6x01 Dead Hand

[7.3/10] What the hell? Those are the first thoughts that come to mind here. Three years. We jumped at least three years in time. Did they know this was going to be the final season when they were making season 5? Were they put in this position and had to accelerate things to the planned endgame when the network told them they had one more batch of episodes to wrap things up? I don’t know how else you explain this. It feels like we missed a season.

Here’s the thing though, this episode isn’t bad. The conflicts and themes it sets up for the season aren’t bad. In fact, both are pretty darn good! I like the idea that before the breakdown of the Soviet Union, Russia is breaking down into two camps: the people who want things to persist as they have for decades, and the people who want to see things change between the USA and the U.S.S.R. I like the fact that Philip and Elizabeth, who have always been on opposite sides in their beliefs and commitment to the motherland, are being set up to oppose one another not just philosophically but in terms of spycraft. I like that their relationship is strained by the divide in their lives right now.

But holy hell, we built to exactly none of this! Sure, it’s a fair extrapolation point from what we know about Philip, Elizabeth, their family and handlers, and the state of America and Russia when we last left them on The Americans. The connective tissue between there and here, on the other hand, is all but absent.

You can feel the show straining to justify that and account for the time. For a show that was always fairly judicious with its song cues, “Dead Hand” has a half a dozen needle drops and packs in way more montages than usual to try to get the audience up to speed in an artful way. Sure, some passage of time is inevitable, even advisable, between seasons to graze over some less interesting things and open up the playbook for what’s to come in a new season. But the final season premiere for the show is artful about it, yet still plainly stretching to try to explain and account for where everyone is now and why.

Philip is happy as a clam, looking thinner and better-kempt, and spouting EST-esque speeches to his employees at the travel agency and, if their final blow-up is any indication, also his wife. Elizabeth is at the end of her rope, looking sunken and hollow and sleep deprived as she pushes herself further without her partner and smokes like a burnt marshmallow to get through it. Paige is fully in the frickin’ spy program now, not to mention college, watching soap operas with Claudia and doing stake outs alongside her mom. Henry is well-established at boarding school, playing hockey and seeming like a big man on campus while the Jennings have become empty nesters.

And that’s just the Jennings’ crew! Renee has stayed living with Stan! Aderholt is married and has a kid! Oleg is married and has a kid, and is working under his dad at the Ministry of Transportation, having apparently avoided the guillotine of the KGB and left the intelligence scene behind! Arkady is in charge (or almost in charge) of Directorate S now!

Again, it’s not as though these are bad or unrealistic or implausible developments. I can buy each of them happening for the good guys and the bad guys on a three year time scale. But man, that is a lot of time, and a lot of development, to skip right over. Maybe there’s practical, commerce-related reasons for that, but as someone not privy to them, it feels like the show’s creative team just “yada yada yada”-ed its way through some of the most important specific plot and character developments the show spent at least three seasons working toward.

What kills me is that I like where they’ve taken the characters and the direction that “Dead Hand” seems to be pointing for the season. It’s natural that Philip becoming a civilian and Elizabeth still doing all the same work whilst having half the help would lead to strain and resentments between them. He wanted to leave, and she wanted to stay, and this compromise may be good for Philip’s mental health, but it’s not good for Elizabeth’s well-being, or for their marriage.

The one thing the show has never really delved into, even at the Jenningses’ lowest moment as a couple, is they idea that they would go against one another. But “Dead Hand” sets the stakes as “what will the future look like?” I still don’t care about Oleg particularly, but he’s at least a solid vessel to deliver that point -- this isn’t about the FBI and the KGB’s “little games,” as Arkady puts it.

It’s about the future of Russia, and maybe the world. It’s about the nuclear weapons, the last atomic resort, that Elizabeth has been enlisted to protect on behalf of an entrenched military class. It’s about people like Philip and Oleg and Arkady who see the faults in the current system and believe in the possibility and necessity of change and reform. It’s about Paige and Henry, unknowingly on opposite sides of that divide.

Would that be enough to make Philip and Elizabeth work against each other? It doesn't seem plausible from where we left them in season 5, having just secretly and privately recommitted themselves to one another, and each making sacrifices for their shared honest and happiness. That makes it seem a little too jarring when, powered by montage, we see Philip living his best life, replete with line dances and corporate speeches, and we see Elizabeth living her near-worst one, with cigarette binges and daughter-defense stabbings, and the jagged line that disparity draws between them.

But if you take that as given, accept what the show is more telling us than showing us that the past three years have cracked the intimacy and shared struggle that kept Philip and Elizabeth together, then the concept of the world caught in the balance between two opposing forces might be enough to see them take up (mostly figurative) arms against one another. It’s a violation of trust, and a tainting of the most sacred thing on the show since the end of season 1, but apparently jetting past the ends of prior seasons is de rigueur for The Amercians right now. Let’s hope the rest of the final season moves at a more measured pace, and takes the audience along for the ride.