5x05 Lotus 1-2-3

[8.6/10] Holy cow is this one sad. Aside from Henry getting bumped up one class, everybody is more or less at a low point here. But as usual, The Americans finds meaning in its characters’ suffering, even as it starts to unspool plot-dramatic stuff in the process. It’s also an episode that focuses very much on parents and children, on the connections that linger between them, even when it’s unwanted.

But let’s focus on the happy stuff first! Go Henry! I’ll be honest, I have no idea what this show’s plan for Henry is. Every time I think they’re going to do something with the fact that he seems to go basically unnoticed by his parents, whether it’s him being influenced a la the kid in season 2, or getting too close to Stan, or something else, the show just kind of keeps him in stasis. Maybe this unexpected math talent will be a sign to them that they’ve been overlooking their second born, and it’ll turn into something, but I’m skeptical at this point. I keep waiting for this kid to matter beyond being a prop, and I hope the show’s playing the long game.

I’ll give it credit though -- it was playing the long game with Mischa, Philip’s son with Irina. I spent much of the last few write-ups questioning why we were spending so much time with him. The show definitely spent a lot of real estate on his journey from Russia to the USA without much development, and it was easy to wonder why. The answer seems to be, so that the audience would feel the length and hardship of his journey when he’s turned away at the gates.

That reluctant rejection is sad for everyone involved. It’s sad for poor Mischa, because he’s come all this way in the hope of finding his father, of finding something that’s been missing at his life and gnawing at him, and after coming all this way, he’s stopped from finding the person who’s supposed to help this all make sense. It’s sad for Gabriel, because he clearly wishes that he could help reunite Philip and Mischa, to bring them together in the hopes that it might heal some of their mutual wounds. And it’s sad for Philip, because you know that whatever he’s going through, he would love that kid, and give him the care and affection that he needs, however difficult the situation.

But Claudia(!) is right. Philip means well, but he is shaky right now. As pleasantly surprised as he is by Henry, he is struggling with concerns about whether Paige has inherited his pain and horror at this line of work; he’s having to pretend to be a dad to Twan; and he’s having flashbacks to his own childhood, the dirty food and clothes that he was given as a child and is trying to make sense of as an adult. He is not in a good place right now, already losing faith in the Centre and his government, and learning that they imprisoned and committed his son for speaking out against the war would do little to assuage his concerns or maintain his loyalty.

That’s magnified by the biggest plot development of the episode -- the reveal that Agricorp is not trying to breed pests so they can devastate Russia’s grain supply; it’s trying to breed pest-resistant super wheat, in the hopes that they can feed the world. Elizabeth uncovers it as part of her honeypot scheme on the Agricorp tech guy, and it’s news serious enough to pierce her emotional mask and shock her. Keri Russel sells the hell out of the news, the impact it has on Elizabeth when she was so sure, so aghast, that America was trying to starve her people.

And yet, that’s not the part that Philip focused on. You get the sense that he bought the defector’s line about institutional failures in Russia being the reason for the food shortages rather than American sabotage much more than Elizabeth did. So “getting it wrong” there doesn't make him feel bad about the mission or rock his worldview the way it seems to for Elizabeth, when she realizes that there are well-meaning activists on the other side of the line.

Instead, for Philip, it means he’s had to kill another innocent person, that there’s more blood on his conscience that he can’t seem to wipe clean anymore. He struggles with it from the moment he realizes, and Elizabeth is hard-pressed to comfort him. But the one solace, and curse, that he has is their bond. Even when Elizabeth offers to do the wetwork on her own, Philip rebuffs the suggestion. This is their work. It’s us.

That’s in direct contrast to everyone else in the episode, who feel alone and are all the more vulnerable because of it. Philip and Elizabeth join the audience in suspecting that Stan might be dating a spy, since he is recently divorced and kind of a loner. It’s the same criteria the Centre used to pick their honeypot targets at Agricorp. It’s the same concern Oleg’s dad has when he tries to set his son up with a trio of local young women. And even when Oleg is unknowingly blessed, when Stan’s ultimatum works and no one shows up to lean on Oleg to work for the CIA.

(The stuff with Oleg works with the father/son theme this episode has going, and dovetails with the crooked grocery story functionary who’s pressured through his connection to his own son.)

But the hardest part of all of this is Paige. She’s inherited her father’s difficulty at reconciling her beliefs and compassion with the rough things she’s expected to keep under wraps. Philip knows first hand what it’s like to have to swallow down things that are eating you inside, and there can hardly be things more devastating to hear as a parent than your child’s worry that they’re too screwed up to be anything but alone.

Paige seems to break things off with Matthew, not because she doesn't care for him anymore, but because she hoped he would make her feel better, and now she worries that she’s beyond fixing. THat’s the one blessed difference between her and her parents here. Philip has someone he can confide in. Elizabeth calls him from Topeka to tell him she misses him. Even in an episode full of shock and misery, there is the sense that the Jennings have each other, which gets them through the hard times, something that few others in their orbit can rely on.