6x07 Harvest

[7.8/10] Maybe I’m a stick in the mud. There’s something that feel convenient about Stan being such a dope for so long, but only now, four episodes before the end of the series, starting to put it together that there’s something off about the Jenningses. It’s almost become a running joke, one of those conceits for a series that helps you sell a pilot (“They’re KGB spies living next to an FBI agent!”), but starts to strain credulity by the time a show’s entering its sixth season. Either Stan is so much of a dupe that if he hasn’t figured it out by now, he shouldn’t ever be able to do it, or it should take more than a few things seeming off for him to connect the dots.

Still, Noah Emmerich does a good job at selling the internal process of Stan putting things together. You can see the distant look in his eyes when he’s talking to Henry, when he glances at the photos in the Jenningses’ house, that convey the puzzle pieces falling into place in his mind when he stops and reflects on the lives his neighbors lead.

Even if it’s implausible that Stan could have this eureka moment six years down the line, The Americans does well to depict the path he takes to that little epiphany. It’s a smart choice to start it with his friendship with Philip. However much the connection between Philip and Stan has been one for appearances, there’s also being some genuine ties there. Stan’s recognition that something is off with someone he touchingly calls his best friend, coupled with his FBI instincts, makes for a nice spark to touch off the flames. The cold open, ending in a hug that could be the impetus for the Jenningses’ downfall is a hell of a way to open the episode.

But I also like how the next step runs through Henry. I’ve often joked in these write-ups that given how much neglect Henry’s had to deal with, I wouldn’t be shocked if it turned out that Doug was actually a secret agent recruiting him for a rival intelligence service or something. Henry takes both his parents bailing on Thanksgiving stoically, but in his conversation with Stan, who’s been as much a parent to him as either Philip or Elizabeth, you can tell that he feels their absence and is frustrated by it, even if he’s accepted it.

There’s something poetic, then, that it’s Stan realizing that it is really rough for both parents to leave their kid, who’s visiting home from school, all by himself on Thanksgiving, that spurs him to start tugging at more of those threads. He realizes that Paige and Henry never stay with or even visit other family. He starts to piece together how odd it is that a pair of travel agents get phone calls at midnight and have to bolt at a moment’s notice. It’s not any grand FBI insight that finally puts him on the illegals’ scent; it’s how they treat their son, a fitting comeuppance.

But “Harvest” is just as concerned about how Philip and Elizabeth treat one another. Philip does, in fact, join Elizabeth in Chicago. The reunion is a muted but no less powerful one, taking place largely in silence, but with an atmosphere of detente that shows how much the gesture means to both of them, even if neither will say it. Elizabeth does share the existence of Chekov’s suicide necklace with Philip,even if she won’t provide the details of what’s so important that she “can’t get arrested.”

That discretion ends up being all for naught, as the fellow illegal they’re trying to extract ends up giving the details to Philip after the operation goes sideways and the FBI agents on their trail shoot him. (As an aside, given the guy’s affectionate last words for his mom, and bitter last words for his dad, I’d love to see a spin-off, or at least an episode, about what his life has been like over the past six years.) For better or worse, Philip now knows about the part Elizabeth has been tasked with finding.

Despite Philip’s valued presence, the operation goes poorly, The Jennings get out alive, but lose their target, and Marilyn, in the process. It hints at a theme this season -- that however good Elizabeth is at what she does, things aren’t the same, aren’t as successful, with her husband at her side, something she warned Tuan about last season. This is just the latest in a series of failed operations Elizabeth’s spearheaded this year, and the readdition of Philip didn’t save the day for them. But there’s an argument that maybe, given the concerns Marilyn expressed to Elizabeth earlier, he’s the factor that made it so that Elizabeth got out alive, regardless of whether they were able to pull off the extraction, the thing that brought Philip out there in the first place.

As in all good stories, though, it comes at a cost. He has to watch the Chicago illegal die horribly from a combination of his gut-shot and his suicide pill. To keep the feds from identifying Marilyn, he has to chop off her hands and, less cleanly or easily, her head. It’s the kind of brutality and wet work that so steadily wore Philip down into his own state of distress over the course of the show’s middle seasons, and The Americans doesn't spare its audience from having to share in the methodical, visceral harshness of these moments.

But they also come with a benefit, of an understanding and reconciliation between the Jenningses that seems to genuinely repair, or at least patch, the brokenness of their relationship from the start of this final season. Elizabeth checks on Philip at the travel agency for the first time in forever, remembering how tough it was for her to see him hollowed out by all those killings coming at his hands. She touches her hand to his cheek, but this time it’s not even arguably part of a ploy to soften him for a favor; it’s from genuine concern and care. Too much has gone wrong between them for this one mutual gesture to fix it all, but it sets Elizabeth and Philip back on a better path, something heartening after all the hardship we’ve seen between them this year.

It also motivates Elizabeth to give Paige a way out. She tells her daughter that this life is hard, that it requires untold sacrifices, of friends, of relationships, and maybe even your life. She laments that Philip dove in not realizing the toll it would take, and that Paige has a choice now, to commit wholeheartedly or to break it off now. Paige recommits herself. With her mother’s blessing, she heads off to apply for an internship at the state department and signs up for more of this life.

Her timeline may be short though. However oblivious Stan has been up until this point, the inconsistencies, the red flags of the Jenningses’ life store, start to pop up. When he breaks into their home and pokes around, he looks at their family photos and sees none of any extended relatives. He recalls William’s words that threatened to expose them. Later, he brings out the sketches of the illegals made during the events of the first season.

In short, though Stan is still not quite at his “My secretary was married to a KGB officer” moment, he’s starting to realize his neighbors might not be all that they seem. He’s starting to help Aderholt marshal the resources that would exonerate or expose them. And as we near the endgame, he’s poised to pose as great a risk to the Jenningses as any other good or bad guy. As a neighbor, a best friend, a surrogate uncle, for Philip and Elizabeth, the greatest threat is coming from inside the house.