The Americans 4.10
May. 19th, 2016 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which Pastor Tim pulls a classic Pastor Tim, and things, they are changing, indeed.
Tim: surviving the apocalypse, I tell you. But before I get to that: is this season lethal to old time regulars or WHAT? Okay, Martha survived (as far as we know), but she’s off the show, Nina is dead, and now Gaad is dead as well. Who’s next, Arkady? Mind you: writing Gaad off the show made sense, because you can pull the old “this time, this is going to cost my job for real” only so often before it becomes empty. So Gaad actually losing his job was necessary. And I expected him to exit the show for good (with maybe return gigs once or twice a season to dispense some advice to Stan), because his function in the narrative was over. But I certainly didn’t expect him to die as the result of a badly handled attempt at recruitment on the KGB’s part while vacationing in Thailand. Which makes me wonder, of course, what the writers are up to in this regard. The obvious reason would be to send Stan on another Roaring Rampage Of Revenge, but been there, done that, and this show usually doesn’t repeat itself.
Which makes me assume that the reason for Gaad’s death has something to do with a planned storyline for Arkady (about time he gets one). After all, the show gives us the scene of Arkady getting the news of Gaad’s death while talking to Tatiana, and being clearly shocked and unhappy. And it makes sense that Arkady, when hearing Gaad more or less HAD to leave the FBI, would try to recruit him – their two scenes together back in season 2 weren’t just wonderful viewing material, they did strike a rapport of the respected enemy type. Unfortunately, the Thailand division of the KGB thought it was a good idea to show up not discreetly in a café, a la Arkady and Gaad, but in threes in Gaad’s hotel room, he bolted through the window/balcony door, and this show, for the very first time in my long tv viewing career, actually takes into account that glass isn’t sugar (which is what they use for glass in tv and for the movies when someone has to get thrown through it), and lets Gaad kill himself this way, via glass splinter, and with the three KGB guys looking as stunned as Arkady later and repeating “I’m sorry”.
So, complete botch of an operation that Arkady seems to have initialized. And the Oleg and Tatiana conversation delivered some hints as well. Methinks Arkady might indeed the next cast member in danger, though hopefully not for the chop.
Meanwhile, chez Jennings: Paige, clearly having heard the prayers of many a viewer, tries to get some family background information about her father, aka The Parent Who Never Tells This Stuff Unless Direly Pressed. Thank you, Paige. Philip confirms his father died when he was six, but not, apparently, his mother, who instead was a tough lady like Nadezhda’s mother who could intimidate corrupt supervisors into handing over her child/teenage son’s complete salary. Unless Philip is lying to Paige, which isn’t impossible, but I don’t think so. So, new backstory canon.
(He also says that “liking” Tobolsk (his hometown in Siberia) wasn’t an issue, because you don’t like or dislike in the situations he and Elizabeth were in. Which probably contributes to Paige’s reaction later when the entire family going on the run briefly becomes an issue. )
The bombshell dropped in this episode, more than Gaad’s death, is that Pastor Tim and friend for a time go missing in Ethiopia, which causes Tim’s wife Alice to (understandably) freak out, and for the first time we get some Alice characterization beyond “Pastor’s wife, likes to talk”. Seems Alice is far more aware than her husband that Russian spies are likely lethal people, because her threat to the Jennings’ about the tape comes with “if something happened to Tim, or if something happens to me”. (Note: Elizabeth later isn’t just angry that Paige thinks they might indeed be responsible for Tim’s disappearance when they bent over backwards to find a method to keep Tim and Alice alive so Paige wouldn’t hate them; she’s professionally offended that Paige would think they would be so incredibly stupid to kill only Tim, not Alice, when both know.) This latest turn not only fleshes out Alice somewhat but also exposes something of what Paige really thinks: she might be naïve re: how the KGB would get rid of Tim (i.e. not by leaving his wife alive to blab), but she definitely isn’t buying into her parents’ assurances that they would never do stuff like this, either. (And correctly so, of course.) “How would I know?” whether or not something her parents tell her is true in such a case as Tim’s is a question to which there simply isn’t a good answer, though Elizabeth and Philip later try to give one, saying it comes down to trust, and that while they don’t tell Paige everything, they don’t lie to her, either.
I’m always suspected Philip chose the alias Jim for the persona he adopts with Kimmy either consciously or unconsciously because of Tim, and with this Tim-Paige, Philip-Kimmy doubling in mind, it’s not surprising that this episode brings back Kimmy for a scene which doubles her with Paige again. (It also updates us on the situation between her and Philip; he’s now seemingly securely in the role of solely paternal confidant, since they briefly discuss her current – young and not so satisfying – boyfriend; she calls him James, which I don’t think she did last season, though maybe I forgot or misremember.) Kimmy tells Philip about her father working for the CIA, and how this suddenly makes sense of everything; her father confided in her. The parallel to Paige’s fatal confession to Pastor Tim is obvious, and Philip doesn’t respond in Jim’s persona; he responds with what he might or might not have wanted to say to Paige but couldn’t since Paige, too, has to be handled, telling Kimmy she shouldn’t have told him, and that this secret could bring her and her father closer, but only if it’s kept a secret. Otoh, who knows, it might actually be honest advice; Philip works best with bits and pieces of the truth.
