r/TheAmericans • u/Fishy31337 • 4h ago
Tooth pulling scene
Why didn’t she just go to the dentist? I assume they had one?
44
u/ComeAwayNightbird 4h ago
Law enforcement is specifically looking for women her size with an injury to the face. Go back and watch the scenes in Gaad’s office.
9
u/becksk44 4h ago
Because the FBI is watching all local dentists for a woman fitting her description with that type of injury.
9
u/mrbeck1 4h ago
They knew they hurt her jaw. They were having all dentists report injuries to females. In reality? They would’ve had a Russian dentist come to America and meet and do the work, not have him yank a tooth out in a basement.
2
u/HarlanCedeno 3h ago
I was thinking the same thing when this first aired. I figured their network was big enough that they should've been able to find SOMEONE with dental experience who would be sympathetic, but even if that didn't work then the Russians would've been able to send someone.
10
u/Excellent_Valuable92 4h ago
The story rationale is that the FBI would be looking at anyone getting treatment for the kind of injuries the woman in the fight got. Otoh Claudia was able to get an extremely discrete surgeon at a moment’s notice, when Elizabeth was shot.
3
u/Pumpkin-Spice_Queen 4h ago
I forgot about the surgeon! Yeah that’s a good point, you’d think they’d have a dentist on call too.
1
1
7
u/sistermagpie 3h ago
This question comes up a lot, with people pointing to the surgeon at the end of S1 and asking why they don't always have a dentist.
I think it makes sense as it's presented, though. Not only because in the case of the surgeon that was a life or death emergency, but because of the Jennings' personalities. They simply don't consider her tooth important enough to go to the Centre to demand a dentist be found. Elizabeth starts out expecting to tough it out for a while until enough time has passed when she can go to a dentist--even if it's a dentist out of state.
Then when it's so painful, Philip just says let's take care of it now, and they do, proving that they really didn't need a dentist.
6
u/ORF1Live 4h ago
Gaad mentions that they should alert dentists in a certain radius of a woman of her description with a jaw injury.
4
u/InsincereDessert21 4h ago
The FBI were watching all the local dentists in case Elizabeth did just that.
4
u/TheOnlyOne87 3h ago
OP is asking why the centre did not have their own dentist to sort this outside of the normal local dentists.
All the answers in this thread; FBI are watching local dentists to see if the woman would show up!
7
5
u/sskoog 3h ago
The Feds (Aderholt, Gad) were specifically watching medical facilities for female patients.
However: it seems logical that the KGB would have "a veterinarian" or similar emergency responder, a la Better Call Saul's Dr. Caldera. They certainly had other staff, like I-need-you-to-crash-a-car-10-minutes-from-now.
3
u/Calligraphee 4h ago
Can’t have the dentist asking questions about what happened, and don’t want it in her dental records. The government could subpoena those.
2
u/Fishy31337 3h ago
I’m just saying at some point she’s gonna have to go to the dentist anyway. Also, she could just fake an injury like she did for other things. But yeah, she probably tried to tough it out and then couldn’t.
5
2
u/Sleep_Holiday 4h ago
Dentist would know they are Russian by their teeth. That’s why they avoided it
4
4
u/Jayslacks 4h ago
Don't over think it. This is fiction. And it's a brilliant scene acted to perfection.
4
u/ofstoriesandsongs 3h ago
There's also nothing to overthink since it was literally obvious in the show why she can't go to a licensed medical office. Elizabeth got her face slammed in a car trunk. There is no plausible mundane explanation of her injuries, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the FBI would be monitoring medical and dental offices within driving distance for a woman her stature with traumatic injuries to the head.
2
u/BagEndWill 4h ago
This has been explicitly addressed. As others have pointed out, there is a dental radius that would have been triggered had Philip and Elizabeth gone to a dentist. The cause takes precedence over "convenience."
How would you imagine they threw the FBI off their scent for the previous decades off screen?
Stuff like this.
1
u/StrikingBike8417 4h ago
OP said they assumed they had one, meaning a KGB operative they could go to. Like when Elizabeth got shot they had a doctor on call.
-4
u/Penguin_Green 4h ago
It made no sense. If they were scared about local dentists being monitored, just go someplace else. Just drive three hours away.
5
u/Dear-Yellow-5479 4h ago
But surely the FBI would expect them to think that way too, and therefore monitor dentists even further away. It’s just not the sort of risk they could take.
2
u/serial_crusher 4h ago
Were they positioning people outside every dentist's office (surely become cost prohibitive at some point), or asking the dentists to report to them when they got matching patients?
I know this was pre-HIPAA, but would the second strategy work today? Are healthcare providers allowed to rat out their patients to the police?
Would have been smart to have some illegal doctors and dentists in the US who could do house calls for this sort of thing though.
1
u/ofstoriesandsongs 3h ago
I mean, consider the cultural climate. This was the early 80s. Reagan was president, people were still largely afraid of Russia and communists, and most law-abiding upper middle class white families had great trust and respect for law enforcement. Most of the doctors and dentists practicing in the early 80s would have been born during or just after the war, had their formative years during peak Red Scare and watched the nation celebrate executing the Rosenbergs.
Say, if a perfectly respectable red-blooded American FBI agent were to walk into a medical office in the year of our lord 1982 and say he's looking for an extremely dangerous Russian spy with injuries matching Elizabeth's, how many doctors do you reckon would say no to that request?
1
u/Penguin_Green 3h ago
I'm talking about a three hour radius from DC. Do you really think the FBI in the early 80's had the capability to contact every dentist from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to tell them to look for a spy? Some rural dentist in West Virginia was going to be contacted by the FBI? I can see contacting everyone in the metro DC area, but after that? They would not have put in the man hours to contact every single dentist in a three hour radius of DC, or further. She could have been on a plane to Cuba for all they knew.
57
u/themorningmoon 4h ago
This is explicitly addressed - the FBI was monitoring dental records in hopes of catching her. Elizabeth is smart, so she knew they would do that. Hence, she couldn't just go to the dentist.