1x10 Only You

[8.0/10] There’s a sense of Elizabeth and Philip as avatars for certain opposing ideas in The Americans. Or, to put in less-grandiose, more TV-focused lingo, there’s ways in which the show is doing a twisty, espionage-centered version of The Odd Couple. Elizabeth is purity, loyalty, devotion. And Philip is compromise, affection, sentimentality.

That’s a big part of what makes them interesting as a pairing. They’re in the same situation; they have similar goals, but they have different philosophies and personalities, and that means The Americans can ride the inevitable sparks and friction as they both compliment and clash with one another for five more seasons.

But that may also be why Gregory had to go.

That is, admittedly, overstating things. For one thing, Gregory most likely had to go because had other acting commitments that prevented him from being able to commit to this show whenever he was needed. For another, more than a few shows have played the “old flame who’s a spoke in the wheel of the main couple” characters for tons more mileage than this.

But Gregory nevertheless had to go because he stands for that same purity, that same devotion, that same commitment that he praises Elizabeth for. As she put it in an earlier episode, he didn’t want anything, he just believed in the cause, something that Elizabeth could relate to. That, more than anything, is why they could never be together in the context of a T.V. show. Because characters who feel the same way, who have the same philosophy, don’t cause those same sparks.

They do, however, cause tragedy -- the tragedy that nothing gold can stay, the tragedy that the same purity, the same unwillingness to give up the fight, the same resistance to compromising or being the least bit soft in his beliefs, is what gets Gregory killed.

Well, let’s give Stan some credit too.

Stan continues his dogged fight for Chris Amador, this time to try to avenge him, rather than save him. “Only You” gets a little contrived on that front. The FBI is able to track Chris’s missing ring to a pawn shop to a salvage yard to an owner who attributes the getaway car to “some black guys” which is enough to get him through to a mug book which is enough to get Stan to one of Gregory’s henchmen (the same one he chased in “Gregory”) which is enough, sure enough, to get him to Gregory.

That requires a fairly healthy amount of willing suspension disbelief. But this isn’t really a storyline, or an episode that runs on plot. It’s an episode that runs on the emotions of its characters.

That’s actually a nice change of pace. It’d be too much to say that The Americans has become formulaic, but it has a dependable cadence, even if it uses its typical form to do some really interesting things and move the show in novel directions.

And yet this is an episode without as much of a mission of the week. There’s few plot-heavy obstacles to be solved. Stan’s ability to track things down to Gregory happens almost magically, and for the Jennings, the issue comes down to a case to be made rather than a problem to be solved. It’s not about what obstacles Elizabeth or Stan have to hop over; it’s about how they feel, which gives “Only You” some emotional power without regard to the mostly-absent fireworks.

Because something has changed in Stan after Chris’s death. He almost admits it to his wife. The world is darker to him now, the rougher underbelly of what he thought he knew about this job has been exposed to him. He is rougher with the salvage yard owner than we even saw him with the pawn shop salesman. He’s willing to lie straight up to Nina (and may be getting played by her in return) in a way we haven’t really seen before. Stan was never a sweet or gentle man, but the death of his partner clearly had an effect on him, made him harder, colder, and crueler in his grief and his worldview.

But he too centers on that idea of commonality to try to find his partner’s killer. When he interrogates Curtis, he admits that the two have walked very different paths in life. But he appeals to the idea that when it comes to the KGB, they’re on the same side. They may be different, believe in different things and live very different lives, but they’re both Americans, and that, Stan hopes, is enough for Curtis to give up the identity of the man who set this all up.

He’s right. Curtis rolls on Gregory, and the KGB leaves enough hints in his apartment to pin Chris’s murder on Gregory. They present him (and by extension Elizabeth and Philip) a choice: Gregory can escape to Moscow where he’ll live a comfortable but soft existence, or die, because he knows too much and can’t be trusted not to spill on them like Curtis did to him.

And it’s the biggest challenge for Elizabeth because it pulls her between her two strongest beliefs: that Gregory is a true-believer who would never do anything to hurt her and that the mission and her orders comes first, so she was to fulfill Claudia’s instructions no matter what. That makes her desperate to convince Gregory to take the deal, to go to Russia, to start a new life, so that neither she, nor anyone, has to end it.

But she’s right about Gregory. He is a true believer. He is devoted to the cause. And he simply cannot imagine retreating from the fight, accepting an easy life away from what he knows, unable to pursue what he wants and believes is right in the way he chooses to do so. He would rather perish than compromise, rather die fighting the fight he believes in than live by taking the easy way out. Despite the promises made, the possibilities offered, he knows there’s only one way out of this for him.

Before he takes it, he gives Elizabeth a warning -- not to let Philip get to her, not to compromise like he does, not to go soft. And when push comes to shove, for once it’s Elizabeth begging Philip to compromise, asking him to give into sentiment over his orders, asking him not to be ruthless and pragmatic in the job he was told to him. So Philip gives her that, he relents and trusts Gregory to enact his death-by-cop plan without giving them up, despite how much he would clearly love to ensure that his wife’s lover is dead. He let’s Gregory go, go to die.

The Americans gets more impressionistic, more artistic in that death than it has anywhere else in the show so far. “To Love Somebody” plays over slow-motion scenes of Gregory’s shootout with the cops. We see out of time images of Stan staring at Gregory post-mortem photo, of Philip eating pizza in bed alone in his depressing hotel room, and of Elizabeth hearing the news on television. It layers on the tragedy, on the lives touched by this one man’s steadfastness, for better or worse, that makes it meaningful when he leaves this world.

And we see Elizabeth feel the grief in a private moment, as she cries to herself in an empty kitchen late in the evening. It is not just that someone she loved died; it’s that a piece of her died with him. Gregory represented the part of Elizabeth who was just as committed, just as faithful and passionate about the cause as she was.

The idea that there’s a good life at the end of that tunnel, that the people who live up to her ideals can find happiness, that she can find happiness, in that sort of life, goes down in a hail of bullets on a city street, felt by the one person who can most understand why he died, and most wish that he’d lived.