The Americans S3 E12: I Am Abassin Zadran

All the intrigue that had been bubbling all season over Afghanistan, Yousaf and the CIA got a hell of a payoff this week. Philip and Elizabeth suggest to Abassin Zadran that his fellow Mujahideen members are communists in disguise who might prevent him from getting American weapons and Zadran brutally stabs his friends with the CIA just outside.

This was the most dangerous mission the Jennings couple has ever undertaken, posing as CIA agents to fool actual CIA agents. They were also very close to death in that car as Zadran revealed his passionate hatred of communists to two undercover communists. Philip had to be thinking of his son when the Afghani told him what he’d do to infidels like the Soviet soldiers. With the death of the Mujahideen and their leader apparently in American custody for murder, that’s fewer people who can kill Mischa Jr.

Paige is really her parents’ daughter, questioning her history and family as she reviews a sort of greatest hits of The Americans’ adventures. She’s thinking like a spy and looking for things that others might not notice but that seem out of place to her. It has to be lonely as a Jennings child, having no family beyond the four of them. The relationship with Paige is so delicate and so crucial that Elizabeth and Philip are also in potential danger just living with her, as one word to an authority figure would mean their heads.

I don’t know about this trip to the USSR, which I assume will happen next episode and lead to a hell of a cliffhanger. This could go either way: Either Paige can find some connection with her grandmother and Mother Russia or she will rebel against it further. Or the trip will be botched and they will all die horribly.

The three sweetest words in the opening credits of The Americans are “with Margo Martindale” so we were very excited. Claudia did what she does best on this show: Offer grave pronouncements and reveal secrets. This time it’s that they almost shut down Directorate S after Jared killed his family, yet the young illegals program continues.

Stan is closer to the truth about the illegals than he knows, drawing a line from shooting Elizabeth in season one to the death of his partner. It was a nice bit of misdirection to have Clark going to Martha’s apartment and then show Stan sitting there having tea with her. He must suspect her of planting the bug and she must know that and want nothing to do with it. Before I realized Hans tipped off Clark that Stan was at Martha’s, I was afraid Clark would walk in, Stan would recognize him as Philip and all hell would break loose.

Oh God, Martha. She knows she’s doomed. She’s seeing her situation more clearly, with a husband who must stay away from the FBI and a strange man offering her a ride to a safe house. After she called her parents, I thought for a second that she was saying goodbye before killing herself. Just run away, Martha. Get somewhere with a lot of witnesses and stay there. There was that throwaway line from Philip about the two of them having to go away and I wonder if that meant he would send her somewhere and not follow despite promises that he would, or if “going away” is a euphemism for death or what.

The last scene, with Martha weeping as Clark pulled off his wig (looking for a second like he would pull off his face), was stunning. This is Philip’s Hail Mary move, stripping down to honesty to get Martha not to turn on him.

I should invest in a defibrillator before watching the season finale.

One Man's Trash

Last Saturday I volunteered to help with the Elsmere cleanup day, picking up the bulk trash that people discarded from their homes. It was a chance to get some exercise outdoors, chat with neighbors and be judgmental about what people threw away.

A few houses were getting rid of books. I don’t like that. Take them to Goodwill or the library but don’t just leave them on the curb. It was a lot of romance novels and stuff so it was nothing I wanted to rescue. It’s just so wasteful to throw away books.

There was a perfectly good armchair that someone threw away. I would have claimed it but we’re trying to travel lighter in anticipation of our move. People also got rid of clothes that they could have just donated.

Some people just left their trash out. Just regular trash that they could have put out on Thursdays with, like, the regular trash. Have they been holding onto a bunch of crap in anticipation of the annual cleanup? People also left their recycling for us to pick up. One house put out a dozen large bottles of Tide. Unless they were doing industrial levels of laundry, these were the type of Tide bottles that would last months each. Every house in Elsmere gets a trash can and recycling can for free so I don’t know why people don’t use them.

Then there were the saddest sights of all: Discarded plastic children’s toys, like little play houses and oven sets. They will stay in a landfill until the last person on Earth is long gone.

We did find a picnic table for the garden, so that’s a plus.

Mad Men S7 E9: New Business

After last week’s thematic cohesiveness, I don’t know what to make of “New Business.” I didn’t much care for it. Everyone seemed like they were getting involved in new affairs that were crappy and depressing.

