The Americans S5 E10: Darkroom

I wonder where Mikhail and Nadezhda will be going for their honeymoon? Will they be using DuPont Circle Travel to plan the getaway?

The subterranean wedding was one of the rare romantic moments in The Americans. Under their real names, the two spies get married in Russian by a real Russian Orthodox priest in a gorgeous ceremony. They’ve committed to one another in ways most married couples don’t but this is the wedding their fake/real marriage never had. Philip doesn’t bat an eye when the priest asks if he’s committed himself to anyone else. It’s a beautifully sentimental moment between two characters who can finally be themselves.

As romantic as that wedding was, with the symbolic crown and all the other trappings, there was a definite gothic darkness to it, a hint of Romeo and Juliet getting secretly married before their deaths. After all, it was an underground covert wedding in an abandoned warehouse. With all the foreboding and setup of this season, was this the one happy moment before the end?

Immediately after the warm darkness of the wedding, the Jenningses looked like they’d descended into hell in the darkroom scene. Paige’s photos of Pastor Tim’s diary were displayed in devilish red for the parents to see, like an indictment: “Are they monsters? I don’t know but what they did to their daughter I’d have to call monstrous.” Wow.

Well, the good pastor may have a point. Their daughter is clearly in crisis, sleeping in the closet, waxing the floor in shock, and dealing with things no teenager should have to face, regardless of whether she asked to hear the truth. This was a slap in the face on par with Betty in the machine shop telling Elizabeth that what they do is evil.

But it’s very complicated and I’m trying to figure it out. Did Paige reveal these diary pages so publically just to throw in her parents’ faces how damaging their actions have been? This is a double-edged sword because she is confronting her parents’ actions and also becoming disillusioned by Tim’s private judgments of her. “She’s starting to see him for who he is,” Elizabeth says about her daughter and Tim, but those photographed diary pages also mean she may see her parents for who they are. There’s no easy way out of this and now the whole family is in very deep.

However, we also see Elizabeth and Philip being more open and considerate in their own way. Two seasons ago, they would have gotten Tim a job offer without even telling Paige. Now they consult with her, giving her a choice.

In the first Rezidentura scene of season five, Tatiana returns, trying to get Evgheniya to return home. I missed Tatiana. She always seemed like she was secretly running the USSR and could destroy you with a thought. Something bad will definitely happen with Pasha and I worry that it will be suicide after being harassed by kids in school.

The slow burn continues.