For some reason the first 15 minutes of this episode didn’t record. Can somebody recap that bit?
You can watch it online at fx.com. You have to enter your username and password from your online account with your cable provider.
Thanks.
These podcasts are so excellent: SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds
I’m caught up with this. Holy shit, this show is good. The last 3 episodes have been so incredibly tense that the run time just seems to fly by. The verbal bombs being unleashed within the family, especially from Elizabeth, and the acting and direction that’s gone into those scenes in particular has been incredible.
The redrawing of the differences between Elizabeth and Phillip (most principally in the differing methods of dealing with the end of a source’s usefulness - allowing, way back in S1, Gregory to commit suicide by cop or, just now, with Liz taking a bottle to the head of her source rather than arranging an exfiltration, showing she’s not changed much, if at all) lead me to think there is no way this can end well for the two of them. I reckon one of them is probably going to kill the other.
The only thing that is slightly distracting is the game’s that are having to be played to disguise Keri Russell’s pregnancy, but otherwise this show really is as good as the critics crack it up to be.
I’m pretty sure Paige is thisclose to being OK with offing Pastor Tim.
Yeah, I think she isn’t liking the extensive church involvement now that she has little say in the matter. Sort of her own personal purgatory. I think both kids are pretty darn good young actors. They don’t overplay their parts.
Boy, did Elizabeth light up Paige when she wanted to skip the youth group meeting! No backtalk, sighs or rolled eyes from Paige that time.
I’m not sure that it is Pastor Tim she’s increasingly disaffected with.
Well, you’re right. Paige has a lot of stress these days on the home front.
Maybe, but that scene at the end with the whole family watching the tv together looked very cosy. Plus Paige didn’t seem too enamoured hanging with Tim and Alice at the crazy golf.
I’d quite like her to take an interest in self defence classes …
Yeah, but the scene watching David Copperfield was seven months ago. In their present, she is high-fiving and smiling with Pastor Tim and Alice at golf (but that could very well be an act), and when she gets home, she breezes right by Elizabeth without acknowledging her, tries to make it upstairs without talking to either parent and then gives her report as quickly and emotionless as possible. If there’s any coziness in the Jennings house, I don’t think it involves Paige and her parents at the moment.
Plus, if you want to call the David Copperfield scene cozy, keep in mind that what set up that Kodak moment is literally an illusion. Make of that what you will.
It was clearly an act, as her face fell from smiling to miserable as she turned away from them and picked up her ball.
She stops smiling when she picks up the ball, but I don’t think she then looks miserable. To me, it just looks like she turned from smiling to something more ambiguous. The look on her face could just as easily be interpreted as one of regret because she resents her parents for making her spy on people she still genuinely likes, or she resents herself even.
I don’t think she likes the pastor, his wife, or her parents at this point.
That’s a weekly must-listen for me as well. I have tried several other podcasts about the show (as I wanted one that really discussed each episode in depth, which that one does not do), and I ended up really liking this one. (It’s also on iTunes, or available by searching with your favorite podcasting app, of course.)
Fully agree! How long ago did you start? Was this a super binge watch?
Ha, I was thinking something similar. It occurred to me that if Paige hadn’t fessed up to having spilled the beans, her parents would have had to go on pretending they didn’t know. Which, I think, probably would have meant killing Tim and his wife. Right? Or had they decided not to go through with it before Paige told Elizabeth? I can’t remember for sure, but I don’t think so.
So if Paige knew all this, I do suspect at least part of her would be like “shit, I shouldn’t have admitted it, in which case I’d be free of this constant daily burden”. For her to just come up with the “can we just kill them?” idea on her own (since her parents obviously won’t broach the subject) seems unlikely, but it *would *be funny. Maybe if we had longer left in the series to watch the transformation. After all, on Breaking Bad, Walt went from agonizing over killing someone who had tried to kill him (and almost not going through with it), to cold-bloodedly arranging the deaths of a whole slew of people just to cover his tracks, and every incremental step along the way seemed earned–except maybe the berries.
I like this! 
They had decided to go through with it before Paige told Elizabeth. Elizabeth asks Paige to look after Henry that night because she and Philip have to work late, which is, ostensibly, to liberate Pastor Tim. But then after a short while Paige comes back downstairs and confesses she told Pastor Tim. Then they know that if she knows that they know, she’s too smart to think Pastor Tim having an unfortunate accident that night is really just an unfortunate accident. But then I think once they find out that Pastor Tim in turn blabbed to Alice, making the whole thing that less manageable, that’s when they say, “Fuck it, we’re going to EPCOT.” But then, of course, that got cancelled. It’s like the KBG is the Dread Pirate Roberts and Pastor Tim is Westley.
I’m not sure that’s fair.
IIRC (it’s been a long, long time since I watched it) with Gregory, the three of them were trapped in a room and Elizabeth was trying until the very last minute to find some way to get him out alive, but by that point there really just wasn’t any way to do so. (Gregory also knew what he was doing. He knew they were KGB, he’d already chosen not to go to Russia, and he made the call to go out the way he did.)
Lisa was planning to turn herself (& Elizabeth & Philip) in the next time she had a chance. That would lead to an investigation, which they couldn’t risk right then. Elizabeth tried to talk her out of it, she tried to get her to even leave the house, and Lisa wouldn’t do that voluntarily. Her choices were to drag her out of the house (creating a scene) and keep her under lock and key until they could get her out (something that Lisa would fight against every second of the way; because they wouldn’t be able to take her kids, too) or to kill her.
Philip could get Martha out because they had time to get Martha out and Martha was mostly willing to go. I don’t think Elizabeth had that option with those two specific assets.
My take on Paige was that she felt terrible reporting on the pastor and his wife and that this guilt had ruined her enjoyment of her time with them. I really like how Henry is completely oblivious to all the drama swirling around him in the house, one day the whole thing is going to blow up and he will just be floored.
I will be very very disappointed in the show if Paige decides she is OK with the pastor and his wife being killed. That would be preposterously out of left field and out of character. People do not suddenly have no problem with the taking of a human life.
Maybe, maybe they could write a “will no one rid me of this meddling priest” scene where Paige expresses frustration about the situation and P&E misinterpret it as her being OK with killing pastor Tim… but for Paige to actually seriously desire that would take an enormous amount of change in her character and/or situation.
This is The Americans, remember. I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers had her decide to murder Henry, Philip and Elizabeth instead. That’s what teenagers do, don’tcha know.