I agree that these events necessarily make us see the show in a different light. But what do you mean about screwing up the landing?
Yeah. Philip has actually been the more cold hearted of the two. Elizabeth is a True Believer ™, but she seems to have an almost maternal or big sisterly relationship with her assets. Philip is much more transaction oriented.
I can’t see him (or his earlier seasons self) being too fussed about having Kimmy kidnapped.
He does what he does as it’s necessary. Elizabeth does because of The.Cause.
They seem to have gone out of their way to make the Soviets seem almost cartoonishly evil, something they avoided in the first few seasons.
The only good Soviets are those who agree with the US viewpoint. They have almost managed to make Philip and Elizabeth a caricature. Body counts aside, in the earlier season it was made clear that they (and their bosses) were professionals doing their duty to their country, which at times is unpleasent, but not so different from their counterparts.
Now… it seems evil for the sake of evil. In season 1, when their colleagues wife was discovered, Claudia hid the fact that she would be killed from P&E, and it was clear no one was happy about it, ditto with the attack on the maids son, or Gregory.
In the pilot they were trying to send the defector back to the USSR, not kill him.
ISWYM now. You make an interesting point. I wonder if they have indeed been influenced by current events. To hear them talk, it would not seem so, but maybe it’s not even conscious.
Come on - she COULDA killed the kid, but didn’t. Isn’t that enough to earn her a white hat? 
As far as screwing up the landing, I think that becomes more of a problem to the extent they intend the show to end with a resolution, and how satisfying they want that resolution to be for everyone involved. I suspect the show is likely going to be less satisfying the more cleanly they try to tie up all of the various threads. I think many of us want/expect there to be at least SOME arrests/deaths by the show’s end. But I think it might be a better option to simply put them in a place where each audience member has to imagine how they will fare in the ensuing 30 years we have experienced.
Someone suggested (here?) that they will FF to today, in the current administration, with Paige (or someone) whispering into Trump’s or Putin’s ear. While that might be emotionally rewarding, I think that would have the effect of a gimmicky punchline at the end of a long novel.
As far as the writers being sophisticated, well, they are good. But they also are messing with people - as evidenced by the overly dark warehouse scene, and the long digging ep. They created a VERY complex situation with a huge number of characters. In one respect, that is a great accomplishment. But in another respect, it makes things easier for them, because they can just have characters pop up out of the past (a la Natalie this ep) and or fall off the radar, however they wish to support any storyline or twist. Added in, most characters are good or bad, brilliant or clueless, as any particular situation requires. It is hard to accuse a character as acting “out of character”, because we don’t really KNOW the true nature/ability of any of them.
Final thought, I think an author can only do so much in dictating how an audience perceives their product. Once a show is filmed/shown, a book written/sold, each individual consumer and the aggregate market get to determine how they perceive it. You might contend that someone missed what was intended, but it is problematic to say that someone’s opinions and interpretations of a work were “wrong.”
I think Elizabeth’s extremism, as well as some of the other Russians on the show, is pretty fitting. While I think it’s ridiculous that her character can so easily get away with the sheer volume of murders she’s committed this season, I get the point of her characterization.
Elizabeth is going through a severe bout of cognitive dissonance, and her recent stridency is part of her denial of what the real world situation is. She’s spent the better part of her life living a lie, risking her life, and committing heinous acts – all in service of a cause she thought would ultimately lead to a better world. But that cause is dying: the Soviet Union is in a state of collapse, and it is being exposed as a corrupt, ultimately unworkable mess – and it is also being exposed as always having been an unworkable mess.
Making matters worse, she has to explain the USSR and her work to Paige. And while it’s one thing to lie to yourself, bury your own head in the sand, and just flat out not think about uncomfortable truths, it’s another thing when you’re trying to make rationales to your intelligent daughter who has a strong bullshit meter. It’s got to prey on Liz’s mind, that one day she’s going to have to let Paige know the true extent of her espionage activities and she probably doesn’t look forward to seeing her reaction. When you have to confess your sins out loud, suddenly you have to confront the reality of it.
It also can’t escape her notice that Philip is genuinely happy – not just about being of the spy game; he’s happy leading an American life. And Henry seems as if he’s destined to be voting Republican when he’s old enough. (This is something I wish the show would delve into – has Elizabeth ever actually voiced her real opionion about Henry’s yuppie aspirations?) In the position she’s in, seeing that her life’s mission was apparently all for nothing, and the ideal world she belived in exposed as a lie, it’s no wonder she’s doubling down and bellowing how much she hates America, even though – as Tuan pointed out – she’s become more American than Russian at this point.
I think it’s interesting the show skipped over the Chernobyl meltdown criss. That was a serious “Emperor’s new clothes” moment for the USSR. No doublt Claudia and Elizabeth went into overdrive explaining to Paige how the U.S. media’s coverage of it is all lies and anti-Soviet spin. But I can’t help but think Elizabeth felt some doubt during all of that, something she wants to block out now.
