Sure, but that seems like a weird reason to say that they are literally going to hell. I’m an atheist myself, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an ethical system in which someone shows up in the afterlife to be judged, and St. Peter says “well, you lived a good life of love and good works… but you created a work of fiction in which some of the characters were of ambiguous morality, and you expressed sympathy with them. TO THE FIRES OF HELL WITH YE!!!”
Being sympathetic towards P&E, or even admiring them in some ways, does not mean excusing the horrible things they have done, nor does it mean judging that they are, on the balance, Good People. Nor does it mean taking on their level of good/evil as one’s own.
Well, I’m one of the ones saying that P&E are the bad guys, and I’ll say that if the showrunners disagree, then they, too, are the “bad guys”. While P&E may be the protagonists, they aren’t the good guys.
In a show created in America, for an American audience, P&E, and the whole illegals program, are truly the bad guys. They are attempting to subvert and help bring down the American system. They murder innocent people for their cause. They ruin people’s lives without any thought to achieve their goals. They would kill you without a second’s hesitation if you got in their way.
How in any view, other than that of a staunch Soviet, are they the “good guys”? Because they are “patriots”, fighting for the glory of the Motherland? That they believe in their cause, their system of government, that life in the USSR is the ideal? Moral relativism only works when both sides have at least something good about them. Might as well make a show about brave CSA spies working against the Union. Or even better, a comedy about a bunch of German POWs in a British camp, committing espionage during WWII. Wouldn’t that be great, watching them blow up factories and ammo dumps, murdering both soldiers and civilians, all for the good of the Fatherland? A laugh riot!
Before anyone snarks, I like the show. I actually prefer my villains to not be mustache-twirling, puppy-kicking baddies, but to have believable motivations. P&E have that. But don’t ever think they are the good guys.
Have to admit, I hadn’t thought about the end game in, say, 15 episodes time. Quite fun thinking about how we will leave these lives - how about if the next season jumped forward a decade
It has to be a truth that P&E don’t know the extent to which the USSR is in trouble, also that they would be shocked. Two questions:
Accepting Henry stays in the USA, would they take Paige to a dissolving society AND ideology, and
Would they go home themselves if they knew Soviet communism was ending …
I’m going to assume they could resettle, maybe in California or Canada or somewhere, without ever troubling the FBI radar.
You added this while I was composing my last response, hence the separate post.
WHY are you rooting for them? I am completely baffled. To use a familiar quote, that actually applies in this case, why do you hate America?
Removing the knowledge of how history turned out, rooting for P&E means you want the US system to be defeated. You want Soviet-style communism in the US, or at least, have the US status as a superpower removed. Aside from rooting for thir methods means approving in the killing of innocent people, rooting for them means you want our way of life to disappear (unless, of course, you aren’t American, then maybe you do.).
If you actually think they are the good guys, then consider that your self-assessment might be correct.
This is to micro for me. If you zoom out and consider the horrifying, murderous US policies in central America, for example - tens, maybe hundreds of thousands died in this era. Chunks of the world was a war zone by proxy - Vietnam had ended but Africa, MENA, etc, the US was imposing and supporting dictators on at least three continents in the early 80s.
Do you good-guy/bad-guy people who seem to see everything in simplistic black/white, hero/villain terms have the same kind of issues watching other shows, or is it just when it involves politics/nationalism?
The first part, “good guy/bad guy people” isn’t necessarily linked with the second “simplistic black/white”. Sometimes there really are bad guys. Do you think Denzel Washington’s character in Training Day is the “good guy”? Do you think The Bad Lieutenant is a hero? Do you root for Bloefeld’s plans to succeed? (After all, he is just trying to make his life better, just like anyone would.) Is there actually any doubt about this?
Just because America sponsored bloody coups in South America and fought in Viet Nam doesn’t make the US and the Soviet Union equally bad. They are objectively worse, there should be no doubt.
Well, if you’re counting the USA and USSR as characters and assigning good/bad guy roles to each, I’m right there with you. But that’s NOT what we’re talking about, and those other very different characters in the very different stories that you mention aren’t what we’re talking about, either.
We’re talking about the protagonists, P&E, and I’ve come to be interested to see how they evolve with their situation as it changes, but I don’t see them as either good-guys or bad-guys. I see them as people who’ve found themselves in a very interesting and intriguing situation who are playing the cards they’ve been dealt from their own fallible POV, sometimes understandably making mistakes. I sympathize with each of them more or less and wonder if/how I would act differently if I were indoctrinated and convinced to believe that the USSR/communism were the good guys and the USA/capitalism were the bad guys, then sent on a mission to start a family that lives for years and raises their children among the bad guys, leading the lifestyle of the bad guys. I’m not sure how I’d react in a similar situation, and you know what, that’s what makes it interesting! I might hope they choose to do what I *think *I would choose to do in their situation, but that’s not a requirement. I don’t have to try to judge them or hope that that they get caught, either. I just enjoy the ride while trying to relate to and understand their situation and motivations, like with any other protagonist in any other story.
