As promised...The Americans!
Spring break has begun, and I'm enjoying a lazy Sunday before resuming my thesis work and before entering Marking Hell. So here are my reviews of both "Chloramphenicol" and "Clark's Place", two terrific episodes of The Americans, which is still my favourite tv show, even though Better Call Saul is definitley becoming a serious challenger.
The Americans is so good in terms of writing, directing and acting...and "Chloramphenicol" was one of the best episodes the series had delievered. It deserves its own entry so I shall make a second post for "Clark's Place".
The episode, whose title refers to a rather dangerous antibiotic, shows most characters being trapped: Philip and Elizabeth are "quarantined" in Gabriel's apartment; Martha who now lives in fears of being unmasked and has been trapped into a date with a coworker who's getting suspicious; Paige is kept in the dark while being trapped in a situation her parents put her: an empty house and a web of lies. Oleg is trapped in his father's home, for his brother's funeral, because of his son duty, and while he calls another land his home. He eventually agrees to stay trapped, and remain in USSR, when his father promises to help Nina.
And there's Nina who's trapped in a prison cell again, after she screwed up her chances of freedom by passing Anton's note.
"I am not who I was" Nina said in the previous episode, when Vassili asked her "why" she would do such thing. The phrase would apply to the other female characters too.
There's a lot of tensions throughout the episode, even though there's little surprise in the end. No viewers could fear that Elizabeth would die from the "glanders" virus for instance...and yet those scenes were very strong because they allowed character development. The viral situation, or rather Elizabeth's fear of dying, was both a metaphor for the kind of life they live, and a catalyst. Elizabeth finally tells Philip to do what he wants, acknowledging what he wants without being judgemental about it. Feverish and exhausted, she's haunted by her mother once more, and then she kinda cuts the umbilical cord - which in her case has always been a metaphor for her indefectible loyalty to the Mother Land.
Nadjezda used to be such a good daughter, taking care of her sick mother...
Now it's time for a sick Elizabeth to be a mother first and foremost. After her professional phonecall to "postpone the delivery" , that is to warn the Centre to cancel the killing of Pastor Tim and his wife, the phonecall she gave to Paige left her in an upset transitional state, that the reaction to the antiotics emphized.
Eventually she is not who she used to be. She goes against the Centre and agrees with Philip to put their daughter first and give up killing Tim and Alice.
Of course, Gabriel eventually says that they have to offer something to the Centre in exchange for sparing those lives, which is of course carrying on the "recruit Paige" mission. Neither Philip nor Elizabeth is happy about that:
The Jennings couldn't touch each other during the episode, because of the risk of contagion, but they definitely were together in that huis-clos with sick Gabriel and William:
They can count on each other, support each other...they may have never proprely wed, exchanging the marital vows, and never said the "in health and sickness" words, but they really are a married couple, worrying about their kids, looking in the same direction.
I especially loved this shot below, the intimacy of the scene, the lack of shoes, Elizabeth's graceful way of sitting, Philip's relaxed posture, the way they look at one another. The deadly pathogen demanding that they keep some distance between them, and yet they are in harmony:
So when Elizabeth tells Philip what to do "if" something happens to her, they are no longer framed together. The bathroom scene is mostly filmed in reverse shots.
This shot totally echoed the ones of young Nadezhda, dutifully cleaning her mother's bloody cloth (and what a metaphor again for the blood this KGB agent has on her hands for serving Mother Land!):
When Elizabeth is done, she re-inters the frame eventually. The camera focuses on Philip, while she's still a shadow and then a blurry figure, as if she almost had already vanished from his life, fading to black, and was slowly being embodied again. But the mere idea of a future without her is too painful for Philip to fathom. Matthew Rhys's face just tells the audience what no words could convey. He's, as usual, awesome.
And at least, Elizabeth got to talk to Paige on the phone, poor Martha only reached Clark's answering machine, leaving messages over and over, and he never called back.
So she goes out with Agent Aderholt. BTW I loved the way Martha kept calling him "Agent Aderholt" in the office, when he was addressing her as "Martha". Allison Wright was fantastic in the phonecall scene and in the dinner scene. Martha has turned into such a consummate liar. What an asset!
Paige has changed to...she's now able to lie to Stan's face with a certain aplomb when she tells him the cover up story that explains her parents's sudden absence and changes of plan.
Eventually the family is reunited.
That bowling scene is a moment of fun and levity, offering a nice mother/daughter bonding moment...
...and setting up, by contrast, the shock of the final scene.
Before that, we visit Nina as she's returning to the prison cell. She looks at the other bad, probably remembering the last time she submitted in order to save her own ass, when she betrayed her Belgian cellmate in season 3.
That act of betrayal was the proverbial straw that broke the camel. Nina then got close to Anton, as she was told to do, but found with him something very pure that she wouldn't betray.
