In Which All Our Inner Thoughts Resemble Pamphlets Of Questionable Origin

It's Enough Paige

by ALEX CARNEVALE

The Americans
creator Joe Weisberg

We no longer have to suffer through Nina's reincarnation as Mother Teresa as a stranger in a strange land. It nearly drove me crazy to watch people talk about how moving it was. If they ever have Martha chewed up by a wood chipper on The Americans, then I will cry genuine tears. Until then they will be of the crocodile variety.

Then again, it probably affected me on some level, since I have spent the last day and a half placidly responding, "Paige, it's too much," to every single question I am asked, including "What kind of toast do you want with that?" and "Who will you be voting for in New York's Democratic primary?"

It was a little mean when Elizabeth (Keri Russell) started ragging on Ronald Reagan's rosy cheeks, especially since she has not had color in her face since the days of Felicity. Watching her and Philip having real life sex turned The Americans into a stag film. I kept waiting for a dramatic pan to Paige watching her mother humping her father, but it never came. Philip would probably just have made eye contact with her and said, "Good," while Paige's mother informed her daughter that it was too much.

Paige sure knew how to work over Pastor Tim. He stared at her like she was a piece of candy, and after having to spend mere minutes with Pastor Tim's gossipy malingering wife Alice we all understood why. She talked to him with all the dignity of a guest on Howard Stern. The ringer they brought in to vouch for their heroic actions in El Salvador probably would not have been wasted on Paige either.

Even less believable was our Moscow friend whining about how he lost his brother in a war that he is not permitted to name. I mean, one woman gets executed and it's enough to throw the entire idea of the Soviet Union in question?

Stan Beeman should have informed him that traitors in America share much the same fate. Well I guess some do, others are honored as respected neighbors and FBI agents have best friend type relationships with their son. When it comes to getting weird amounts of praise about your Trivial Pursuit acumen, nothing – I repeat nothing – beats your neighbor's ignored teenager.

Stan's desultory son Matthew scares the shit out of all thinking people. Just looking at his face is enough to make you insecure about the future of America. This is the kind of child Martha probably would have emitted from her secretarial loins, so it is probably a damn good thing that her childbearing years were spent in a hot cuddle with Clarke's wig. Matthew is probably in solitary confinement somewhere in Indiana as we speak.

The Americans would be a lot more entertaining if Philip's affection for Martha were a little more believable. I can buy that he is concerned about her welfare, but even the idea that he ignored calls from her for two days while she was having a romantic dinner with a colleague seems to prove that he sees her as just another Paige, albeit a Paige whose body he explores in the many arcane ways the wizened men of the Asian continent prescribed that people could pleasure one another.

It is time to bring the Martha storyline to its inexorable conclusion, since watching Clarke violently take her from behind cannot possibly approach the intimacy we witness between a real couple. Love ideally would ravish the world of The Americans — how does Frank Langella get his rocks off, for example? What about Agent Gad, or the head of the Rezidentura?

One of the great things about The Americans is the depth it gives to these smaller characters, like the Mary Kay saleswoman Elizabeth seems intent on romancing for some reason. The people Russia preys upon seem completely innocent, although we must know in our hearts that they are not. In the end, Philip and Elizabeth are more loyal and virtuous than Pastor Tim, whose criticisms of U.S. foreign policy resemble a deranged Noam Chomsky pamphlet.

But Paige just won't understand her destiny to become the Jason Bourne of the George Herbert Walker Bush era, which basically seems like the good old days. Also, WTF was that t-shirt she was wearing? Her mother does not understand that all Paige requires is one carrot enticing her to a more appealing life than her status as an absent daughter in the D.C. suburbs.  Has she thought about maybe being executed abroad?

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

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Birdwatching in Winter

by ALEX CARNEVALE

The Americans
creator Joe Weisberg 

Betrayal!

A man, enthusiastic for a new life! He stands on the precipice of the old, peeling back his woman's blanket from her face! He is more uncomfortable than comfortable, he is more imperceptive than perceptive, he is more un-American than you know what! His bowling improves over long years! Where at first he used the bumper system, until he abandoned it because it was the worst possible metaphor for his life! His son works a joystick at both ends!

Move effortlessly backwards in time from the decision of a divorce, recalling each moment that led to the separation! For Stan Beeman life seems more peripatetic in reverse! When he was poring over the various lozenges and sarcophages of his co-worker, he feels both the thrill of the deceit and the astonishment of delving into a life more consummated than his own! In America, there are always further levels of knowing, passions unknown to the Russian people, who stop at the first orgasm, certain that life could not possibly improve from the state that it is in!

Stan Beeman's real other half, the Russian one, skulks and towers through a shit park to save the one he loves! But the way he loves her! Annet Mahendru, in discussing the illogical fate of Nina Sergeeva, whispered to some reporter that she missed her character! They must have been really tired of having her on set! I have heard of the Stanislavsky method, but never such a fine implementation as in this case! You have probably heard of David Mamet's method of acting! The only thing he tells the performers is to speak the dialogue, the less inflection the better! The only thing he was ever in love with was his ideas!

That is what I think when I see that poor scientist who cared for Elizabeth and Philip like he was their best friend! It is very good to have a friend, especially when you are sick! It turned out that Elizabeth simply had a nasty reaction to antibiotics! They really can make you nauseous! She took it well, all things considered! Life is very precious, especially American, Caucasian life! There must be a respite from the world, and there is something about knowing you are in a house, okay, and pretty soon no one is going to be living there except for the molecules, and in time they will be gone, too!

