Part of what makes The Americans so great is its ability to evoke a number of different emotions, shifting from one to the next to the next with ease. Even an episode like “The Midges”, which was fundamentally one of the dourest in recent memory, can achieve it. Long stretches of the hour were utterly miserable, and yet it still found time to provide hearty laughs or, indeed, cause a moment of quiet joy.
That joy came, of course, in Martha’s return.
When Alison Wright departed the show mid-way through last season, there was a real question mark over whether she’d ever return, in part because it’s tough to find her a storyline when her role within the show revolved so heavily around Clark, but also because of how powerful it was to contemplate never seeing her again, much like Philip. The KGB, presumably, keep their eye on her, and so Philip - and, by extension, the audience - may be told the odd thing about how she’s doing, but the likelihood of them ever meeting again is virtually non-existent. So “The Midges” showing her in a Soviet grocery store trying to cope as best she can was an interesting approach. It was a welcome one, however, and Wright’s temporary reappearance was wonderful to see.
She wasn’t the only relief from the misery, as Stan and Aderholt’s two brief scenes barely qualified as drama and instead bordered on straight comedy. Their attempts to talk to Aeroflot employee Anatoli and Amtorg employee Mr Pirogov were hysterical - particularly the former, a scene that ended with Aderholt very casually eating a piece of abandoned food and justifying it by saying: “What? He didn’t touch it.” The exact nature of why the pair are probing into a Soviet airline and a Soviet trade corporation is yet to be revealed, but it didn’t need to be. What this episode required was a break from the bleakness, and that’s what was provided.
But that was the extent of the relief, the remainder of the hour devoted to making this world look as dire as it possibly can be. Pasha and his mother are miserable. Philip is miserable. Paige permanently looks as though she wants to lie in bed crying nonstop for a week. Every other word that Tuan speaks is anger directed towards the Morozov family, using his tragic past as a basis for his view. All of these characters convey a sense of emotional tiredness, as though they’ve taken about as much as they can bear yet the world has no desire to stop piling more weight on them. It’s harrowing to watch, but it’s also excellent television.
Bringing Paige into the loop on the mission seemed like a smart move in terms of further integrating her into the world of spies, but makes her current situation more difficult. Philip notes that Paige “can’t handle this. Any of it.” And yet, he’s the one to suggest telling her their mission, because Matthew won’t seem so important by comparison. While that’s true, her ability to balance her parents’ secret and pretend to be a normal 16-year-old is tough enough as it is; giving her another secret to cloud her mind is an odd decision. Yes, she might be less focused on Matthew, but it becomes dangerous when he notices more unusual, distant behaviour - which is exactly what happens.
Unsurprisingly, the technique Elizabeth showed Paige worked, and she was able to deflect from Matthew’s concern by lying about stress over an essay on Napoleon (*). But the ease with which she was able to lie was incredibly uncomfortable for her, later noting to her mother: “It felt gross.” It’s a stark contrast between the two - Elizabeth’s life is a lie, and she spends much of any given episode lying to someone, either overtly or by deceit. Paige isn’t geared this way, and although she appears to be great at it, lying doesn’t fit her personality at all. When she gave her parents a report on Pastor Tim and Alice in last season’s “The Magic of David Copperfield V”, that was about as dejected as we’d ever seen her. This is worse. The contemplation of having to lie to any and all boyfriends is a tough pill to swallow, despite Elizabeth’s reassurance that it’s normal. Individuals in relationships may keep things from each other, sure. But very few have the burden of knowing their parents are spies for a foreign intelligence agency, and that one wrong move would obliterate her family’s lives. Holly Taylor is terrific throughout, carrying Paige as though she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. It may not be the whole world, but it is her entire world, and it won’t be long before that overwhelms her completely.
(*) My question: does she actually have an essay on Napoleon to write, or was that completely made up? If it was the latter, how does she explain it when Matthew comes to help?
