# The Americans: Season 6 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 28, 2018, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379 "2018-03-28T22:50:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 33
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/641 "2018-06-01T19:47:32Z")
> [@golffan1963](#): > > A co-worker of mine said she rooted for Dexter because “he had a code…he only murdered people who deserved it”. The trouble with only killing people “who deserve it” is, who determines “deserve”? You start down that path, and sooner or later you’ll be doing nothing but killing the “deserving”. "A man could kill from sunup to sunset and still his work would never be done. " ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/642 "2018-06-01T20:41:53Z")
Philip seeing the happy family sitting the restaurant and knowing he will never, ever have that again with his family was heartbreaking. The show was always about a marriage so we should have realized this was the ending we would get. Poor Stan. I don’t believe P and E “played” him. I think other than lying about the severity of what they did to keep the situation from escalating, Philip was truthful about how he felt about Stan. In hindsight I get why we didn’t get one but I would have loved to see flash forwards to how everyone fared in the 90s. ---
**Author:** ![Sefton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Sefton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sefton)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/643 "2018-06-01T21:03:02Z")
Anyone who thinks Stan’s behavior was out of character needs to remember his relationship with poor [Nina](http://theamericans.wikia.com/wiki/Nina_Krilova). Stan has a long history of putting his feelings before his job. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/644 "2018-06-01T21:28:30Z")
What many forget is that Stan’s job before Counter Intelligence was as an undercover agent infiltrating white supremacist gangs; he came to the job already jaded and probably had expended his cache of being able to surpress his feelings. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/645 "2018-06-01T23:02:19Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > Philip seeing the happy family sitting the restaurant and knowing he will never, ever have that again with his family was heartbreaking. > > The show was always about a marriage so we should have realized this was the ending we would get. > > Poor Stan. I don’t believe P and E “played” him. I think other than lying about the severity of what they did to keep the situation from escalating, Philip was truthful about how he felt about Stan. Yeah, I was actually shocked by the close reading the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum gave that scene: > **[The Finale of “The Americans” Was Elegant, Potent, and Unforgettable](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-americans-finale-was-elegant-potent-and-unforgettable)** > > The show was a dry-eyed tearjerker to the very end, leaving a lasting chord of moral unease. > [@](#): > > A fair amount happened before that Russian denouement, although the crucial sequence began twenty-two minutes in, with a hilariously arch greeting between old friends. “Hey!” the F.B.I. agent Stan Beeman says, cheerfully, to his neighbors, Philip and Elizabeth and their daughter Paige, as they enter a parking garage, preparing to flee the country. “Hi, Paige!” “What. . .what are you doing here?” sputters Philip to Stan, as if they’d all conveniently bumped into one another running errands. Stan holds one finger up and says, calmly, “That’s a great question.” > > It was the last moment that Stan would be in control, during a clash of perspectives that should have, by all narrative logic, led straight to prison or, if not, to a shootout, a car chase, or something worse. Instead, ten minutes later, the Jennings were coolly driving away to freedom, as Stan stood by silently, as if paralyzed, watching them go. How did they pull that off? > > Six seasons of sharing a beer at the end of the day, that’s how. Thanksgiving together; conversations during Stan’s divorce; watching one another’s children grow up. “The Americans” has always been a show about intimacy, not simply as a human need but as a dangerous vulnerability, the crack that lets the light in.