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‘The Russians love their children too’: ‘The Americans’ are finally learning to pare…
One of the more fascinating aspects of watching “The Americans” play out for the past four seasons has been watching Philip and Elizabeth evolve as parents. The survival-skill parenting they experienced growing up in Russia and the more emotional parenting of 1980s America are miles apart, and harmonizing the two has never been easy. Top that off with the fact that their reason for even having kids — for being together at all — wasn’t their choice, and it’s easy to see where the tension comes from. This whole “loving parent” thing was something that needed to be learned.
The most electric part of this season (so far!) has been the sense that the gloves are starting to slip off. Now that Paige is in on the family con, Elizabeth is slowly realizing she no longer has to treat her eldest child like a child, she can now treat her like something she actually understands: An operative.
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In the beginning of “Pests” (Mar. 14) Elizabeth turns a garage self-defense lesson with Paige into the long-awaited talk about the dangers of getting too close to Matthew. This inevitably evolves into the Talk every teenager (and parent) dreads, as things turn to sex, and how it can muddle your feelings for someone… And make you do — and say — things you didn’t mean to. This is the dangerous part for Elizabeth. It isn’t about the sex, it’s about how sex helps us open up: Will Paige spill her parents’ secrets in the postcoital glow? Will her shift in hormones somehow shift Paige’s allegiances?
After the talk, Paige tries to worm out of the rest of the self-defense lesson, but when Elizabeth doesn’t let her off the hook, we get a prime scene demonstrating what’s best about this show: A wordless standoff as Paige continues to hit the punching bag, looking at her mom with a mix of hormonal rage and fear; Elizabeth silently watching her daughter with a thin smile, perhaps no longer seeing Paige just as her daughter, but an apprentice.
Meanwhile, the Eckerts continue their mission as the perfect American family, taking their Russian neighbors out to dinner. Here, Philip and Elizabeth exemplify another trait of parenting: Silently holding your tongue while a child rants about what’s bothering them. Pasha’s father, the agricultural consultant, aghast that he could send back an order at a restaurant and not get jailed for it, rails against the motherland. How can anyone live like this! Why is our government so stupid! He groans. After gets this fit out of his system, and after chastising by his son and wife in Russian, he apologizes to Eckerts.
With the icy rage of a battle-worn mother, Elizabeth steadies herself. “We understand.”
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As Philip and Elizabeth pull into their driveway after dinner, Elizabeth pauses. Elizabeth is sick of treating Paige like a kid, she tells Philip without looking at him. What does this mean for Paige? Are the training wheels coming off, and will we see her running ops like Tuan? If the tactic they then teach Paige up in her room — a method of centering yourself in emotional situations by pressing your finger and thumb together and meditating — is any indication, Matthew could become more than Paige’s first boyfriend: He may just become an asset.
Oddly enough, we see true maternal worry kick in while Elizabeth is out in the field: She’s followed the Russian consultant to a greenhouse in Illinois that houses rows of crops. Nothing seems out of the ordinary — confusion playing out on Elizabeth’s face as she stalks in between plants. Suddenly, as she pulls back a stock, she’s swarmed by a cloud of bugs nesting within the leaves. Her confusion quickly turns to a befuddled panic that remains even as she’s back at a hotel room, washing the bugs off in the shower:
Still uncertain of the Americans’ objective, Elizabeth has the unsettling intuition it’s somehow going to hurt her family back home.
“The Americans” airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX.