But that’s not the lesson Paige ends up taking away from the experience. “Everybody lies Paige. That’s part of life,” Elizabeth tells her, both knowingly and cynically. For Paige to expect anything else would be a danger, but the reality of her family situation isn’t one she can accept. Having a daughter that trusts someone more than her own parents is the reality Elizabeth has been denying, as she optimistically tells Philip that the trip was good for Paige. At the same moment, mere feet away, Paige is confessing the sins of her parents to Pastor Tim. Philip and Elizabeth believed their daughter’s bond to them would outweigh their years of lies and deception, but they’ve both grossly miscalculated what kind of person Paige is.
It’s Philip, The Americans’ guilty conscience, who takes the last punch before the final bell. All season, Philip has worked his internal torment into the identities and parts he’s had to play for his work, desperate for someone to hear what he’s been keeping bottled up. Paige found religion as an outlet for her problems, and Elizabeth has always had the Cause driving her forward. Without either, the EST program has become Philip’s higher power. Their values of self-determination and ownership of one’s own being, including as a sexual being, simplify his world to a manageable size.
But the only person willing to acknowledge those feelings, Sandra, couldn’t possibly imagine the scope of Philip’s baggage. In saving Martha, Philip sacrifices Gene, ending the season’s streak of horrifying violence with a killing that’s more painless, but no less regrettable. From the very first episode of the season, Philip’s only fought losing battles, his actions to protect Paige, Kimberly, and Martha often doing little more than stall the inevitable. He was programmed to complete missions, not question them, and the longer he goes on carrying this anguish alone, the more clouded his judgment becomes.
In the final moments of the episode, Philip’s attempt to confide in Elizabeth is interrupted by Reagan’s “evil empire” speech, in which the Cold War is cast as a battle between clear rights and wrongs. It’s the sort of reduction that Philip craves but can’t have, and both Paige and Elizabeth have arrived at from opposite sides of the argument. Despite messing with the timeline somewhat (would it really take the Centre two months to receive/act on Zinaida’s message?), the speech perfectly distills the political and moral convictions of the Jennings women, while leaving Philip in the middle to be shamed by his doubts.
All season, the truth has corroded or outright destroyed relationships, families, and lives on The Americans, so history says Philip being candid with Elizabeth would do more harm to her than good for him. “I feel like shit all the time,” he tells Yousaf, and it’s the most honest thing we hear from him all night. But it’s what Yousaf says moments earlier that underlines what has made Season 3 a different, yet still marvellous beast than Seasons 1 or 2. “So, Annelise finally pays off,” he says to Philip, as the Mujahideen won’t be getting Stinger missiles anytime soon thanks to Philip’s actions. If that’s what you’re watching the show for, to see spies complete missions and possibly interact with history, that’s what you might want to hear.
“I don’t think like that,” Philip replies, drawing a line between The Americans as a show about events, and a show about characters. On a plot level, much of “March 8, 1983” could be read as a punt: we don’t know what’s happening with Martha, Kimberly is nowhere to be found, and Nina and Baklanov aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Really though, I see it more as a squib kick, one that will directly carry this year’s momentum and storylines into the next. The show is asking you to have faith that individual subplots will payoff down the road, so if you watched the finale expecting the narrative to be tied up in a pretty bow, I wouldn’t blame you for feeling disappointed.
But when looking at The Americans as a show about trust, family, belief, compromise, love and all the other concerns it packs in more densely than the plot threads, I can’t imagine a more satisfying ending for this season than “March 8, 1983.” It seems like Season 4 is really being set up as Season 3: Part II, as it will have a much wider plot and character pool to draw from thanks to this year’s expansive storytelling. Season 3 had a looser backbone than 2 did, but on an emotional, thematic, dramatic, and technical level, it’s superior. A show with surprises in store is all well and good, but a show that surprises you for what it is and what it can be is so much more rare, and so much more rewarding. The Americans is continuing to evolve, and I can’t wait to see what its next phase looks like.
- Stray Thoughts
-Despite the general dourness of the hour, the scene of Zinaida getting picked up by Gaad was pretty hilarious, both for its use of a luggage cart, and the major death stare Zinaida gave. I’m hoping this isn’t the last we see of her.
-Also laugh-worthy: the F.B.I. director casually shutting down Stan’s request to get Nina back as leverage against Oleg. “You’ll find another way,” he adds, before promptly leaving Stan to dwell on his promotion.
-One last bit of over-analysis for the season: reading the left-most letters of the title slide for the second seminar Philip attends gives you “TF CACA,” as in “True, false, or crap.” Coincidence?! Yes, but I thought it was a funny detail.
