I think for Gabriel denying Phillip the chance to see his son was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. He alluded to this in his conversation with Elizabeth in this episode.
this season has definitely been slower than previous years. i think that might be due to paige's storyline. her scenes, while probably accurate to how a teenage girl would be acting in her situation, doesn't exactly make for great tv. also, burov. i like him, but man, it feels like time stops when he goes for another walk. it's still good, but i hope things start picking up soon. it's curious that they neglected to inform paige that they were wrong about the US trying to sabotage the soviet grain supply to starve them.
The scenes with Phillip and Deirdre never fail to crack me up. So things are going to end badly for that nice Russian lady that Stan and Dennis are running, right?
I found that actress's performance to be simply tremendous. Utterly heartbreaking stuff, that scene in the art museum. Wow. When she asked for help with her teeth I about died.
That's why I think it'll end badly for her. It's basically the TV plotting equivalent of showing us a cute puppy and then doing something terrible to it.
Isn't it odd that there are only three more episodes to this season? I feel like not much has happened so far. The end of this latest episode is ominous. I suspect that after having read Pastor Tim's diary excerpts, Elizabeth (and perhaps also Philip) might want to revive their original plan to eliminate him by blowing up his cabin in a gas explosion.
The pastor leaves for a mission never to be heard from again. Agreed, the storyline seems to pick up and drop. What's the primary overarching story here?
i'm worried that the bullying of pascha (don't know if that's how his name is spelled) is going to be too much for him to bear and he may kill himself before his mom decides to go back to moscow. if that was to happen, surely philip and elizabeth would bear the brunt of that responsibility.
It would fit in with the theme of the mistakes of grown-ups coming at the cost of their (or someone else's) children.
This season seems like its constantly setting something up only for it never to be really big or maybe not happened yet.
Yeah, it does feel like they are just slowly working up to the final season. This season doesn't seem like it'll have an arc of its own. At least the rough outlines of it aren't clear.
Wow. That was once again an episode meant to remind the audience that Philip and Elizabeth are monsters.
At the end of the day, they are instruments of The Center. Interesting tidbit about Henry's unwitting report about his FBI visit. I'm glad we didn't spend much, if any time on Paige this week. What's the endgame with the investigation on the "produce lady" in Russia?
In terms of the endgame of the writers, I'm guessing it's to show the futility of the KGB going after corruption when that corruption is inherent to the system. If they indeed lock up that woman for fifteen years, she will just be replaced by someone else who does the same thing she did. I honestly didn't think they would kill the husband, so when Elizabeth shot him first, that was really shocking in the moment.
Yea, that was a "good" twist, as I think the show has become a bit predictable. Was the lady telling the truth? (Rhetorical ?)
At first I thought she was confessing to save her husband (thus lying to Philip and Elizabeth in the process) but when she recounted the story to her husband, it was too detailed and emotional to have been made up.
Wow, the Russian lady really screwed Beeman and Aderholt over with her Russian hockey beau. I loved how rattled Stan was but Dennis just rolled with the punches like a pro. Tuan is a disturbing little sociopath. Which is why I have a bit of a problem with the consistency of his portrayal. A guy who can talk so coldly about talking another person into suicide would not risk everything to make a phone call to check in on a sick former foster brother. Not unless that story was bullshit after all. A general observation about this season: regardless of how much happens in the season finale, this season has been all about setting the board properly for their final season. Which is a but unfortunate just because not much of note happened and it's still hard to really identify overarching themes that have consistently featured throughout the story area this season, other than perhaps a general feeling of regret at how the past and each person's personal history has a way of catching up with them.
1984, I think. Andropov is still in power. I doubt that they will do a five year time jump. One other point they could end on is Gorbatsjov becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.That is closer by in terms of its time and it also has a certain symmetry with their decision to go home.
So Renee is a Russian operative, right? It also appears as if Stan is starting to have suspicions that there is more to her than meets the eye, going by his facial expressions at the end of that scene. Overall I thought season five was a bit of a letdown. Not a bad season of TV, but probably the weakest season of "The Americans" so far. It just felt like Weisberg and Fields spent an entire season moving the pieces in the right position for their closing gambit. Which is a bit of a shame, but I expect that season six will be truly great.
my first thought when they showed martha and her language teacher sitting on the bench looking at the little girl was, "please be an orphanage." i'm glad they're sincere in their efforts to do right by her.
The way Elizabeth was looking around the house....could she be having second thoughts? Tuan should have known....they've been operational for at least as long as Paige has been alive....his report won't do squat.
I think Elizabeth's second thoughts were meant to be about the life of luxury they have built for themselves in America, comparatively speaking, in contrast to what they will have in Russia. In a way, it's a mirror of the scene in the very first episode of season 1 in which Philip buys the cowboy boots.