The rest of “Baggage” is similarly structured around people trying to reach out to one another, but for the most part, success is just as limited. Nina seems to have given up hope for her situation entirely, though one can hardly blame her. When she gets a new, panicked cellmate from Belgium, she almost immediately withdraws, despite the friendly new face. Would her jailers have anything to gain by planting a spy in her cell? It seems unlikely, but nothing about her present circumstances would have sounded likely a year ago. “This isn’t a prison for innocent people,” is all she’s willing to tell the scared new inmate, denying any camaraderie suggested by an offer of food that gives the pair a moment of equal footing (but not equal lighting) in a wide shot.
It’s a more cynical reflection of Stan’s own meeting with someone from out of country, a defector delivered to the United States in a container not all that much bigger than the one Annelise ends up in. Appalled by her nation’s continued actions in Afghanistan, Zinaida Preobrazhenskaya (Svetlana Efremova) relishes her first taste of American air and chocolate. Even as she and Stan look out at the city’s night sky, a window frame dividing the two, that candy bar bridges the gap as a small token of their fast friendship. But as Tatiana advises Oleg about the traitor and her publicity tour designed to shame the politburo, “propaganda is more important than anything.” Zinaida’s feelings about Soviet foreign policy may be true, but to her new handlers, she’s a puppet to be paraded around when needed, and locked up for security reasons when not. Compared to the sweet taste of true freedom, a Milky Way makes for a poor consolation prize.
Stan is the big winner of the night, even if it meant nearly being killed in an alley by Oleg. The brush with death spurs him to call Sandra and his son, the phone both splitting him down the middle from a long shot, then crushing him in a glass case of pent-up emotion from closeup. Noah Emmerich has been doing fine work on The Americans thus far, but this season has seen his performance, and Stan grow in astonishing ways. The mental head-kicking he gives himself for offering a pleasantry to his wife’s new lover is a funny little moment from the sad sack Stan we’ve always known, but the quavering in his voice as he tells his family he loves them opens another small crack in his abstruse personal identity.
Stan is being forced to change now that he’s alone, and it’s given the show a new thread to follow that fits in perfectly with the rest of The Americans. I had previously feared the Sandra leaving Stan was simply the show cutting away a loose end, but when Stan goes to visit Sandra in Arthur’s home, he, and the show are committing themselves to the difficult path of reconciliation. With Sandra’s hippie-dippy lamp separating the two in their scene, and a black lampshade behind Stan reminding us of his secretive past, it’s obvious to everyone that this isn’t the day they’ll fix their marriage. But that that day may eventually come is a sign of hope for the Beemans. Unfortunately, it’s also the closest thing to a sign of hope for the Jennings marriage that “Baggage” has to offer.
- Stray Thoughts
-Little known fact: the character of Goose from Top Gun was inspired by Tony Scott walking by Philip in his new surveillance disguise.
-Between the meet with Charlotte last week, and the Jennings monitoring Yousaf with the Afghan group, the show could start a web series called Communists in Bars Getting Intel.
-The last two episodes made for a terrific two-parter, but the real test for the show’s third season lies ahead. Sadly, Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields can’t write every episode, just as Daniel Sackheim can’t direct all of them either.
