In six seasons, I don’t
think The Americans has ever given us
this much Henry at once. It became a running joke in past seasons that the
younger Jennings child was always at a friend’s house, a convenient excuse for
his parents to talk shop without fear of eavesdropping. Then he went away to
boarding school, removing the last impediment to his family openly talking about
overthrowing the government.
Now he’s back home, facing
the threat of having to leave school as the travel agency faces hard times
(poor Stavos), coming up with a smart plan to save it. He notes if he gets
through three years of school and doesn’t graduate, it will all have been for
nothing, a neat parallel to Elizabeth feeling all her years of spying will soon
amount to nothing. His mother calls him as if to catch up on his entire life,
which works as foreshadowing of Elizabeth’s death and a heartbreaking reminder
that she doesn’t know who he is.
The irony to all this is
that the ignored child may have been the one to spur Philip to go back to
Elizabeth’s side, or maybe the one to alert Stan to his parents’ activities. Henry
points out the obvious to Philip: that his wife is now deeply unhappy. In the
opening scene, the husband and wife have a quietly vicious fight over Elizabeth
killing Gennadi and Sofia in front of their son, and Philip not going through
with the Kimmy mission (she gets in an especially cruel dig about him wanting
to have sex with her, since she knows how agonized he was by that possibility).
Then Elizabeth leaves on Thanksgiving Day to go to Chicago and exfiltrate USSR
agent Harvest, with a tender parting word to Philip: “You can take your Forum
bullshit and you can shove it up your ass.” (This is probably the most
profanity-driven episode of this show ever. I think it’s the first time they’ve
dropped F-bombs, which made it shocking when they did.)
Just when it looks like the
Jennings marriage has hit bottom, Philip decides to reunite with Elizabeth.
Henry’s phone call tells him his wife knows she’s in dire straits—which is very
sad, since it implies the only reason she would call her son is when fearing
her own death—and she confirms that she isn’t sure she can do what she came to
do. He offers her the break she gave him at the end of season five, asking her
to come home, but of course she won’t. He goes to her and although Elizabeth
tells Philip nobody’s asking him to come, she doesn't say no to him. From next
week’s preview, it looks like the weird behavior of both parents leaving around
Thanksgiving may tip off Henry, which may tip off Stan.
The FBI is closer than ever
to uncovering the illegals program, thanks to Aderholt’s brilliant, if
unglamorous, plan to look through the records of every car bought with cash in
metropolitan areas. When Aderholt told Stan to get cracking on the endless
paperwork, it reinforced how far Aderholt has come through the bureau and how
smart he’s always been (he was the one who discovered the bug in Gaad’s pen). I
am loving the fan service this show
is giving us with the Mail Robot’s appearance. It’s been debugged for
awhile—otherwise it would have picked up anything Stan and Dennis said in the
elevator—but it’s reassuring to know it’s still out there.
What was going on with Stan’s
Lee Greenwood-level speech about America over Thanksgiving turkey? Does he
suspect something about the Jennings family or is he just venting over the
deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Teacup, underlining just how awful the Soviets are? As
uncomfortable as Philip (his lying about Elizabeth’s whereabouts was noticeably
less professional than usual) and Paige looked, I imagine Elizabeth would have
had an aneurysm. It was very resonant to have this scene on Thanksgiving. It’s
the quintessential American holiday and emphasizes the idea that the Americans
celebrate having that second helping of mashed potatoes while the USSR was
often left with scraps.
How much of Philip going to
Chicago is out of altruism? He spies on Elizabeth’s secrets at the safe house,
then sends Oleg a dead drop with information. What will that invisible ink
uncover? Will our two spies betray each other or go down together?
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