The montage near the close of the episode was by far one of the best the show has done through its first two seasons, especially with the added benefit of an original Pete Townshend/Nathan Barr composition. Nina has no guilt that she is sleeping with Oleg and Stan at the same time, yet we see his two-timing eating away at Agent Beeman to the point where he can’t see the forest for the trees. His wife, always the more upfront and honest one in the marriage (again, a mirror image of the gender roles Elizabeth and Phillip inhabit) actually had the courage to tell him that she was having an affair. What’s more, the people around him are accomplishing everything that he could never do when fooling around behind someone’s back. Basically everything having to do with Stan’s stories right now has to do with cheating, I’m sure not coincidentally. Instead, Paige is stuck being miserable in her own home (welcome to your teenage years, sweetheart) and Elizabeth and Phillip are playing the bad guys under their own roof, one more reluctant to do so than the other.Įlsewhere, Nina continues to play Stan for information and future opportunities at subterfuge just as the rest of his life is falling apart. Just think: “Oh, sorry honey, I forgot to mention the reason your father and I don’t like you going to church is that we were actually raised in a strict and secular Russian society before we were sent to infiltrate America.” Yes, I think that would go over quite well. Of course in this case Paige pretty much is calling out her mother appropriately, but there isn’t anything that Elizabeth can reasonably respond with that wouldn’t blow everything to pieces. She made some great points as to how they aren’t reacting the same way as when Henry broke into someone’s home for goodness sake, and they’re the observations any pre-teen would make thinking they are in the absolutely right. The pairing of the Annelise and Elizabeth plots were definitely the most obvious deployment of this particular tactic, but I was more of a fan of how Paige reacted to her parents’ refusal to allow her to go to camp. Everything from Elizabeth and Phillip carrying out polar opposite missions at the same time, to Nina playing both sides of the coin once again with Oleg and Stan, to Paige spelling out just how differently her parents were treating her from her brother, there was a very clear mirroring between every single plot and subplot. Last night’s The Americans was as symbolic an episode as a top-tier drama would ever dare to produce.