When season three of The Americans ended, the FX drama had earned the highest place in the pantheon of great television shows. Did the first six episodes of season four (roughly half of the 13-episode journey) live up to that newfound status?
Since this is an FX Networks show, let’s frame the matter in ways an FX fan and viewer would understand: If the prosecution faced the burden of proof in The People Versus O.J. Simpson, the first half of season four of The Americans made it harder to undercut the show’s reputation than to uphold it.
Perhaps you can argue that showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields got lost in some storytelling thickets at times. But from this vantage point, it’s extremely difficult to make that case. There’s so much compelling evidence to offer in support of the contention that The Americans still has its fastball, hitting 98 miles per hour and slicing off the outside corner of the plate with nasty, late movement.
That’s not an idly-used metaphor, either. This show unearths nasty truths flowing from intentionally delivered, yet abrupt and violent actions. That’s what a wicked fastball is and once again, viewers have had no choice but to deal with the full and frontal impact of this show.
How awfully, terribly beautiful it is to behold.
Since we’re on a roll with apt baseball metaphors, why not dive into season four with another turn of phrase from the Grand Old Game that a couple of Russian spies would never relate to?
Baseball is a game fathers pass on to their children in the simplest, most pastoral way: They have a catch in the yard or the nearby park. The game is as simple as a ball, a glove, a parent, and the long brightness of summer. Opening Day and the arrival of longer, more sun-splashed evenings bring out “the little kid in all of us.”
In many ways, that turn of phrase reinforces the haunting, wrenching artistic excellence given to us by Weisberg and Fields in season four of The Americans.
The season begins with Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) recalling his childhood. As a young boy in Russia, Philip – then known as Mischa, his birth name – was tormented and bullied by gangs. From his place of fear and insecurity, Mischa realized he had to show he was tough enough to survive, to stand on his own feet and be a man. He struck back at one of the boys to prove his point… but then he went too far, in a display of uncontrolled madness. He killed the boy with an unceasing torrent of blows delivered with the large rock he held in his hand.
“The little kid in all of us” is not just the part of us which falls in love with a sport, or with another person. It’s also that part of us which is the most vulnerable and supremely hard to make peace with. This is true not just in childhood, either; it’s true throughout a lifetime, if we aren’t supported by others. Mischa lost his father at age six, so he didn’t have that anchor in his early life. When he takes on the identity of Philip Jennings, there’s a hole in his soul, one he’s been wrestling with throughout the series. The revelation of his first kill – long before his career in Soviet espionage began – exposes a new and expansive source of the insecurities deeply embedded in Philip’s immensely complicated thought world. That moment in episode one shapes season four and imbues it with rich psychological and spiritual dimensions.
“The little kid in all of us” is about the fight for one’s own soul. This centerpiece of The Americans in the first half of season four is hardly confined to that half of the Jennings marriage.
In episode four of the season, Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) fell ill amidst the greater concern that she contracted a serious infection while tending to her handler, Gabriel (Frank Langella). Elizabeth and Philip both stumbled upon a bleeding, quivering Gabriel, who was lying on the floor of his home after becoming exposed to glanders, a deadly pathogen he was trying to smuggle back to Russia.
https://youtu.be/lDsoWATiaec
William (Dylan Baker) – a fellow spy working undercover as a Defense Department scientist – gave Gabriel life-saving medical care, and he also gave the Jenningses an antibiotic to treat their exposure to glanders. Elizabeth, however, reacted negatively to the antibiotic. She developed a fever, and in that fever, she recalled a scene from her own childhood.
Elizabeth – as shown in season three – was extremely close to her mother. The fiercely protective and loving nature of that relationship is something the show did not soft-pedal or underplay. Therefore, when Elizabeth – in her feverish sleep – recalls her mother tenderly caring for her when she was a girl in Russia, the flashback device acquires a powerful storytelling role in a way which isn’t forced… as was the case for Philip’s flashback in episode one.
The importance of Elizabeth’s recollection is rooted in her relationship with her daughter Paige (Holly Taylor). So much of the exquisite tension of season four (picking up where season three left off) comes from the awareness that Paige lives in a world which is crashing down upon her and, by extension, the Jennings household (with the exception of Henry, her younger brother, who has been shielded from everything).
Elizabeth and Philip have spent much of season four – on their own, but also in consultation with Gabriel – wrestling with the decision of whether or not to kill Pastor Tim (Kelly AuCoin). The Christian minister is the person and mentor Paige most respects outside of her parents. Paige – who learned about the real identity of her parents late in season three – then spilled the beans to Pastor Tim. Early in season four, Philip and Elizabeth discover that Paige disclosed this terrible secret.
When Paige shared that secret late in season three, she insisted that Pastor Tim keep the matter to himself. Early in season four, we learn that Tim told his wife. The act represents a betrayal of Paige’s trust, and that’s what stings Paige the most. However, the much greater significance of the act – no matter how moral, ethical, or reasonable it might be – is that it puts Philip and Elizabeth at even greater risk of exposure.
The central point of Elizabeth’s fever-sleep recollection of her own mother in Russia is that it reminds her of her own identity as a mother, and of her obligation to protect Paige more than anything else. Elizabeth realizes that if Pastor Tim and his wife are killed, her maternal relationship with Paige will be ruined forever.
Containing exposure becomes the better path for Elizabeth and Philip in their no-win situation.
https://youtu.be/s0wgSJVVnG4
In many ways, exposure to people – pastors, daughters or lovers – is an exposure even more terrifying than exposure to glanders or any other deadly pathogen. Therein lies the essence of what has made season four so satisfying through six episodes… and what has made The Americans such a hauntingly beautiful piece of television.
