5x03 The Midges

[7.8/10] The tug of war in season 5 of The Americans isn’t just the USA vs. the USSR. It’s a struggle between “you don't know how lucky you are” and “no, things really are that bad.” It’s a struggle between the people who want to look on the bright side and count their blessings, and the people who want to reckon with potentially harsh realities that mean admitting the worst.

I complained in my last write-up about the show hitting a lot of the same beats in the early going here, but I like the fact that we’re sticking with an abundance/scarcity theme so far. It’s a sort of broad-cased, almsst The Wire esque look at a problem that I didn’t really expect from this show. We see every angle, or at least multiple angles, of the food shortage idea.

You have Oleg investigating corruption in Russia. You have the Jennings working to uncover whether the Americans are trying to screw up Russia’s grain supply. You have Paige reckoning with the fact that this is something the country she grew up in would do, and deal with her parents’ place in the fight against it. And you have Twan once again remarking on how he used to have to starve or eat garbage where he came from, and Philip recalling similar misfortunes when he was a kid.

It adds a different kind of stakes to this season, one where we’re less immediately concerns about the Jennings’ relationship or about them potentially being exposed, but about how their efforts connect to a broader global and social problem. I don’t expect the show to stay on that tack forever. It continues to be as interested in the Jennings as spouses and as parents as it as interested in them as spies. But still, it’s a broader lens than we normally get to see from the show, and that pivot is an intriguing thing to do in your show’s fifth season.

The most striking detail in the episode is that Philip and Elizabeth tell Paige about the current mission, with the hope that it will help sway her as to the importance of what they do. It’s an understandable move, even if it contradicts Philip’s statement seconds earlier that learning about their work has been too much for Paige to handle. It’s a way to help persuade her that the USA operatives they’re working against are the bad guys, and that they’re working for the safety and humanitarian wellbeing of their countrymen.

Only, this being The Americans the idea runs into serious problems almost immediately. First and foremost, Paige seems more aghast that something like this could happen, that as she puts it, “nuclear bombs weren’t already enough”, more than she’s impressed by her parents for fighting it. Second, she ends up seeming more interested in how they do their work, what it’s like to have to pretend to be someone else, and how hard it is to have to keep that up. It translates to her scene with Matthew, where she tries her parents “magic” thumb and forefinger techniques, but reports to her mom that she feels gross about it, that she’s afraid of not ever being able to truly get close to someone.

Third, something happens on the Jennings’ trip to Oklahoma City to investigate the grain situation that, as Philip describes it, they might not want to tell Paige about. When they investigate a lab that seems to be breeding the cro-killing bugs that Gabriel reports about, a poor lab tech shows up. He’s interrogated, threatened, and eventually killed in that swift, cold-blooded Jennings way.

It’s a side of their lives that the Jennings aren’t ready to share with their daughter, and one that Philip’s had trouble with in the past. He, much more than loyal Elizabeth, has had the impulse to question whether what they’re doing is right, whether they’re on the right side and doing the right thing. He looks at the plains of Oklahmo and thinks that they have the same thing in Russia. Surely, the government there could do the same thing the Americans are here. He seems to be asking why the world is this way in the same way that Paige is.

All Elizabeth can do is reassure him, in a quiet but endearing scene, that whatever’s going on in the world, they still have each other. Maybe it’s just a distraction Or maybe it’s meant to be a comfort from things that are too big for either to get their heads around. Either way, it’s an interesting reflection of what Elizabeth tells her daughter -- that marriage isn't about sharing everything. Based on her history, she probably feels much differently than Philip about questioning the Soviet government. But she sets that aside to give comfort to the person she loves. It’s something Elizabeth doesn't just teach; it’s something she lives.

The rest of the episode is the quiet advancement of things we mostly already know about, but which move a little further along. Misha makes it t o Yugoslavia, and is effectively shaken down by the untrustworthy people who are meant to get him across the border to Austria. But he too is in a foreign country and has no choice but to trust these people. It’s unclear whether this is meant to tie into the “you don’t know what security and comfort you have” theme, or if it’s just another story beat, but it’s hard not to at least feel for the kid as he’s pretty helpless and easy to take advantage of here.

We also have another interaction between the Jennings and the defector family, learning that the mother in the family wasn’t happy to be moved to the USA and wasn’t told anything about it until it happened. We see Stan and Agent Aderholt try to turn a few possible assets in what feels more like a tease than a thing of substance. We see Oleg probing the very thing Philip is worried about -- what kinks in the system are there that some people can get fresh tangerines while others are starving? Only, if the CIA has their way, with the blackmail tape they surreptitiously hand to him, he may not be around very long to actually fight that good fight when he’s too much of an asset to too many others. And as usual, nobody sees Henry.

(Oh, and arguably, most importantly, we see Martha! She’s alive and well in Russia, and seemingly struggling with the same issues other people are, even if she’s able to buy food at what passes for the fancy grocery store! It’s a surprisingly exciting and reassuring moment!)

This whole season feels like a slow burn in the early going, where we receive little pieces of the puzzle rather than individual stories told within the episode. There’s recurring notions of some people noticing how bad things are, and others trying to point out how and where things could be worse. Presumably, these things will come to a head sooner rather than later, but until then, we just see marks on both sides of the ledger, of how both Americans and Russians on the show, optimists and pessimists, have reason to claim they’re right.