2x07 ARPANET

[7.7/10] If the theme, or at least recurring motif, to the prior episode was sex, than the one for “ARPANET” is technology, and the disconnect between people and their machines when confronting them in the era that computers were just starting to emerge as a real force in the world.

The main focus of the episode is Nina having to take the polygraph test that Stan suggested in the last episode. It’s a cause for concern, since obviously the polygrapher is going to ask her about her loyalties to the KGB vs. the FBI, something that she’s going to be both nervous and perfidious about no matter how much she might wish to pass the test.

Of course, this provides Oleg the perfect opportunity to inject himself into things. He claims to know how to beat the polygraph machine, and it gives him an opportunity to not only coach Nina on how to do it, but to become closer to her, to become her savior, in a way that lets him, inevitably, get into her pants. It’s a predictable development, one that seemed pre-ordained from the moment he showed up and sexually harassed her, but it’s worth seeing where it goes.

The other major part of the episode comes down to the Mission of the Week, which sees Philip, with the help of Charles, the unctuous and vaguely flamboyant drunk of an ally have to sneak a bug into the arpanet (a precursor to the internet) to help the KGB spy on American data transmissions. And the story provides a nice contrast between the flow of ones and zeroes that are still such a mystery to the folks of Philip’s generation and the human capital that is still the currency of the day of 1981 (or 1982? It’s hard to know the timeline exactly.)

Either way, it requires Philip and Charles to pump a local professor for information. In one of the episode’s best scenes, the professor describes a metaphor for the upcoming information superhighway, something that describes the majesty of the system that you’re reading this review on with a sort of wonder and poetry and awe that’s hard to consider anymore given how omnipresent and taken for granted the Internet is today.

But the actor and the writers do a good job, both of conveying this then-groundbreaking notion in a way that makes it seem wondrous, while making the professor seem still awed by the idea he’s conveying to what he thinks is a pair of reporters, who are mystified at best and incredulous at worst about the conceptual but potential-filled system that they’re meant to infiltrate.

It’s a great outing for both Philip and Matthew Rhys (and for Charles for that matter). There’s tension in the episode as Charles is forced to do some actual spy work, not just opening the doors for folks like Philip who have to get their hands dirty. But Philip also has to improvise, as even when Charles gets into the professor’s office and retrieves the code to access the server, he finds that a class is in the computer room and panics, leaving Philip to save the day.

And save the day he does. He manages to set off a fire alarm, which sends the programmers and students scurrying out of the building. In the interim, he’s able to connect the “bug” the KGB sent him in to deploy, despite the total ignorance of his young handler who can tell him nothing about it, but it requires him to kill the young computer enthusiast who has the misfortune of coming back for his wallet and inadvertently intercepting Philip.

When the job is done, Charles is exaltant, thrilling in the spirit of having completed a real live mission with twists and turns and not just making introductions and passing on information. But Philip is jaded and a bit disdainful, not just because Charles has broken his assurance that he’d give up alcohol (something Philip confirms by ordering Charles’s same drink from the bartender, with some excellent body language acting from Rhys), but because for all those ones and zeroes, it can’t help but weigh on Philip once again that he’s had to condemn an innocent life to something terrible in the name of his mission.

We continue to get stories of this job wearing Philip down, of him feeling the body count he’s created, something cast into sharp relief given how excited Charles is to be a part of that operation. It may just be me projecting what isn’t really there, but you start to get the sense that Philip is getting tired of this shit.

The only thing that doesn't really fit in this episode (though isn’t bad necessarily) is the continuing storyline of Larek. It feels like this is The Americans’s overarching storyline for this season, and so they have to just patch it in to whatever other storylines or plots they’re delivering within a given episode, regardless of whether it meshes.

The result is two-fold. For one, it’s revealed that Lucia has a grudge against Larek and wants to kill him, something that makes her harder to handle by the Jennings (and, in a heavily underlined scene, reminds Philip of his wife). For another, Elizabeth meets with Jarek and finds out that he’s shipping out to Nicaragua, something that complicated their infilitration mission, and also includes hints that he’s onto them, and more dangerous than their average informant.

To be frank, Jarek feels like some late season Dexter B.S., and while I like the idea of an asset who’s unpredictable and poses a legitimate threat to the Jennings, this guy has barely been built up to that. He’s just sort of thrown out there and we’re expected to care about him, while he’s mostly a mustache twirling, if capable villain at the moment. That’s not very satisfying, regardless of how tense it may be when he seems to have made Philip in his sniper position.

Still, it’s not as tense as when Nina is taking the lie detector. As cheesy as it is for Oleg to get himself into Nina’s good graces by helping her beat the test, there’s some truth to the scenario, the sense that an emotional connection can form when assisting someone in a stressful situation. I’m not really on board with Oleg + Nina, and frankly he’s kind of annoyed me since he’s showed up, but there are worse ways to ingratiate him with Nina; his tips are sound (thanks for the knowledge on that topic This American Life), and it at least progresses the story.

But the actual lie detector scene is intense. You can pretty well suspect that Nina is going to pass the test, but the direction and editing still imbues the scene with tension. The way that Nina looks at Stan when she says she knows who killed Vlad, the way she breathes and looks at the “empty space” in the room that Oleg talked about when having to answer the hard questions, and the moment of anticipation when Stan is talking things over after the test with the polygrapher make it taut, well-crafted sequence that keeps you on the edge of your seat even when you’re pretty sure how things are going to turn out.

Human capital wins in “ARPANET.” It takes Oleg’s ingenuity to help Nina beat the polygraph. It takes Philip’s know-how and willingness to kill to help Charles master the American server. And it even takes Henry mildly hoodwinking his parents to allow him to play the video games that his parents refuse to buy for him (albeit, after his dad drools over a different, more automotive machine). The flesh and blood wins out in this episode, but there’s the sense that it’s harder, that the machines are complicating things, in ways that even the human beings who are ahead for now in 1981 don’t fully appreciate yet.