Given that the Chernobyl meltdown, initial cover-up, and then exposure was pretty much the driving event that spurred on the fledgling policies of glasnost and perestroika, it is surprising that the show didn’t give it more attention, but remember that as portrayed in the show the KGB is a very conservative organization and Philip and Elizabeth are very focused on their specific mission objectives. A sprawling narrative about Chernobyl and the internal political impact, which was not well-understood by Western intelligence agencies and political analysts at the time, would be a diversion to the themes of the show, and the Jennings wouldn’t have any more insight into the consequences and power struggles within the Soviet Union than would other normal Americans.
Stan still fails to impress, BTW. I assume he wasn’t in charge of arrangements but given that he knows there are active Soviet operatives killing people, why keep the Teacups in a difficult-to-secure townhouse and allow Gennadi to go wandering around? Surely the FBI can find a safehouse out in rural Virginia or Maryland where they would be better protected. Even if they aren’t valuable as intelligence sources, it is bad press to allow defectors to be executed, and Stan should have been howling about their arrangements and lack of security long before Elizabeth got to them.
Stranger
I honestly don’t see a change. There’s a power struggle going on in the USSR and also this summit happening, so everyone is under more time pressure than at times in the past… but none of the Russians we’ve seen are sadists or anything.
They don’t come up with the (very disturbing) plan to kidnap Kimmie because that gives them their jollies, they come up with it because they believe they desperately need intelligence from her dad. As long as they were getting it via periodic recordings, they were happy. Suddenly they’re struggling, and this is all they came up with.
I don’t know how implausible I think it is that Elizabeth keeps getting away with murder. I guess there are two angles that could be looked at from:
(1) Murder is difficult and dangerous and yet every single time she comes out alive, you’d think eventually something would go wrong and she’d be the one who ended up dead
or
(2) Eventually she should screw up and leave behind a finger print or something… some way for the cops to catch her
I’m not too concerned about (2). She’s super highly trained and frequently has things planned out ahead of time. There have been plenty of serial killers who remained uncaught through dozens or murders with far less rigorous training than she has. And while she has a “pattern” from a viewing perspective, what are the DC police or FBI going to do, tell everyone who ever has contact with anything ever related to everything to be more on guard than they otherwise would be? (And of course a fair number of her murders probably end up appearing as accidents or suicides or whatever).
As for (1), well, here’s where I’m happy to extend a bit of disbelief. She’s the protagonist, so she gets some amount of protagnist armor. And, again, she’s extremely highly trained and almost never involved in anything like a fair fight. And I think the show has done a decent job of showing some close calls, such as with the general in the park earlier this season.
I think I’m immune to most of it, because I don’t read articles or listen to podcasts by the creators of any shows I watch. I’m old skool. I let the shows speak for themselves. When I came of TV age, we didn’t have all this new fangled intarwebs. We only had TVGuide. And we liked it!
But if the creators are trying to have the audience support P&E as the ostensible “good guys”, I’d have to say, what the hell is their malfunction? The republicans are always complaining about liberal Hollywood being filled with communists, and here we have a show that sings the praises of murdering, godless communists undermining our American way of life ™, proving their point, as it were. (Could you imagine this show being made in the McCarthy era? me neither.)
So I treat the show like I do the Godfather movies - great art about horrible people. I never think Michael Corolone is the good guy, I don’t want him to succeed, but I can’t not watch the movie if I find it on TV. The world of both shows is captivating.
If that’s the “wrong” way to watch the show, well I don’t know what to say. I’m never going to root for P&E to succeed (even knowing that in the macro sense, they never do. That isn’t much of a condolence for all the innocent people they murdered.).
I must add that Don Draper’s post just about suns up my read of the characters. I watch the show as if the show runner’s intentions really are to set up the audience to like the characters, and then reveal that the whole Soviet Union was a house of cards built with lies and shadows. Then we the audience get to think about why we fell for such a pack of lies.
I think both P&E have reached that point, but their reactions to it couldn’t be more different. Phillip is enjoying the best the West has to offer, doing the minimum required for his work ( a typical American. ) but Elizabeth is taking out her anger at being mislead by her own country into hurting America as much as she can. The reason the body count is up is not due to meta-issues or poor writing, but because Elizabeth is using murdering Americans as an outlet for her internal rage. And she doesn’t see it. She’s been in the cold too long. She needs therapy. 
Be fair. He DID bring snacks! :rolleyes:
I very much hope that the show doesn’t make a leap into the present time. In fact, I would prefer it if the ending takes place in 1987 or 1988, before the fall of the Berlin wall, long before the breakup of the Soviet Union was even dreamed of. One element of the show that I have always appreciated is that characters never seem able to predict future events. It is a huge pet peeve of mine with films or novels set in the past: the writer obviously knows what will happen and he/she allows the characters far too much prescience. The Americans has admirably avoided that pitfall. So I would really like to see the series end with the characters still fighting the cold war (or rather, the old cold war), all of them still convinced (to one degree or another) of the rightness of their opposing causes.
