5x13 The Soviet Division

[7.2/10] It feels like The Americans has been in a holding pattern for all of season 5. It’s not as though nothing whatsoever has happened during the season, but progress has been slow and, at the end of the season, most things have only changed marginally from where we started. The worlds of a few guest characters have been rocked, but the situation as we began is, if not wholly unchanged, than just a slight deviation away.

Sure, “The Soviet Division” dangles the possibility of the Jennings leaving for Russia in front of the audience, but it feels like a false possibility from the word go. There’s the possibility that The Americans is a show with enough chutzpah to spend its final season on the Jennings having to deal with the realities of migrating back to their Soviet homeland, but it seemed slim. Instead, the show gives us hordes of meaningful montages about saying goodbye, about making this big move, that’s meant to sucker in the audience before the inevitable “we have to stay” detail is revealed.

That detail is the fact that Breland (aka Kimmi’s dad) has been promoted to the head of the CIA’s Soviet Division, giving the KGB an unprecedented opportunity to know the inner workings of the people working against them. Philip, on the verge of the exit from this life that he so desperately wanted, considers throwing it away and never telling anyone, but he can’t. He cannot hide this sort of thing from his wife, and confides in her, knowing what it means for their immediate futures, even if he vocalizes delusions that things could continue as they have. He tells her that this hasn’t just worn on him; it’s worn on her too, and maybe they can still run away.

Elizabeth recognizes that, but tells him that she cannot just leave with this opportunity on the table. She offers a compromise, that they stay and keep working, but that Philip stop beyond picking up the tapes from Kimmi. It is a revealing suggestion from Elizabeth, particularly given her speech to Tuan that he cannot make it by working alone, that he needs someone else lest he get caught or killed or captured. But perhaps with that idea in mind, Philip rejects it, telling his wife that he needs her.

And so things will continue as they have. Philip is still cracking. Elizabeth is still worried about him, and still dealing with some issues herself. The mission is still important enough, and their concern for one another is still strong enough, that they more or less need to maintain the status quo. That’s....where we left things last season, and the season before, and arguably the season before that too. Sure, the Jennings’ exhaustion and moral concerns have been gradually increased, and now they’ve had escape offered and de facto retracted, but this is still where things have stood for a long time.

The one person whose situation has meaningfully changed from the beginning of the season to the end is Paige. “The Soviet Division” takes pains to put a capstone of Paige’s journey here. She essentially closes things down with Pastor Tim and company, who are headed for Buenos Aires. She tells her mother that she is not interested in religion anymore, but still wants to volunteer at the food pantry, having taken on Elizabeth’s activist impulse to believe in something without the spiritual bent that her mom disdains.

And if that weren’t enough, the episode shows her walking through the parking lot where she and Elizabeth were nearly attacked all by herself, showing the added confidence and sense of security she has regained since those foundation-shaking events began. It’s all delivered a little too tidily, but in a season that often felt like the show treading water, Paige is at least some major figure on the show who made a big change this season.

The catch is that I’m not sure I fully buy it. The passage of time has always been a little fuzzy on this show, but she basically goes from fully rattled, overwhelmed, utterly distraught teenager to kickboxing, religion-shedding, mini-spy in the span of a season, without enough clear connective tissue between. Still, there’s an argument to be made that these sorts of internal changes happen subtly, and that even if the show doesn't signpost the shift clearly, or rushes it a little, it’s a plausible change of heart in an already mercurial teenager.

The one person whose fortunes and affect believably make huge strides in this season is Martha, who only makes three appearances, but who knocks it out of the park in each of them. The look on Alison Wright’s face when Martha’s handler indicates that she’ll be able to adopt an adorable Russian orphan named Olya is an emotional uppercut. If anyone in this show deserves a happy ending, it’s her, and it’s nice to see the show taking time out of its (surprisingly low-key) finale to set one up for her.

Everyone else has potential developments that are more teased than brought to fruition. Stan and Aderholt’s new possible informant passes the lie detector test. The show is still playing coy about whether Stan’s girlfriend Renee is in the service, but hints strongly at it when Stan says he wants to leave CounterIntelligence and she tries to talk him into staying. Oleg is still in Moscow doing Oleg things. Henry got into boarding school and sparks with Philip over not being able to go. It all still feels more like prelude than payoff.

The only other major fireworks in the episode come courtesy of Alexei the defector and his family. The Pasha suicide ploy works (thankfully, without Pasha dying. It leads to Pasha and his mom heading back to Russia, and a lot of tears and hand-wringing over the hardship of separating a family. I might care more about this stuff if it didn’t feel like the defector family were little more than props for the show, with the same going for Tuan.

I get the notion of the show wanting to use these characters as cause for Philip and Elizabeth to compare on reflect on their own lives, but when the characters themselves come off like stilted and/or exaggerated cardboard plot devices, it’s hard to feel the emotional impact of the big speeches or epiphanies that they’re meant to spur.

That’s particularly true when, at least for now, it doesn't really amount to anything. There’s something to be said for Elizabeth and Philip making the decision to leave, even if they don’t get to act on it. It indicates a new emotional space for them. But the day-to-day reality of their circumstances as the credits roll here isn’t markedly different than how it was when we were first wondering who the hell Tuan was and why he was coming home to the Jennings in the first scene of the season.

There is a statement in that, in the slow wearing down of people and their resolve when outside forces conspire to keep them in stasis. It just doesn't make for especially compelling television, or at least isn’t enough to sustain a full season, and arguably more, of the characters wrestling with that without a major change. WIth only ten episodes to go, let’s hope The Americans stops saving its biggest plot points for a rainy day, and instead nigh-literally pulls the trigger on them in its final frame.