Theres nothing like an incredibly satisfying denouement to a TV episode: The creation of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce at the end of Shut the Door, Have a Seat (Mad Men); Jesse Pinkman calling 911 to rescue a little boy from his neglectful meth-head parents in Peekaboo (Breaking Bad); and now,Elizabeth Jennings admitting, out loud, that her chosen profession has put her childrens lives at risk in Cardinal (The Americans). There was plenty of tension throughout the episode its impressive Elizabeth found the time to play a board game with her kids, let alone mentor a young Sandinista in the middle of all her paranoid window-watching. But instead of a shocking death or revelation, the big buildup only led to a bedroom confession to Philip: All these years, I never worried about Paige and Henry being safe. Because for all the high-impact excitement of scenes filled with brush-passes, bewigged sex and Margo Martindale smackdowns, The Americans is more a show about a marriage and family than it is about the good ol days of the Cold War. Its a shame it took the death of an innocent teenage girl (Emmett and Leannes daughter, Amelia) for the Jenningses to realize their biggest fear shouldnt be whether or not their kids embrace capitalism, but whether or not theyll live long enough to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. At least now there could be a whole new dare I say it, humane dimension to Philip and Elizabeths spy work.
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Speaking of Indy, although every Americans episode is a nostalgia trip for anyone who came of age in the Reagan era, Cardinal was so jam-packed with distracting early Eighties references that unless you were paying close attention, it was easy to miss some actual plot movement. Still, its hard to care about some propeller factory changing locations when a character is reading a Time magazine cover story about a blippy newfangled game revolution thats already turned younguns like Henry off from classic family pastimes like LIFE. (Note: Between the cover date of that particular issue of Time and Rezident Arkady dictating a memo regarding the mysterious World Bank employee walk-in, Bruce Dameran, this episode firmly establishes the action as taking place in late January 1982, as opposed to fall 1981 as previously stated.) However, Elizabeths brief detour from taking the kids to see Raiders of the Lost Ark to help out a Central American freedom fighter in need was a nicely added global dimension to what at times can be an oversimplified view of the Soviet Union vs. United States geopolitical situation. Your revolution is beautiful, Elizabeth tells the graduate student from Costa Rica, after advising her to refrain from smoking cocaine with congressional aides in the future.
While Elizabeth has her hands full with or, rather, down the passed-out congressional aides throat and giving the Sandinista some free on-the job advice (Dont party with him anymore. Be his girlfriend), Philip goes to Chesapeake, Virginia, to get some answers regarding Emmetts and Leannes deaths. The bug Philip had Martha place in Agent Frank Gaads office last season has already cleared the FBI of suspicion, so the next move is to track down the man with whom Philip did the amusement-park brush-pass, Fred Timbrook. Philips visit to Freds house produces little more than guest appearances by a vintage Playboy magazine with a cornrowed Bo Derek and an AT-AT Walker model kit. But, other than establishing he too had nothing to do with Emmetts and Leannes murders, Fred does offer one vital piece of intel: The propeller information he handed to Philip in the Bayer aspirin bottle during the brush-pass? Its time-sensitive the factory where the propellers are being grinded is moving, so Philip and Elizabeth need to act immediately if theyre going to step in where their friends left off before their untimely expiration.
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Philip and Elizabeth arent the only ones who have a vested interest in these propellers, though. The new KGB Line X director, Oleg, stops short of throwing a tantrum when hes barred from joining Arkady in a meeting that addresses the murder of two Directorate S operatives. Turns out that Bayer bottle contained items critical to the science and technology mission. So, he does what any cunning spy would do flirt with the pretty female agent who has also been excluded from the cone of silence. Nina could not be more bored with Olegs small talk about Blondie and demonstrates that it takes way more than lame patriotic pickup lines like Im a feminist. I work only for Mother Russia to get a good Soviet girl into bed. Besides, Ninas sexual preferences seem to lean toward tall, handsome all-American FBI agents like Stan, anyway. Despite her still-impenetrable gaze and her ability to provide Stan with just a mere hint of information to whet his appetite (one mention of a walk-in to the Soviet Embassy and next thing we know, Stan and his colleagues have combed enough surveillance footage to ID Dameran), Ninas emotions begin to betray her as she types up her latest report for Arkady. The cold clinical description of how she serviced the subject orally before allowing him to penetrate [her] belies the replayed rendezvous in Ninas head, which has her and Stan tenderly making love at their safe house. And unless Nina is actually a way better spy than Elizabeth (which isnt beyond the realm of possibility), she seemed to be enjoying it.
Its these little cracks in the missions, at the hand of human emotion, that are what drive the narrative of The Americans. For the first time, Philip abandons his scheduled visit to Martha potentially harming his relationship with such a crucial FBI source in order to return home to be with Elizabeth and the kids. Placing love over duty, as I suggested last week, can be a deadly choice for the Jennings family. If anything, Clark should be spending more time with Martha, especially since shes voiced an interest in possibly leaving the counterintelligence department. And what good is a sham marriage if youre not at least getting something out of it? Then again, now that Paige has done some sleuthing work on her own (calling the operator to get the address and phone number of Great-Aunt Helen Leavis), perhaps some increased family time isnt so bad after all.
Previously: Comrades in Arms