Most of the main characters of The Americans took a back seat this week to focus on one of the
more fascinating secondary players, Martha. The Westerfeld marriage was bound
to fall apart sooner or later and it’s all happening due to a pen that ran out
of ink. Agent Aderholt is proving himself to be very sharp as the one who found
the bug in that pen in Gaad’s office.
With that discovery, Martha woke from her dream. You can
almost see her screaming “Oh God, what did I do?!” in her head. Alison Wright
gave a great performance in putting across her panic. I wonder if Martha knows
how screwed she is and how ridiculous her secret marriage to a CIA agent will
sound if she tells her superiors. She also is probably realizing she bugged her
boss’s office and there isn’t much of an excuse for that.
The tension of the bug discovery was riveting and many
viewers were probably echoing Martha’s “Oh shit” at the revelation. This show
has done a number on my level of suspicion because when Martha was destroying
the bug in the stall, I was convinced the woman next to her was another spy.
Also riveting was the delicious tension at Martha’s apartment as her panic
turned to something closer to a cold, bitter resolve toward Philip.
There are deep consequences to Clark taking Martha to his
fake apartment. Now she knows where to find him when he’s not at her place. I
can see her following him there after he leaves her and finding the spies using
it as a safe house. She already knows about Philip’s wig so I think she’ll put
two and two together and realize, if not that her husband is a Soviet spy,
certainly that he’s manipulating her. Plus, Martha’s got a gun.
The question is how much Philip suspects, if he bought her
lie about leaving her purse at work, and what he’ll do about it. I think the
smart play would be for the show to give Martha some control and not leave her
as a victim. Maybe she’ll go to the FBI and come clean. Maybe she’ll take
matters into her own hands with Philip. Or maybe Philip will kill her. That
last scenario would be hard for the viewers and for Philip, as it would really
test the limits of how ruthless he can be. In any case, I am betting the bug
finder Walter Taffet is the key to this and that the FBI will discover her. You
don’t name an episode after a character who won’t be consequential.
Meanwhile, the Jennings marriage seems to vacillate between
passive aggressive sniping over Paige and genuine tenderness (kind of like a
real marriage). It was refreshing to see Elizabeth not flip out over Philip’s
long-lost son but comfort him since the kid is in Afghanistan. I liked that
they waited a few beats for Elizabeth’s reaction as she processed the
news.
The other big development this episode was the kidnapping of
the South African at the diner. It’s one of the cases in which this show
confuses me because I am better able to follow the emotional sequences than the
political intrigue. The car chase and accident were thrilling. Elizabeth’s
murder of that witness was ice cold, even for her.
Best of all, we got another Fleetwood Mac montage out of it.
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