Philip, meanwhile, is similarly depressed. His discussion with Tuan about Pasha’s pickiness adds to his earlier memory of life as a young boy, and he’s left wondering why his country can’t grow enough grain themselves. It’s fascinating to see. Much of their time is spent trying to assist the Soviet Union, by sending samples back - such as the Lassa virus or one of the bugs - and by stealing American information for their own use. That’s typical spy fare, but the larger picture is that the Jenningses are trying to make their home country a better place, to allow it to win the Cold War and thrive in the aftermath. So while it’s all well and good to get close to Alexei, and to try and work out what is being added to the grain and how to stop it, the larger question becomes: why is it even necessary for the USSR to import these crops? Again, it paints an incredibly bleak picture not of what their country has become, but what it has failed to become in spite of all the work they’ve done in nearly two decades. The Cold War has been simmering for nearly forty years, and yet the societal advances from when Philip was six to present day seems minimal.
So, ultimately, it comes down to what the point of their work is. History tells us that it’s futile, with the USSR just seven years from collapse, but Philip doesn’t know that. All he knows is that he’s spent more than half of his life devoted to the cause and that even after everything he’s done, there are still men defecting to America with nothing but hatred for his homeland. There are still men and women and children suffering immense hardships - struggling for food, having family members taken from them, prisoners treated inhumanely. And while Philip doesn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for Alexei given his current work - or, indeed, for running when he had to endure it too - it feels like there’s a small part of him that can at least understand his actions.
Aside from difficult life experiences back home, the Jenningses can relate somewhat to Alexei’s decision to defect. They, of course, were offered the opportunity to return home at the end of last season, though under drastically different circumstances. “Alexei didn't have to run. He wanted to come here and be a big shot,” Elizabeth says. Certainly, there is a disparity between them, but Philip’s thought is relevant nonetheless. Neither Pasha nor Evgheniya knew until it happened, and, regardless of when Paige and Henry would have been clued in on a relocation, chances are they’d be showing a similar reaction. They don’t seem particularly regretful for rejecting Gabriel’s offer, but seeing something of a mirror in front of them is deeply insightful, and an indicator that they made the correct decision.
In yet another long, partially silent sequence, “The Midges” ended with the Jenningses discovering exactly what the bugs are, how they’re sent, and where they’re being sent. It was, again, well-constructed and tense, and came complete with the deputy director of the lab being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as often seems to be the case. Their need to kill him makes one of their operators understandably uncomfortable; it’s particularly effective given Philip and Elizabeth’s swiftness to do what is necessary. But it just further adds to the feeling that everything in The Americans’ world right now is terrible: they aren’t even able to conduct a simple piece of espionage without having to break someone’s neck.
Philip caps off the hour by lightening the mood, just a little: “Should we tell Paige about this?”
He can quip about it if he wants, but make no mistake: adding that to Paige’s conscience would likely break her. And, at that point, the only way to go back is to quite literally go back - to the Soviet Union.
Another strong, deep episode. Keep up the misery, The Americans. It makes for considerably better television.
Notes:
• Oleg is given a copy of the tape Stan made, putting his future on very thin ice. Nothing could better describe his situation than Costa Ronin’s sigh upon hearing the audio.
• The final moments were set to Roxy Music’s “More Than This”. Another excellent music choice.
• Tuan’s approach to criticising Alexei - pointing out that he’ll miss the USSR when the US destroy it - suggests a lapse in memory about his faux parents.
• It was refreshing to see Philip and Elizabeth get changed back into their normal clothes and appearance since we almost always just see either in disguise or out of it.
• Mischa is slowly but surely making his way to America, tonight paying a man - not Luka Jovanovic, whom he was looking for - to get him from Ljubljana into Austria.
• Vulture published a piece yesterday listing the excuses made for where Henry is during the show’s run. It’s fitting and hilarious, then, that the only mention of his name tonight came in the following exchange between Elizabeth and Paige: “Henry here?” “Nope.”
What did everyone think of “The Midges”? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
