[7.6/10] I’m not that far into The Americans, but I feel like there’s a tell in each episode. There’s usually one line, one scene, or one exchange, that gives away what the show is getting at with a particular installment.
Now maybe that’s difficult for an episode like “A Little Night Music” which, without an explicit “to be continued” still feels like part one of a two-parter given the abrupt ending and the lack of payoff to several things set up in the episode: Elizabeth’s tryst with Brian the navy boy, Marta threatening to put her “husband”’s name on an employment form, and most obviously the pair of bizarro-verse spy assailants who attack the Jennings at the end of the episode.
But it still feels like “A Little Night Music” gives us the key to what it’s trying to say from an unexpected source -- Oleg, the intrusive jerk who’s been pestering Nina since he joined the series. He uses his family connections to up his clearance level, which gives him the clout to read Nina’s reports (though, thanks to some discretion and implied sense off protection from Arkady, not the files that detail her betrayal of the KGB). It seems like there’s more than meets the eye to Oleg beyond his Russian Logan Huntzberger routine, whether that means he’s a spy for another country or an operative for some other part of the Soviet government, or just someone playing his own angle.
But he says something interesting to Nina. Instead of just his usual raw harassment, Oleg tells her he admires what she does, because even when the rest of us wants to lie, there are parts of ourselves that cannot help but tell the truth. Now maybe that’s just a fancy Russian version of “your lips say no but your body says yes” and it’s just another brick in the wall in his continued harassment campaign, but either way, that seems to be what “A Little Night Music” is trying to put forward.
The most compelling part of that is Elizabeth seducing Brian in order to get the files on one of Emmet and Liane’s assets. It is, if nothing else, a dynamite performance from Keri Russell, who plays the broken bird who thinks she’s found her hero so well that she had me wondering how much of the real Elizabeth Jennings was bleeding through this character.
The way Elizabeth blends a retelling of her real life past assault with a chance for her target to be a hero, one that gives this shy, sweet young man a taste of sexual gratification in the process, is a strange echo of the series’s pilot, where Elizabeth spurned her “husband”’s advances until he killed her rapist. It was awkward then, and it’s awkward now, but in a more layered way, where Elizabeth is blending fact and fiction, her need to persuade this naif with her true feelings about trauma and fear that bend this playacting toward something truer.
That seems to be the case for Philip as well. It’s hard to tell what exactly is motivating his seemingly calculated tantrum with Martha. Maybe it’s just that with Agent Gaad being forced to fall on his sword for various FBI foibles, the KGB’s link to him isn’t as important, and Philip is finding a way out. Or maybe it’s just genuine frustrations with being pulled in multiple directions, without having real control over his own life, spilling out in strange ways. Maybe he just wanted an exit from that morning, and things got out of control, to where a simple tiff became an argument about how constrained Philip really feels.
It’s a tough time for that because, as the pre-credits teaser lets us know, Claudia (aka Character Actress Margo Martindale) is back! She’s a welcome return here, as she’s still a bundle of mysteries and competence, who is bucking orders openly with the Jennings rather than telling them to follow the straight and narrow while she challenges her superiors. In this instance, she says the Centre is really going to investigate who killed Emmett and Liane, and that she wants Philip and Elizabeth to do so.
(My crazy theory on this is:Liane was her real life daughter, possible with Zhukov, and that’s why she says she “can’t lose anyone else” and is so legitimately affected by this and willing to operate outside the authority.)
That at least gives the Jennings a mission, one that pushes both of them forward and drives the action of the episode. Seeing Elizabeth work her magic on Brian, and Philip track down the Jewish physicist who escaped Soviet rule lets us see both of them doing what they do best, and as much as I enjoy the headiness and layers of this show, it’s also just cool to see the Jennings do spy stuff sometimes too.
It’s also oddly charming to see them do parent stuff in the midst of that. In an episode that is about people finding themselves more emotionally involved in extramarital affairs (albeit a couple of fake or at least known ones) than they intended, Paige is cheating on her family...with God. It’s a funny scene where Elizabeth (who, along with her husband, is trying to give Paige some space) walks in on her daughter hiding a book, only to discover that it’s the bible.
I’m sure it’s many parents’ greatest dream, so it’s funny that in a secretly Soviet household, the bible is what’s taboo, and has the Jennings in turn freaking out and calming each other down about the bad influences Paige is getting here in America. It’s a funny sort of rebellion, that feels true to life in how one good friendship in your youth can turn into, well, a youth group.
That just leaves Stan, who admits to Philip that he’s cheating on his wife. Stan vocalizes what’s been obvious for some time now -- that he can be open with Nina, seen and known by her, in a way that he can’t be Sandra. That is extraordinarily sad: for Sandra because the man she loves isn’t there anymore and for Stan because the woman he loves is playing him.
But it speaks to that interesting sense in this episode, of Stan only feeling comfortable with someone he can be open with, who is ironically not being open with him, and the Jennings fears and frustrations and truths seeming to come out with people they’re being anything but truthful too. It makes you wonder about Philip and Elizabeth themselves, who seem to be on the same page, but are, perhaps, not providing that outlet to one another, even as they work as a well-oiled machine that’s neverless stymied by another pair of interfering spooks.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-07-18T02:22:35Z
[7.6/10] I’m not that far into The Americans, but I feel like there’s a tell in each episode. There’s usually one line, one scene, or one exchange, that gives away what the show is getting at with a particular installment.
