3x01 EST Men

[7.4/10] I can’t help but recall what Alan Sepinwall said about The Wire, that’s its opening scene for each season, and to a similar extent the first episode of each new year, would set the tone for the season to come, presenting its themes and ideas in miniature. And if that’s the case, Season 3 of The Americans is going to be about two things in particular.

First and foremost, it’s going to be about what was set up at the end of last season -- whether Paige will learn who her parents really are and be brought into the KGB’s covert operations. There’s all kind of conflicts and stories to spin out from that central premise, not the least of which is the wedge it again drives between Philip and Elizabeth.

Philip is angry and aghast when he hears Elizabeth tell an old friend of theirs (played by Frank Langella of Frost/Nixon fame) about how Elizabeth has been priming her daughter, assessing her, joining her in her church group functions so as to get a better sense of what she is and isn’t capable of, where her head’s at, and above all else get closer to Paige so that there’s a level of trust there if things need to move to the next step.

In a private moment, Elizabeth protests that it’s all just telling the Centre what it needs to hear, but Philip knows better, knows where this is headed, and it portends further philosophical clashes between them over which comes first: their family or their mission.

But if “EST Men” is any indication, it’s a storyline that also speaks more broadly in terms of a theme for the season, one about motherhood, about womanhood, and more generally, about the place that women occupy and the challenges they face even within a nominally meritocratic system of espionage and diplomacy.

You see that in the opening flashback, where a young Paige is too scared to go into the pool, and Elizabeth’s response is first to gently encourage her daughter to face her fears, and when that fails, to simply toss her into the pool and trust that she can swim. It’s a pretty “Hooray for metaphors!” moment in the show, but it exemplifies Elizabeth’s approach to her children and to this life.

But “EST Men” gives it a counterpoint. Just as Paige is poised to move closer to Elizabeth’s real life, Elizabeth’s own mother is poised to move out of it. The episode delivers the information that Elizabeth’s mom is dying artfully, letting Keri Russell's reaction to the unsubtitled audio tape from home tell the story before we know the details, and letting the specifics of the information come out at a moment when it can reunite Philip and Elizabeth after their tiff over Paige. There’s a parallel there, as Elizabeth juggles the emotional weight of having the woman who raised her leaving this world when there’s nothing she can do or even visit because of this life, at the same time she’s trying, or at least thinking about, bringing her daughter into that life.

“EST Men” also spends time gesturing toward the difficulty of that life even apart from family and interpersonal connections. Who knows if the CIA agent whom Elizabeth speaks with in an early scene is telling her the truth about her career misadventures or if she’s just trying to forge a sisterhood connection with Elizabeth, but either way, she talks about a man getting the credit for her good work in a way that suggests the world of spies is not free of sexism or greater expectations placed on women.

That thought finds its echo in the aftermath we learn about regarding Nina. She too faced different expectations because of her gender, because of what she was expected to do and to use to save herself and serve her country. And in the end, it only gets her shipped back to Mother Russia and convicted of treason and, presumably, a death sentence. Oleg has to deal with his anger and impotence over that. Stan has to deal with his guilt (and his well-meaning but failed attempts to reconcile with Sandra). But at the end of the day, Nina is the one who has to pay the costs, something that even the pragmatic but unassumingly sensitive Vlad seems to brush off.

But Vlad seems to have bigger fish to fry right now, specifically the proxy war in Afghanistan, which seems to be the other (less thematic, more plot-heavy) thread that The Americans is setting up for this season. That too has plenty of tendrils to reach out and touch other parts of the show.

It gives the Jennings a mission, specifically to come up with a list of names of CIA agents involved in America’s efforts in the country. It gives Vlad and the Rezidentura a specific focus, a bigger goal and challenge now that stealth seems to have been put by the wayside for the time being. It gives Frank Langella’s Gabriel, and the Centre he represents, greater reason to push the Jennings to enlist more bodies in this war. And it provides another real life historical hook for the show to build its plots around.

In the immediate term, it makes Philip a party to another horrific death, one that he has to use to spin straw into gold with Annelise. Silly me, when I saw Annelise in the “Previously On” segment, I thought she might get a bigger role this season. Well she does, but only for a moment, as her affection for the men who are playing her, and whom she’s supposed to be playing, inevitably gets her killed. When she confesses her love to Yousef, and with it, the implicit truth about what she’s up to, he strangles her, in a tragic scene.

But Philip is undeterred. He catches Yousef in the act, and while he doesn't prevent Annelise’s death, he gains leverage over Yousef, leverage that might get him those CIA names that they’re after, but only at the cost of another woman made disposable as a part of this life, the same life he’s deathly afraid of bringing his daughter into.

Before she embarks on the mission, Philip warns Annelise that she has to stay objective, that mission success means keeping your personal feelings out of it. That’s something Elizabeth has always been better at than Philip. But when they’re daughter is what’s at stake, with a war overseas encroaching on their lives at home, The Americans suggests that this sort of objectivity, of keeping family and work separate, is untenable. The show’s third season seems ready to examine the fault lines of that idea, as the calls get closer, and women at all corners of the world the Jennings occupy seem worse off for it.