This episode mostly served as Megan’s farewell. After the divorce, there’s no reason for her to have any contact with the rest of the cast and anything else would be anticlimactic. A lot of viewers seemed to hate Megan but I never minded her. She did use her relationships to get what she wanted in life but no more than anyone else on Mad Men. She was a match for Don.

Some of Megan’s anger here is understandable. She’s right in calling Don “an aging, sloppy, selfish liar” because many of the problems in their marriage were his fault and related to his lies. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she gave up her youth for him as the years living in the penthouse were not exactly wasted, but Don did uproot her to California and then didn’t follow her.

Some of that anger has been pent up for awhile but I’m sure some of it came from the pressures from the Calvet family. Marie-France is a piece of work, saying “We’re here to support Megan, not make her ashamed of this failure.” Thanks, sis. Megan looked beatified after getting that $1 million check from Don. She seemed freer and rightfully told her sister off for being ghoulish about wallowing in other people’s pain. When she noted that her mother was unhappy for a long time and finally did something about it, Megan was no doubt referring somewhat to herself. The cracks in the Draper marriage had been showing since at least “Far Away Places,” when he left her at the Howard Johnson’s and later chased her around the apartment like a murderer.

Harry was an ass for hitting on Megan, especially with his suggestion that she didn’t get any good parts since she didn’t sleep with any directors. He was one of a number of people to treat her like a prostitute this episode but Megan is one of the very few main cast members who has never been unfaithful to a spouse.

Prostitution overtones are always heavy on Mad Men. This week we see Marie ask for money from Roger to pay the movers who (hilariously) moved all the furniture out from Don’s apartment. Never change, Maman Calvet. (I think Don gets his stuff back because the next episode tease shows his sleeping in his bed with his old bedspread.) She really did seem to be in pain and far from her usual snark. I wonder if she and Roger will really end the series in one another’s company.

The inadvertent prostitute Diana the waitress reappears. I didn’t much care for this storyline and hope that’s the end of it. The way that Don followed her to her new job seemed desperate and stalker-y and at a time when we should be focusing on the rich main characters, she just seemed like a plot device. The revelation that her daughter died brings context to her being so freaked out last week with Don talking about death. Diana echoed Marie-France’s wallowing in other people’s pain as she can’t allow herself to forget her own daughter. She is punishing herself in that apartment and seemed close to suicide. Diana is somewhat of a Doppelganger to Sylvia, who we meet again in the elevator with Arnie. I don’t mind how old characters pop up now and again because it’s not like these people disappear once the main cast is done with them.

New photographer Pima sleeps with Stan and flirts with Peggy. I agree with Peggy that she is a hustler because she was kind of slick and pretentious. We don’t even see her work so we have to take the cast’s word for it that she’s a good photographer. Pima seemed like future Peggy because the two have similar hair, with a gray streak in the older woman’s. Maybe she’s a cautionary example for Peggy.

Does the opening scene at the Francis house mean Don and Betty’s story is not yet done? Was the wistful look at his family meant for his ex-wife or just remembering his life with his kids? The “previously on Mad Men” showed the season six scene of Don and Betty sleeping together. Maybe that means they’ll sleep together again but that whole thing was clearly something Betty needed to get out of her system, and then she didn’t look back. Good for Betty for advancing herself and getting a master’s in psychology but it seems like an odd choice for someone with zero self-awareness to be helping others understand themselves. 

Roger and Pete both gave Don some divorce advice. One thing about this show that interests me is that Don has become Roger: both divorced a first wife to marry a secretary, a woman with artistic pretentions who flaunted her money. Pete in turn has become Don: having affairs in the city like Don and divorcing a woman who is similar to Betty without the hang-ups. Roger was right in that Megan echoed Jane’s statement that she gave up her youth to her ex-husband. Pete was on target, saying “You think you’re going to do it all again and start over but you don’t know if you’re going to get past the beginning.”

As Faye wisely pointed out years ago, Don only likes the beginnings of things. He never made it past the beginning with Diana. After leaving her and giving away $1 million to Megan, he returns home to an apartment that is empty of possessions as well as companionship.