The fear of being caught – being unmasked, being found out – is in many ways the central fear of every important character in the show. The Americans achieves such mastery as a work of art because it so seamlessly integrates metaphorical meaning with tense, riveting, and unhurried storytelling. The pacing might be slow, and the developments of secondary plot points might be too drawn-out for some. But that’s a feature of this series, not a bug.
The Americans doesn’t speed up the story to rush viewers to the finish line. The show takes its time walking viewers over the hot coals of tension and uncertainty, making it important to absorb the weight of each moment and the enormity of the crises the central characters must confront.
This emphasis on slow-cooked storytelling is why the death of Nina Sergeevna works at the end of episode four. We had to see Nina’s own transformation in prison, and her seemingly surprising decision to send a note out of the country on behalf of Anton, the scientist detained with her. That decision to notify Anton’s son that his father was alive – it was suicide for Nina, who was executed shortly thereafter. However, while not being pragmatic, the act was one of pure love, with no concern about being revealed or caught.
Nina lost the fear of being unmasked and found out. The price for that freedom was her life.
Everyone else in The Americans at the midpoint of season four is nowhere close to shedding that fear of being discovered.
Here’s the tricky, yet supremely compelling nuance of the show: While being outed as a spy carries with it an immediate danger to one’s life on a biological and situational level, being outed as a failure – as an untruthful person, as a ruthless killer, or as a fool – also feels like death… but not the physical kind. This kind of death exists on psychological and spiritual levels.
This is “the little kid in all of us” trying to break free and give birth to the adult who can see how many bad choices have been made over the past several years.
The Americans is currently summarized by this amazing confluence of irony and reality: These characters can’t situationally afford to be discovered, but the need to reveal – and gain peace with – their truest selves is just as urgent and important. Perhaps the protection of self in a situational sense – don’t get caught by the FBI – must come first, but protection of self by being open, truthful, and committed to a new way of life can’t be delayed too much longer. Revelation is a curse in one sense, but it can also become a blessing. Discoveries are threats to existence itself, and yet discoveries of the inward kind – about character, honesty, and facing up to the content of one’s actions – are the very things which liberate a life and give it true substance.
(God, this is simply perfect…)
Philip and Elizabeth cause great harm – they deal out death, in fact, many times – to other people. They have lied through their teeth to Paige, insisting that they don’t bring destruction to others. They can’t be outed on that front – it would feel like death to them and their relationship with their daughter. That’s the most central – and unmistakably honest – fear pervading the show and its methodical development of both plot and character.
However, that fear of being unmasked certainly extends to other characters, and in episode six this past Wednesday night, the long-running tensions in the relationship between Philip – in his separate spy-based identity as FBI agent Clark Westerfeld – and Martha (Alison Wright) give way to a sobering and searing set of disclosures.
We’ve waited three-and-a-half seasons for the moment we saw on Wednesday. Martha – naïve, foolish, Martha – was so hungry for love, affection, and the fulfillment of her longings that she bought Clark’s stories about work, life, and everything else. She took on an untraditional and unconventional relationship, despite working for the United States government in a delicate position of enormous importance. We all saw this and cringed at how gullible Martha was and Wednesday, the fullness of the price for that child-like trust is about to be paid.
Being discovered as a spy by her own government is one big fear Martha must face, but even more paramount is the inner fear of realizing she’s been a very foolish person, someone others have manipulated and tricked for a very long time.
“The little kid in all of us” – revealed so tenderly in both Philip and Elizabeth this season – is revealed in Martha as it dawns on her that she’ll never see her own house again, and might not see the United States ever again. Though an adult in age, just like Philip and Elizabeth, Martha also possesses an extremely frail identity at the innermost center of her being. This isn’t something we didn’t know from watching previous seasons, but the extent of Martha’s lack of inner development fully emerges at the very end of this episode.
https://youtu.be/SNcmB_uO-v8
Martha’s desperate plea for sexual intercourse with Philip (or Clark, if you prefer) is a classic representation of the desire to stamp out negative thoughts or fears with pure sensation and stimulation. It is the response of an adolescent, if not a child. Martha later marches out of the safe house provided to her by Philip when she learns he isn’t there. He was sent by Gabriel on an important mission, but of course, Martha doesn’t know this. Gabriel stayed with Martha at the house, but since there’s no basis of trust in the relationship between Martha and Gabriel (there is, essentially, no relationship at all), Martha leaves.
The final image of episode six is of a fearful Martha walking away from the house. Gabriel – in the position of a parent who is powerless to stop the much younger and more impulsive person under his care – is left standing on the front steps in quiet despair and disapproval.
“The little kid in all of us” is an image of sweetness and beauty when the sun is shining, the grass is green, and a ball is being thrown in the back yard. When we’re free to be our best selves, our childlike nature is one of our best and most attractive qualities as human beings.
When life isn’t going well – when murder, deceit, and sexual exploitation are part of daily existence – “the little kid in all of us” inhabits 40-year-old people trying to rescue their lives… and make the extraordinarily difficult journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance, and from a life of destruction to a life one can genuinely love. When the skies are dark and the human heart is even darker, that little kid inside us never wants to be discovered. Hide-and-seek becomes a deeply damaging and harmful game, which can’t play out forever. Moments of great reckoning – as we’ve seen in season four – will eventually arrive.
God bless America… and God bless The Americans.
The need to avoid being discovered at all costs, simultaneously balanced with the need to attain self-discovery at all costs, very neatly summarizes a half-season of enormous psychological and spiritual complexity. Let the slow-paced and meticulously-crafted storytelling continue.
The Americans just keeps getting better… after making you think that the bar for impossibly great television can’t be raised any higher.
