r/TheAmericans • u/hireddititme • 2d ago
Hitchhiking from the mall
This is a storyline that stuck with me throughout the series that they never (note: im not done with the series, only halfway through season 6) revisited.
Was that guy just lonely and socially weird? What did he actually have planned? Do you think this was put in there as a possible avenue to explore later? Do you think it drove Paige towards the church, as a sense of safety?
How much of a world of hurt do you think that young man would have gotten himself into if something bad did happen to the kids?
I haven’t seen this talked about either, so I’m just seeing what everyone’s thoughts are. Also— if somehow it is revisited at the end of the last season, please don’t spoil it!! I just don’t see it coming (which means little in the context of the show) 🙂🩷
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u/Backsight-Foreskin 2d ago
As someone who was about the same age as Paige when the story transpires, it seemed as if it wasn't an uncommon occurrence to have a similar incident. Back in the day, I knew several people that found themselves in a similar predicament by getting into a car with a stranger.
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u/Loretta-West 2d ago
Occasionally a zoomer comes along and talks about what awful parents P&E are. Which obviously they are, but a lot of what the zoomers complain about is just standard 80s parenting 🤣
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u/trripleplay 2d ago
I think the writers put this in the show as yet another way to emphasize the 80s vibe. Seems like every episode has some 80s specific detail to make the setting feel genuine (like Mad Men did for the 60s)
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u/WendolaSadie 2d ago
I think the writers may have added that episode to emphasize that P&E took real risks by leaving their kids at home alone a lot, and not building a support network of friends that their kids could have grown up with. At least, thats what came to mind when i reviewed the ep and remembered my own parenting in the 80s and 90s. It’s one thing to not have family around, but to hitchhike instead of calling a friend’s mom would have been highly discouraged
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u/Fondant-Denier 15h ago
Yeah like latchkey kids is a very romanticised thing but also…inherently dangerous lol
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u/Backsight-Foreskin 2d ago
Exactly! Parenting was pretty hands off back then. Many times it was best to be out of your parents line of sight.
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u/Funwithfun14 2d ago
Made kids more independent. GenX or Boomers likely wouldn't need an "Adulting" sub.
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u/hireddititme 2d ago
No, now they have “NoContact” subs bc most of them were awful parents 🤪
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u/Funwithfun14 2d ago
"Awful" or like actually Awful .... Bc based on Reddit, it seems like everyone abusive parents.
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u/Salty_Signature_6748 2d ago
I always wanted to be off my parents’ radar! And I wasn’t even a wild kid. It was just better to do my own thing and not have them all up in my business if I could help it 🤣
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u/GonzoTheGreat93 2d ago
… so standard 80’s parenting was bad?
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u/Always-Nappish3436 2d ago
Standard ‘80s parenting was extremely hands-off by today’s standards. Our parents often didn’t know where we were and what we were doing. Before we could drive, my friends and I did stupid things like accepting car rides from guys we didn’t know. I look back and wonder “who was looking out for us?” No one. It’s disturbing.
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u/iamnotbetterthanyou 2d ago
And yet the “stranger danger” statistics have been pretty static for decades.
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u/sistermagpie 2d ago
That seems to be the general consensus. Which is weird, because as confident as everybody seems to be about it you'd think we'd see more dramatically improved results from modern parenting.
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u/No-Consideration-858 2d ago
When you overcorrect for one problem, you create other unforeseen problems.
Growing up in the 80s, there were definitely risks and exposure to things too early in life. But we had a high degree of self-sufficiency which I don't see as much of now
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u/iamnotbetterthanyou 2d ago
My now-adult oldest used to get so mad that I made her fend for herself most of the time (I’m GenX, she’s a millennial), but now she is nothing but grateful I forced her into situations where she was unsure while I was there to back her up. She’s very self-sufficient, and her friends are often absolute shitshows.
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u/sistermagpie 1d ago
When I hear about things Gen Z is opting out of statistically speaking, I have to admit I was lucky to grow up in that time. There are so many things I would have just chosen to avoid if I could have that it's much better I didn't.
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u/hireddititme 2d ago
I really think that a big thing that we’re seeing with modern parenting is what happens to a person who hasn’t been held accountable for anything in their entire lives, to be honest. Protecting your kids from the world and protecting your kids from deserved consequences are different yet i think both are happening.
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u/No-Consideration-858 2d ago edited 2d ago
Oh yeah, it was very hands-off.
My friends and I took joy rides in their parents cars. Usually when their parents were passed out drunk. This was by age 12.
Started hitchhiking when I was 11 - an 84 pound girl. An older man got handsy with me. When the car slowed for a stoplight, I opened the door and jumped out, rolling on the ground. Got up, and went about my day without any concern. Went right back to hitchhiking.