The Americans S3 E11: One Day in the Life of Anton Baklanov

Do you think Paige is regretting her curiosity into her parents’ mysterious lives? This week she deals with the fallout from last week’s revelations, grilling Elizabeth and Philip like a pro. She hasn’t forgotten last season’s bizarre middle-of-the-night vacation to the woods and is now probably going back over the rest of her life, looking for what might be spycraft.

The shock has worn off and it’s sinking in for Paige just how much of a lie her life has been. She pointedly asks Elizabeth how she can believe anything her mother says. Cut to commercial because there can be no answer. Philip already told her a casual lie when she asked if her parents were really married. If this girl could only see herself, though, she would have an answer to whether she is really a Jennings child. She’s never been as much like her mother when she told a curious Henry to shut up and eat his breakfast.

The flip side to all these trust issues in the Jennings household is how much the parents can trust the daughter not to rat them out. This tension now colors all their scenes together.

I saw the beginnings of some sympathy in the end scene in the bedroom when Paige finds out that her grandmother is dying. She knows the cost to Elizabeth possibly never seeing her mother again before she dies. Yet there’s a flip side to that, too: Paige probably wonders whether the espionage will throw up a similar barrier between her and her mother when one cannot be there for the other in a time of need.

You have to feel for the titular Anton Baklanov. People he trusted ripped him from his homeland and his family doesn’t know if he’s alive or dead. He writes letters to his son that the boy will never see. I have to wonder how much of Nina’s interactions with him are genuine and how much is her playing him to win her release.

The scene with Martha focusing on the tip of Walter Taffet’s nose was a bit of comic relief in a tense story. As Philip says, Taffet’s job is to make her think he knows. I think he suspects Martha planted the bug. It would make sense as she’s the closest administrative person to Gaad and would have the most access. Also in the comic relief department were the bored Oleg and Tatiana imitating the beeping of the bugged mail robot. Who knew they were such goofballs?

Is it me or have Maurice and Lisa turned the tables on Elizabeth? They don’t know exactly who she is but they’ve figured out that she’s after information from Northrop and are willing to trade the secrets from Lisa's workplace to save their house. It was really unexpected and exciting to have this guy, who doesn’t seem to have his life together at all, come closer to discovering Elizabeth’s identity than any of the government agents. Elizabeth played it cool but I don’t expect him to survive the season. Between this guy and her daughter, the walls between Elizabeth and her true identity are getting more porous.

This was a quiet episode after last week’s bombshell. It’s setting the table for the end of the season (and the show has been renewed, so yay!). There are two more episodes of The Americans left and I don’t know where it’s going to go next.

Gaysplaining Indiana

If the religious freedom law in Indiana has nothing to do with gay people, as some of its supporters claim, why is this happening now? Why did this law arise at this particular moment in history? Laws don’t form in a vacuum. Legislators sponsor and pass them because of some real or perceived need to defend a principle or outlaw something immoral or unfair. As the issue of gay marriage arises in state after state, and with this summer’s Supreme Court decision, I cannot believe that this law has nothing to do with businesses refusing to serve gay weddings.

As I’ve been reading, many of the lobbyists who sponsored the bill and stood with Gov. Pence as he signed it have said the law would protect Christian businesses from catering weddings. These lobbyists are all from groups like Family Focus or Yay! For the American Family or whatever. The names of these groups seem harmless but I think they’re insidious. I support the traditional American family like these groups do but I also support many different types of families and these groups do not.

I read somewhere that the people behind this law are afraid that the government would force churches to marry gay couples but the Constitution already protects churches from that. Houses of worship can’t be forced to facilitate or celebrate gay marriages (they have no obligation to marry straight couples if they don't agree with the union either) but baking a cake or putting together a flower arrangement is not a celebration. It’s just a business transaction. The guy who baked our wedding cake just dropped it off and left. We paid him. You’re not going to go to hell over some fondant and frosting.

I don’t care if people oppose gay marriage because my husband and I don’t have to care what they think anymore. Oppose it until you’re blue in the face. What do you want us to do, draw an asterisk on our wedding license? But there is a difference between speech and actions and those actions can sometimes be constrained by the law. If you really don’t like the fact that gay people are married, the action to take is not to marry someone of the same sex. But please don’t obstruct those of us who want to.

