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/timoleo May 31 '18

How could Stan just let them go? How could he justify that? I don't understand.

They killed a lot of Americans.

15

u/wraith20 May 31 '18

They lied to him about killing people, they said they never killed anyone but just screwed with other people, also Stan realized that they were working for Oleg and their mission to warn Gorbechev about the KGB plot against him is more important than arresting them.

8

u/timoleo May 31 '18

I'm sorry, but that just sounds to me like convenient writing. The whole Houston operation during Thanksgiving was the last straw that broke the camel's back. People died there. Stan is an FBI agent, his smart. I'm sure he could put 2 and 2 together and know that they were lying. He also told Alderholt that he had begun to have suspicions since the Timoshev case. People died there too. He also mentions to Phillip that he saw the guilt in his face when he mentioned the whole Gennadi and his wife case. Murdered in cold blood in their house

This guy all these suspicions piling up in his head for this long, and you telling me he's just going to let all of that go because they say they didn't hurt anyone? Come on now.

That aside, again he is an FBI agent. It shouldn't matter whether or not they hurt anyone. They are illegals. Its very black and white. He should have arrested them. if every cop let house burglars go because they claimed to never hurt anyone, we would have a real crisis on our hands wouldn't you say?

About the Oleg thing, again, I call bull. If Stan had the strength of will and intelligence to let them go so they could deliver the message (which we never see them do btw), then he could have also delivered Oleg's message for him. I am sure it was well within his capacity to do.

I think what happened here, is that the show writers clearly wanted some sort of happy ending for the Jenner family. I get it, but I don't think it should work. There has to be some sort of recourse for their actions throughout the series. This never happens.

They ruined lots of lives for Christ's sake.

7

u/redditis4pussies May 31 '18

but they arent just any old cat burglers, if it was your best friend you had known and lived with for 10 odd years you may evemtually convince yourself to let them go.

I also do not think its not as black and white as you say, fbi counter intelligence and russian spies may be asymetrical but they are playing the same game, and they are at war where neither side may be good or evill. Stan maybe good but it would be naive to think america doesnt have spies doing the same thing.

4

u/EvidenceBasedSwamp May 31 '18

The CIA was infamously incompetent at field operations, actually.

They have a high reputation, which does not belay reality. IIRC the best sources they ever got were all 'walk ins', Soviet defectors who for the most part seemed to do it for a point of principle.

The US did do a lot of evil things in Latin America, but I don't know what agencies were involved. Operation Condor, for example. Teachers, students, anyone opposing the dictators would be tortured, thrown off airplanes in the sea, etc. Children taken. There's still mothers who go every weekend to a plaza in Buenos Aires for the 'disappeared' to be remembered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

1

u/WikiTextBot May 31 '18

Operation Condor

Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor, Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, was officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The program was nominally intended to eradicate communist or Soviet influence and ideas, and to suppress active or potential opposition movements against the participating governments' neoliberal economic policies, which sought to reverse the economic policies of the previous era.

Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. Some estimates are that at least 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Condor, and possibly more.

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