Speaking of parallels between fathers and their jobs: Paige has realized the one between Stan and Philip, and in this episode sounds out Matthew about how he feels re: his father’s profession. This, btw, is a very different scene from s1 when Paige for a while had a teenage crush on Matthew who wasn’t interested and hardly noticed her. Now, he’s interested in her (not necessarily as a girlfriend but as a person, definitely, asking her to stay, seeking out conversations), and Paige doesn’t treat this as a romantic signal but tries to talk as much as she can without betraying confidence again about the current key issue in her life with someone who actually might understand.
Tim, in the end, turns out to have simply suffered from a broken down car and the search for gasoline followed on a long march on foot and getting lost before getting back into contact again. Ah, the days before mobile phones. (Today, they’re the main communication method in any given African country. Including and especially poor ones.) Which is such a Pastor Tim thing to do. I bet if he ever ended up in a Siberian gulag by accident, he’d get out of it again and would find his way back to the states. He’s that kind of character.
The big change going on that doesn’t happen in accidental deaths (Gaad) or suspected deaths/kidnappings which in reality are harmless accidents (Tim): Elizabeth, she who defines herself by never giving in, by always taking the harder option, because that’s what she’s been taught was the right thing to do, finally reaching her limit here. In two storylines, no less, though that she does is interconnected. In the Tim one, when she says the words Philip has been waiting to hear since the pilot, “I think we should run”, and in a fitting irony, this time this prospect is foiled by Paige’s “no way no how!” at the idea of living in Russia. And in the Young Hee one, when through the episode she stalls with the next step (presumably blackmailing Don, though for logistics reasons, I hope there’ll be more to it than “promote William to Level 4 or I’ll tell your wife we’ve had sex”, since Don can still foil that one by a confession, though the longer he waits the less Young Hee might be willing to believe the supposed night of adultery with her dear friend wasn’t his idea) while watching the emotional havoc of what she did to Don unfold: Don hardly can look Young Hee in the eyes anymore, Young Hee goes from her cheerful self (in the opening scene) to leaving a desperate message on Patty’s answering machine because she can tell something is wrong with her beloved husband. And thus when, in the most suspenseful scene of the episode at the end, Gabriel offers Elizabeth an out after having gotten her to confess she really likes Young Hee and Young Hee’s family, offers to ask their bosses for an alternative so Elizabeth won’t have to break Young Hee and Don any further, Elizabeth finally says “yes”.
Now Gabriel could have been testing Elizabeth. And/or the Centre could simply say “no way, go on as planned”. But it’s still an incredibly important moment in Elizabeth’s development as a character. When Zhukov tells her in an s1 flashback that she was chosen as an Illegal because they knew she would never back down, never surrender, you could practically hear the words getting engraved on Elizabeth’s heart. There have been choices she hated making since then: for example, letting Lucia be killed right in front of her by a man deemed more valuable for the current operation, when Lucia was someone she had loved mentoring and whom she had liked. Killing Betty last season. But she still always went through with all of this. (One notable exception was NOT killing Pastor Tim and Alice, but that was for Paige, and it wasn’t something the Centre had previously ordered her to do. It wasn’t a mission.)
So, with Elizabeth finally having reached a personal line in the sand: what other changes will result from this? It might not even salvage Young Hee’s happiness IF the Centre finds another way (which I doubt). (Though it presumably would if “Patty” were to tell Young Hee the full truth.) (Or if Young Hee can get over a perceived one night stand.) Will Elizabeth now be considered less reliable than before, and/or will she and Philip have to take on more difficult cases again to make up for this? I have no idea, which I love.
Lastly: Stan, Aderholt and Martha’s father: was a dastardly move on Stan’s part, but a competent one. After all, he knows Martha has contacted her parents while being on the run already. And Mr. Harrison actually has met Clark; he might know details that could help identifying Clark. I noticed that Matthew, too, brings up Martha (and that Stan has told him about her is interesting and does show an attempt to communicate with Matthew) to Paige. With Paige being who she is, somehow I think the original entrapment of Martha, or what Elizabeth did to Don, or the ongoing Kimmy operation would be the hardest thing to forgive her parents for, way above actual killings. And yet, Paige is adopting more and more spy qualities; when we see her hugging the relieved Alice, her changing facial expression shows she’s already thinking of the next step, and her later assessment of Alice to her parents is given, and treated by them, as handler-of-Alice advice.
