I loved the digging, but it would not be appropriate for a series finale.
How could they “reveal” Renee as a red herring?
I always study the “Russia” scenes closely to see if I can recognize any landmarks, but never have seen anything I concretely recognized. But while modern Brooklyn has some of the most gentrified and expenseive real estate on the continent, it also does still has neighborhoods that are beat down, nondescript, and desolate enough to pass plausibly as proletariat housing in some post-war Iron Curtain nation. I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect some of the Russia scenes are shot out at Brighton Beach, a neighborhood near Coney Island with a sizeable ex-pat Russian community and where some of the store signs are actually in Russian Cyrillic script.
I’ve looked at the Russia scenes enough to recognize some of the camera/lighting techniques they use to signify Russia: those scenes always have much darker lighting and typically use bluish filters for outdoor scenes. They always shoot the outdoor scenes with close shots on the actors and often tilted a bit toward the ground. That likely has the practical effect of keeping any Western/American features out of the shot, but also does lend those scenes a slightly claustrophobic feel – a sense of oppression.
Anyone else think E gunning down the assassin in broad daylight in front of witnesses was a tad over-the-top?
Heck with Claudia reaching under the table - I was waiting for her to grab a gun out of the pot of soup! 
Paige breaks it down like this:
Being able to trash bozos, way cool.
The spy intrigue, cool
Screwing somebody for intel, icky.
Not sure how serious you were being, but I think she took very seriously (if naively) the idea of being part of a larger movement for (what she perceived as) good.
“I had no problem with the murder, theft, and high treason, but I never thought the job would involve sex!”
Basically by her winding up not being a spy (or whatever other theories are floating around that explain some of the seemingly suspicious stuff about her).
I don’t know if you’re being semantic about it, but if the show ends with no twist to her character, we can consider that the reveal.
I guess maybe you would say I’m “being semantic about it”. I can easily see how they can pull a “reveal” that she IS a spy; but I have a hard time seeing one the other way unless they show a montage of her growing up in a normal American family etc. Bottom line: I don’t agree with your “we can consider…” statement.
Yup, they wanted to set up a big confrontation with momma, but the “you’re a whore thing” made no sense at all. Elizabeth had already hinted pretty strongly to Paige that sex was sometimes involved. And didn’t Paige herself volunteer to use sex with the other aide (who she liked anyway) as leverage to get intel?
I think the motivation for the confrontation would have worked much better focusing on the lying thing, and gratuitously fucking other people’s lives up. Paige to Elizabeth: Our whole life was a lie before, and now things were supposed to be different, honest between us. But you’re still lying to me at every turn! And we’re supposed to be the good guys here. But you turned down my plan to use sex with an aide as leverage to get intel in a harmless way; and instead you did it in a way that totally fucked this kid’s life up.
My prediction for the end: Philip and Elizabeth vanish into the mist. Renee gets the job at the FBI and life is happy for her and Stan. The final scene is Claudia still in her DC apartment having some borscht. She is talking to one of her agents who is revealed to be…Renee.
The establishing shots (the panoramas of the city) are filmed on location, of course. The street scenes look a lot like Moscow, but I’ve never been able to identify a particular neighborhood or landmark (statue, Metro station, whatever).
For years, Helsinki was the go-to location for filming movies set in Russia (Firefox, f’rinstance). Nowadays, there are lots of places in Central and East Europe where this can be done cheaply.
The only “recent” Western movies I can think of that were actually filmed (at least in part) in Moscow were from the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras (e.g., Red Heat, The Russia House, The Saint).
I’ve never been to Brighton Beach, but I too suspect some scenes in The Americans were filmed there.
If Claudia is going back home, she’ll probably be involved in the 1991 putsch against Gorabchev. With luck, she’ll be one of those who commits suicide when it fails.
If she’s still alive at the end of the '90s, she’ll be one of those who makes sure Putin replaces Yeltsin. Then she can retire to her dacha on the outskirts of Moscow.
Oh, well. That makes it alright, then. :rolleyes:
I’m still waiting for her to read about the SP who had his throat slashed out in the open while walking back from a Chinese restaurant. You’d think that would have merited a paragraph or two in the newspaper.
So… with the Russian factions playing against one another, perhaps it does seem somewhat plausible that Renee is GRU rather than anything more complicated, placed there to keep an eye on Philip & Elizabeth without telling them - both to protect them from the FBI agent across the street and check up on their loyalty.
That might set up a denouement where the FBI are closing in on Phil & Liz, and at the same time the GRU send Renee to kill them. Total mind fuck for Stan, but many dramatic permutations in how it could play out - Stan kills Renee to save Phil & Liz; Renee kills Stan to stop him capturing them; Phil/Liz kill Renee to save Stan.
I found it interesting that she “just happened” to drop the hint about the couple who wanted to defect when she knew Elizabeth was in earshot. Helluva good way to pass on information without giving away who you really are.
I don’t think it was the sex per se so much as it was seeing firsthand the consequences of such actions.
This wasn’t some asshole politician, rich industrialist, or high-ranking military officer (or even Security drone). This was some dumb, poor kid her own age and a buddy of her boyfriend who’d been tricked into doing something stupid, freaked out when he realized he’d been had (in more ways than one), and now his life is ruined. (She might also realize he’s actually lucky to **still be **alive.)
Unless you’re a true sociopath, something like that is bound to make you feel pretty shitty about being involved in it, however tangentially.
Well, if you’re basing this by taking the pro/anti Gorbachev factions into account, I’m not sure that adds up because Renee meets Stan about a year before Gorbachev even comes to power. But either way, how does the GRU enter the picture?
KGB and GRU have always been great rivals while running their own networks abroad (wasn’t Oleg working for GRU when he was in Washington before?). It’s natural that they’d be spying on each other.
With compartmentalization, there’s little chance of P&E knowing they live across the street from a GRU agent.
The Gorbachev angle is in this aspect completely tangential to the story.
… and on a very personal level.