[7.5/10] One of the major themes of The Americans is lying and the toll it takes on the people who have to do it constantly. But one wrinkle that this episode introduces is what it means to bring someone into the lie, to perpetuate it, rather than just carry it out as ordered by some unseen functionaries controlling the narrative.
You see that most clearly with the Jennings and Paige. They have to teach their daughter how to keep things secret, how not to talk about these things except when they’re safe. They have to try to account for how the distance between their jobs and their loyalties doesn't make their love of their children fake, doesn't make their friendship with Stan fake, doesn't make their whole life fake.
Paige is right when she asks how she can trust them. How can she separate what’s fact from fiction? I love that she picks up on the fact that the “emergency vacation” to the cabin was an operation. When you realize that the whole edifice your life and your trust with your parents has been built on is a sham, how can you go on feeling like you’re being let into the tent and not just being strung along on some new fabrication?
That’s the irony of Elizabeth and Philip coming clean to their daughter. It’s meant to be a clearing of the air, a bold new step on the way to them being able to open their lives and be closer and realer with her than they’ve ever been before. Instead, it just makes her more mistrustful of them, as a confirmation of her fears that the people entrusted with her care have been gaslighting her this entire time. Obviously there was going to be some pulling off of the bandaid there, some sense of things getting worse before they get better, but the reveal of a lifetime of lying creates a lot of stuff to work through before you can ever get to trust and understanding on the other side.
That’s reinforced by the toll, the transmission, of those lies that happens elsewhere in the episode. The most obvious of them is Philip coaching Martha on how to deal with the interrogation from Walter Taffet. The way he teaches her to look at the man’s nose to seem direct and forthright (something reinforced by some nice camera work later in the episode), shows how adept at this Philip has become.
There is something that feels sinister about this, about the way he’s putting a decent person at risk, darkening her soul, because she loves him and believes he loves her. It’s a deception founded on a deception, and the recursive manipulation of it all is ugly even as you’re rooting for Martha to be able to accomplish her goal, a way in which the show makes its audience complicit in what’s going on.
I’d argue it’s even at play in Elizabeth’s story here, where she flirts and sleeps with the hotelier, a faux relationship that allows her to get the key to the room where the CIA will be meeting with Mujahideen representatives. I’ll admit straight off that I may be grasping at straws here, but I think there’s a connection between the way that the hotelier goes to pleasure her and the amount of time the show spends depicting Elizabeth enjoying it, and the way she then seeks intimacy with Philip toward the end of the episode.
It feels as though there’s guilt there, even though both of the Jennings know this is their job. Or if not guilt, then something that needs to be reestablished between her and the man she loves after something disorienting with the man she’s only pretending to like. Even when lying is your job, you cannot hold every part of yourself back, and the parts of your real self that slip through, that get bruised or sated in the midst of that lie, make it that much harder.
The most mystifying entrant in this thematic merry-go-round is Nina, who is, once again, the hardest character in this show to read. But I take her conversation with the kidnapped scientist, to be one about her trying to reclaim a bit of her identity, a bit of her agency, after being used and forced into action by so many disparate forces. She’s had to pretend so often, for Stan, for Oleg, for the Rezidentura, for her captors, for everyone.
But here, she seems to choose to open up to, and choose her own path with, a fellow captive. She understands the man’s feelings about a son who may never see him again, and seems to choose to be on his side for real when he describes being caught in this web of falsehoods and instructions and control that she can relate to better than anyone. And yet, that’s the tricky thing with Nina. With how many sides she’s played at once in this show, to where it was unclear whether she even knew where her loyalties truly lie, this could just be another show within a show, a piece of truth to make the lie more convincing.
Yusef is struggling with the convincing part, with the weight of having lied to someone and had it lead to their deaths. Philip tells him that it never gets easier. And when Philip asks a resistant Gabriel to help get Elizabeth home to see her dying mother, he starts to wonder aloud once more about whether all of this is worth it, whether these lies are a necessary evil to make the world a better place, or whether their goal and promises are just another big fib from the people who taught them how to lie.
Still, the most striking moment in the episode is the most honest one, with Elizabeth and Paige in the car, sharing moments of instruction, but also of honesty. Elizabeth speaks of her mother, of their life, in a way she never could before. She can finally tell Paige that she’s like her grandmother, that the same connections and strains between mother and daughter have repeated themselves, only in a different direct, in the next generation. However hard those lies may have been, there’s a sense that breaking them down, at least within the family, is freeing for Elizabeth -- a solace that helps balance out the hardship of losing her own mom.
Let’s just hope it’s enough right now. The deliberately closed door with Paige and her parents could be early, understandable resistance, the predictable reaction to a world-shaking revelation. It could be the rocky road that leads to warmer shores. Or it could be the motivator for a break between the Jennings and their daughter that is not easily, if ever, repaired.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-07-01T01:49:57Z
[7.5/10] One of the major themes of The Americans is lying and the toll it takes on the people who have to do it constantly. But one wrinkle that this episode introduces is what it means to bring someone into the lie, to perpetuate it, rather than just carry it out as ordered by some unseen functionaries controlling the narrative.