As for watching “against the grain,” I can appreciate that a program like this one invites various interpretations. I certainly don’t view The Americans (or indeed, history in general) through the lens of U.S.=good, U.S.S.R.=bad. I find the characters of Philip and Elizabeth extremely interesting, and I can understand their complex motivations for behaving as they do. IMO, the body count has been even more ridiculous this season than previously, but there are some aspects of the show that I am willing to suspend my disbelief about. I don’t believe that we must follow the writers’/creators’ stated or implied lead in terms of how we watch the program. I would say it is the mark of a subtle, nuanced work of art when various different interpretations can be put forth convincingly. Of course, some interpretations are harder to sustain than others. Moreover, a writer isn’t necessarily the best interpreter of his/her own work. I mean, Gogol declared that The Government Inspector was a Christian allegory, but I read it as a social and political satire, as most people do. See also: the intentional fallacy.
Random thoughts about this episode:
Stan must be the most clueless FBI agent in the bureau’s history.
Interesting parallel between Elizabeth/Philip and Philip/Kimmy. Elizabeth very clearly used sex to convince Philip to set up Kimmy. Philip started to follow the same script with Kimmy and would have succeeded if he hadn’t had a crisis of conscience. Also the Kimmy/Paige parallel was interesting. Philip sees Kimmy as in some respects a stand-in for Paige. He can’t protect his own daughter so he does his best to protect Kimmy.
I have a lot of sympathy with Elizabeth in terms of the bias and inaccuracies in U.S. school textbooks.
The family relationships between Elizabeth, Philip, and Paige have broken down to the point that the only way they can communicate is through physical violence. A worrying development if ever there was one.
Otherwise you are watching naively and, yes, incorrectly.
Sorry, Slacker, but I think the concept of someone telling someone else how to “correctly” watch a show is off the mark and inherently flawed. I can understand that I may be watching the show in a way that the writers did not intend–which is fine, if you want to pin that one me, I’m OK with it—but that doesn’t make it “correct” or 'incorrect". How one watches the show and decides whom to root for is not up to anyone except the viewer. In other words, you can’t force someone to watch a show from a certain viewpoint. Granted, you can try to steer them in a certain direction, but in the end, it’s the viewer’s call. That the viewer might choose another path doesn’t make it wrong, nor does it make them necessarily naive.
A good example would involve this same show. I know there are viewers out there who root for P and E. That’s not the way I look at it, but I would never presume to tell them they are watching the show rightly or wrongly. To do so would be the pique of arrogance on my part, and I would never even think of going there.
Yeah, I can imagine all manner of ways for it to end - a la Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Yeah, we’re PRETTY sure they die, but they don’t show it. They could show the SU moving towards break-up, additional stresses on the agents, the FBI noose tightening - but my personal vote would be for sufficient ambiguity for each viewer to imagine how each character might have spent the upcoming years.
Here’s a kinda weird thought I just had. Who would you describe as “main characters.” A short list would be P/E/Paige/Stan. But it doesn’t take much effort to double/triple that list. How many of those characters do you think should have some sort of “resolution” by the end of the show?
I don’t trust this show to the extent I would not be surprised (but would be disappointed) if a relatively minor (IMO) character like Tuan or P’s son showed up in the last episode to play a major role in wrapping things up.
Really good observation.
I’m annoyed that there’s been no reaction to the murders in the warehouse. That should be front-page news.
One FBI agent got a decent look at Elizabeth when she asked Gennadi for a cigarette. I wonder if that will have any significance.
So far, Elizabeth has killed the Air Force general, the security guy, the warehouse workers, and Gennadi and Sofia. I’d expect the FBI and D.C. police to be on red (ha) alert.
Here’s a question: Why did Elizabeth ask Gennadi for a cigarette? Was she going to murder him in broad daylight?
But I think that’s entirely missing the point. No one has ever said that they are “good guys”, in the sense of being white hats, heroes.
They are complicated people who have various qualities. Some of them are “good”. They are dedicated and loyal and hard-working (well, up until Philip quit) and skilled and clever and resourceful. They are also criminals and murderers. But they are doing their crime and murdering for a cause they believe in. But it’s a cause that we know is flawed. But their enemy is also flawed. And so forth.
I don’t think anyone is asking you to view P&E as heroes. But if you are viewing them as the equivalent of Voldemort or Dolores Umbridge (or, say, the “big bad” in a season of a superhero show, or the serial killer that our heroes are trying to catch on a cop show), then I think you are watching the show in a way the creators did not at ALL intend. The show is not “here are two horribly monstrous villains, let’s what the good guys try to catch them” it’s “here are two very interesting characters, let’s watch them live in a very complicated and difficult (and hopefully interesting and entertaining) situation”.