Nina is no longer that person who was mostly in survival mode for so long. Looking back, I think we saw glimpses of what Nina could/would become. The first time was when she came clean to Arkady after Vlad was murdered. She put herself online then and we could see that they were more to Nina than that selfish girl who was willing to do anything, to betray her country and be exploited by men.The second time, she was watching The French Lieutenant Mistress with Stan, raging about the script and what men thought women would act; the third time was during her pillow conversation with Oleg when she remembered being a young girl in some Pioneer camp and being so proud of her Lenin pin. Once upon a time she believed in something, before the system turned her into the Nina we met in season 1.
The note she passed for Anton, was Nina's final rebellion - as Oleg's father said, she "interfered with the project" -, an act of resistance that was both individual and ethical. It was also an act of kindness and selflessness that reconciled her with her communist younger self. Eventually, Nina was sentenced to death as a traitor but she was faithful to what mattered at last. The last dream she had echoed the one from the previous episode, wherein she saw Stan and Anton in some sort of safe place that was filled with white flowers and looked like a funeral room. It was also the counterpoint to Elizabeth's fever induced flashback.
She dreamed of a road that will not be taken, a futur that couldn't happen, a release shared with the only man who never trapped her into doing anything. A happy ending, with pathos, heavenly light and piano score, that The Americans is too good a show to indulge in.
Did Oleg's father really tried to help Nina and was too late because the machinery has already been set in motion? Or did he actually manage to hasten Nina's execution in order to prevent his son from seeing her and thus aligning himself with a traitor? The jury is still out on this one.
Anyway, Nina had to die. The writers and the viewers knew it was time to pull the plug.
Erik Adams summed it up in his review on the AV. Club:
"From a cold, emotionless critical perspective, an execution is the logical endpoint of Nina’s story. The show’s visits with her have grown increasingly short, and returning her to a prison cell is a narrative cul de sac that no gorgeously lit dream can circumvent. As the story ends, so does her life."
He also wrote: "As the bureaucrats sign off on the paper work, the only lingering reminder of Nina Sergeevna Krilova is the blood on the ground. She’s left her mark on The Americans: A red blot. How tragically appropriate. How appropriately tragic."
The blood leitmotiv was there early on, from Gabriel's cough, to the bloody cloth Nadezhda tried to clean in Elizabeth's vision...to Gabriel's mentioning his youth when he "was afraid all the time”, during the Great Terror, when they "were killing each other everyday" and nobody was safe. So the episode did prepare the audience for blood, but when it happened we weren't quite ready for the kill, like Nina who bursted into tears and struggled before the bullet hit her head.
She didn't end wrapped in a suitcase with, but in a cover...disposable, already forgotten.
IMO the most poignant detail happened before the actual execution, when the guards showed up in the cell, and one of them put her poor belongings in a small disposable bag. That's when I realised it was over and they were taking her to her death.
The blood will be cleaned (the cleaning tools were already there in the corner), but a stain will remain. Damnit, they killed Nina!
The Americans is so good in terms of writing, directing and acting...and "Chloramphenicol" was one of the best episodes the series had delievered. It deserves its own entry so I shall make a second post for "Clark's Place".
The episode, whose title refers to a rather dangerous antibiotic, shows most characters being trapped: Philip and Elizabeth are "quarantined" in Gabriel's apartment; Martha who now lives in fears of being unmasked and has been trapped into a date with a coworker who's getting suspicious; Paige is kept in the dark while being trapped in a situation her parents put her: an empty house and a web of lies. Oleg is trapped in his father's home, for his brother's funeral, because of his son duty, and while he calls another land his home. He eventually agrees to stay trapped, and remain in USSR, when his father promises to help Nina.
And there's Nina who's trapped in a prison cell again, after she screwed up her chances of freedom by passing Anton's note.
"I am not who I was" Nina said in the previous episode, when Vassili asked her "why" she would do such thing. The phrase would apply to the other female characters too.
There's a lot of tensions throughout the episode, even though there's little surprise in the end. No viewers could fear that Elizabeth would die from the "glanders" virus for instance...and yet those scenes were very strong because they allowed character development. The viral situation, or rather Elizabeth's fear of dying, was both a metaphor for the kind of life they live, and a catalyst. Elizabeth finally tells Philip to do what he wants, acknowledging what he wants without being judgemental about it. Feverish and exhausted, she's haunted by her mother once more, and then she kinda cuts the umbilical cord - which in her case has always been a metaphor for her indefectible loyalty to the Mother Land.
Nadjezda used to be such a good daughter, taking care of her sick mother...
Now it's time for a sick Elizabeth to be a mother first and foremost. After her professional phonecall to "postpone the delivery" , that is to warn the Centre to cancel the killing of Pastor Tim and his wife, the phonecall she gave to Paige left her in an upset transitional state, that the reaction to the antiotics emphized.
Eventually she is not who she used to be. She goes against the Centre and agrees with Philip to put their daughter first and give up killing Tim and Alice.
Of course, Gabriel eventually says that they have to offer something to the Centre in exchange for sparing those lives, which is of course carrying on the "recruit Paige" mission. Neither Philip nor Elizabeth is happy about that:
The Jennings couldn't touch each other during the episode, because of the risk of contagion, but they definitely were together in that huis-clos with sick Gabriel and William:
They can count on each other, support each other...they may have never proprely wed, exchanging the marital vows, and never said the "in health and sickness" words, but they really are a married couple, worrying about their kids, looking in the same direction.