[…] > “The Americans” would be a romantic story if they weren’t such murderous sociopaths. > > In the garage with Stan, Paige, who is only a novice spy, improvises a cover story, which falls apart. Stan gets angry, brandishing his gun. “We had a job to do,” Philip said, acknowledging the truth at last. “We had a job to do.” And then Stan makes his great mistake. “You were my best friend,” he says to Philip, wounded, unable to believe that their relationship wasn’t real. He offers a bridge that Philip crosses. And Philip, who is a master at such moments, transforms, like a werewolf, his eyes softening, into the most powerful form of himself: the tender, honest, authentic, connected Philip—the sensitive modern man, hurt and confused, a persona that he uses to damage others. (Philip might have been sincerely seeking help when he went to the self-help seminar est, but he only ended up sharpening his tools.) He quickly creates, for Stan’s sake, the illusion of an authentic surrender—and he begins to tell the truth. He’s like the world’s best crisis negotiator, except that he’s trying to get the other man to jump. > > When Stan tells him that their friendship has made his life into a joke, Philip mirrors the emotion back, “My life was the joke, not yours.” And then the gaslighting begins in earnest, as they negotiate what was real and what was not: Was Matthew, Stan’s son, ever part of the scam? What about all those people whom the Jenningses killed? At the mention of murder—a crime that Philip knows Stan won’t accept, which would burst the illusion of trust—Philip grimaces, establishing the first big lie: that the Jenningses are idealists who never, ever killed anyone, let alone left two parents bleeding to death in front of their own child. Philip’s daughter nearly ruins this scheme, apologizing, saying, “I’m sorry—” “We don’t kill people! Jesus,” her mother cuts her off, briskly. “We wouldn’t,” Philip says. > > It’s too late for Stan anyway, who has lost his ability to read such nuances, and who opens the door for Philip to deliver the aria of a con man: a confession that lets Stan move toward what he really wants, to feel closer to his friend, then help him escape. “I kept doing it, telling myself it was important,” Philip tells Stan about the horror of his job. He shows regret, and then self-disgust, at who he’s finally become: “I’m just a shitty, failing travel agent.” Matthew Rhys runs through all of his most effective facial expressions: the wince, the frown, the toothy half-smile flashed beneath guilty-dog eyes. It’s an act of domination that’s camouflaged as an act of submission. Only Elizabeth knows Philip well enough to admire his craft. > Stan swallows every sedative, especially the mention of Henry, the Jennings’s innocent son, whom Stan desperately wants to protect. Finally, improvising, Philip finds the wedge that works: he tells Stan about the Jennings’s scheme to expose the enemies of Gorbachev, which offers Stan the opportunity to see them not as enemies but as allies. Philip tells enough of the truth for Stan to buy the lie.[…] > > There was nothing especially flashy about the sequence, which was mostly a set of closeups, with Philip and Stan rarely in the same frame.[…] > The power is in the performance: “You should hate me—you should,” Philip says, pleadingly. “You should probably shoot me.” And then, after that escapist fantasy of violence, a moment of near-hypnosis: “But we’re getting in that car. And we’re driving away.” Then, after a deep sigh, he adds a manipulative kicker. “I wish you’d stayed with me in est,” Philip tells Stan. “You might know what to do here.” > > I laughed out loud at the line, cruel as it was. Without lifting a finger or pulling a gun, Philip used his legendary eagerness to talk, the emo dampness that often drove his wife crazy, his sincerity, his New Man charisma, to undermine this lonely macho G-Man entirely—a cop who spent many years undercover himself, who should have known all about nurturing the needs of one’s asset. At the line about est, Elizabeth shoots Stan a flabbergasted side-eye. “You have to take care of Henry,” Paige says, as they leave. “He loves you, Stan,” Philip says, his eyes ringed in red, overwhelmed, for real, at losing his son. “Tell him the truth.” > > Then, just before he gets into the car, Philip tosses off a comment that only a best friend could make—the one that would destroy Stan’s life. “I don’t know how to say this, but I think there’s a chance Renee might be one of us”—Stan’s wife, he was implying, might be a Russian spy. Or maybe not. Philip shrugs, then blurs it further: “I’m not sure.” In seventeen words, he saves his marriage and ruins Stan’s. Now Stan has no one whom he can trust: his best friend is leaving, he can never tell his co-workers that he let the Jenningses escape, and Stan’s own wife, Renee, will be a stranger to him, forever. The lovely final shot shows Stan receding, growing smaller, and finally shadowed only in silhouette, as his destroyers drive toward freedom. When we see Stan again, he’s moving through the altered world (his office, where he no longer belongs) in shock, as Dire Straits’s “Brothers In Arms” plays, a song about friendship in wartime. I rewatched the scene after reading this, and there’s nothing technically disproving it. But it really requires a strong belief in not only death of the author, but of the actor (because Matthew Rhys has said multiple things in interviews indicating that he sees the character sympathetically and the friendship as genuine). ---
