Postmortem: History, repressions and --yes-- comedy on THE AMERICANS

  

Mothers and Daughters

Certainly one of the most heart-wrenching moments of Season 3 of The Americans – helmed by creator Joe Weisberg and exec. producer Joel Fields – is when Betty Turner (played soulfully by Lois Smith) comes to the realization that she will be killed at the hands of Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell). This mirrors Elizabeth’s own relationship with her own mother, who we see in the season finale "March 8, 1983" in a wheelchair. She reminds Elizabeth that she had to send her away, without any acknowledgement of what has been lost – except that it has all been for a greater good.

Paige is there, too (poor Paige). Her turn to Christianity has been handled far more deftly than Grace Florrick's in CBS’s The Good Wife. But while Grace’s mother might be neglectful because she hungers for the American mythos of power and authority, Paige’s mother just has no mind of her own, as she serves her mother country with a zealous and frightening commitment. Paige strives to understand her parents – her mother specifically – and Elizabeth tries to consistently inaugurate her into her belief-system with bonding trips throughout this season. But we come to realize – as Paige does, when she puts the pieces together – that this woman is a shell. That's why her killing Betty is so utterly horrifying and profoundly tragic, because – even if she might cry and mourn – she’ll simply have to erase it from her mind, just like she has to with every other death.

The Americans is not merely a spy thriller, nor an anti-hero show or a Wire-esque delving into 1980s America. This show takes its thematic premise (hiding, deception, masking) seriously, rather than exploiting its sensationalist concept (neighbors who just happen to be spies) to gain viewers. The Americans could have easily been a commercial juggernaut if it was more flashy, more bloody, less disturbing and less ambiguous. Instead, Weisberg and Fields have turned this into a drama, the camerawork honing in on interaction rather than sensation (more-so than ever this season) to highlight the personal toll this work is having on each character. Interaction is key to this, rather than flashy car chases.

Let us not forget the rape of Elizabeth Jennings, even if it has never surfaced in an obvious manner. Her pain is felt, not in those bad-ass moments in which she’ll beating Agent Frank Gaad to a pulp, but when she confronts the idea, in that conversation with Betty, that she is able to repress empathy to the point where she is subhuman. So much of that expertise is grounded in her rape, where she lost control and consciously decided to never let anyone else in again.

Embodiment of Past to Present

I have never watched a show where the past played such a central role, and where it’s so simultaneously muted. Philip’s vulnerable face while sitting on the sex seminar, or in Elizabeth’s teary eyes upon watching this woman kill herself, comes out precisely because there is a past they have been trained to mentally block.

If maybe we had some bad fans, they might interpret this show as a depiction of these morally corrupt agents, meant to engender pride for American freedoms, and vitriol towards the mind-warping bureaucracy that is the Soviet Union. Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich) is the argument-manifest to that assertion. Stan, like the Jennings, is ensnared by the all-consuming nature of his job. One might say that he is the Hank (a Breaking Bad reference, for all you TV newbs out there) of The Americans, but he always feels like a simple extension of this show’s thesis: that obsession is destructive and it warps our perspective irretrievably. 

He is a metaphor for an arguably still reverberating Reagan-era America; he looks good, he’s convinced of his beliefs, he’s confident that the “evil empire” will get what’s coming to them. Yet all the same, he’s a hollow shell like the enemies he lambasts. He’s willing to betray Oleg, of the Russian Rezidentura, immediately, and is also willing to delude himself into believing he’ll get Nina back from Soviet control. (Frank Gaad’s observation is spot-on: what made him think that the U.S government would prioritize his wants over the national interest?) Unlike the Jennings, Stan is unwilling to bend the rules enough. His entropy is enacted by this absurd quest to get his damsel-in-distress back to him, and the executive producers have done an excellent job in juxtaposing his obsessive desire with Nina’s ambivalence. It’s subtle, because so much of how the characters in The Americans function are suppressed. True intentions are lost in the smoky House-of-Mirrors that is this show.

Martha and Clark: Tragedy is Comedy 

Martha (Alison Wright) and Philip’s relationship is so compelling that, though I like The Americans, if you told me the show could just be about these two, I would jump for joy. Alison Wright’s Martha expresses such deep vulnerability and loneliness; we absolutely believe she would fall for a man as false as Clark’s toupee. She compartmentalizes so much of what Clark is that she readily places a bugged pen in Agent Gaad’s office. Afterwards, when she finds out who Clark really is, she plays along, serendipitously. Martha – unlike every other character on this show – works in a converse emotional realm; she’s really the only one who knows what she wants (love) and must suppress the nagging realities at any cost to afford herself a smidgeon of happiness.

David noted to me how critics have labeled this show humorless, but we both couldn’t disagree more. Aside from the obvious (Henry is clearly milked for comic effect), Martha is living proof of the fine line between humor and tragedy. How funny are her and Philip’s karma-sutra exploits? I guess the comedy is black, and it is embodied so much in her performance: her anxiety and peppiness; her unwavering optimism in the future she envisions with Clark; her ability to tell herself that she is in a real marriage. “To turning the page,” Martha says with a glass of red wine in her hand, upon realizing a truth (rather than the truth) about Philip, said with Wright’s debonair edge. She fears pain, and she’d rather embrace her tormentor rather than come to terms with herself.

