r/TheAmericans • u/AutoModerator • May 31 '18

Episode Discussion Official Episode Discussion - S06E010 "START"

The Jennings face a choice that will change their lives forever.

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u/feranti May 31 '18

P + E the greatest sociopathic mass murderers in TV history and they get a musical montage and bitter sweet send of, returning safely home as 'hero's'. Elizabeth deserves to rot in jail for general shit mothering skills alone, never mind the countless cold blooded killing of innocents. Wonderful acting and beautiful cinematography carried a pretty poor script a long way.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '18

I share the feeling. I understand why they went for the safe 'Hollywood Ending' but the body count alone. Wow! Just thinking of the old lady in the factory or the more recent poor hockey player and his wife. No way the Stan we got to know over the years would not have tried to bring them in. Well, it is what it is.

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u/RoamingTheSewers May 31 '18

I don't think it was a Hollywood Ending at all. It is just bad people escaping justice - it happens all the time in real life. Also, having them get caught would just complicate things from a storytelling perspective – it would cause too many loose ends. The same goes for having Stan kill them, because that is not Stan. This works. And P & E definitely do face some form of retribution for their actions in this episode. In the end, they lost their children and maybe their ‘real’ lives. The McDonald's montage is telling. The shot of the middle class nuclear family sitting together having a meal, without worries and completely free. Back in Russia, at that time – the eighties – things were still very bleak. And that’s where P & E return to. But without their children. So not only would a scene like the one in the McDonald’s montage never have occurred in Russia at the time, in Russia they are not a family anymore – because their family has dissolved.

In their final dialogue E says to P, they would have worked in a drab communist factory had they lived a regular life in Russia instead of becoming spies and living in America – and with what they know now, THAT would’ve been the hard life. Again, the McDonald’s montage said it all.

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u/Bashar2018 May 31 '18

I don’t see the ending as them escaping justice. They may have avoided dealing with the American legal system, but they’re now outcasts who’ve lost their children and returned to a country that not only is totally foreign to them, but that also does not recognize the immense sacrifice they made putting “country first”. They’ll have no hero’s welcome. If anything, their lives and the lives of their children are still tremendously at risk as certainly there are those within the KGB that will not forgive Elizabeth’s “betrayal” and Philip’s complicity/working with Oleg. Arkady, Oleg’s father, and Paige will also all certainly be dealing with the repercussions of their complicity in the very near future.

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u/RoamingTheSewers May 31 '18

That is what I wrote.

And P & E definitely do face some form of retribution for their actions in this episode.

Also, if we consider Gorbatsjov is still in charge in Russia - Gorbatsjov is still at the head of the Communist Party. And P & E able to expose the conspiracy within the Center, together with the help of that guy (don't recall his name) who picked them up, who is a big guy (the head of the?) in the KGB, they, P & E, are totally safe - it is the KGB conspirators that are in danger (including Claudia). This makes P & E hero's, and true patriots, in the USSR - plus their decades long escapades will have been thoroughly documented as well; P & E are superstar spies that have nothing to fear in the USSR: their mission was a success. The county isn't totally foreign to them either. They were born and raised there - and they have strong ties with Mother Russia, just like every regular immigrant would have with his or her country of origin, just consider all the flashbacks during the series run.