**Author:** ![chaika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chaika/32/405_2.png) [@chaika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaika)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2018, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/646 "2018-06-01T23:50:43Z")
Nussbaum’s reading is more cynical than mine. I think Philip genuinely has strong feelings of connection and friendship for Stan. I also think he feels like a failure as both a Russian and an American, a failure in both parts of his life. There is truth in what he says. But at the same time, in my reading of the scene, Philip is also using the truth, half-truths, guesswork, and outright lies in service to his larger goal: to extricate himself, his wife, and his daughter from this dangerous moment. He knows exactly what he is doing. He was trained for situations like this one and he has honed his skills brilliantly over the years. But that doesn’t negate the genuine emotion he experiences, including perhaps some guilt for manipulating his friend. And therein lies the brilliance of the scene IMO. If it were a scene strictly of Philip lying to Stan, as Nussbaum reads it, I wouldn’t find it so compelling. Similarly, if I saw it as some sort of soul-revealing session in which he reveals The Truth, I’d find that far too pat and unconvincing. The various nuances of deceit and truth have always been key themes for the series. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/647 "2018-06-02T00:30:57Z")
> [@chaika](#): > > Nussbaum’s reading is more cynical than mine. I think Philip genuinely has strong feelings of connection and friendship for Stan. I also think he feels like a failure as both a Russian and an American, a failure in both parts of his life. There is truth in what he says. But at the same time, in my reading of the scene, Philip is also using the truth, half-truths, guesswork, and outright lies in service to his larger goal: to extricate himself, his wife, and his daughter from this dangerous moment. He knows exactly what he is doing. He was trained for situations like this one and he has honed his skills brilliantly over the years. But that doesn’t negate the genuine emotion he experiences, including perhaps some guilt for manipulating his friend. And therein lies the brilliance of the scene IMO. If it were a scene strictly of Philip lying to Stan, as Nussbaum reads it, I wouldn’t find it so compelling. Similarly, if I saw it as some sort of soul-revealing session in which he reveals The Truth, I’d find that far too pat and unconvincing. The various nuances of deceit and truth have always been key themes for the series. I agree with this. Philip was working hard toward his goal of getting his family safely out of that garage, but he wasn’t doing it by cold-bloodedly manipulating Stan. He was doing what made him such an effective operative over the years: he deployed his own genuine feelings and reactions, and relayed them honestly and sincerely to the person he was trying to persuade to do something. Elizabeth had the same talent. Neither told the whole truth, with Stan or with any of the other people they’d ‘worked’ over the years. But Philip was using his real emotions to get to Stan. He was leveling with him enough to let Stan know, on some unconscious level, that what he was being told was real. It didn’t hurt that the plot had already given Stan information from Oleg that corroborated part of what Philp was saying–but the emotional truth of the pitch Philip gave was what really sold it. Part of the appeal of _The Americans_ has been that this tactic used by foreign spies—to make use of real reactions and feelings in order to manipulate others—is something that goes on every day, even where no international espionage is involved. It’s something that we can, perhaps, recognize ourselves doing, at times. As for the finale as a whole: I felt it was well-written and made. The open-endedness of it felt reasonable, rather than as if the show-creator had just given up (the reaction I had to _Lost_, among others). No character behaved in a way that seemed anomalous or implausible, and the developments fit with actual history in a fair manner. That might seem like faint praise; I really liked it a bit more than that would seem to indicate. The flavor of the show remained true to itself, and it’s now possible to view the entire work with satisfaction. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/648 "2018-06-02T04:50:14Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > You know what I mean, no need to be coy. Do you still think not verifying that Renee is a spy is the same as verifying that she is not? No, I don’t know what you mean. If you think I’m being coy, you’re projecting. I never said not verifying she is a spy is the same as verifying she is not a spy. I said if there is no twist, she becomes a red herring. Those are not the same thing. Philip informing Stan he thinks she’s a spy put the twist on her. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/649 "2018-06-02T04:56:27Z")
Just as an aside, didn’t Paige look super geeky with those eyebrows? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/650 "2018-06-02T05:16:16Z")