Her housewife-ly way of comporting herself tells us that quite clearly: the way she pronounces his name, “Clark,” with that pronounced “-ark” rings consistently funny because of how normal she’s convinced herself all of this is. She aspires to be the classy, quintessential American wife, and her constant disappointments (the foster children being one, her parents not coming to the wedding being another) are blackly comic. This is why, watching her struggle to believe Philip’s (or Clark’s, but really Philip’s) story is just heart-wrenching and cruel.

Philip's Moral Crisis

Philip and Elizabeth are morally-corrupt human beings, in every respect. What makes Rhys and Russell's performances unlike anything I have ever seen is the extent to which their characters' cruelty is masked by the secondary characters they constantly create. The wigs, the false mustaches, the glasses they sport, the cadences they adopt, the subtle mannerisms: it’s fun, right? If you don’t realize this about The Americans, that the Jennings are most at home in other bodies, then you miss the nuance the actors bring to their work. They – Philip and Elizabeth – operate in the thrill of creating and inhabiting circumstances far removed from their own. Take Philip’s rendezvous with Kimberly (Julia Garner): his creation is charming, supposedly care-free, pot-smoking, cool, American. Clark is sensitive, attentive, open, loving. It’s a character created practically, with the attempt of ensnaring someone as vulnerable as Martha into the plans of the KGB, yet it’s also a projection of someone else he might be in another life, but isn’t. In the pilot, while Philip’s in church, he wonders what it would be like to be American.

When he takes off his accouterments in the second-to-last episode for Martha, he clearly believes he is that person behind the mask. The impossibility of being able to fully tell the truth to Stan Beeman’s wife Sandra (Susan Misner) comes to mind when recounting that moment, but it also shows us the possibility that Philip might to aspire to something greater, despite his realities.

Like Oedipus, Philip is blinded by the trained aversion he shows towards his own inner-demons and by the tyrannical control he is forced to impose on characters like Martha and Kimberly and Anne-Lise. (He, quite literally, has her conform to what he needs her to be by breaking all her bones. Maybe it's too literal a reading, but I like it.) The constant feeling in this show is, if they were able to fully comprehend the reprehensibility of their actions (Philip and Elizabeth both), they would go absolutely mad. To reference Sophocles once again, their fates are controlled by the Soviet Union’s single-minded patriotism to the point where Gabriel (Frank Langella) tries to recruit Paige, their own daughter, for the cause. Weisberg and Fields have been especially skillful in their handling of Philip coming to terms with who he is, as these realizations are rendered gradual. They, more importantly, leave the difficult work to Matthew Rhys, who is giving one of the year's best performances in his ability to conjure up these complex, contradictory impulses during these seemingly innocuous moments. He’s paler by the season-finale, and walks with a defeated gait.

Closure, or Lack-thereof 

But that said, this isn’t Season 2, where it was finally revealed to us how deep the psychological scars for these KBG spies and their families are. Season 3 is about how deep the scars of the Jennings family go, and it culminates – appropriately – with Paige calling Pastor Tim and telling him her family’s horrible secret. The juxtaposition between this final moment and Elizabeth and Philip watching the “evil empire” speech Reagan delivers is breathtaking and wickedly smart. We see how dedicated Elizabeth is to her anti-Americanism without ever acknowledging the effects this has had on everyone around her. And this is so precisely what this season has been – horror for everyone who isn't sided with the Soviet Union. Elizabeth refuses to acknowledge that her husband is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, refuses to concede how deeply she has harmed her daughter, refuses – on every level – to grasp how serious and how damaged her life is. Keri Russell is stone-cold upon watching a man burned alive, but her craft is simply astounding and tactfully masterful. Her Elizabeth can justify any terrible thing, much like her mother does during their encounter after a 30-year absence. Paige – like us – cannot negotiate the type of hypocrisy on behalf of Elizabeth, who simply refuses to acknowledge her absurd predicament.

Yet "March 9, 1983" – while it might not feel necessarily tidy by the end, given all the dangling plot-points – shouldn’t be seen as a weak ending. These seasons are chapters, and they’re playing the long game. I was genuinely frustrated because there was no Martha (I didn’t assume she was dead, like most people), but it somehow worked creatively. It is a conclusion to this chapter; it might jar a viewer expecting a little more, but it all worked for me because of how emotionally vacant Philip is by this last episode. His mind simply could not process any reaction but his own.

I guess my main, and only, criticism is that I wish the show were longer, because this is certainly not only one of the best shows on television, but a step forward in showcasing what the medium of television can really do. It’s carefully crafted, expertly written and superbly acted. One, really, cannot ask for anything more. (Except for the next season, of course.)