The Americans

“Paige, Kimberly, Martha with her baby fever, that’s a lot for anyone. I imagine it might be confusing, even for you.”

Even as The Americans remains a show about marriage, it’s becoming a show more interested in being parents, in watching your children become something wholly distinct from you, about hoping to shape them into what you’re certain is best for them, about trying to keep them protected from the forces you see in the world every day. Elizabeth is now firmly on the side of telling Paige the truth about her life, hoping that the ability to mold her into a Soviet spy will take her off the oh-so-American path of a devout Christian — something wholly unfamiliar and dangerous in Elizabeth’s mind. Philip doesn’t like it any better — he even threatened her pastor last season — but he’d rather have her pure and religious than becoming a Kimberly.

Yet Philip can’t keep all the potential children in his life from blurring together in “Salang Pass.” Martha seems resolute in her quest for children, and Philip has to brace himself for not only being a fake husband to a woman he’ll eventually have to desert, but also to be a fake father to a child that’s already been abandoned. He’s watching his daughter change into something he doesn’t want, while also trying to fight off the influence of his wife, who wants her to be just like them. He fears that most of all. To make matters even worse, now he has to sleep with an underage girl, a girl so much like her daughter, a girl that just wants to spend time with her father but is left alone so much. Another possible future for Paige.

Already, this season has had a number of scenes that leave the audience feeling sick — breaking a dead woman’s limbs to fit her in a suitcase, pulling teeth with a wrench, and now the passionate kiss that Kimberly and Philip share just when he thought he had tucked her away for the night. Philip tried so hard to change the relationship from a sexual one to a father-figure one; he played with food with her, sat on the couch and watched TV with her, and listened to her stoned pleas for someone to actually be there for her. But the lines between father and lover are too blurred for her right now, and it doesn’t look like Philip will be able to make it into that house again without crossing those lines.

It’s difficult, but necessary, to keep in mind Philip’s complicity in this situation. He clearly doesn’t want to do this. It’s tearing him apart, and it’s quite likely he’ll crack before anything is actually done. But still, he’s the one in her house, giving her illegal drugs and attempting to seduce her. He may be doing awful things for the love of his country, but it doesn’t excuse the awful things. Neither he nor Elizabeth should be let off the moral hook for their actions.

The other major plotline of the episode involves Stan. He just might be ready to give up on Sandra and go on a date with the woman from the EST meeting last week. He’s spending his dinners with the Jenningses, asking Philip for advice, and even trying to right his wrongs by working with Oleg to save Nina. Stan is back, and whether or not Zinaida is actually a double agent, Stan’s going to find some way of convincing himself and others that she is. Wouldn’t that be a more interesting plot twist? She’s actually who she says she is, but Stan sends her back to get Nina?

Also, we can’t forget that this is the episode where Elizabeth crushes a man under a car. Her major mission here is to get access to Northrup, using her AA friend as an in. It’s just another reminder of how many people are caught in the crossfire of the spy game, how many lives are ruined, how many friendships betrayed, how many people killed and how many hearts left shattered in the name of a war that the Soviets will ultimately lose.

But the episode’s most powerful, most haunting moment comes at the end. A physically and mentally exhausted Philip collapses on the bed next to Elizabeth, his stoned mind playing over and over again the sexually training he had to endure as an agent. How can sex be real for him or Elizabeth anymore, given what they’ve been forced to do and how they’ve been forced to use it? Elizabeth, finally realizing the extent to which this is ravaging Philip’s mind, asks “Do you have to make it real with me?” We expect him to say no, because she’s the one person he really loves. But this is Philip, and this is The Americans, and nothing is that simple. “Sometimes,” he says, confessing that even with the woman he loves, sex is tied up in the life he chose to endure, “but not now.” It’s awful, really, comparing sex with Elizabeth to the sex he had to have with an assortment of not-ideal candidates in his past, but at least with Elizabeth, he’s being honest. Maybe that’s more romantic, after all.

Tidbits

  • I just have to take a moment to express how fantastic the facial acting in this series is. I can’t think of another show that does so much with lingering close-ups, with multiple layers of emotions that can’t be expressed in any other way that flickering eyes and set mouths. Incredible.
  • Do we think that Philip is actually going to go through with sex with Kimberly? I don’t think so. I think he’ll try and just be too disgusted. Which will inevitably result in complications for their plans.
  • No Nina, again? This continues to fulfil my prediction of the show wanting to keep her on even though she doesn’t really have a part to play in the story anymore, or shouldn’t. Let’s hope that this Zinaida/Oleg/Stan/Nina plotline goes somewhere interesting to justify her continued presence on the show.
  • “How’s Mrs. Beeman?” — Henry, you clueless child, you poor dumb kid …