Rewatching "The Americans", season 6

Things have been going slower, but I since I received a diagnosis for Long Covid in the meantime, I guess "The Americans" for me will therefore be forever linked to the global pandemic. Cheery times! But oddly fitting, given the material. I finished the final season, so let's make this a proper send-off, shall we? 

 

This season gives us the biggest time jump yet, roughly two years, into 1986. Gorbachev is now in power and negotiating an end to the Cold War, a coup is being prepared inside the KGB and Philipp has actually retired. Paige is studying - political science at day and spycraft at night - while Henry is happy at his elite school and develops his not inconsiderable talents. The most unhappy person is Elizabeth, for a change. 

 

Her decision to support Philipp's retirement means she has to pull double duty, which, given that she already did that before on account of her gender, means something like quadruple the workload. She's smoking like a chimney and looks like hell all the time. 

 

But Elizabeth's state of mind does not allow for cutting back. Instead, she doubles down, in practically every department. The season opens with her nearly botching several assignments, always with a huge bodycount. This seems to be an expression of her mentality as much as anything, but the FBI will pick up the blood trail eventually, and Stan's final moment of epiphany is triggered over Elizabeth's unwillingness to continue covering up her smoking habit, providing Stan with the - wait for it - smoking gun to finally crack the identity of the illegals.

 

And if all of that wasn't enough already, Elizabeth also trains Paige for her new assignments. The girl is too young for the real stuff, but she's not being eased into it - Elizabeth and Claudia both let her run before she can walk, which finds its most gruesome fallout when Paige finds her mother with the brains of an American colonel splattered all about her face, product of yet another rushed and insufficiently planned - and frankly ill-adviced - venture the Center forced her to undertake. 

 

Speaking of Paige, she's a shadow of her former self. With no real identity of her own, she's torn between worlds and conflates her private life with her new spy life more and more, to the horror of her parents, who react to this in the worst ways - Elizabeth by holding increasingly hollow speeches and abusing her mentally, Philipp by pretend-raping her to shatter her growing self-esteem. Paige is walking through her life as if controlled by someone else, and in a very real sense, she is. 

 

Henry, in the meantime, is removed from all of that mentally as well as physically. Since leaving home, the worst he has to deal with are Philipp's guilt-ridden calls of empty nothings, and else he can concentrate on a better life. He's an object, as far as his parents are considered, and his sister dropped out of his life for good. Things creep back only when Philipp's life breaks down and the financial fallout threatens his ability to stay in school. It's fitting that he learns of his parents' identity last, from the mouth of Stan, who makes his surrogate fathership official. 

 

It's Stan who has the most crushing revelation coming. The suspicion about the Jennings, dormant since the ill-considered awakening in the pilot episode, comes roaring back with a vengeance. Once on the scent, Stan follows it mercilessly, fighting himself at least as much as the Jennings. After all, what does it say about his life that his best friend is a Soviet spy? His life will be destroyed in the process, through nothing as much as through Philipp's poisonous passing gift of telling him about his own suspicion regarding Renee. 

 

Outwardly, the happiest person in the beginning of the season is Philipp, of all people. He retired, expanded the business and lives the dream of Morning in America. he even takes his employees to a bar playing country music and dancing to it. He loves this country he consistently fought against, and now he finally can do it without the cognitive dissonance of his old job.

 

But it's not to last. Philipp is a better spy than businessman and tanks the expansion, threating the family's livelihood in the process. And when the main plot rears its ugly head, he sees himself compelled to return and help out first Oleg Burov and then his wife. Both ventures fail and see his cover almost blown. 

 

For Oleg, it's even worse. He was demoted into political oblivion, but he's happy with it - a mirror image of Philipp's - but Arkady recruits him to help out in a secret operation to stop a KGB plot from killing Gorbachev. This requires him to be in the US as a private citizen, so if he's jailed, he's done. His wife and little child will be without him forever. You'll never guess what will happen next. 

 

The main plot, despite its world-defining stakes, takes a second place behind all of this character stuff, and rightly so. It's the characters that make "The Americans" compelling, and the plot is useful only insofar as it propels them into action. We'll not be on the edge of our seats whether Gorbachev is killed in 1986; the relevant question is what this does to our protagonists. 

 

In the end, they can single-handedly prevent the catastrophe, but it means the end for them. They need to flee, and heavy decisions need to be made. Leaving Henry behind certainly is the best thing, but what about the ghost that once was their daughter? After a brutally emotional stand-off with Stan, the Jennings flee to Canada - but Paige deserts them on the border, going back to Claudia's appartment of all places, where she pours and gulps down Vodka, facing a very uncertain and bleak future. 

 

The show ends ambivalent in many places, and the added coda of Philipp and Elizabeth's long escape to the USSR, not knowing what the future will bring, underscores that beautifully. 

 

I do not rue watching this show, and I do not rue rewatching it. It's one of the greatest things out there. Don't miss it.