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Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, the lead actors on FX’s slow-burning spy series The Americans are gorgeous, sexy individuals with undeniable chemistry. I know it, you know it, and the FX marketing team certainly knows it. But in this most recent season, FX has turned down the sex on their leading lady, Russell’s Elizabeth Jennings, and it all paid off in last night’s devastating episode.

Especially in its first season, The Americans leaned in somewhat to certain gender stereotypes of the spy genre, with Elizabeth far more likely than her partner, Philip, to put her body into service for Mother Russia. (Comedian Amy Schumer recently said that watching the first season of The Americans inspired her to create her popular “Operation Enduring Mouth” sketch.)

In Season 2, when comely satellite assets like Aimee Carrero’s Lucia (R.I.P.) and Gillian Alexy’s Annelise (R.I.P.) stepped in to shoulder the sexual burden in their spy games, Elizabeth’s body was often on display for a different person. Elizabeth used sexuality as an olive branch as she and Philip transformed their marriage of convenience into a true and loving relationship. Continue reading How The Americans Subverted Worn-Out Sexist Spy Tropes to Bring Us Its Most Disturbing Episode Yet

“You think doing this to me will make the world a better place?”
“I’m sorry. But it will.”

“That’s what evil people tell themselves … when they do … evil things.”

These are the dying words of a stranger, but they have wounded Elizabeth Jennings like no bullet, knife, or punch has yet. Tonight’s episode of The Americans, “Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?” steals its title from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the Philip K. Dick novel that inspired Blade Runner—another story that questioned what it means to be both human… and inhuman.

The old woman who utters these words (played by a charming and riveting Lois Smith) punctures a hole in Elizabeth’s otherwise impenetrable devotion to her grim life’s work for the KGB. Until now, Elizabeth has seen herself as a spy, a saboteur, a soldier—but overall an agent of equality. In this moment, forcing an innocent elderly woman to commit suicide for the crime of catching up on warehouse paperwork when she and Philip break in to bug the FBI’s mail robot, opens her eyes to a different reality: Maybe she’s just a murderer, a thug, an oppressor. Maybe she is the enemy.

We’ll get into the mother-issues that allow this particular victim to strike such a nerve with Kerry Russell’s usually stoic character, but let’s dive into how the episode starts: With Elizabeth breaking some unfortunate news to Hans, her young South African KGB recruit. She says that he may have been spotted by Todd, the pro-apartheid college student and would-be bomber she spared in the previous episode. After the fiery death of his terrorist handler, Todd confessed everything Elizabeth, Philip, and their South African revolutionary Reuben Ncgobo wanted to know.

Given what Elizabeth has to do to poor, heartsick Betty, the purely innocent bystander, later in this episode, the mercy she showed to potential mass-murderer Todd seems out of place, no? When she tells Hans that his, um, KGB internship is being scrapped because this Todd guy caught a glimpse of him… something else rang false, at least for me. I actually went back to the previous week’s episode to see if this really happened, if Todd really did see Hans, and sure enough, yes, he did. But, but—remember that Todd spent a lot of time not only looking at her, Philip, and Reuben, but talking with them and begging them for mercy. Surely those are some faces he’ll never forget. The kid he saw briefly at a distance, scurrying away—so what? How is that a threat?

Still, she tells him: “Hans, it’s over. Us. This.”

I’m no mail robot, but … this does not compute. Especially for a woman who is eager to draw her own daughter into this life. It’s never stated explicitly, but my theory is: This is a test.

The next scene has Matthew Rhys’ Philip delivering Elizabeth a one-two hit of more troubling news:

1. The FBI found the bug they embedded in the desk pen of Special Agent Frank Gaad (Richard Thomas.)

2. Gaad’s secretary, and Philip’s “other” wife, Martha Hanson (Alison Wright) knows he’s not the internal affairs investigator he claimed to be.

“The person they brought in to investigate isn’t me,” he explains.

But there’s a silver lining: Martha hasn’t ratted him out, and he doesn’t think she will. Elizabeth is incredulous. “How can you know?”

I loved Rhys’s hesitation here, and thought he was going to say: “Because she’s my wife.” I think that’s what the character was actually thinking, although what he tells Elizabeth, his “real” wife, was somewhat softer.

“Because I trust her.” Continue reading ‘Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?’ TV Recaps

It feels strange to call an episode where so many things happen “slow,” especially on a show like The Americans, where slow is very much the point. But that’s how “Divestment” feels, mostly because it spends its time moving a number of this season’s plots forward just the slightest bit, without much in the way of that fraught tension the show is known for. Nonetheless, the moves made tonight are important ones—all things to add to the powder keg at the end of a very long fuse.

The episode picks up immediately after the end of “Walter Taffet,” with Elizabeth, Phillip, and Reuben taking Eugene Venter and his student accomplice Todd to an abandoned warehouse for interrogation. At first, they’re kind to Venter–Phillip offers him cash and a chance at a new life if he talks. Venter refuses. So he resorts to pain.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth goes to work on Todd—all he does is tell her that Venter had him monitoring campus anti-aparthied groups. She then takes him outside, and sits him in front of Venter. They’re going to make him watch Venter die. But Reuben stops Elizabeth, and refuses to take her gun when he expresses that he wants to do it himself.

“You already have your country,” he says. “You can’t understand.” Continue reading ‘Divestment’ TV Recaps