I especially loved this shot below, the intimacy of the scene, the lack of shoes, Elizabeth's graceful way of sitting, Philip's relaxed posture, the way they look at one another. The deadly pathogen demanding that they keep some distance between them, and yet they are in harmony:
So when Elizabeth tells Philip what to do "if" something happens to her, they are no longer framed together. The bathroom scene is mostly filmed in reverse shots.
This shot totally echoed the ones of young Nadezhda, dutifully cleaning her mother's bloody cloth (and what a metaphor again for the blood this KGB agent has on her hands for serving Mother Land!):
When Elizabeth is done, she re-inters the frame eventually. The camera focuses on Philip, while she's still a shadow and then a blurry figure, as if she almost had already vanished from his life, fading to black, and was slowly being embodied again. But the mere idea of a future without her is too painful for Philip to fathom. Matthew Rhys's face just tells the audience what no words could convey. He's, as usual, awesome.
And at least, Elizabeth got to talk to Paige on the phone, poor Martha only reached Clark's answering machine, leaving messages over and over, and he never called back.
So she goes out with Agent Aderholt. BTW I loved the way Martha kept calling him "Agent Aderholt" in the office, when he was addressing her as "Martha". Allison Wright was fantastic in the phonecall scene and in the dinner scene. Martha has turned into such a consummate liar. What an asset!
Paige has changed to...she's now able to lie to Stan's face with a certain aplomb when she tells him the cover up story that explains her parents's sudden absence and changes of plan.
Eventually the family is reunited.
That bowling scene is a moment of fun and levity, offering a nice mother/daughter bonding moment...
...and setting up, by contrast, the shock of the final scene.
Before that, we visit Nina as she's returning to the prison cell. She looks at the other bad, probably remembering the last time she submitted in order to save her own ass, when she betrayed her Belgian cellmate in season 3.
That act of betrayal was the proverbial straw that broke the camel. Nina then got close to Anton, as she was told to do, but found with him something very pure that she wouldn't betray.
Nina is no longer that person who was mostly in survival mode for so long. Looking back, I think we saw glimpses of what Nina could/would become. The first time was when she came clean to Arkady after Vlad was murdered. She put herself online then and we could see that they were more to Nina than that selfish girl who was willing to do anything, to betray her country and be exploited by men.The second time, she was watching The French Lieutenant Mistress with Stan, raging about the script and what men thought women would act; the third time was during her pillow conversation with Oleg when she remembered being a young girl in some Pioneer camp and being so proud of her Lenin pin. Once upon a time she believed in something, before the system turned her into the Nina we met in season 1.
The note she passed for Anton, was Nina's final rebellion - as Oleg's father said, she "interfered with the project" -, an act of resistance that was both individual and ethical. It was also an act of kindness and selflessness that reconciled her with her communist younger self. Eventually, Nina was sentenced to death as a traitor but she was faithful to what mattered at last. The last dream she had echoed the one from the previous episode, wherein she saw Stan and Anton in some sort of safe place that was filled with white flowers and looked like a funeral room. It was also the counterpoint to Elizabeth's fever induced flashback.
She dreamed of a road that will not be taken, a futur that couldn't happen, a release shared with the only man who never trapped her into doing anything. A happy ending, with pathos, heavenly light and piano score, that The Americans is too good a show to indulge in.
Did Oleg's father really tried to help Nina and was too late because the machinery has already been set in motion? Or did he actually manage to hasten Nina's execution in order to prevent his son from seeing her and thus aligning himself with a traitor? The jury is still out on this one.
Anyway, Nina had to die. The writers and the viewers knew it was time to pull the plug.
Erik Adams summed it up in his review on the AV. Club:
"From a cold, emotionless critical perspective, an execution is the logical endpoint of Nina’s story. The show’s visits with her have grown increasingly short, and returning her to a prison cell is a narrative cul de sac that no gorgeously lit dream can circumvent. As the story ends, so does her life."
He also wrote: "As the bureaucrats sign off on the paper work, the only lingering reminder of Nina Sergeevna Krilova is the blood on the ground. She’s left her mark on The Americans: A red blot. How tragically appropriate. How appropriately tragic."
The blood leitmotiv was there early on, from Gabriel's cough, to the bloody cloth Nadezhda tried to clean in Elizabeth's vision...to Gabriel's mentioning his youth when he "was afraid all the time”, during the Great Terror, when they "were killing each other everyday" and nobody was safe. So the episode did prepare the audience for blood, but when it happened we weren't quite ready for the kill, like Nina who bursted into tears and struggled before the bullet hit her head.
She didn't end wrapped in a suitcase with, but in a cover...disposable, already forgotten.
IMO the most poignant detail happened before the actual execution, when the guards showed up in the cell, and one of them put her poor belongings in a small disposable bag. That's when I realised it was over and they were taking her to her death.
The blood will be cleaned (the cleaning tools were already there in the corner), but a stain will remain. Damnit, they killed Nina!