Now maybe that’s difficult for an episode like “A Little Night Music” which, without an explicit “to be continued” still feels like part one of a two-parter given the abrupt ending and the lack of payoff to several things set up in the episode: Elizabeth’s tryst with Brian the navy boy, Marta threatening to put her “husband”’s name on an employment form, and most obviously the pair of bizarro-verse spy assailants who attack the Jennings at the end of the episode.
But it still feels like “A Little Night Music” gives us the key to what it’s trying to say from an unexpected source -- Oleg, the intrusive jerk who’s been pestering Nina since he joined the series. He uses his family connections to up his clearance level, which gives him the clout to read Nina’s reports (though, thanks to some discretion and implied sense off protection from Arkady, not the files that detail her betrayal of the KGB). It seems like there’s more than meets the eye to Oleg beyond his Russian Logan Huntzberger routine, whether that means he’s a spy for another country or an operative for some other part of the Soviet government, or just someone playing his own angle.
But he says something interesting to Nina. Instead of just his usual raw harassment, Oleg tells her he admires what she does, because even when the rest of us wants to lie, there are parts of ourselves that cannot help but tell the truth. Now maybe that’s just a fancy Russian version of “your lips say no but your body says yes” and it’s just another brick in the wall in his continued harassment campaign, but either way, that seems to be what “A Little Night Music” is trying to put forward.
The most compelling part of that is Elizabeth seducing Brian in order to get the files on one of Emmet and Liane’s assets. It is, if nothing else, a dynamite performance from Keri Russell, who plays the broken bird who thinks she’s found her hero so well that she had me wondering how much of the real Elizabeth Jennings was bleeding through this character.
The way Elizabeth blends a retelling of her real life past assault with a chance for her target to be a hero, one that gives this shy, sweet young man a taste of sexual gratification in the process, is a strange echo of the series’s pilot, where Elizabeth spurned her “husband”’s advances until he killed her rapist. It was awkward then, and it’s awkward now, but in a more layered way, where Elizabeth is blending fact and fiction, her need to persuade this naif with her true feelings about trauma and fear that bend this playacting toward something truer.
That seems to be the case for Philip as well. It’s hard to tell what exactly is motivating his seemingly calculated tantrum with Martha. Maybe it’s just that with Agent Gaad being forced to fall on his sword for various FBI foibles, the KGB’s link to him isn’t as important, and Philip is finding a way out. Or maybe it’s just genuine frustrations with being pulled in multiple directions, without having real control over his own life, spilling out in strange ways. Maybe he just wanted an exit from that morning, and things got out of control, to where a simple tiff became an argument about how constrained Philip really feels.
It’s a tough time for that because, as the pre-credits teaser lets us know, Claudia (aka Character Actress Margo Martindale) is back! She’s a welcome return here, as she’s still a bundle of mysteries and competence, who is bucking orders openly with the Jennings rather than telling them to follow the straight and narrow while she challenges her superiors. In this instance, she says the Centre is really going to investigate who killed Emmett and Liane, and that she wants Philip and Elizabeth to do so.
(My crazy theory on this is:Liane was her real life daughter, possible with Zhukov, and that’s why she says she “can’t lose anyone else” and is so legitimately affected by this and willing to operate outside the authority.)
That at least gives the Jennings a mission, one that pushes both of them forward and drives the action of the episode. Seeing Elizabeth work her magic on Brian, and Philip track down the Jewish physicist who escaped Soviet rule lets us see both of them doing what they do best, and as much as I enjoy the headiness and layers of this show, it’s also just cool to see the Jennings do spy stuff sometimes too.
It’s also oddly charming to see them do parent stuff in the midst of that. In an episode that is about people finding themselves more emotionally involved in extramarital affairs (albeit a couple of fake or at least known ones) than they intended, Paige is cheating on her family...with God. It’s a funny scene where Elizabeth (who, along with her husband, is trying to give Paige some space) walks in on her daughter hiding a book, only to discover that it’s the bible.
I’m sure it’s many parents’ greatest dream, so it’s funny that in a secretly Soviet household, the bible is what’s taboo, and has the Jennings in turn freaking out and calming each other down about the bad influences Paige is getting here in America. It’s a funny sort of rebellion, that feels true to life in how one good friendship in your youth can turn into, well, a youth group.
That just leaves Stan, who admits to Philip that he’s cheating on his wife. Stan vocalizes what’s been obvious for some time now -- that he can be open with Nina, seen and known by her, in a way that he can’t be Sandra. That is extraordinarily sad: for Sandra because the man she loves isn’t there anymore and for Stan because the woman he loves is playing him.
But it speaks to that interesting sense in this episode, of Stan only feeling comfortable with someone he can be open with, who is ironically not being open with him, and the Jennings fears and frustrations and truths seeming to come out with people they’re being anything but truthful too. It makes you wonder about Philip and Elizabeth themselves, who seem to be on the same page, but are, perhaps, not providing that outlet to one another, even as they work as a well-oiled machine that’s neverless stymied by another pair of interfering spooks.
Or maybe we’ll just find out in part two.