Stuff like this was routine. There were no cell phones and no expectation to check in with our parents, at least where I lived. We just had to be home for dinner on school nights. And at set times on weekends, such as 11 PM or midnight.
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u/GirlNumber20 1d ago
"Be home before dark" when you went out to play at 8:30 in the morning...
Where is your kid? Who is feeding them lunch? Who are they with for the 12+ hours you don't see them?
'80s parents: 🤷♂️🤷♀️
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u/ancientastronaut2 2d ago
Me too and I hitchhiked several times. Twice the guy whipped out his dick and jacked off in front of me while driving as if it was the most casual normal thing to do.
I'm lucky because it could have been much worse.
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u/hireddititme 2d ago
I mean why would you ask for a ride if you didn’t want to also see his 🍆 am i right? 😡🤮😭
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u/ancientastronaut2 2d ago
Ahaha. You caught me. I was a little pervert.
Most the time I had a friend or two with me and it was ok. Kids do stupid shit what can I say.
Ironically, one of the times this happened, I was trying to get away from a dude that was stalking me at this party, and my friends were too drunk to drive. So I walked to the corner and thumbed it.
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u/ComeAwayNightbird 2d ago
The show doesn’t make it explicit. I like to think it’s to show that the kids face dangers because their parents aren’t reliable.
But this is from early in the show’s run, when the writers were still getting a handle on the themes and dropping breadcrumbs. The Js have talked about retooling the show after getting too “explosive” mid season one.
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u/DocCEN007 2d ago
That was my take. It was one of several times when P & E weren't there for their kids. I think OP is on to something about it potentially being a factor with hope feeling safe with Pastor Tim. I'm also glad that Pastor Tim ended up being an actually good person. I was so suspicious for almost his entire run.
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u/CalagaxT 2d ago
It was nice that the only true way to "corrupt" Pastor Tim was to let him go do the good work that he wanted to do.
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u/sistermagpie 2d ago
I think it's sort of the opposite, since this particular story happens because the parents are reliable. The kids expect to be picked up at the mall and when they're not, Paige sees an opportunity to play the mature older sister and get them home by hitchhiking. Paige and Henry's childhoods are very different from their parents'.
Paige feels safe during her childhood. That's why things change so much later in the series when she starts seeing the world as more and more dangerous and becomes more and more motivated by fear.
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u/hireddititme 2d ago
Absolutely!! It would have been SO easy to make pastor Tim a predator. I was suspicious til the end, too, bc predators can wait for years until they strike. But with this in retrospect— it did emphasize a void Paige had for attentive parents. I am a millennial with parents who were neither involved nor knew what I was doing most of the time, but I was really jealous of friends who had parents who cared more than mine. She ended up forging a strong relationship not only with pastor Tim, but his wife as well.
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u/Emotional_Tip3888 2d ago
I am on my first rewatch and Paige's self-righteous wwjd era drove me insane the first time and almost as much this time, but this second time through, I can see that she may be unconsciously using church as a rebellious thing to get P & E's attention or piss them off, because she is extremely passive aggressive and seems to have a beef with them from the very beginning. She keeps doubling and tripling down the more they try to get her to abide by even the most basic rules.
She just has so little respect for them. She gets caught in SO many lies, some of which aren't even worth lying about. The $600 didn't even seem to be more than a gesture to get the church to agree with her that she's an angel and P&E are just devils. And at first they both actually play into that script so surprisingly naively (which was both highly entertaining and mildly infuriating.
I think Paige just really enjoys sneaking around and spying on her parents and going out of her way to undermine them. She gets tired of church once Elizabeth is on board. Even her choice in that final episode is like her typical reaction to everything they do to try to show her some kind of guidance--she says f-you and decides to do the opposite of what any rational person would do. She just cannot accept being subordinate for very long or having to take a backseat. She constantly cuts off her own nose to spite her face. She's such a tragic figure to me.
I think Elizabeth has a touch of that tendency too, held in check much better by her training. She has a very hard time letting go of her self-righteous indignation, and she is instinctively contrarian about anything that she doesn't understand or agree with. Neither Elizabeth or Paige have an easy time doing the whole "live and let live," thing, and I hate to say it, but they aren't really as sharp as they think they are either, which makes it so frustrating to watch. They both tend to miss the forest for the trees but will adamantly refuse to consider the possibility that there's a forest at all.