You see that most clearly with the Jennings and Paige. They have to teach their daughter how to keep things secret, how not to talk about these things except when they’re safe. They have to try to account for how the distance between their jobs and their loyalties doesn't make their love of their children fake, doesn't make their friendship with Stan fake, doesn't make their whole life fake.
Paige is right when she asks how she can trust them. How can she separate what’s fact from fiction? I love that she picks up on the fact that the “emergency vacation” to the cabin was an operation. When you realize that the whole edifice your life and your trust with your parents has been built on is a sham, how can you go on feeling like you’re being let into the tent and not just being strung along on some new fabrication?
That’s the irony of Elizabeth and Philip coming clean to their daughter. It’s meant to be a clearing of the air, a bold new step on the way to them being able to open their lives and be closer and realer with her than they’ve ever been before. Instead, it just makes her more mistrustful of them, as a confirmation of her fears that the people entrusted with her care have been gaslighting her this entire time. Obviously there was going to be some pulling off of the bandaid there, some sense of things getting worse before they get better, but the reveal of a lifetime of lying creates a lot of stuff to work through before you can ever get to trust and understanding on the other side.
That’s reinforced by the toll, the transmission, of those lies that happens elsewhere in the episode. The most obvious of them is Philip coaching Martha on how to deal with the interrogation from Walter Taffet. The way he teaches her to look at the man’s nose to seem direct and forthright (something reinforced by some nice camera work later in the episode), shows how adept at this Philip has become.
There is something that feels sinister about this, about the way he’s putting a decent person at risk, darkening her soul, because she loves him and believes he loves her. It’s a deception founded on a deception, and the recursive manipulation of it all is ugly even as you’re rooting for Martha to be able to accomplish her goal, a way in which the show makes its audience complicit in what’s going on.
I’d argue it’s even at play in Elizabeth’s story here, where she flirts and sleeps with the hotelier, a faux relationship that allows her to get the key to the room where the CIA will be meeting with Mujahideen representatives. I’ll admit straight off that I may be grasping at straws here, but I think there’s a connection between the way that the hotelier goes to pleasure her and the amount of time the show spends depicting Elizabeth enjoying it, and the way she then seeks intimacy with Philip toward the end of the episode.
It feels as though there’s guilt there, even though both of the Jennings know this is their job. Or if not guilt, then something that needs to be reestablished between her and the man she loves after something disorienting with the man she’s only pretending to like. Even when lying is your job, you cannot hold every part of yourself back, and the parts of your real self that slip through, that get bruised or sated in the midst of that lie, make it that much harder.
The most mystifying entrant in this thematic merry-go-round is Nina, who is, once again, the hardest character in this show to read. But I take her conversation with the kidnapped scientist, to be one about her trying to reclaim a bit of her identity, a bit of her agency, after being used and forced into action by so many disparate forces. She’s had to pretend so often, for Stan, for Oleg, for the Rezidentura, for her captors, for everyone.
But here, she seems to choose to open up to, and choose her own path with, a fellow captive. She understands the man’s feelings about a son who may never see him again, and seems to choose to be on his side for real when he describes being caught in this web of falsehoods and instructions and control that she can relate to better than anyone. And yet, that’s the tricky thing with Nina. With how many sides she’s played at once in this show, to where it was unclear whether she even knew where her loyalties truly lie, this could just be another show within a show, a piece of truth to make the lie more convincing.
Yusef is struggling with the convincing part, with the weight of having lied to someone and had it lead to their deaths. Philip tells him that it never gets easier. And when Philip asks a resistant Gabriel to help get Elizabeth home to see her dying mother, he starts to wonder aloud once more about whether all of this is worth it, whether these lies are a necessary evil to make the world a better place, or whether their goal and promises are just another big fib from the people who taught them how to lie.
Still, the most striking moment in the episode is the most honest one, with Elizabeth and Paige in the car, sharing moments of instruction, but also of honesty. Elizabeth speaks of her mother, of their life, in a way she never could before. She can finally tell Paige that she’s like her grandmother, that the same connections and strains between mother and daughter have repeated themselves, only in a different direct, in the next generation. However hard those lies may have been, there’s a sense that breaking them down, at least within the family, is freeing for Elizabeth -- a solace that helps balance out the hardship of losing her own mom.
Let’s just hope it’s enough right now. The deliberately closed door with Paige and her parents could be early, understandable resistance, the predictable reaction to a world-shaking revelation. It could be the rocky road that leads to warmer shores. Or it could be the motivator for a break between the Jennings and their daughter that is not easily, if ever, repaired.