I am so tired of you, Paige! I am so exhausted by your need for attention! One of the things I dislike most about you is how you let the phone drop to your shoulder when a call becomes too emotional! How is the other person on the end of the line supposed to sense this! You know perfectly well there was no Skype in the 1980s! Sometimes it makes me upset when I think that Paige is alive somewhere, a lot older than me, and way more jaded about everything! When Demi Lovato comes on the radio she probably screams or fondles her gorgeous crucifix necklace! I don't know what the word bespoke means in almost any context!

Sometimes I feel like I am inside Nina's dream! On one level it is weird that she had kind of a brother thing going on with that Jewish guy! I mean, do you really have time to friendzone someone while you are living in a prison cell! She keeps a red diary there! She betrayed plenty of men, except the last one she ever knew! Her betrayals of women were only secondary, and there is something both sexist and progressive about that, and about The Americans in general! That is a terrible feeling: when you think you are taking a step forward, but quite possibly you are mistaken and it is a step back!

A step back from what, you ask, sipping chardonnay with your pinkie finger extended slightly in the ether, like sideways rain! You could be moving onto something great! It could be a substantial improvement over what you left behind, or the person who left you behind! Martha's sad dinner speech was the echo of this idea! You'll never truly know until what happens, happens! The future could also be worse, and the part of the brain dedicated to knowing such things is like the appendix, in that it became vestigial over time, but once this organ had a great purpose!

Trust me!

Do you understand?

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.

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In Which Anger Is A Concept Purely Developed By The Americans

Son of a Preacher Man

by ALEX CARNEVALE

The Americans
creator Joe Weisberg

"Anger is a concept," Philip's therapist explains to him on this fourth season of The Americans. He follows up an energetic session with a bald man who is a subtle parody of Walter White by taking Stan Beeman's ex-wife Sandra (Susan Misner) out to dinner. For a certain type of man anything is more gratifying than being with his wife, no matter how silly.

The Americans is now the Philip show. We see the world through his flashbacks, which revolve around smashing a little boy in the head with a rock. (The boy in question suggested that dating your co-star was maybe not the best career move.) To suggest that he regrets this one, first murder above all the other deaths he has caused describes an invigorating softness that has begun encroaching on all of his life. 

Philip infects everything around him with this sentimentality. It is not kindness, because he rarely does good things for anyone he meets. When Beeman violently explains that Phillip was seen laughing at a restaurant with Sandra, he does little to assuage the FBI man's concerns. He uses an innocent moment as a excuse for something else, a way to push things in the direction that most benefits his own interests. Such a morality could never suit a loving father.

This suggests a calculated, sociopathic nature from which Philip can never quite free himself. Whatever closeness on The Americans brought Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys together in real life is being shied away from now. He is at peace in his relationship with Elizabeth, but it is no longer his prime relationship. Watching them walk down a block together was the creepiest part of this first episode. They looked like they had done it a million times.

The Americans thrived on an illicit intimacy. The show feels strangely cold without there being someone desperately in love with someone else, since wasn't that the entire point of international espionage to being with? Even Nina Krilova (Annet Mahendru) has been reduced to a cold fish who can't even get a Jewish scientist sexually involved with her. Is no one attracted to anyone else since Reagan termed their country the evil empire?

Philip has unwittingly passed although this cold, dangerous naivete to his daughter Paige. Never look up Holly Taylor's Instagram — you will suddenly come to the conclusion that there is no Paige, and there has not been one for years, maybe even thousands of years.

But it is not just Paige, a patriot so devout she cannot stand to make the Pledge of Allegiance under these trying circumstances. One lie gets so out of control it ruins the lives of other, peripheral people, who are engaged by the deception on a subconscious level. Stan Beeman takes this falsehood with him wherever he goes, like a picture in his wallet.

Stan is flipping through the newspaper while his new squeeze, Tori (Callie Thorne),is getting dressed. Her makeup and clothes take over an hour to prepare, so he must kill the time before she is ready to emerge with him into the world.

It is not quite accurate to say that Stan loathes her, he just senses she is passing through, and maybe he is managing a similar transparency. He hasn't been the same since he met Philip Jennings; no one has.

Philip's relationship with Martha (Alison Wright) has come to a natural end, but I guess they still wanted to keep her on the show. It is believable that she has grown so accustomed to the idea of Clark (Claaaaark) as her husband that she would forgive the death of a colleague. After all, she knew what she was getting into when she married him. But the fact that he committed the murder himself and told her about it, even describing the circumstances, makes him a monster so complete that it would appall virtually any person's inner sense.

If she was going to accept him as she is, The Americans should have made a bigger deal of that, since it would made his faux relationship more honest and engaging than his marriage.

In past seasons, we have fully exorcised the demons which haunted Keri Russell's sleeper agent; her rape at the hands of a colleague, the development of love for a husband thrust upon her. The Americans struggles to find a dilemma of the same importance in her adopted country. Elizabeth is not a natural mother, and her scenes with Paige seem strange and disconnected, so there is no precarious line of trust or love with which to balance the ongoing reveal of information about the Jennings' life as spies. It just seems like two people talking to the air.

This leaves a real emotional gap on the program. There is no new villain, as of yet, nothing for Philip and Elizabeth to overcome. All their enemies have been reduced through innuendo and murder to mere shreds of what they once were. At this point I am really wondering how Russia did not manage to win the Cold War.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. You can follow him on Instagram here.

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