A relatively quiet hour before a hotly-anticipated finale that has many important storylines to address, “I Am Abassin Zadran” is mainly an exercise for The Americans in examining the prolonged effects of Martha being unknowingly used. Even when someone is unaware of the situation of which she’s a part, the subconscious and unconscious have ways of speaking to people. Last season, for example, showed how Stan’s mind was beginning to piece things about Martha together while it wasn’t active during a dream sequence in the FBI office. Martha’s experience isn’t as explicit, but while Clark has been telling her that everything is going to be fine, everything else around her is very much saying the opposite.
Stan’s visit to Martha’s place, despite the fact that the two characters are often in scenes together, is as uncomfortable for the viewer as it is for Martha. These are two characters who both fall into the protagonist category for the series, since both have understandable and sympathetic motivations mixed in with their individual flaws (temper and lack of self-confidence, respectively). The same can be said of other characters, but it’s interesting that two people who are so aligned on paper have so many reasons to be at-odds with one another. Both have betrayed their own causes, to some degree, and both are genuinely troubled by that. Martha, though, gets the episode’s focus, and her decision to leave Clark to go live with her parents is one of impressive and confident finality. Martha’s weakness has allowed her to remain active as an unintentional asset, so strong moves like this that show her individuality in a professional role that often doesn’t have one, is a big moment for her character. Philip, of course, recognizes this, which is why he has to resort to a last-ditch move in revealing his real face. I suppose it makes sense that a penultimate episode would throw out a cliffhanger like this, but since The Americans usually handles these reveals with care within episodes (like lingering on Paige finding out about her parents), it almost cheapens the moment because of how blatantly the device is used.
In fact, when “I Am Abassin Zadran” isn’t focused on Martha, it’s a little bit all over the place. This doesn’t mean there’s a definite lack of focus or that the episode is poor, especially when many finely-structured series could sometimes benefit from having a more improvisational feel, but it’s uncommon ground for The Americans, which usually feels so assured. Lacking the more concrete conflict (with beginning, middle and end) that Season 2 had, this season looks like there are just too many moving pieces to be addressed in one more episode to be really satisfactory. There’s no Kimberley in this episode. Paige’s story treads water, while still being interesting and occasionally heartrending. Nina is physically absent. Maurice doesn’t get taken care of just yet.
On the one hand, it’s great that the season has introduced so many things that are worth exploring over time (and, hopefully, the idea was that Nina’s story back in the Soviet Union would cross multiple seasons), but if The Americans has outclassed all of its peers at anything in the past, it’s plotting. This is one of the best-written shows in terms of the ways the content is formed into chunks of story and how it moves place-to-place organically. This season, while dropping massive character-based and emotional bombs, has maybe not lived up to those standards of the previous two. And even though Abassin Zadran and all the international political intrigue of this year has given the series a greater breadth and scope, it has rarely felt related to what’s going on in Philip and Elizabeth’s personal lives. The finale will almost certainly be a tense, engaging, impressive, and satisfying hour of television, which is why it might be worth considering this week how The Americans still has some kinks to work out in the future, and that it’s not the fully-formed, premium drama that last season might have been masquerading as.
Covert Observations:
– “You need to act as if everything’s perfectly normal.” Elizabeth and Philip actually look rather threatening with Paige, and the discomfort of Paige asking to get by them is the one real glimpse she’s seen of the nature of their work.
– Although, it looks like Paige is going to be getting a lot more of that following a visit with her grandmother that is likely to be the thing that brings her back closer to her mother.
– “I appreciate that, Agent Beeman.” I love little decisions like this in scripts in which the word choice (“Agent Beeman” instead of “Stan”) coveys so much about how a character is feeling.
– Ladies and gentlemen, Frank Langella and Margo Martindale. Together. On-screen. Just give us forty-five minutes of that each week, and we’re good.
[Photo via FX]
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Wow, you’re tough. But some good points. Thank you.