> [@zbuzz](#): > > No, I don’t know what you mean. If you think I’m being coy, you’re projecting. > > I never said not verifying she is a spy is the same as verifying she is not a spy. I said if there is no twist, she becomes a red herring. Those are not the same thing. Philip informing Stan he thinks she’s a spy put the twist on her. Mmmhmm. Even though we already knew Philip suspected her? Helluva twist there! Fact is, we didn’t learn anything new _about Renee_ in this episode. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/651 "2018-06-02T05:27:57Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Mmmhmm. Even though we already knew Philip suspected her? Helluva twist there! > > Fact is, we didn’t learn anything new _about Renee_ in this episode. Stan learned something new and that changed the narrative. ---
**Author:** ![betonbill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b782af/32.png) [@betonbill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betonbill)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/652 "2018-06-02T14:36:20Z")
I think that somewhere along the line Stan will wind up helping Paige. After all, he’s the only adult she has any connections with. I can visualize Philip, Elizabeth, and Martha (and her adopted child) bumping into each other in the line to the first McDonald’s in Moscow. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/653 "2018-06-02T21:23:07Z")
In real life, wouldn’t Stan have been taken off the case as soon as the Jennings became suspect? ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/654 "2018-06-02T21:46:00Z")
I didn’t find the question of whether Renee is a spy to be ambiguous at all. I thought the lingering look she gave the Jenning’s house as the FBI was clearing it out said “I’d never be that careless”, then she walked away. To me, at least, it was clear as a bell. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/655 "2018-06-02T23:27:36Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > I didn’t find the question of whether Renee is a spy to be ambiguous at all. I thought the lingering look she gave the Jenning’s house as the FBI was clearing it out said “I’d never be that careless”, then she walked away… If Renee was an Eastern Bloc spy of some kind assigned to keep an eye on Stan and/or the Jennings then presumably pretty soon Stan is going to come home from work and find our his wife has disappeared off the face of the Earth. > [@E-DUB](#): > > In real life, wouldn’t Stan have been taken off the case as soon as the Jennings became suspect? Yes, or at least he’d be reduced to a passive role in the office while another agent took over. > [@betonbill](#): > > …I can visualize Philip, Elizabeth, and Martha (and her adopted child) bumping into each other in the line to the first McDonald’s in Moscow. I would _love_ to see that conversation. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/656 "2018-06-02T23:49:25Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > If Renee was an Eastern Bloc spy of some kind assigned to keep an eye on Stan and/or the Jennings then presumably pretty soon Stan is going to come home from work and find our his wife has disappeared off the face of the Earth. You think they would abandon having a spy placed so closely (so her cover must be golden) to a key FBI agent without a reason to believe that she had been burned? ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2018, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/657 "2018-06-02T23:54:59Z")
Man, the more I think about it, poor Stan. He basically can never trust and has to indefinitely run counter-intel ops on his wife. His best case scenario is that she IS a spy and he busts her. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2018, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/658 "2018-06-03T01:05:46Z")
If she is an illegal, her cover won’t hold up. If she got recruited somehow, it might hold, although not if like Gregory it came via radical political action. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2018, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/659 "2018-06-03T12:04:59Z")
Here’s a super interesting and very detailed look at several of the disguises/costumes Elizabeth wore in the last couple seasons: [“The Americans” Had 6 Seasons of Amazing Spy Disguises - Racked](https://www.racked.com/2018/5/29/17397128/the-americans-wigs-disguises-keri-russell-elizabeth-jennings-costume-designer-katie-irish) ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379/660 "2018-06-03T17:24:09Z")
Nice article there, SlackerInc. I guess one big question is “Whither Paige?”. Claudia, who has acted almost as a surrogate grandmother, has seemingly folded her tent and silently stolen away. She could go to Stan, the only person who has _any_ knowledge, and even then not much at all, of her complicity with her parent’s activities. Is she aware of Mom and Dad’s suspicions about Renee? Does she have the skills to fabricate a new identity? Even if she can remain Paige Jennings, the career path she was on seems closed off to her now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379.md?page=32) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-americans-season-6/811379.md?page=34)