This is a catch-22 because if people insist that the law is not specifically aimed at gays, they should be open to the idea that they could find themselves barred from some businesses, too. Can you imagine if a business owner cited his religious beliefs for not catering a Christian wedding (which I think would be just as unfair)? There would be a run on all the hardware stores in Indiana so offended people could buy nails to hang themselves on the cross. We’d never hear the end of it and it would come from some of the same people who had no problem with this law until it applied to them. Only then would it be a grave injustice.

That’s precisely why we shy away from these broad “I don’t have to do things I don’t believe in” laws in the United States: Because laws like this can target someone you don’t like but they can also target you.     

Mad Men S7 E8: Severance

… and we’re back. In the first episode of this home stretch of the show, Mad Men didn’t explicitly say what month or year it was but I had guessed it was summer 1971. This is based on the comments that Ken first left McCann Erickson six years earlier, which I believe happened in 1965. I’m sure many astute viewers could pinpoint an exact time based on the product mentions of L’eggs and Pop Tarts but that’s my best guess. (Other reviewers are saying spring 1970 so I stand corrected. It’s less than a year after we last saw these characters.)

“Severance” was a somewhat overstuffed episode both in terms of plot points and appearance. The show is looking more decadent and crowded and the aesthetic almost looks dirtier. The scene in the diner, with Roger hitting on those models and a strikingly relaxed Don telling Dick Whitman stories, looked to me like it was shot to look like a movie set in ‘70s New York, all grimy and sweaty.

The men of the show are still catting around, with Roger and Ted now sporting trashy mustaches to show the passage of time. The show opens with a casting scene that seems almost like a dream or a fantasy, with former fur salesman Don directing a model wearing little more than an expensive fur coat. Just as in season four, he is enjoying a rather fun but empty single life, sleeping with a stewardess and later a waitress (in an exchange with parallels to the first episode of the season where Don has another elliptical conversation with a woman on a plane). When he returns to his apartment, he keeps the lights off.

Another woman in a fur coat appears, Rachel Menken Katz, Don’s department store owner mistress from the first season. She is at first a dream and then a ghost as Don finds out Rachel had died days before. At her shiva, he seems haunted by her children from another man. This is the life not lived for Don, a theme articulated by Ken after he gets fired and realizes his own life not lived is that of full-time novelist.

We have a contender for theme of the season or half-season. Although the viewers haven’t seen her in years, Rachel always loomed large as the love he could have had. She was one of the more level-headed women Don had an affair with. She was the one who pointed out the folly of them running away together. In a nice parallel, Peggy plans to run away to Paris with her blind date. The verdict is still out on him. He was very neurotic and pissy in the beginning of her dinner but turned out to be charming. (Peggy looks fabulous, by the way.)

Peggy and Joan are finding out the drawbacks of working for a subsidiary of another company. In a supremely uncomfortable meeting, the guys from McCann Erickson make horribly sexist comments to both women. Neither has the latitude to stand up to these two men, who are basically their superiors. It’s a depressing reminder that as far as these women have come and as supremely competent and talented as they are, they can’t get away from these sexist pigs. The boardroom conversation might as well have been happening in 1960 or 1950.

Peggy compounds the conversation by implying that Joan draws such sexist comments by the way she dresses, which is a horrible thing to hear, especially from an ally. Joan hits back with some weirdly nasty comments of her own, telling Peggy she never had to deal with sexism, when we know she has. She also implies that Peggy is unattractive.

As a partner, Joan had power at the old agency but now she’s more of a cog, despite being filthy rich. So she ignores calls from McCann Erickson and asserts the power she still has: spending money on clothes at Bonwit Teller. The salesgirl recognizes Joan from her short stint working at the store years ago but Joan tells her, “You must have me confused with someone else.” It’s another life not lived.

Ken also finds a drawback of working for McCann Erickson as the firm fires him, bitter over his having left them years ago. To add insult to injury, his old rival Pete is getting his clients (while the latter whines about making an unmanageable amount of money during the merger). I was happy for Ken, the one person at Sterling Cooper who recognized that his life was more important than the office, as he was free to write that book. But he turned the tables, with his new job at Dow Chemical making him a client of his former coworkers. This could be interesting.

But who knows if that was Ken’s actual sendoff or if we’ll see him in the next six episodes. The thing with the end of Mad Men is that there will be many staggered goodbyes to characters and you never know if someone’s last scene will be their last scene. You are saying goodbye without even knowing it.

The Americans S3 E10: Stingers

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.