Elizabeth Jennings keeps killing.
That’s 1.2 murders per episode.
Well, “murders.”
Credit: Eric Liebowitz/FX (2)
It’s not always so messy.
Last week, Elizabeth earned a 100% stealth rating by Solid Snaking her way through a darkened warehouse.
She popped the lightbulbs with her silenced pistol, and then she popped three security guards.
That scene was thrilling, but death can be funny onThe Americans, too.
Stylish, sure, but also, this isa lot.
We’re meant to think, of course, that this is all wearing on her.
She’s smoking too much.
She isn’t sleeping.
I almost compared Elizabeth to Wolverine inLogan, the most obvious popular model for blood sick traumatized glorious wreck-hood.
But the degree of difficulty is much higher for Russell here than for Hugh Jackman there.
It’s a great performance by Russell.
But I worry Elizabeth’s murder spree is a misstep for the show.
I get the intention ah, the exhaustion of the old warrior!
Season 6 has only 10 episodes, down from the usual 13: This could explain the breakneck pace.
No broken necks yet!)
More likely, this was always the plan.
A violent serialized drama usually trends extra violent in its final season.
Some main characters die or they all do.
The feeling of explicit importance swells, too.
Everything reallydoescome down to this.
Everything Elizabeth has ever done is echoing in Paige’s life now.
Is this season building towards Paige’s first kill?
Maybe this really is a variation ofLogan, with Paige as X-23.
But one of the simplest great things aboutThe Americanshas always been that it has two true main characters.
Carmela Soprano’s a great character, butThe Sopranosnever gave her a two-episode dream journey.
Hindsight is 20/20, of course.
Maybe by June we’ll realizeThe Americansalways had its heart focused on one particular super spy.
(Or maybe the main character is someone who’s beenhiding in plain sight all along.)
Not in plot terms, per se and current momentum will carry them closer in the next five episodes.
Philip’s out of the spy game, mostly.
He’s become an American man, a business owner with plans for aggressive expansion.
He took out a loan from the bank.
“If you’re not growing, you’re not succeeding.”
He’s not growing.
The numbers aren’t adding up.
Philip can’t afford private school tuition anymore.
The confession leaves Philip looking shrunken.
Do further debasements await?
Elizabeth, briefed on the business troubles, tells him to cut back, make the company smaller again.
“I just don’t see how cutting back would fix it,” says Philip.
Brutal mathematics: Win big, or lose everything.
Wednesday’s episode feinted toward bringing Philip back into spy territory.
She needed him for an op.
And what an op!
Might Philip go with her, in the guise of moody leather-jacketed wanderer Jim Baxter?
Might he convince her to cross the border into Soviet Bulgaria?
Might he place some drugs in her pocket, just in time for a sting operation?
But the show twisted its knife toward a delicate, internal drama.
The stab wounds were merely psychological.
And then he decided he just couldn’t go through with it.
This was a minor betrayal of his wife which became a major betrayal of his country.
I know that’s unlikely.
But I’m tickled by the duality of this season’s first half.
It’s rarer and more special when a show trends more intimate in its final act.
It kind of happened withGirls, which admittedly required one gigantic plot thing (pregnancy!)
Elizabeth went full Rick Grimes (The Walking Dead), while Philip did his bestHalt and Catch Firecosplay.
I suspect no viewer is all the way in onbothtracks.
(More, I say,more!)
But together, the two tones have been electric.
Whereas Philip’s loss with Henry is pitifully relatable.
So Philip struggles within capitalism, while Elizabeth struggles against capitalism.
You worry they’re both losing and everyone else is, too.