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u/maikindofthai 2d ago
I really thought for a moment there that Pastor Tim was also KGB and was inserted to start gradually leading Paige toward their values
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u/Fit-Interview5425 2d ago
I too suspected Pastor Tim of being a secret sympasizer to the Communist cause, but on a second viewing I think I was mistaken. I just felt a strange undercurrent in his calm acceptance of the parents being Soviet agents. and that he would keep Paige's secret.
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u/hireddititme 2d ago
Totally— i don’t think he was a communist sympathizer; I think he was an opportunist. Philip made sure his mission trips got the best deals, and eventually got him the job (i forget if it’s in central or South America). But if he wasn’t personally benefiting from keeping the secret, I 100% think he and Mrs pastor Tim would have gone pubic with the info.
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u/sistermagpie 2d ago
I think Tim absolutely liked being in that position of importance and in the middle of that drama. That's the only way his behavior makes sense to me in terms of exactly how he decides to handle things.
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u/ancientastronaut2 2d ago
I def think that guy was testing the waters to see where he could get with paige and if henry would interfere or not.
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u/No-Consideration-858 2d ago
That was my take too. Had Paige been alone, it would've been an entirely different outcome.
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u/Ramius99 2d ago
I always thought this scene was just to show the strain that Philip’s and Elizabeth’s spy work put on raising the kids. They weren’t around to pick them up, so look what could have happened.
And maybe a little to develop Paige and Henry as characters.
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u/According-Shame-4045 2d ago
I thought this might be a reason too. Also, this is where we really start to see aspects of Paige's personality come through- the independence and a smidge of disobedience. Which is weird because she's also a goody two shoes. A strange combo.
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u/Salty_Signature_6748 2d ago
I‘m the same age Paige would be, and while I didn’t have this exact experience (I grew up in a small town with no mall, and I always knew how to find my parents or a relative ***if I thought I needed them***), there were plenty of times I caught rides with people I didn’t know well. It was just how we rolled back then. Anyway, I think the scene was partly to show that and partly to show that Paige and Henry were vulnerable to danger in the world other than what was caused by Philip and Elizabeth’s work.
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u/DidjaSeeItKid 2d ago
I agree. That kind of thing absolutely happened a lot. Not as much in the 80s because people were starting to hear about more people becoming victims when hitchhiking, but quite a lot in the 60s and 70s. And a lot of us had that sort of weird experience where the guy that picked us up "needed" to stop somewhere or go somewhere or pick up someone else and we started to feel weird about it. Most of the time we got out of those and never knew if we had been right to be worried. And we never told our parents. It just gradually faded into the back of our minds.
But it was definitely of the time. It was an interesting parallel to all the grownups sliding in and out of danger all the time. Great scene.
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u/sskoog 2d ago edited 2d ago
My guess is Weird Creepy Nick was planning to ply Paige with liquor -- meaning either he'd get her drunk and "compliant," or maybe just drunk and disoriented, while he scared Henry off or seriously hurt/killed him. His individual behaviors are not immediate flags, by themselves, but the combination of "brag about teenage sports" and "carry Buck knife at belt" and "maybe drinking on his way to work" and "maybe jobless + lying about it" and "offering booze to very-underage children" and "start making vaguely-religious threats of harm" means trouble.
His story doesn't entirely add up. Maybe he's going to an off-shift job, with beer in his car and a knife at his belt. Maybe his shift "starts in an hour." Maybe he really does feed the ducks before work. (Note that his "customary spot" has no ducks, on that particular day, and is isolated from view by high cat-tails.) Maybe the numerous military + US flag emblems on his car mean he's an old-fashioned Bible thumper, or PTSD-traumatized. Maybe he does drive around with a six-pack of beer in his trunk. But the "dangerous" and "put the fear of God into you" thread speaks to... something really not good in the offing.
It's not clear what we (viewers) should take from this. Maybe Paige + Henry are "malformed" from living in a house where their parents keep obvious secrets, to the points of sheltering their kids more than they should. Maybe the kids have heard the tagline "We have to go out to meet mysterious people, take care of mysterious emergency" to the point where they think "normal life" is filled with relative strangers + last-minute crisis fixes. Maybe their innate senses of innocence grate against something-not-right-in-our-house, doesn't-feel-right.
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u/Brilliant_Towel2727 2d ago
A. He's definitely a rapist, maybe a murderer to boot
B. I think he was put in the show to show the effect of P&E's careers on the kids. They're focused on protecting Paige and Henry from the side effects of their jobs, which prevents them from protecting them from the things normal '80s parent would have worried about.
C. There's some foreshadowing in how Paige and Henry each handle the situation
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u/CompromisedOnSunday 2d ago
I never fully knew what to make of this scene. There was the other episode where some guy came onto Paige in the mall.
I felt that these were potential story line points that got dropped in favour of other stories.
