Yep, I guess the whole point of EST is Philip trying to develop his own identity whereas Elizabeth is defined by The Cause. At this point, she has nothing to fill the void after retirement, and will have even less in a year or so when Gorby baby pops up.
You know, annoyed as I was with this season’s writing and acting, you’ve helped put it in a better light for me.
Glad to be of service.
Having worked with two russian programmers (one in 93, one in 2012), I beg to differ.
To me The Americans has become a different show in the last two seasons. The first three seasons were very high tension, nearly getting caught, a lot of new seductions, infiltrations… A lot of murders.
Season 4 began the decline. Apart from “the moment with Nina”, there was a lot of nothing happening. It was more about P&E getting burned out and the soviet empire declining, but I guess that is history and the inevitable end of the series…
I found Season 5 at least a bit better, but probably because now I’ve got used to it being a different show. Nothing particularly shocking this season. Barely any deaths. Barely any real reveals. I do kind of miss the day to day of the grind and intrigue of the Rezidentura, and Arkady too, but he was in last season so maybe I don’t really…
And I guess I’m still yearning for a bullet for Pastor Tim, and Paige too, while they’ve got the gun out and loaded…
I just finally got done watching Season 5 and thought I’d check in on this thread. I’m not going to go back over all that much, but the whole “good guy vs. bad guy” and “hero vs. villain” arguments awhile back made me think that two of the shows I liked most in recent years were “The Shield” and “Sons of Anarchy”. Both featured troubled characters that had positive and negative characteristics. You kind of rooted for them, but also rooted against them at the same time. In this show, it’s hard to not pull for Philip, while at the same time seeing that Elizabeth is ruthless to the extreme.
Like a lot of posters here, I didn’t like this season as well as previous ones. While the slow pacing doesn’t bother me, it was too slow at times, with scenes dragging out and not much happening. I also found the numerous story lines and characters hard to follow at times. Oleg is a good character, played masterfully by the actor.
That’s how I interpreted that scene, too. But those who pointed out that she might just be reminiscing about the past decade or more in the house might be right, too.