It’s Friday night and you’re hanging out at the bonfire
while A Flock of Seagulls plays, trying to work your newest asset, the daughter
of a CIA agent. Two of her friends approach you and ask if everything is OK.
Wait a minute … are those high school letter varsity jackets?
OH MY GOD — YOU’RE FIFTEEN?!?!
Not that it wasn’t already creepy (and Philip knows it) for
a middle aged man to even pseudo-seduce a young girl but it just makes it worse
that she’s not even old enough to drive. With this kind of thing, every year
you subtract from someone’s age makes it geometrically worse. The tables have
turned on Philip. Where he would have gone ballistic if an older man tried to
seduce Paige (and he did go ballistic in season one), now he’s the one being
confronted by high school kids and having to run out the house before the CIA
agent catches him, like a guilty teen.
Kimmy uses that timeworn line, “Age is just a number,” which
people really only say when they’re trying to justify sleeping with someone
much older or younger than they. Philip carries the stoned and sleeping girl to
bed almost as he would his daughter, until she pulls him in for a kiss and we
all throw up in our mouths. Kimmy is very lonely, with an absent, uncaring
stepmother and a father who might have a secret family for all she knows.
The Americans is
clearly drawing a parallel between Kimmy and Paige and Philip sees it. Note
that the dress he bought for her baptism is white and lacy, the most innocent
one he could find in a quest to keep her innocent. This interaction with Kimmy
will definitely inform how he deals with recruiting Paige but I can see it
going either way. Philip could strengthen his resolve that he doesn’t want his
daughter to have anything to do with the KGB but he could also decide to
recruit her since at least more of his secrets will be out in the open and she
won’t have to wonder where he goes at night.
The May/December motif had a subtle parallel when Henry
asked Stan about Mrs. Beeman, whose scantily clad picture he keeps. Meanwhile,
Stan is working Oleg about the possibility that Zinaida is a double agent. Oleg
subtly probed the Rezidentura woman about it but if the defector is under deep
cover, would they even know about it?
Ice-cold Elizabeth kills a man by crushing him beneath the
car he’s working on. It took me a little bit to figure out who that was. I
think it was just a guy who worked for Northrup and she killed him so a
position could open up for Lisa at the closer office (her commute was 50 miles
— no wonder she drinks). Well, I guess that’s one way to create a job opening.
Some of the murders on this show are so horrific that they almost circle around
back to comedy. I worry to see how Elizabeth will destroy Lisa because taking
advantage of a recovering alcoholic seems especially nasty. I like how The Americans continues to give shading
to secondary characters like Lisa and Kimmy so we care about what happens to them.
They’re not just extras.
With Philip juggling a fake marriage, a real marriage and a
teen admirer, Elizabeth is feeling a little … I don’t want to call it jealousy
because it would imply that she’s overreacting and she’s not. With everything
swirling around her, is it any wonder why she wants to assure herself that some
parts of her life are still real? Things are so fragile in their relationship.
The Jennings parents had a nice scene early on when the let down their guard
and reminisced about their kids but then it all seemed to turn cold again.
The flashback to the training Philip received to have fake
sex looked like something out of a horror movie. When Philip confessed to
sometimes having to “make it real” with Elizabeth, that was one of the most
quietly devastating revelations to happen on this show.
On a lighter note, I was happy to hear “I Ran (So Far
Away),” a song I love without a trace of irony. Between that and Yaz, I kind of
want to hang out platonically with Kimmy. Now that the show is moving into
1982-83, it’s also moving into new wave and my favorite era of music.
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