There are plenty of long-term investments The Americans has made with its characters, and the series has been careful to cash in on them sparingly. Two episodes ago, Martha found out that Clark had been lying to her, but she didn’t uncover all of the truth. With more of that emotional climax still to come, that episode somehow managed to build up the inevitable even more powerfully while also giving Martha a big moment for the season and shifting her character’s path and motivations. The business with Stan, of course, still looms heavily the more we see him become integrated into the Jennings family. If this season has been about any one of those investments, though, it has been the ever-growing Paige, years removed from being the slightly oblivious child that Henry still is. When people have secret identities in a television series, the story is bound to find different ways of having other people learn about those identities. And as the first truly big reveal for The Americans, Paige learning the truth–a much closer truth than Martha has–does not disappoint in the slightest.
The execution of the whole sequence is fantastic, to be sure. But when it comes to a moment like this, you have to really wonder what it’s like to be Paige right now. With Paige somewhat catatonic on-screen after the fact, the post-reveal scenes appear more from Philip and Elizabeth’s perspectives, considering how quiet and tip-toeing they are (if we were getting scenes from Paige’s perspective, they would be much more turbulent). Yet, to stop and step into her shoes is almost unfathomable. Among the many things that her parents say, “Do you have any questions right now?” is not among them, which is almost humorous in its absence because of how many questions she certainly does have. What has she just learned, really? That her parents have been lying to her her entire life. That Soviet blood runs through her, messing up her own identity. That her parents have been living seditious lives and have probably done terrible things to people, despite how they try to word it as simply helping their country. Even if Paige has been portrayed as an adult, and gets called so by her pastor, no one is an adult during a first experience with grief. And that is what this is–grief. Paige’s sense of loss is as strong here as it might be for someone else to have lost a loved one. No one is ready for that first time, and even if Paige is able to put up a front to suggest she’s coping well, she’s not. These are the kinds of tremors The Americans creates by having this reveal.
Paige, however, learns something else that she probably won’t be able to understand and appreciate for a while. She learns that the answer to her “Do you love me?” question is a resounding yes. Understandably worried that her parents just didn’t care about her and were willing to continue lying forever, there’s an eventual relief that the lie was a necessity and all these gestures they’ve made to accommodate her growing up have been out of love. The image we linger on is Paige thinking about how Stan, an FBI agent, could possibly be fooled by Soviet spies so well that he comes over for dinner and brings Henry pirated videos, but the images Paige will begin thinking about the longer she grapples with all this will be ones that make her think “How were they able to let me do or say these things while biting their tongues?” And when she finally does start asking the questions she needs to, she’ll also hear about the rather convincing details of why it was necessary to keep the information from her for so long, since they’ve basically been tasked with vetting her for future missions.
Again, apart from the larger ramifications, how the sequence is pulled off technically is remarkable. Alison Wright got material to deliver a huge performance in her conversation with Clark, and it goes double here for Holly Taylor as Paige. From the moment Paige confronts her parents at the dinner table to the scenes of her lying in bed, Taylor is just superb in communicating the overwhelming feelings of her character. The blocking, too, is ridiculous. Everything about how the main sequence is shot capitalizes on the “Oh my…is this really happening?” feeling. Maybe, for some, this was slightly telegraphed by the fact that the episode was written by The Americans showrunners Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, but with the best series, the reality is always more substantial than the anticipated. It’s almost a wonder there’s still three episodes left in the season, since this certainly warrants a season finale kind of upheaval. There’s plenty more to deal with, though, and we’re finally at a point where The Americans has to dramatically change things up.
Covert Observations:
– It’s also a wonder that there’s anything else in this episode, since the Paige reveal is going to dominate thoughts and discussions. That said, Henry is actually featured on-screen and gets some interesting interactions with Stan, illustrating some kind of surrogate father-son relationship now that Matthew may or may not be living there. But hey, Henry gets to see Tron out of it, so that’s a pretty sweet deal…until Stan finds out about this whole picture of Sandra business.
– Kimberley also returns to the action, which is actually mildly disappointing for me, since the series already has me invested in that storyline and I want to see more than a simple check-in of it. Still, we get a great beat of Philip looking at a picture of Kimberley and her parents, reminding him how precarious this whole situation is and how much he cares for his own daughter.
– Hey, Zinaida really is faking it! Codename WILLOW, Oleg is now going to have an opportunity to give Stan the information he needs to bring back Nina, who is making her own headway by talking English with Anton. Based on episode titles, we should be spending more time with those two next week.
– And, of course, that was Tootsie Stan and Zinaida were watching. A true American classic.
[Photo via FX]
