The Americans Season 4

Cafe Society
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“The Americans” - season four, episode one

SCENE ONE - FUNERAL HOME IN D.C.

Phillip and Elizabeth, both dressed in black, enter a funeral home to pay respects for the recently deceased Pastor Tim.

Phillip (to Pastor Tim’s widow): “We are so very sorry for your loss! How terrible it was that the good Pastor got shot in the back in the head by a mugger who jumped him in his own backyard!”

Pastor Tim’s widow: “Yes, not even our own backyards are safe from crime and violence any more.”

Elizabeth: “Well that’s life among the exploited masses in the capitalistic machine that is this bourgeoisie socie…” (she’s interrupted by a sharp, discrete jab in the stomach by Phillip.)

Phillip: “Err, Paige sends her regrets. She really wanted to be here, but…you know, she couldn’t miss her first week at her new boarding school.”

Pastor Tim’s widow: “It’s funny. Paige was at the youth ministry every night, but she never mentioned she planned to go away to school overseas.”

Elizabeth and Phillip smile weakly.

SCENE TWO - SIBERIAN GULAG PRISON

Nina, having failed in her mission at the science research station, has been sent back to her old cell. She’s idly watching cockroaches crawl around on the wall when there is a loud CLANK of the door unlocking.

The door swings open. Paige is thrust into the room, and the door swings shut with a definitive CLANG!!!

Nina: “Yeah, it’s a fair crop, kid.”

SCENE THREE - FBI HQ

Gaad: “Stan, where is Martha?? She hasn’t shown up for work for ages!”

Stan: “I miss my wife…Nobody loves me, not even the Mail Robot…”

Gaad: (Groans in exasperation)

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Well now, Don!

I never realized that you had such talent as a writer. Truly good potential!

I would like to encourage you to try a larger project. How about trying to write an entire episode?

I hope that you won’t mind if I ask what you meant by the statement, “Nina: “Yeah, it’s a fair crop, kid.””

What did you mean by that? Why would Nina say that? Was it directed towards Paige?

If you were locked up for many years with only cockroaches for company, what would you do to try and pass the time? I can’t imagine the cockroaches would provide any kind of interesting companionship. Although, they would be more interesting than Paige spouting stuff from The Bible. Those are just my personal thoughts. But, who knows?

After all, I never would have imagined that listening to Nina would have provided any interesting conversation. I didn’t think that Nina would have much of anything of interest to say - even if the only other source of conversation was from Paige. But, Nina was just so boring, her private nature would have just sealed the deal for her.

Oh, Nina. Ye be such a dope! How could you have doped things up so badly?

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I think at some point, the pastor is going to make a move on Paige. There’s a reason for that prediction, but I will stop there. Perhaps I’m being a little biased…there’s something about him I don’t like.

Also, how close will the geniuses at the FBI come to figuring this out? I’m still wondering why they couldn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together after Elizabeth beat up Gaad…but I guess we wouldn’t have a Season Four then.

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Interview with showrunners on season 4 (mild spoilers).

Seems they plan on five or six seasons and are plotting out how the show will end.

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I think it’s just weird to have an earnest pastor figure that doesn’t have a ‘dark secret’, so that’s why we’re all worried about the admittedly odd Pastor Tim. I look forward to Arkady continuing to be awesome and Stan and Oleg moving to Los Angeles to be buddy cops.

I’m really excited for this season!

My first crazy prediction:

Paige kills Pastor Tim or allows him to die, in order to save her parents.

My second crazy prediction:

Paige kills poor Martha.

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I didn’t read the spoilers. But, I hope at the end, maybe in the last episode, that the show runners actually remember that P&E aren’t nice people, that they aren’t gentlemen spies like Rudolf Abel, painting nice pictures while stealing harmless secrets. That they get their comuppance.

To quote DeNiro quoting Capone: I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!

And then I want Phillip’s car.

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Well the pastor trying to molest Paige would sure work out for Philip & Elizabeth. It’s a great lesson for Paige, and would probably make her a little less upset when they kill him. Elizabeth would just love to use it to put the kibosh on the whole Jesus thing. If Stan & Clark ever meet it’s game over for Phillip & Elizabeth, but that seems less likely to happen (at least by accident) now that Martha knows he’s a spy.

Very interesting. I for one look forward to Elizabeth taking her laundry & groceries with her on missions and wearing coats during her sex scenes. :slight_smile:

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I would organise them into a forum.

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I just don’t see how this ends well for the Jennings unless they somehow make it back to Russia. The chances they take are too great and luck always runs out. I would really enjoy seeing Elizabeth’s reaction to the fall of the Soviet Union though.

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Difficult to see how the pastor can’t be central to this season. He’s a beautifully constructed character and so difficult to play, imo;

The manipulative teen wants to use him as the alternative parent, as a third moral authority figure. Will it lead to divisiveness or bonding between the three adults … what I like about the set up is the Pastor is as fearless in his beliefs as Elizabeth is in hers.

Are they so widely apart though …

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Elizabeth would have a hard time adjusting as she’s basically red through and through. Phillip isn’t a dedicated commie, but I think more of a patriotic Russian, he’d adapt to service whatever regime was running the country.

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I’m constantly amazed at the depth of some people’s beliefs. About how much cognitive dissonance the human mind can handle.

You’d think that people like Elizabeth, even if they were taught from birth about the decadent Americans, about how bad life is here compared to mother Russia, might noticelife here really isn’t that bad. You’d think that, after living here basically uncontrolled for decades, that she might begin to notice that she had been lied to.

But nope, even after this long, she still loves the Soviet system to the core. And she’d kill Phillip in a heartbeat if he turned traitor. I think she’d kill Paige if she was told to.

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Well, lets start as we mean to go on - that’s not exactly correct :smiley:

Elizabeth, and her mother, feel they owe a debt of honour and are grateful.

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Yeah…Elizabeth and honor are synonymous. Tell that to the woman whose only crime was to by chance be working late one night.

“That’s what evil people say to justify evil things”

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Also, Elizabeth sees that while many, if indeed not most, Americans live lives of great material wealth, that wealth is “paid for” by the grinding poverty of others, oblivious to the fact that that aspect of things isn’t really all that different from that back in the USSR.

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So there were a lot of reveals this episode, but only Nina’s really took me by surprise. :wink:

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She was’nt kidding about having a husband? She was the Rezidentura’s bicycle for fucks sake.

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Exactly.

And also, that guy with the 'Cuda who had to be killed so some other patsy could get a job and steal tech secrets.

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I was a bit disappointed by this episode, although maybe that was just because my expectations were so high.

But I feel like they’re kind of teasing us with the Paige storyline, telling us so little after such a big buildup last season.

And biological weapons? That’s a case where the fact that we know real history means that we know it’s not going to end up really mattering one way or the other. The stakes are so high that, paradoxically, they’re not as high.
Not that it was BAD or anything, but it was a bit meh.

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I think it suffered from being the first ep of the season and a lot of “set-up” is going on. Are they abandoning the Kimmy storyline? It was a little pervy.

Also, funny that Stan thinks Phillip might be banging his wife. Between Elizabeth and Martha, it’s amazing he can walk, although it may be a while before Martha gets back in the mood.

Nina and “old spy guy” have become a drag to the plot. I love Nina’s character (and the actress who plays her, yowser) but unless they can get her into a place where she’s interacting with the main cast, they should let her go.