Yay! The best show on TV is back! Oh, how I missed you.
The Americans wastes
no time getting started, with Philip telling Martha how he killed her IT
coworker Gene the previous day. Still rocked by the revelation that her husband
is a Soviet spy, Martha understandably flips out, crying,
“What have you done? What have I done?”
“What have you done? What have I done?”
Yet Martha continues to abet the spying, whether from a
sense of love for Philip, or because she is in so deep that she can’t see a way
out, or a combination of both. While illicitly copying FBI surveillance
records, she tells Stan, “I guess you never really know a person, do you?”
Biological weapons seem to be the big enemy this season.
“This is to meningitis what the bubonic plague is to a runny nose,” the contact
tells Elizabeth and Philip about the agent that could spread the titular
disease glanders. I had never heard of this disease before but I read that it
causes nodular lesions in the lungs and results in septicemia and death within
days. Better keep that safe in the
freezer, Jennings family. Apparently Tatiana, from the ominous Department 12,
is involved in all this.
Paige also deals with the fallout of the revelation that her
parents are spies, unable to walk into the classroom and pledge allegiance with
her classmates. Elizabeth tells her daughter her work is about getting people
to trust her, then lies her ass off that she and Philip don’t hurt people but
“try to make the world safer for everyone.” It fascinates me that part of
Elizabeth’s rationale here is a twisted version of trying to get closer to her
daughter by bringing her into the spy setting.
Pastor Tim hilariously asks Paige if her parents would be
willing to sit down and talk all this Cold War stuff out. Of course they
absolutely will not, as Paige realizes the more sensitive ‘70s/’80s way of
being open and talking about your problems just will not work with people from
an older generation, particularly those raised in post-war Russia.
There was a thread in this episode of the old ways not
connecting with the new, or at least people not being able to explain old
experiences in new terms. Philip tries to tell the EST class about how he beat
another boy to death with a rock but he knows he can’t use new age terminology
or psychobabble to explain it and the crowd really doesn’t want to hear the
truth, as much as they think they might. “He moved away,” Philip tells his
classmates about the boy he killed and they give him a hilarious round of
applause. I guess they have to encourage his growth as a person.
Trouble is brewing after Stan’s girlfriend (and Sandra
Doppelganger) Tori spots Philip and Sandra looking “intimate” getting a drink after
EST class. Stan is as unhinged as I’ve ever seen him (and might want to watch
out for the biologic agent in Philip’s jacket) and threatens his neighbor. I
wonder if Stan will be more vigilant with Philip now and this will lead him to
pull at some threads about the spy work. I don’t think Philip really wants to
sleep with Sandra but more just wants someone to talk to.
The person he is able to talk to is Martha. At his apartment,
he opens up about how hard it hit him when he had to kill Gene. Martha listens
and thanks him. This is in pointed contrast to the end of last season, when he
tried to open up to Elizabeth, who turned into Sovietbot at the sound of Reagan’s
voice on the news and shushed him.
Season four begins in a quiet but tantalizing way but
judging by the preview of next week, things are going to escalate quickly.
Apparently, the Jenningses find out that Pastor Tim knows about the spying and
Martha goes to Gabriel’s house?! Are
you kidding me?! Oh, this is going to
be good.
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