The communist cat is out of the bag in the Jennings
household. I don’t think I breathed for about 10 minutes. Given that Paige
backed them into a corner with her curiosity, her parents handled it about as
well as they could have and The Americans
handled it about as well as it could have. This was one of my favorite episodes
yet.
There were so many subtle touches that I loved about the
reveal. I liked how the episode focused on the Jennings family in uninterrupted
scenes, as if savoring the shock the characters and viewers felt, as if nobody
could look away to the other characters. When Paige finally asked her parents
where they went at night, I liked the “I told you so” look Elizabeth gave
Philip and how you could then see the sad surrender on his face. There was no
way to avoid telling her at that point.
I loved loved loved Paige asking them to speak Russian.
Elizabeth had spoken Russian only once to my knowledge since living in America.
The last time she did it, asking Philip to come home at the end of season one,
it was enormously powerful (and left me slack-jawed), so I loved the emotion in
Elizabeth’s voice. She expressed love for her daughter but I think there was
also some pride in her country and a feeling of relief that she could in some
small way be herself.
When Philip was asking Paige not to tell anyone, I thought
for a second that he’d tell her “or we’ll have to kill you.” If it ever came to
that, it would be the end of
television. I loved the suspense of Paige’s phone call to the priest (I keep
wanting to call him Rev. Tim Tom after the guy on The Middle) because I really didn’t know if she would tell him or
what. On a related note, the priest’s visit to the travel agency was hilarious.
Philip has never booked a trip in his life and I kept picturing him looking
through fake binders and shuffling papers and stalling and having no idea how
to book a flight to Kenya.
Now we wait and see how many specifics the Jennings parents
reveal to their daughter and how she processes the information. Maybe she’ll
conclude that her parents’ evasiveness was nothing personal since it wasn’t
that they didn’t love her but they were working toward something greater. Maybe
she’ll make the connection between revolution and religion. Maybe she’ll get an
inkling of the nuts and bolts of what her parents actually do and realize, like
that woman in the warehouse, that her parents are telling themselves what evil people
tell themselves.
At the end of the episode, when the FBI agent came over for
dinner, it began to sink into Paige just how much danger her parents were in
and I loved the shot framing her claustrophobically at the table. It was the blackest
of comedy to have Philip sharpening knives while sending the subtle message to
Paige not to say anything and I loved the frighteningly stern look Elizabeth
gave her. All that said, “We love you and we will protect you but do not mess this up.”
Other things happened in “Stingers” but they kind of fade
away next to the momentousness of the Paige revelation. Mischa Jr. does not
want to leave Afghanistan. Zinaida is, to nobody’s surprise, a Soviet double
agent and there are some bureaucratic shenanigans involving her and the
Rezidentura. I have no idea what Philip and Elizabeth were up to in that hotel
because I need remedial help with some of the intrigue on this show (something
with Yousaf and the CIA).
There was one potentially big non-Paige development: Stan totally suspects Martha planted the bug.
I don’t know what he’ll do with this information. It will not be as
straightforward as Stan being a good company man and turning her in so maybe he’ll
leverage the information for something for himself. Martha might catch a break
because the person who discovered her may be the one person with no room to
talk about betrayal.
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