Sure, why not. I have done recaps for episodes of Breaking Bad and Mad Men and since The
Americans is in the rarified air of those shows, I’ll be recapping it. I
hope the six other people in America who actually watch The Americans will enjoy these slightly delayed recaps. It’s the
best show that nobody is watching and I will recommend it to anyone. The
characters are fascinating, the action is intriguing and there are a lot of
meaty themes as the show draws parallels between spy work, marriage and
parenthood.
We begin in November 1982 with the death of Soviet General
Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. As always, the season premier drops us straight into
an action sequence, with Elizabeth getting information from a disgruntled CIA
agent. The deal goes bad and she ends up in a brutal street fight with Gaad and
another FBI agent. She gets her head slammed into the hood of a car and Gaad
gets pistol whipped. All that before the opening credits.
I felt alternately angry and sad for that CIA agent. She’s
understandably bitter that the agency didn’t notice her fieldwork but betraying
her country and putting lives at risk was not the way to handle it. She does
the right thing in the end but at the very least has ruined her career. I like
how the writers give attention to some of the smaller pawns in the game, like this
CIA agent, the guy they left for dead at the Contra training camp or Caspar
Weinberger’s maid. They appear briefly but are real characters and I can feel
for them.
Bookending that action sequence was Philip laying the
groundwork to blackmail Yousaf, who has just strangled Annelise. It was a
brutal scene to watch and Yousaf probably has to take the deal Philip offers
him because her death will not be without consequences.
Martha seems to be enjoying herself, getting gun lessons at
the shooting range and having screaming, stand-up Kama Sutra orgasms with
Clark. She is one of the characters with the potential to bring down the entire
KGB illegals program. I am terrified to see her reaction when/if she finds out
Clark’s secret. Martha will either have the meltdown of a lifetime or go on a
shooting spree, or both.
Stan is not enjoying himself at EST. He still doesn’t seem
to understand what went wrong in his marriage but he shouldn’t need a self-help
group to tell him: His marriage failed because he was physically and
emotionally unavailable and Sandra sensed he was having an affair. Of course,
Sandra is having none of his BS. I am glad they didn’t write her out as I’m
still waiting for another flip-out scene like her glorious fight with Stan in
the first season (plus, she has the most amazing hair on TV).
“EST Men” is introducing a lot of little threads to pick at
in season three. There is the possible exposure of Elizabeth’s identity to
Gaad, the quagmire of Afghanistan, Philip/Clark’s time bomb of a marriage, the
fate of Nina (please do not write her
out), Elizabeth’s mother’s illness and the relationship between the Jennings
and their new/old handler.
But the most tantalizing thread of The Americans is how Elizabeth and Philip deal with the recruitment
of Paige as a second-generation illegal. As expected, Elizabeth favors it and
has been getting closer to her daughter by going to church with her. Philip is
skeptical and wants Paige to stay clear of the spy life. The scene with the
handler did imply that the Jenningses are at the very least getting Paige ready
to tell her who they are.
This is such a potent story idea and I am fascinated by
where it will go. Parents would want to mold their children and maybe have them
follow in their footsteps, but how do you do that when those footsteps include
subterfuge and murder? How do parents reconcile the desire to give Paige a good
life if that life is inimical to their belief system? There are weighty
questions and this show and they bring The
Americans to another level.
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