Tim: surviving the apocalypse, I tell you. But before I get to that: is this season lethal to old time regulars or WHAT? Okay, Martha survived (as far as we know), but she’s off the show, Nina is dead, and now Gaad is dead as well. Who’s next, Arkady? Mind you: writing Gaad off the show made sense, because you can pull the old “this time, this is going to cost my job for real” only so often before it becomes empty. So Gaad actually losing his job was necessary. And I expected him to exit the show for good (with maybe return gigs once or twice a season to dispense some advice to Stan), because his function in the narrative was over. But I certainly didn’t expect him to die as the result of a badly handled attempt at recruitment on the KGB’s part while vacationing in Thailand. Which makes me wonder, of course, what the writers are up to in this regard. The obvious reason would be to send Stan on another Roaring Rampage Of Revenge, but been there, done that, and this show usually doesn’t repeat itself.
Which makes me assume that the reason for Gaad’s death has something to do with a planned storyline for Arkady (about time he gets one). After all, the show gives us the scene of Arkady getting the news of Gaad’s death while talking to Tatiana, and being clearly shocked and unhappy. And it makes sense that Arkady, when hearing Gaad more or less HAD to leave the FBI, would try to recruit him – their two scenes together back in season 2 weren’t just wonderful viewing material, they did strike a rapport of the respected enemy type. Unfortunately, the Thailand division of the KGB thought it was a good idea to show up not discreetly in a café, a la Arkady and Gaad, but in threes in Gaad’s hotel room, he bolted through the window/balcony door, and this show, for the very first time in my long tv viewing career, actually takes into account that glass isn’t sugar (which is what they use for glass in tv and for the movies when someone has to get thrown through it), and lets Gaad kill himself this way, via glass splinter, and with the three KGB guys looking as stunned as Arkady later and repeating “I’m sorry”.
So, complete botch of an operation that Arkady seems to have initialized. And the Oleg and Tatiana conversation delivered some hints as well. Methinks Arkady might indeed the next cast member in danger, though hopefully not for the chop.
Meanwhile, chez Jennings: Paige, clearly having heard the prayers of many a viewer, tries to get some family background information about her father, aka The Parent Who Never Tells This Stuff Unless Direly Pressed. Thank you, Paige. Philip confirms his father died when he was six, but not, apparently, his mother, who instead was a tough lady like Nadezhda’s mother who could intimidate corrupt supervisors into handing over her child/teenage son’s complete salary. Unless Philip is lying to Paige, which isn’t impossible, but I don’t think so. So, new backstory canon.
(He also says that “liking” Tobolsk (his hometown in Siberia) wasn’t an issue, because you don’t like or dislike in the situations he and Elizabeth were in. Which probably contributes to Paige’s reaction later when the entire family going on the run briefly becomes an issue. )
The bombshell dropped in this episode, more than Gaad’s death, is that Pastor Tim and friend for a time go missing in Ethiopia, which causes Tim’s wife Alice to (understandably) freak out, and for the first time we get some Alice characterization beyond “Pastor’s wife, likes to talk”. Seems Alice is far more aware than her husband that Russian spies are likely lethal people, because her threat to the Jennings’ about the tape comes with “if something happened to Tim, or if something happens to me”. (Note: Elizabeth later isn’t just angry that Paige thinks they might indeed be responsible for Tim’s disappearance when they bent over backwards to find a method to keep Tim and Alice alive so Paige wouldn’t hate them; she’s professionally offended that Paige would think they would be so incredibly stupid to kill only Tim, not Alice, when both know.) This latest turn not only fleshes out Alice somewhat but also exposes something of what Paige really thinks: she might be naïve re: how the KGB would get rid of Tim (i.e. not by leaving his wife alive to blab), but she definitely isn’t buying into her parents’ assurances that they would never do stuff like this, either. (And correctly so, of course.) “How would I know?” whether or not something her parents tell her is true in such a case as Tim’s is a question to which there simply isn’t a good answer, though Elizabeth and Philip later try to give one, saying it comes down to trust, and that while they don’t tell Paige everything, they don’t lie to her, either.
I’m always suspected Philip chose the alias Jim for the persona he adopts with Kimmy either consciously or unconsciously because of Tim, and with this Tim-Paige, Philip-Kimmy doubling in mind, it’s not surprising that this episode brings back Kimmy for a scene which doubles her with Paige again. (It also updates us on the situation between her and Philip; he’s now seemingly securely in the role of solely paternal confidant, since they briefly discuss her current – young and not so satisfying – boyfriend; she calls him James, which I don’t think she did last season, though maybe I forgot or misremember.) Kimmy tells Philip about her father working for the CIA, and how this suddenly makes sense of everything; her father confided in her. The parallel to Paige’s fatal confession to Pastor Tim is obvious, and Philip doesn’t respond in Jim’s persona; he responds with what he might or might not have wanted to say to Paige but couldn’t since Paige, too, has to be handled, telling Kimmy she shouldn’t have told him, and that this secret could bring her and her father closer, but only if it’s kept a secret. Otoh, who knows, it might actually be honest advice; Philip works best with bits and pieces of the truth.
