1x07 Duty and Honor

[8.1/10] A recurring formula in The Americans has been a sort of goofus and gallant routine between Stan Beeman and the Jennings. Stan has a comparatively easy life to the Russian spies who are deep undercover. He’s well-liked by his superiors and can speak openly and generally trust them. His job involves some rough work, but he has the open support of the whole FBI on his side. And he has a home life that is, if not normal, than at least more normal.

And yet, he consistently fucks it up. The show still manages to make him sympathetic, intimating that something changed in him when he was forced to go undercover for years, and that reentry and reacclimation has been hard on him. But the interesting contrast of the show, one its built on, is how the Beeman’s life is comparatively less complicated, less treacherous than the Jennings, and yet Philip and Elizabeth find a way to make it work, to be open with one another, to do what needs to be done, and to be, in a strange way, a more effective team as two people who married for duty and honor than two people who married for love.

Until now.

That’s a little overdramatic, but until about the two-thirds mark, it seemed like The Americans was drawing out the usual trajectory between Team Beeman and Team Jennings. Both Stan and Philip had the choice to cheat on their wives, to pursue the women from the Eastern Bloc whom they’re carrying the torch for, or to stay true to the women they married.

Stan, naturally, gives into his carnal (or, to be more generous, romantic) urges toward Nina. When his partner drags him down to a local bar for a drink and urges him to loosen up by going after some “strange,” Stan demurs. He says he has nothing to say to any of those girls at the bar, that he has a wife and son at home and that sort of thing is just not for him.

But the thought lingers in his head, and after a couple of drinks, he calls Nina and tells him he needs to see her. The connection that’s been bubbling on the show from the first time Nina strolled into the narrative is consummated. It was inevitable, both in terms of the story The Americans has been setting up for Stan, and the way that he was flirting, both subtly and not so subtly, almost from the beginning.

Stan, however, seems to feel guilty about it, or at least a little reserved in the aftermath. We’ll have to wait and see how it affects his home life, but he carries himself as though it’s an act he regrets. Nina seems to pick up on that, telling him that she doesn't regret it, but it never has to happen again. For Americans, she says, everything is “white and black,” while for Russians, everything is gray.

Things certainly get grayer for Philip. When the mission of the week calls for an anti-communist Polish agitator to be framed for rape so that he’ll step out of the spotlight, the powers that be reunite Philip with his old flame from before he entered Directorate S. They haven’t seen one another for twenty years, not since Philip was called away to be a part of the most selective programs in the Russian service.

And the path seems clear. Stan, who has it easier, is weak, and so he will give into his urges with Nina. But Philip, who’s had a harder life, is strong, which means he’ll resist even the siren call of his lost love.

Except that’s not how things go. Instead, after a successful operation (one which the episode unspools nicely) Philip and Irina reminisce. The spark is still there. They flirt and coo and however fleetingly, recapture that sense of energy and affection that began on a frigid train station behind the iron curtain. They talk about their lives, and Irina reveals (maybe) that they have a son together, that she was pregnant before he left but didn’t want to tell him because she knew he’d do the right thing and stay with her rather than pursue his dream.

That dream led him to Elizabeth who, in a flip of circumstances, is the one pining for her KGB-mandated husband rather than the other way around. In the episode’s best scene, Elizabeth is softly commiserating with Stan’s wife, Sandra, who laments how far her husband has drifted away, and expresses her envy for Elizabeth’s relationship with Philip, the way that the two of them are unquestionably partners, unquestionably together, through everything. And with just a subtle, almost nuanced look, Keri Russell conveys the sense of Elizabeth only now realizing what she has, or at least had.

So she calls Philip, across the coast, to tell him that she misses him, to come home. And I believe it’s the turning point in the episode, where Philip realizes that he and his wife can be for real, and the fissures of the prior episode will be mended. Instead, he says nothing, hangs up the phone, and rolls over to reveal a nude Irina, rolling onto him after a night of long-absent passion.

And maybe it’s the sort of thing that can be forgiven in the strange, complicated world that Elizabeth and Philip occupy. After all, Elizabeth had her romance with Gregory that went unknown by Philip for a decade and a half. Each of them is called upon to seduce targets and informants in their line of work. Philip’s relationship with Irina means something to him, which complicates things tremendously, but at the end of the day, he chooses not to run away from her, to stay and return to his family, which means something, even it doesn't mean everything.

Except in the aftermath, Elizabeth tells him that she wants them to be real, to try something genuine. But she also asks him point blank if anything happened between him and Irina. And he lies. He lies right to her face, and this new stage of Elizabeth and Philip’s relationship is now founded on a lie.

That contrast is still there, between Stan and Philip. Stan does the deed with little compunction, but seems remorseful about it. Philip has no regrets, and more justification, but he lies almost immediately about it. Stan feels bad, but it still seems like this is the life he wants. Philip is harder to read, but if nothing else, he has the chance to have what was taken away from him by circumstance two decades ago, and instead chooses to come home. There are still differences between the Beemans and the Jennings, between a superficially normal but dysfunctional relationship and one that’s thoroughly atypical. But the line has thinned, and it’s getting thinner by the day.

(As an aside, it’s not clear to me whether Irina really had Philip’s child or whether that was a way to persuade him to run away with her. The episode plays it ambiguous, but I’m currently leaning toward the notion that the son is real, and in some later episode the Russian government employs him to go after the Jennings somehow. Also, we get a tense but frankly pretty cheesy interaction between Claudia and Elizabeth here, while Elizabeth cultivates an asset with a gambling problem in a storyline that doesn't fit especially well with the rest of the episode.)