mourning, justifiably so. And now she is reaching out to family she can trust, who haven’t lied to her - her Christian family.
I agree with almost everything Sherrerd and hajario have said.
Up The Junction, I’ve agreed with you on some things and disagreed with you on others, but respectfully I have to disagree with your assessment of Paige.
I mentioned this previously, and I don’t want to make a big deal of it, but I have some experience in that I’ve gone through the process of parents having been deceptive. Whether you have had similar experiences, I cannot say since I don’t know you. But I can tell you what I experienced was no TV show, it wasn’t writing a blog or tweeting with some actors.
It was real life.
As such, I can tell you–as a result of personal experience–that Paige is not “in mourning”.
She’s pissed her parents have been lying to her.
Let’s not forget Samantha Smith, who may well be featured as a plot point next season.
I maintain that it would not be possible to turn, on demand, a well-adjusted American teenager into a Soviet spy. By the time their old enough to show the needed discretion, it’s already too late to get them ideologically.
What about Jared? Hardly well adjusted, QED.
I know I may be treading into “no true Scotsman” territory here, but back in the pilot (or one of the first few episodes, at any rate), Phillip said, “This place doesn’t turn out Socialists.”
Tell that to my mom, my dad, my grandfather…
I’ll have to disagree with you there.
Even granting all your objections about the Paige storyline, last season’s Jared storyline was infinitely more contrived.
Hot-headed teens …
I would just like to add the following from my personal experience:
I believe Paige is also somewhat shocked to find herself in this situation where her parents have lied to her and now they are extremely vulnerable. She can arrange to have them suffer like they have made her suffer. I think that is probably all I need to say.
They are vulnerable and in they are in her hands. If they don’t behave in a way that she would like them to behave, she can bring down the wrath of the Gods upon their heads and part of her would very much like to do that as a sort of retribution for what they have done to her.
Personal experience? I’ve been there - not exactly like Paige. But close enough to understand how she feels. Part of her feels extremely angry towards her parents and another part of her feels extremely “justified” to find herself in this position. It’s a very heady time for a 14 year-old.
Well stated, Charlie…same here, and that was the point of my post. Experience is in fact, the best teacher.
Good point as well. While we do have socialists in this country (Bernie Sanders is one of them and he may run for President!), I don’t think there are enough to make the country turn in that direction ideologically…and that was especially true during the time period of the series.
What you were saying would certainly be valid if Paige had totally suspected nothing, and P and E had decided, after long and careful thought, that they should, out of the blue, tell Paige everything.
But that’s not what happened at all. They desperately wanted to keep their secret, because they’re not idiots, but Paige forced the issue. Now they are VERY worried that she won’t keep their secret. But they also love her.
I think it also makes sense that from their perspective, they want and need the life they have chosen to be a defensible one. They HAVE to believe that the USSR is a force for good, because if it isn’t, then all the terrible things they’ve done have not in fact been for a good purpose. So it’s very believable that they’d fool themselves into thinking that Paige might end up seeing their side of things.
Well, the good news is she hasn’t gone crazy and gone swimming, having killed her whole family.
Paige didn’t force them to disclose “we’re Russian.”
They wanted to level with her enough to keep her love and trust–but they didn’t have to tell her as much as they did. Notice that they didn’t tell her everything. They did draw the line at telling her that they frequently have sex with strangers and that they have killed quite a few people. They made choices about how much to disclose to her.
So they could have chosen to put the emphasis on why they were working covertly. There was no need to bring in the ‘who we’re working for and where we’re from’ part of the story, yet. They could have said something like:
If Philip and Elizabeth had said something along these lines, Paige would still have felt wounded—because there is nothing they could have said that would have gotten her over being a 14-year-old who is certain that her feelings are the most important consideration in the universe. But she would at least have felt flattered that they were finally talking to her “as an adult,” and eventually she might have grown up enough to be told the entire truth, without making that adolescent assumption that it was all a conspiracy to make her, personally, unhappy.
Having P&E hit her with the big shocker “we’re not Americans” meant that her eventual choice to blab to Pastor Tim was a foregone conclusion. As P&E were smart enough to know. The writers had to turn P&E into delusional idiots for that one scene; it had not been previously established that they could sometimes be delusional idiots, so this came out of the blue. And it’s hard to forgive the writers for that.
The first thing to say is E has been given the lead role with Paige and P is asking how it went.
If the issue is E’s judgement then, sure, she got it catastrophically wrong with Paige.
The question is how did that happen? The best I have - much expanded on you-know-where - is E has a blind spot/Achilles heel when it comes to religion, or at the very least it’s meaning for her daughter.
In that regard, key scenes are Paige praying in the bathroom and when they were leaving the airport on the way home (not a liar/everyone lies).
I agree with those points, up_the_junction. I just think the writers failed to adequately establish the “Elizabeth is delusional about Paige’s likelihood of deep-sixing her religious faith” point.
In other words, we can sort of ret-con it to explain away the stupidity of E telling Paige that they are Russians. (Which is bound to stand out to Paige; the ‘trying to improve the world’ aspect of P&E’s lives is completely overshadowed by the Ruskies aspect—as P&E should have known.)
But a well-written show doesn’t require viewers to come up with such explanations. The explanation for character choices should be obvious and well-established, long before the choice was made.
I can see why the writers didn’t want to have Elizabeth saying things like “every reasonable person would choose Communism over the false comfort of religion” or “Paige will see that the Jesus myths are just that, and give them up, as soon as she starts looking at the virtues of USSR policies and goals.” Having Elizabeth say such things would have established that she was delusional about what would happen when Paige learned that P&E are USSR operatives.
But it would also have made Elizabeth look loony. Viewers would have no investment in the question of what will happen to P&E and to their marriage and family, because we would have contempt for Elizabeth.
So we didn’t really get any firm support for the idea that E was delusional enough about the attractions of Soviet Communism to think that Paige would suddenly switch allegiances–and we are left marveling at how stupid E was to tell Paige “we’re Russians.”
I don’t know, it feels pretty clear E has moral a guide in her version of political ideology, P is having a crisis and leaning towards quackery/his gut/EST, and Paige has religion.
There does seem to be a general assumption (Gabriel, Claudia, the Center, E) that Paige’s recruitment is merely a process. Perhaps none of them have considered the power of evangelism.
Agreed!