It amazes me that anyone who watches TV this good finds it entertaining to watch any other way, but hey, POV and all that…
Wasn’t quite a chunk of the first series about Philip deciding maybe he’d defect and stay in America? I doubt he thinks of the Soviet Union as “Home” now.
The fact that this is a fictional story set in a real historical period, whose overall arc we know, changes things a bit, imho.
That is, we know with absolute certainty that the USA ends up winning and the USSR ends up falling. Therefore, while we might or might not “root for” P&E in the sense that we might think “gosh, I hope those two end up living a happy life somewhere” or “I hope they outsmart Stan and the FBI and figure out how to get a bug into the vault”, we also know that no number of individual successes from P&E will change the overall course of history.
That makes me a lot more comfortable sympathizing with P&E than I otherwise would be, if I was just evaluating the good-vs-evil levels of the USA vs the USSR, etc. And it adds an extra element of Shakespearean tragedy to their entire lives.
I disagree, the couple they just murdered were clearly P and E in 20 years, that was one of the threads of the episode. Some day they may find themselves old and begging an assasin not to pull the trigger.
Like you, I’m an atheist, so I wasn’t talking about anyone *literally *going anywhere.
I think this is absolutely fair. While I don’t feel the same way, I really can’t dispute your point. Which, I guess, makes me one of the “bad guys” as well–by proxy, at least!
(Aha, now I see you made a similar point in your next post.)
Keep in mind that I have made no secret of my admiration for Gorbachev-style Soviet communism.
These are interesting examples. I’ll throw a related but slightly different one back atcha. How about Vic Mackey?
I’m with you–I root for those crazy kids all the way–but I think it is totally fair for those on the other side to say “WTF, who cares if they didn’t ‘win’ in some grand geopolitical sense [although I’d argue recent events make that proposition murky], they have killed nice old ladies, ruined good friends’ and lovers’ lives, etc.!”
I think that’s a misreading. He only really proposed the idea of defecting in the pilot; and later, he was shown to be very angry when the U.S. tricked the Soviets with fake submarine plans that got hundreds of Soviet sailors killed. He has many times expressed sentiments that show he has a deep connection to his homeland, even if it is not simplistic jingoism and contains caveats and reservations.
How was Natalie’s husband like Philip in any way?
ETA: I seriously think our debate about morality is a great example of why The Americans has always struggled, compared to other critically acclaimed dramas, to win awards and get Nielsen ratings. At a fundamental level, these showrunners are, as I said upthread, “sick fucks”. (Look at the whole Kimmie storyline, which was presented in an erotic/romantic way.) A lot of critics are SFs as well, and enjoy “transgressive” comedy, literature, cinema, and TV. But the establishment types who vote on awards, and certainly the hoi polloi who watches TV (even a lot of the subset of more erudite viewers) are not SFs and are made uncomfortable by the show’s weird moral centre.
It’s crazy how differently people see this show … I guess it’s testament to the writers and showrunners.
I got a lot of likes on Facebook this week for some points I made on this epi and it struck me the majority of people on there are women. Not so much in this thread.
Reminded me again how diverse the views are on the show - the family stuff plays big to a lot of people.
I’ve always seen Phillip treating his mission like a job - he doesn’t like it but it pays the bills. His flashbacks to his childhood show it was pretty shitty (presumably even by Soviet standards) and now he’s got this awesome life in America. Why on Earth would he want to go back there? In some ways I almost get the impression he keeps doing the KGB Agent thing because he doesn’t want to go back.
I got a sense he was mad about the submarine plan because a lot of people died unnecessarily and through no fault of their own - just as he was pissed because the William Virus got weaponised; they’d been lied to.
Elizabeth is the one who keeps going on about helping Russia and fighting for social justice etc - she was the one who took Paige to Europe to meet Elizabeth’s dying grandmother and has expressed an interest in what’s happening in Russia.
It’ll be interesting to see where the series goes, though.
There is the EST thing as well, so maybe Philip is searching for more meaning to his life - something beyond the bounds of nation or political systems.
We also know something about both of their upbringings. The difference seems to be Philip’s was very harsh - but also that bulllying moment we saw at one point. Elizabeth, however, feels a huge debt to the state because she and her mother didn’t suffer, or at least survived (her father was shot as a deserter, iirc). She probably feels a huge emotional bond with the homeland.
They both had a very harsh upbringing. Unlike Philip, she was from a city that was on the front during the war and nearly destroyed. (as she was born during WWII, her memories are likely of a city/country that was in ruins after a foreign attack). She’s mentioned before that her mother often didn’t have enough food for the both of them. And that when her mother was sick (some kind of extended illness), a teenage/preteen Elizabeth was her sole caretaker.
That said, Elizabeth doesn’t seem to have gotten in violent fights with the other kids in town - she was probably just shunned while Philip was a target for physical violence.
It bordered on being over the top obvious. it’s a show that really rewards close attention and there are very few scenes that aren’t there for a reason.
