5x10 Darkroom

[7.2/10] It’s hard to escape the sense that The Americans is walking in place for the moment. It’s not as though there aren’t a good number of storylines simmering at the moment, but each only seems to make the most incremental of progress from episode to episode, and the ratio of incident to reflection feels out of whack. I am all aboard for character development and introspection, but this show has been at slack tide all season, and I keep waiting for the water to get choppy again.

The biggest event in the episode is an internal one, but a strong one, that all spills out from Paige reading an entry in Pastor Tim’s journal about her. The episode structures the plot well, with the audience seeing Paige’s reaction to it, watching her wrestle with and explore her relationship with Pastor Tim and the possibility of getting him out of her life, and only in the episode’s final scene, gives us the actual, devastating words that he wrote.

They’re words of concern for Paige, a fear that she is too screwed up from all the lies she’s been told and now forced to participate in that she’ll never recover. It is the most bare condemnation of what the Jennings have done to Paige so far. We’ve seen Philip and Gabriel and even Elizabeth worry, but this is the first outside assessment the audience has been privy to which states, in no uncertain terms, that this may do lasting harm to the Jennings’ eldest daughter.

It clearly gets to Paige. A great deal of this season has already been about that idea. We’ve seen Paige suffer for a while, and her parents either fool themselves into thinking that things can get better or at least just not have the strength or will to make a stand to pull her out of this. But this feels like an escalation in the difficulties she’s been having, to have yet another person recognize, with the frankness that only comes from someone who thinks their words will never be read, that this is not only hurting Paige, but that it may scar her for the rest of her life.

And yet, it’s also a turning point for her, a moment that teaches her that she cannot trust Pastor Tim. When making small talk at the food pantry, Paige talks a little about her struggle, about her anxiety for her future, with the opening that Pastor Tim might take to let her know about his own concerns. Instead, he just gives her encouragement, tells her that she’s going to be alright, that he believes she has a bright future ahead of her.

It’s a defensible thing to say to someone to try to help them, even if you’re not sure you believe it. Pastor Tim trying to give Paige reason to look up and be hopeful rather than confirm her worst fears at a time when she’s struggling is a kindness, not duplicitousness. But the irony is that it seems to convince her that Pastor Tim is not someone who will be real with her, in contrast to the way she thinks her parents have been of late.

That’s the extra layer of irony though. Part of what’s swayed her to her parents’ side is the idea that they’re helping to prevent world hunger by stopping this grave American plot to wipe out Russian wheat. Elizabeth and Philip don’t have the heart to tell her the truth, that the thing that convinced her they were doing good in the world was just a mistaken theory on the Centre’s part. Instead, Elizabeth emphasizes that they didn’t lie to her “exactly” -- that they kept things from her to protect her and told her the truth when she asked and was ready.

And yet, it’s hard to see the Jennings as wholly villains here. Maybe it’s just because they’re our protagonists, which always leads to an impulse to excuse. Maybe it’s because they both clearly care about Paige, even if the two still see two different versions of the same daughter and want very different things for her. But I think part of why we’re willing to excuse the obvious damage is the sense we have that these are good people who do bad things, who love and care about things and believe in things and suffer and struggle the way anyone does, even if we know rationally and empirically that they’re a cause of much suffering and struggle for other people along the way.

But whether the pair are antiheroes or antivillains or something else entirely, they love one another, which is endearing apart from their grim deeds. When they get the news from Claudia that they’re going to have to keep working the Topeka Agricorp employees, it’s rough news for the both of them, after the strain it’s put on each of them, particularly given how it feels like a betrayal of their relationship.

So in one of the most strangely romantic sequences in the whole show, he takes her to one of the episode’s titular dark rooms, in this instance a warehouse basement, to get married. It seems a little silly at first, given that they’re already married and have kids and have held themselves out accordingly for a long time. But this is a personal commitment between them, a ceremony with its own rings and rites, rather than a mercenary document passed down to them by their handlers. It is a lovely fortification and emotional reaffirmation to give them strength when both are forced to pretend to love other people once again.

The rest of the episode offers more incremental progress or hints for future developments rather than big shifts. Elizabeth warns but ultimately reassures Twan. Stan and Aderholts informant gives them a bead on a Russian courier. Oleg is still dealing with family issues and worried about the KGB sniffing around. Things are going pretty rough all around for the defector and his family. And Tatiana(!) shows up to make the offer to his wife that she can return home. None of it’s especially exciting or noteworthy, but it all serves to move these plots along, which is something.

But the bigger storyline stays focused on the Jennings and has to do with the first time Paige is truly making a choice here. Philip and Elizabeth suggest that they can use their connections to get Pastor Tim out of Paige’s life. They suggest that they can get him a job offer for humanitarian work that will take him far away, so that she doesn't have to keep maintaining her relationship with him. Before they execute the plan, however, they leave it up to her, saying that they won’t do it unless she tells them it’s what she wants.

Paige has already been sliding into her parents’ way of life. She’s clearly improved at her mom’s self-defense courses. She’s doing spycraft on her own with Pastor Tim’s diary, even snapping photos so that the job offer can be more convincing and attractive to him based on the info within. And in the end, after Pastor Tim proves unwilling to be “real” with her, at least relative to her parents from her perspective, Paige agrees to the plan.

She watches her parents meticulously develop the film in a well-shot and staged scene. There are the words in black and white (er, red and yellow and brownish?), worrying about the lasting damage to Paige of all of this, likening it to something worse than sexual abuse, fearing for the future of this heretofor innocent young woman, while she’s drawn closer and closer into her parents’ world by the very act.

Season 5 has been a slow one for The Americans, but it’s also given us a steady descent for Paige, one that the show seems to be warning us, and has warned us for some time, will leave her no more reassured, no more secure, and no happier than her parents are.