3x03 Open House

[7.4/10] We’re only three episodes into this season of The Americans, but already we have a few recurring motifs. One of them is entirely unsurprising -- the continuing debate over whether or not to start grooming Paige to be a member of the KGB. All of Season 2 basically existed to set up this dilemma, and so it’s natural that the show would pick it up and follow the issue into the next season.

The catch is that it’s getting to be time for the show to either advance that storyline or put it on the back burner. At this point, we firmly get that Elizabeth and Philip feel differently about this idea, and it’s driving a wedge between them. We get that the Centre wants Paige to be brought into the fold, and is unlikely to take no for an answer. It’s not like these are bad notes to play or anything, but we’re starting to reach the point where either there needs to be some real movement in that subplot, or the show needs to move it to the background for a little while so it can simmer while other issues are coming to a boil.

But that connects to a couple of other motifs that have been surprisingly prominent in Season 3. One of those is close calls. Obviously The Americans is not shy about putting the Jenningses in danger, or forcing them to come up with daring or ingenious or occasionally horrifying ways to get out of seemingly impossible situations, a la Walter White.

The difference is that this season, it feels like the FBI’s net is tightening around the Jenningses, and around Elizabeth in particular. She’s the one who had to get into a fist fight with Agent Gaad and Agent Aderholt to get out of a sticky situation with a woman she thought was a CIA informant. And here, by dint of being the driver, she’s the one being tracked by the CIA after she and Philip try to monitor a member of the CIA’s Afghan group, and Philip’s able to tuck and roll his way out of danger.

That cat and mouse does three things for The Americans. First, it lets the show set up another tense confrontation. Again, this show hasn’t necessarily shown enough chutzpah in the past to where we can really believe that Elizabeth will be caught for real three episodes into the season. But the music, editing, and plotting of the situation are so good that even if you know Elizabeth is likely to make it out of his situation unscathed, you’re on the edge of your seat trying to figure out how she’s going to make that happen. Everything from the radio receiver drop, to the countdown until go-time, to the crash and run and hyperventilation that follows, makes for a superb sequence.

Second, it gives The Americans time to more fully introduce Agent Aderholt. We don’t know much about Aderholt, beyond that he seems to be Amador’s replacement. But “Open House” gives us a few details. For one thing, he’s a little sweet on Martha, which is encouraging since she continues to be in an unwittingly loveless marriage with Philip, one where a very different version of the kid issue is at play. For another, he is by the book and a little old school, not wanting to use the automatic file transfer bot because it’s less time to hand-deliver a known file than to track down a lost one.

And last but not least, we learn that he understands what the FBI is dealing with in the form of the “illegals.” All it took was one encounter with Elizabeth for him to deter any inclination to take her lightly. He’s the one who figures out how loose the CIA’s dragnet on Elizabeth is, and t’s his encouragement, his boldness with his boss, that persuades the CIA to try to drop the hammer on her rather than continue following her and hope something bigger shakes out. It’s a brief introduction, but it’s effective to show who this guy is and what he’s about.

Third, that close call once again underlines why Philip is so nervous about letting Paige into this world. I’ve written about the dangers the Jenningses face on a daily basis, and the fear of exposing their children to that plenty before, but suffice it to say, Elizabeth coming this close to being ensnared by the Americans and taken away from everyone she loves drive home what’s at stake for the people who become soldiers in this war.

So does the other odd recurring motif so far this season -- pretty brutal, bone-crunching scenes. There’s a moment of relief, of tenderness from the previously frosty Philip once Elizabeth returns home after the close shave. But that moment quickly transitions to a much more harrowing, if strangely no less intimate, moment where Philip is forced to perform some field dentistry on Elizabeth’s worsening jaw.

(As an aside, I’m willing to handwave it, but it seems odd that the Jennings have to resort to pliers in the garage when we’ve seen the KGB bring out ruskie-friendly medical professionals for their assets before. But whatever.)

The extraction is a well-shot, but hard to watch scene. The look on Philip and Elizabeth’s eyes, the crunch of bone, the sight of blood, the image of Elizabeth stopping her husband but then grasping his shirt in the midst of the procedure, all wordlessly convey the combination of determination, necessity, and horror that mark this late night example of the prices the Jenningses, Elizabeth in particular, continue to pay in the same of their cover and their mission.

It’s not hard to see why this sort of experience would give Philip and Elizabeth pause about the idea of their daughter doing the same thing. Philip sees the same quiet strength in his daughter, the ability for her to be okay with things that are not okay, that he does in his wife, and it makes him angry and afraid. It leaves him upset enough to throw figurative dirt in his handler and old friend Gabriel’s face (after a revealing, bluff-heavy, and overmatched game of Scrabble that was laden with symbolism).

The Paige story may need to be advanced or put on the back burner, but Season 3 of The Americans is, at the very least, offering plenty of reasons for Philip and Elizabeth to have reservations about the issue. Who knows if those recurring motifs -- the close calls, the crunching body parts -- that feel like warnings will be enough to resolve the continuing question of Paige’s involvement in her parents’ second lives, or if they’re just portents for what awaits her down the road.

(As an aside, I was pretty nonplussed by the very brief story about Oleg having an out back to Russia but choosing to stay in America. If we never saw him again, I wouldn’t cry any tears. That said, I was more compelled by Elizabeth having admitted “chemistry” with the young TA she’s training in espionage, but putting the young man off because she doesn't want to mess things up with Philip, even as he’s fairly cold to her.)