The Americans 5.07
Apr. 19th, 2017 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which there are family meetings and goodbyes.
Last season we already had some nods towards the non-Great Patriotic War side of the Stalin era via Gabriel bringing up his past, but this season the brutality of the Stalinist purges really is a theme, what with in addition to Philip's biological father being revealed as a gulag guard and him asking his emotional father, Gabriel, about Gabriel's actions under Stalin Oleg's mother having told him about her time in a gulag, and Oleg looking this up. (BTW, given Oleg's father made a career after this, what do you want to bet he originally denounced her? One of the most insidiously destructive aspects of any dictatorship is the utter erosion of trust in any bond but between the citizen and the state it wreaks, after all.
(This year I heard Svetlana Alexejevich talking about interviewing a man who had been in a camp as well, as had his wife. His wife died there. But he remembers "the happiest moment of my life" as being when, post-gulag, he got his party membership book back. "But didn't you love your wife?" "Yes, yes. But I was just so happy I got my party book back!")
The 80s weren't the Stalin era, but there are, of course, echoes and parallels aplenty. Elizabeth's latest task - getting the files of US friendly people in Moscow - won't result in anything good for any of those names. Philip, Elizabeth and Gabriel all at different points express their joy and/or relief that they're doing something unquestionably good by aquiring samples of the super grain for the Mother Country, but Philip and Elizabeth are careful not to correct Paige, who never was told about their change of mission after the discovery there is no US grain sabotage, when she expresses her horror about this supposed US crime. Nor does Gabriel, in the end, tell Philip about his son. Parents lying (or editing facts) for their children is a thing and too deeply ingrained to be dispensed with. And for all that Gabriel is praising Paige for facing the truth early in the episode, where his easy grandfatherly manner quickly wins her over, his very last line to Philip is the sucker punch one that Philip had been right all along; Paige should have been kept away from all the spying business. Since it's now too late to do anything about this, the admission feels cruel, and yet was probably meant as anything but, and more as a last gift (I imagine Gabriel didn't say "You were right" to Philip that often).
Gabriel saying that his younger self thought he was doing the right thing but really was acting out of fear in ye olde days of course connects to his exchange with Claudia at the start of the season where he said to her "nothing frightens those two" "Everything frightens those two." And in a way, he's got a point. it's never been about physical courage with P & E, that was never their problem, but emotions frighten them more and more. Elizabeth's increasingly unconvincing denial about having liked her target being but a minor case in point.
Philip's latest mark, Deirdre, strikes me as the anti-Martha, not least because despite the different hair colour, Philip's persona with her is very early Clark like. Except that Deirdre isn't looking for romance, and instead identifies Philip's character as needy. I don't think his surprise at this diagnosis was just acting.
I continue to see Stan keeping his job as the most unrealstic part of the show, but at least in this episode they were lampshading it.
Last season we already had some nods towards the non-Great Patriotic War side of the Stalin era via Gabriel bringing up his past, but this season the brutality of the Stalinist purges really is a theme, what with in addition to Philip's biological father being revealed as a gulag guard and him asking his emotional father, Gabriel, about Gabriel's actions under Stalin Oleg's mother having told him about her time in a gulag, and Oleg looking this up. (BTW, given Oleg's father made a career after this, what do you want to bet he originally denounced her? One of the most insidiously destructive aspects of any dictatorship is the utter erosion of trust in any bond but between the citizen and the state it wreaks, after all.
(This year I heard Svetlana Alexejevich talking about interviewing a man who had been in a camp as well, as had his wife. His wife died there. But he remembers "the happiest moment of my life" as being when, post-gulag, he got his party membership book back. "But didn't you love your wife?" "Yes, yes. But I was just so happy I got my party book back!")
The 80s weren't the Stalin era, but there are, of course, echoes and parallels aplenty. Elizabeth's latest task - getting the files of US friendly people in Moscow - won't result in anything good for any of those names. Philip, Elizabeth and Gabriel all at different points express their joy and/or relief that they're doing something unquestionably good by aquiring samples of the super grain for the Mother Country, but Philip and Elizabeth are careful not to correct Paige, who never was told about their change of mission after the discovery there is no US grain sabotage, when she expresses her horror about this supposed US crime. Nor does Gabriel, in the end, tell Philip about his son. Parents lying (or editing facts) for their children is a thing and too deeply ingrained to be dispensed with. And for all that Gabriel is praising Paige for facing the truth early in the episode, where his easy grandfatherly manner quickly wins her over, his very last line to Philip is the sucker punch one that Philip had been right all along; Paige should have been kept away from all the spying business. Since it's now too late to do anything about this, the admission feels cruel, and yet was probably meant as anything but, and more as a last gift (I imagine Gabriel didn't say "You were right" to Philip that often).
Gabriel saying that his younger self thought he was doing the right thing but really was acting out of fear in ye olde days of course connects to his exchange with Claudia at the start of the season where he said to her "nothing frightens those two" "Everything frightens those two." And in a way, he's got a point. it's never been about physical courage with P & E, that was never their problem, but emotions frighten them more and more. Elizabeth's increasingly unconvincing denial about having liked her target being but a minor case in point.
Philip's latest mark, Deirdre, strikes me as the anti-Martha, not least because despite the different hair colour, Philip's persona with her is very early Clark like. Except that Deirdre isn't looking for romance, and instead identifies Philip's character as needy. I don't think his surprise at this diagnosis was just acting.
I continue to see Stan keeping his job as the most unrealstic part of the show, but at least in this episode they were lampshading it.
