Previously on The Americans: The FBI is attempting to track Elizabeth, Phillip and Elizabeth are having a major disagreement over Paige, and Yousaf is proving to be an extremely useful asset for the KGB's mission in Afghanistan.
I have seen Dexter Morgan coldly murder countless people, Jack Bauer relentlessly torture dozens, and more atrocities on television than anyone should ever have to experience in their lives. None of this, however, prepared me for the brutal, wince-inducing teeth pulling scene in this episode of The Americans. Beautifully acted, eloquently shot, and brilliantly delivered to its audience, this scene focused entirely on the ability of Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell to display the emotions through their eyes with not a single word spoken. Such an amount of reliability just goes to show you how excellent this production is. Not only can the actors rely on the writers to keep the show moving forward, but the writers can rely on the actors to turn a silent scene into the episode's golden moment. If that is not television perfection, I don't know what is.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth's asset trainee, Hans, is excelling at his observational skills and is even finding time to brush up on his flirtation skills. I enjoyed this segment of the show simply because it's doing an excellent job of setting of a relationship between Elizabeth and her asset. Elizabeth wants to keep it as uncomplicated as possible, but Hans is looking for something more. Hans is a likable character so I suspect we will see this advance in some way over the next few episodes. Also, brushing up on his flirtation skills is the newly introduced FBI Agent Aderholt. This is an interesting new element to the Martha story because of how difficult it is going to become to hold up the "Clark" farce. As Martha grows tired of Clark's inability to truly connect with her emotionally and his hatred of children, she is bound to start exploring more options. Given this new threat to Martha, I'm suspecting that we will see Phillip go to some pretty extreme means in order to maintain her as an asset.
Phillip and Elizabeth are racking up quite a number of assets this season, the biggest asset so far being Yousaf. Losing Anneliese in the premiere, was a major hit for Phillip, but it also made things much more straight forward for their mission objectives. It has also, however, added a lot of risk for Phillip and Elizabeth as they attempt to tail their targets (members of an ambiguously named "CIA Afghan Group"). I really enjoyed the slow car chase of sorts in this episode. It was filled with intensity and set a brilliant tone for the episode. I don't think anyone can honestly say that they didn't breathe a sigh of relief when Elizabeth walked back into her house.
While this risky mission could have ended with a high cost, it was not without reward. Finding a link between two of these targets was the spy equivalent of striking gold for Phillip and Elizabeth. How they approach this target (a 14 year old girl), however, is bound to be less of a slam dunk and more of a cringe worthy scenario. Phillip is definitely going to have a difficult time separating the way he deals with his target in the field and how he imagines Paige could operate as a spy in the future.
9.5/10 - As I said in the preview last week, this was another excellent episode of The Americans. While watching some television can be like pulling teeth, it's a relief that we can always rely on The Americans to be as good as it is.