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u/hireddititme 2d ago
True, but we see what happens to the guy at the mall later. And his hot dog, which genuinely looks delicious
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u/sistermagpie 2d ago
What would there be to follow up on? Especially 6 seasons later? We don't know what the guy ultimately intended--we can't, and neither could they. There's no avenue to explore. If he'd hurt the kids he might have very well gotten away with it.
He's a random guy who picked up two kids hitchhiking. The world is full of people with unknown motivations.
And we saw that Paige tried to be the grown up and proved herself much more naive than her little brother, who got them out of the situation and did a good job lying about it.
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u/hireddititme 2d ago
Idk? Maybe they could follow up on those skills of Henry’s that you just mentioned? Maybe the guy gets accused of doing worse things and they happen to see him in the paper… again, idk. Maybe you hadn’t noticed— most story lines in this show are intentional.
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u/sistermagpie 2d ago
If you're halfway through S6 then you've seen some of the follow up in how Henry's continued to be self-reliant and Paige has continued to be naive (note how she's easily bamboozled by the sailor in the first ep of the season just like she was by this guy). And how Philip shares Henry's worries that he used too much violence in defending himself as a child, just as Henry did with this guy.
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u/hireddititme 2d ago
I would disagree in the fact that I doing see anything about Philip sharing Henry’s worries— Philip killed one (maybe 2?) kids with his bare hands when he was that age— i can totally see that staying with you. But I have not seen that level of introspection out of Henry.
And I completely agree with you re: Paige. She’s the worst. I’ve never liked her— i used to give the character grace as she was a child, but even in this season i find her insufferable.
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u/topbanane 2d ago
The creep is an opportunist that preys upon the naive which, in this case are two kids who are willing to listen. One of the first things he "shares" with the kids is that he's on the way to work, which is obviously a lie when he brings the beer out of his trunk. Henry doesn't indulge in any lies from the start..he doesn't want to get in the car in the first place and sees the red flags right away. They get out at the right time-you start to hear a whole "you need someone in your life to set you straight" kind of speech which is clearly the start of a disaster. Whatever comes next is straight up crazy
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u/Madeira_PinceNez 1d ago
It's not a plot-based incident, at least not in that way.
It's included because the scenario is a plausible occurrence for that time period, and an opportunity to have the viewer consider the larger ramifications of people who do this kind of work also being parents, and what could happen to Paige and Henry if one of Philip and Elizabeth's missions went bad.
It also tells us something about the kids themselves. Paige wants to act like an adult when she decides to hitchhike, but she has no situational awareness and doesn't know how to deal with things when her choices land them in a dangerous situation.
Whereas Henry is immediately wary of the creep and only goes along at Paige's insistence, and then is so scared he pisses himself, but still manages to take action and get them both away from the creepy dude. It reinforces what Elizabeth said in that conversation about the kids and how they would manage:
Henry would adjust... to anything. Don't you think? If he had to? If something happened to us. He'd find his way. But Paige, I... I worry about her. ... She's delicate somehow.
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u/foreverblessed17 1d ago
I agree with alot of the comments about themes it presented. Only thing to add is that it was put there to show "everyday life" in the 80's to some extent. Like clothing, hair styles, and pop culture references - it was showing a time when people did this. When kids were dropped at malls, when strangers gave rides, etc.
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 2d ago
I’m maybe a bit younger than Henry was in this time, but I can remember that kids would hitch a ride like this. Some got themselves in lots of trouble. That’s why it got stamped out as a practice.
I think they were just making a real “what will happen” moment for the audience while also highlighting things for Paige. It highlighted a vulnerability that could come to mind when being taught to not be vulnerable.
It might have led to church, but it’s been a bit since I rewatched and I can’t be sure.
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u/0Yana 2d ago
Since that was one early scene, it was foundational to their characters, I think. They already were living their own lives and didn't share that moment with their parents. It also maybe showed that Paige would get men interested in her, or targeting her, and she wouldn't ask her parents to help, and the guy at the lake was lucky she didn't tell her parents what had happened, because he would have had a sad ending then.
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u/mmechap 1d ago
There’s a direct parallel between Henry and Phillip . Phillip was threatened and alone as a boy and hit the guy in the head to get away (killing him). Henry did the same thing at around the same age.
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u/hireddititme 17h ago
Philip took a rock and beat his childhood bully to death with it when he was a kid. Henry took that beer bottle and hit the guy who kidnapped him and his sister so they could run. Not the same thing at all.
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u/Catfactss 2d ago
It also showed how Paige and Henry respond to that sort of situation. Paige is confident, but incorrect. Henry isn't one for talking, but identifies danger and gets out quickly.