Even last year, they saidthe present was influencing their writing decisions.
Yeah. Last we heard, Elizabeth lied to Paige about how violent and deadly her missions could be. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop this season and so far it hasn’t. Granted, the killings might be front page news that we just aren’t hearing about. But still, Paige is smart enough to put two and two together.
Well, there is that. Nobody doubts that Stan is a nice guy; in fact, his very ‘niceness’ is his weakness. However, when he figures out the Jennings are spies and Renee is some kind of plant he’s going to lose his shit.
It is interesting in this vein to compare this to another Graham Yost-produced show, Justified. The ostensible protagonist, Raylan Givens, is actually pretty much a flat out serial killer who looks to put himself into situations where he is “justified” in using lethal force, which he does from the very first scene. Although charming, he is full of rage, as his ex-wife notes. Another of his fellow deputies, Tim Gutterson, at one point explains that as a former Army Ranger sniper he has no problem dropping the hammer on a target (although he does seem to be suffering from some degree of PTSD), and of course the various residents of Harlan County are pretty much a collection of violent, dangerous, amoral people. Even comic relief Dewey Crowe is a would-be murderous racist piece of shit. The only people portrayed as having essential normal moral basis are Given’s ex-wife, boss, Deputy Rachel Brooks, and Constable Bob. Nonetheless, even the most vile and dangerous characters such as Boyd Crowder or Mags Bennett do the morally right thing, even if not for the most noble of reasons. It’s a great show (at least the first few seasons) because virtually no one is good, and thus the motivations and responses of the characters are often unpredictable but still plausible.
Philip and Elizabeth are, of course, not only indoctrinated by their training and conditioning, but from a society that lived through one of the most horrific wars ever, and their moral justifications for killing people have a basis in their essential belief that innocent people are often killed through no fault of their own, and the end of supporting the State trumps all other considerations. Philip in particular has clearly come to doubt this, and even Elizabeth has her moments of uncertainty. (I suspect her desire to return to the Soviet Union is more grounded in fear that if she remains she’ll be converted than the love of a country she hasn’t been back to in over twenty years.) Their actions are very wrong by modern Western standards, but in the frame of their experience it is “justified” to bring down the system that threatens what they view as the way of life which prevented them from being captured or killed by Nazi Germany at enormous cost. One can take the same lens and point it at the perpetrators of the Iran-Contra conspiracy, or the manufactured justification for the US invasion of Iraq, or any number of other actions resulting in unnecessary torture and death in service of supposedly lofty ideals.
Stranger
I thought it was nighttime in that scene, and yes: she was going to murder him if the FBI agent hadn’t shown up.
But this is not how the USSR was widely seen at the time. Do you remember 1987? Meaning, you were closely following current events? Gorbachev was seen around the world, including in the U.S. but especially in Europe, as a heroic figure, leading the USSR into a renaissance—a more successful version of the Prague Spring and its “socialism with a human face”. People also retroactively misremember (or misunderstand, in the case of those too young) how Reagan was perceived at the time. From the NY Times, December 1987:
So basically, it was not the spirit of the times to see the U.S. up and the U.S.S.R. down. Certainly not to such a degree that it would shake anyone’s confidence who had been in the Soviet corner all their lives.
Now, it may be of course that Elizabeth sees Gorbachev as too friendly to the West, and as a threat to Soviet communism. But that’s not the same as seeing the USSR as hopelessly mired in corruption and unsalvageable. That would have been a much more likely takeaway a few years earlier, like when we left off the last season.
You really took my quote out of context in a very misleading way. More fully:
To sum that up more succinctly: if you understand that the writers of the show are sympathetic to P & E, that they consider it fundamentally “a show about a marriage”, but you refuse to share that sympathy, that’s not “watching wrong”. It seems to me it would be unsatisfying to watch a show that way, but it’s your prerogative.
It’s only if you watch the show and naively think that the Soviets are in general being presented as the bad guys, like in a 1980s spy movie or something, that I see it as “watching wrong”. You’re misunderstanding what you are seeing on some fundamental level and therefore unable to evaluate it critically.
ETA: Note what was posted while I was typing: the showrunners acknowledged that “new tensions with Russia would likely make the show’s efforts to humanize Russian spies a bit harder”. So again, if you don’t even get that the show is trying to “humanize Russian spies”, you’re watching it wrong. If you do understand that but just say “screw that, I’m not going along”, you’re watching against the grain. Does that make sense?
Yeah - some of my favorite novel series - Westlake’s Parker books, Perry’s Butcher’s Boy, for example - have protagonists who aren’t exactly “heroes,” but whom you can nevertheless identify with and cheer on.