Speaking of parallels between fathers and their jobs: Paige has realized the one between Stan and Philip, and in this episode sounds out Matthew about how he feels re: his father’s profession. This, btw, is a very different scene from s1 when Paige for a while had a teenage crush on Matthew who wasn’t interested and hardly noticed her. Now, he’s interested in her (not necessarily as a girlfriend but as a person, definitely, asking her to stay, seeking out conversations), and Paige doesn’t treat this as a romantic signal but tries to talk as much as she can without betraying confidence again about the current key issue in her life with someone who actually might understand.
Tim, in the end, turns out to have simply suffered from a broken down car and the search for gasoline followed on a long march on foot and getting lost before getting back into contact again. Ah, the days before mobile phones. (Today, they’re the main communication method in any given African country. Including and especially poor ones.) Which is such a Pastor Tim thing to do. I bet if he ever ended up in a Siberian gulag by accident, he’d get out of it again and would find his way back to the states. He’s that kind of character.
The big change going on that doesn’t happen in accidental deaths (Gaad) or suspected deaths/kidnappings which in reality are harmless accidents (Tim): Elizabeth, she who defines herself by never giving in, by always taking the harder option, because that’s what she’s been taught was the right thing to do, finally reaching her limit here. In two storylines, no less, though that she does is interconnected. In the Tim one, when she says the words Philip has been waiting to hear since the pilot, “I think we should run”, and in a fitting irony, this time this prospect is foiled by Paige’s “no way no how!” at the idea of living in Russia. And in the Young Hee one, when through the episode she stalls with the next step (presumably blackmailing Don, though for logistics reasons, I hope there’ll be more to it than “promote William to Level 4 or I’ll tell your wife we’ve had sex”, since Don can still foil that one by a confession, though the longer he waits the less Young Hee might be willing to believe the supposed night of adultery with her dear friend wasn’t his idea) while watching the emotional havoc of what she did to Don unfold: Don hardly can look Young Hee in the eyes anymore, Young Hee goes from her cheerful self (in the opening scene) to leaving a desperate message on Patty’s answering machine because she can tell something is wrong with her beloved husband. And thus when, in the most suspenseful scene of the episode at the end, Gabriel offers Elizabeth an out after having gotten her to confess she really likes Young Hee and Young Hee’s family, offers to ask their bosses for an alternative so Elizabeth won’t have to break Young Hee and Don any further, Elizabeth finally says “yes”.
Now Gabriel could have been testing Elizabeth. And/or the Centre could simply say “no way, go on as planned”. But it’s still an incredibly important moment in Elizabeth’s development as a character. When Zhukov tells her in an s1 flashback that she was chosen as an Illegal because they knew she would never back down, never surrender, you could practically hear the words getting engraved on Elizabeth’s heart. There have been choices she hated making since then: for example, letting Lucia be killed right in front of her by a man deemed more valuable for the current operation, when Lucia was someone she had loved mentoring and whom she had liked. Killing Betty last season. But she still always went through with all of this. (One notable exception was NOT killing Pastor Tim and Alice, but that was for Paige, and it wasn’t something the Centre had previously ordered her to do. It wasn’t a mission.)
So, with Elizabeth finally having reached a personal line in the sand: what other changes will result from this? It might not even salvage Young Hee’s happiness IF the Centre finds another way (which I doubt). (Though it presumably would if “Patty” were to tell Young Hee the full truth.) (Or if Young Hee can get over a perceived one night stand.) Will Elizabeth now be considered less reliable than before, and/or will she and Philip have to take on more difficult cases again to make up for this? I have no idea, which I love.
Lastly: Stan, Aderholt and Martha’s father: was a dastardly move on Stan’s part, but a competent one. After all, he knows Martha has contacted her parents while being on the run already. And Mr. Harrison actually has met Clark; he might know details that could help identifying Clark. I noticed that Matthew, too, brings up Martha (and that Stan has told him about her is interesting and does show an attempt to communicate with Matthew) to Paige. With Paige being who she is, somehow I think the original entrapment of Martha, or what Elizabeth did to Don, or the ongoing Kimmy operation would be the hardest thing to forgive her parents for, way above actual killings. And yet, Paige is adopting more and more spy qualities; when we see her hugging the relieved Alice, her changing facial expression shows she’s already thinking of the next step, and her later assessment of Alice to her parents is given, and treated by them, as handler-of-Alice advice.
