3x13 March 8, 1983

[8.3/10] A ton of things happen in “March 8, 1983”. There are capital-E Events that go down. And yet, this season finale feels more like a midpoint than an ending, a dash rather than a period or even a semicolon. A great deal has happened since the beginning of the season, but as it closes here, it feels like a lot of things are pretty much where we found them, or not far off.

The biggest change happens with Paige. Philip manages to arrange the trip for Elizabeth to see her mom before she dies, and brings Paige along with her. Elizabeth remembers her mother as a strong, tough woman, but when the Centre’s handlers wheel her in unexpectedly one morning in West Germany, she is a frail, warm woman, who takes the daughter she thought she’d never see again in her arms. She looks over and says Paige’s name, probingly, hopefully, and the three room hold hands, mother to daughter twice over, bridging the generations in one incredibly warm gesture.

For a moment, it seems like it will be enough to bring Paige into the fold. She prays for her grandmother, while Elizabeth sits on the pale bathroom tile beside her. There is the sense that her parents have gotten through to her, given her a connection to their roots that may take hold. But at the airport home, Paige breaks down. She wails angrily that she can’t do it; she can’t lie to everyone forever; it’s too much. Instead of bringing her in, the adventure convinces Paige that she cannot live the life her parents did, to have had to endure the things they had to endure, and confesses who they are to Pastor Tim.

That feels like a big deal, but considering there’s three more seasons of the show, it probably doesn't mean that the Jennings go to jail in the premiere of season 4. If anything, it might make Pastor Tim not long for this world (assuming he’s not already affiliated with the CIA or something). And yet, it doesn't feel especially momentous, more like another bump along the way as Paige gets used to her new truth. Maybe the sea changed came a few episodes ago when that reveal happened, but despite some significant moments, this can’t help but feel like just another chapter in the Paige storyline, rather than something that ends with an exclamation point.

The other big change comes in the form of Stan, who not only cements his divorce here, but who comes to clean to Agent Gaad about his affair with Nina, his efforts to work Oleg, and his information that the supposed Russian defector in their care is still working for the Russian government. It gets him a cold reception from Gaad, who is aghast at Stan’s actions and request that they trade the defector for Nina, hinting that his career is over and that he will never be able to trust Stan again.

But when Gaad goes to the Deputy Attorney General to determine Stan’s punishment, the DAG is, instead, pleased. He comes to Stan not to dress him down, but to declare that like President Reagan, he believes that the government works better without the red tape, and encourages Stan to keep working Oleg. It’s a win, but for the fact that the whole goal for Stan’s mission, to bring back Nina, fails.

The US government trades the “defector” for a CIA agent arrested by Moscow, and the DAG tells him it’s not possible to get Nina back. It’s a pyrrhic victory for Stan, one that let’s him succeed at his job and earn the notice of the higher ups, but which has him fail in his effort to retrieve the woman he has placed so much importance on in his heart and in his uncertain life.

That too, feels more like a “to be continued” than the close of a chapter. There’s the sense of a new frosty relationship with Gaad and Agent Aderholt, and yet of being the golden boy with the bosses that will create a tense but dramatically fruitful new dynamic in the FBI’s offices. There’s the hint, reinforced by the end of the episode, that business is about to pick up in the fight between the Americans and the Russians. But for all this incident, we’re pretty much just having Agent Beeman work at the FBI, with a few relationships moved around, while he conspires with Oleg to try to save Nina.

And yet, it’s not clear that Nina needs saving, or that this is the way to do it. She tells Anton that she is tired of trying to buy her life back, and he gives her a bit of advice that could pass as new age epiphany. They can only capture your body. They cannot capture your mind. Anthon may not be able to escape, but he can deny them control over the things his body wants, to limit their ability to ply him with carrots and sticks, and feed the mental side of him that cannot be caged. He encourages Nina, whose outward appearance has been so much the cause of how various powers have sought to use her, to keep the mind free, separate and apart.

It ties thematically into Philip’s part of the episode. Philip is attending EST meetings on his own, and running into Sandra there. While the interactions with Sandra seem particularly odd (and make me hope the show isn’t segueing into some love quadrangle setup), the things that Philip hears at these meetings parallel Anton’s advice to Nina. The presenter suggests that our bodies speak to us. That we can become so lost in our minds that we cannot hear when our bodies are practically screaming.

Philip has had to live in his mind for so long. He’s been trained to do it. And yet it seems like he’s starting to realize that something is wrong. His body is, perhaps, screaming out to him. When Yousef asks if scuttling the Mujahideen meeting was worth it, Philip talks about the young men who would be saved from the fighting. He’s obliquely referencing his son, trying to justify these actions as “making the world a better place.” But in an unexpectedly unguarded moment, he stops the act admits to Yousef that he “feels like shit all the time.”

The Americans has long hinted that this life has taken a toll on Philip. It is a grisly business, to force your body into because your mind is wrapped up in your grand mission. Once again, Philip must get his hands dirty, hanging the young computer expert from the FBI and doctoring the scene to make it look as though he were the one who placed the bug in Gaad’s pen. It will, with any luck, absolve Martha of suspicion, but it’s another innocent life down the drain. For a moment, it seems to get to him.

He almost confesses as much to Elizabeth. He cannot quite articulate it, underscoring how this is a more primal revulsion, a reaction to what he’s seen and done, than something intellectual like their devotion to the cause. But what’s clear is that Philip is, as Gabriel once put it, falling apart.

The episode crosscuts between his effort at confession and absolution, representing the pangs of this life, with Paige offering her own distraught confession to her pastor, drawing a connection between the two’s shared resistance to Paige entering this life. We also see Henry playing a football board game with Stan, once again unremarkably absent from his parents’ presence, with that neglect letting American culture and values soak and seep into their son. And last but not least is Elizabeth, who hears Ronald Reagan’s evil empire speech on the television, the division of a conflict into black and white. She can no longer hear her husband’s furtive plea, only the call that such a challenge must be met, and that they are the ones to meet it.

So we leave things, if not where we started, then not far away either. Philip is once again questioning the value of this life and his part in it. Elizabeth is emboldened by a reforging of her connection to her roots and an opposition that runs to the top. Henry is absent and oblivious, while the Jennings are split on how to go with Paige. The President’s speech suggests a heightening of the conflict, a new stage with more active clashes and more to be asked of The Illegals in response. But for the most part, this is as it has been.

Maybe there’s a point in that though. Maybe The Americans’s third season is about these grand efforts to effect change -- for the Jennings to save or induct their daughter, for Stan to save Nina, to end a conflict in Afghanistan -- that make big steps but never quite come to fruition. Philip’s longstanding, if unspoken desire to get out, surfaces again as the life becomes harder and harder to take. Elizabeth’s equal and opposite devotion to her ideals are renewed in the forge of the opposition leader’s call to action. Stan’s life continues, harder and emptier and more uncertain, but much as it was.

At the end of its season, The Americans has little new direction to offer its characters, or the nations and agencies they represent, only a deepening and hardening of what already was. That may not be as satisfying as a T.V. viewer, but it is, perhaps, truer for some elemental struggles, that neither extinguish nor explode, but simply continue to smolder.