The Americans 4.06
Apr. 21st, 2016 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhich is emotional freefall for more than one character.
If Martha was a dead woman walking last episode already, she's one even more so now. When she walked out on Gabriel and the safehouse, I felt like screaming "don't do this", and yet, if you look at it from her perspective, does she have any reason to believe he (and the KGB in general) doesn't intend to kill her already? (Incidentally, I guess that's what the scene at the Rezidentura was there for where Arkady briefs Oleg and Tatiana on Martha - so the audience knows that the plan at this point is in fact extraction, not death.) Presumably she believes he's the one who has taken her gun, too. And Martha has become a double agent first unwittingly and then solely because of her love for Clark, not because she sees anything good about Soviet Union, as opposed to the late Gregory or Charles. It's suicidal to walk away, and she has to know that, but if she believes she's dead already...
But back to the start. Philip deciding unilaterally to extract Martha and thus force Gabriel's (and the Centre's) hand isn't surprising, and would have worked on a technical level, but for those pesky emotions on everyone's part. I have been wondering whether Martha post-revelation realised that Jennifer didn't really exist, but apparantly not; until she sees Jennifer again in this episode, in the safehouse, she seems to have clung to the belief that Jennifer was indeed Clark's sister. (And that Clark is Clark, only spying for the other side.) When she asks Clark about her, the "are you involved with her?" is the second question already, and there's no good way Philip can answer this, since the core of the story he's been selling to Martha from the start was that he's madly in love with her, and only her. So he gives a classic Philip non-answer ("we've been working together for a long time"). But Martha isn't even the woman most rattled on that occasion, though Elizabeth's shock is of a different nature and for a slightly different cause - when she sees Philip out of Clark guise and learns, as Gabriel did earlier, that Philip has shown himself to Martha this way since three weeks. Part of the shock is the security breach. The bigger part is what Elizabeth voices when she says "did you want her to see you?". Because that implies Philip wanting to share something real about himself with Martha. (Flashback to season 2: that's why Elizabeth was so rattled by Martha's tipsy talk about what an animal Clark was during sex that she started to push for the disastrous ending role play.) In a way, this is to her what the Gregory experience was for Philip in s1, when he found out Elizabeth came to Gregory with her fears - with something real - back in the day.
Btw: and just as it would have felt terribly wrong if Philip had been the one to kill Gregory late in s1 (he'd have done it partly to spare Elizabeth having to do it, but there couldn't NOT have been emotions on his own involved, and it would have damaged him and Elizabeth long term), it would be a disaster now if Elizabeth ends up as the one to kill Martha.
In other plot threads: William delivering the titular rat also delivers a bit of background that calls slightly into question what Gabriel said about him at the start of the season, when he told P & E that William and his partner hadn't worked out together, which made it sound like they didn't get along. What William says that his partner, Eliza (obvious point about the name is obvious) was sent back and he wanted to protest that but didn't have the courage to, which makes it sound more like they got along too well for the KGB's taste. Hmmmm.
Elizabeth making the Korean dish Younghee taught her for Paige and referring to Younghee as a friend (again) when talking to both Paige and Henry continues the unprecedented way in which she lets her professional relationship swap over into her private life - meaning this friendship IS real to her, meaning, this show being this show, disaster must follow. I repeat my guess that this time, Elizabeth will be forced to watch the fallout for Younghee of whatever the reason for her assignment was, and it won't be pretty, or quick.
Philip taking the Chekovian gun from Martha's handbag is such a great ambigous moment. Is he afraid she'll kill herself? Or someone else? Either way, he does it, and that contributes to the impending tragedy. (It also very much makes me fear he'll end up shooting her with this gun.)
If Martha was a dead woman walking last episode already, she's one even more so now. When she walked out on Gabriel and the safehouse, I felt like screaming "don't do this", and yet, if you look at it from her perspective, does she have any reason to believe he (and the KGB in general) doesn't intend to kill her already? (Incidentally, I guess that's what the scene at the Rezidentura was there for where Arkady briefs Oleg and Tatiana on Martha - so the audience knows that the plan at this point is in fact extraction, not death.) Presumably she believes he's the one who has taken her gun, too. And Martha has become a double agent first unwittingly and then solely because of her love for Clark, not because she sees anything good about Soviet Union, as opposed to the late Gregory or Charles. It's suicidal to walk away, and she has to know that, but if she believes she's dead already...
But back to the start. Philip deciding unilaterally to extract Martha and thus force Gabriel's (and the Centre's) hand isn't surprising, and would have worked on a technical level, but for those pesky emotions on everyone's part. I have been wondering whether Martha post-revelation realised that Jennifer didn't really exist, but apparantly not; until she sees Jennifer again in this episode, in the safehouse, she seems to have clung to the belief that Jennifer was indeed Clark's sister. (And that Clark is Clark, only spying for the other side.) When she asks Clark about her, the "are you involved with her?" is the second question already, and there's no good way Philip can answer this, since the core of the story he's been selling to Martha from the start was that he's madly in love with her, and only her. So he gives a classic Philip non-answer ("we've been working together for a long time"). But Martha isn't even the woman most rattled on that occasion, though Elizabeth's shock is of a different nature and for a slightly different cause - when she sees Philip out of Clark guise and learns, as Gabriel did earlier, that Philip has shown himself to Martha this way since three weeks. Part of the shock is the security breach. The bigger part is what Elizabeth voices when she says "did you want her to see you?". Because that implies Philip wanting to share something real about himself with Martha. (Flashback to season 2: that's why Elizabeth was so rattled by Martha's tipsy talk about what an animal Clark was during sex that she started to push for the disastrous ending role play.) In a way, this is to her what the Gregory experience was for Philip in s1, when he found out Elizabeth came to Gregory with her fears - with something real - back in the day.
Btw: and just as it would have felt terribly wrong if Philip had been the one to kill Gregory late in s1 (he'd have done it partly to spare Elizabeth having to do it, but there couldn't NOT have been emotions on his own involved, and it would have damaged him and Elizabeth long term), it would be a disaster now if Elizabeth ends up as the one to kill Martha.
In other plot threads: William delivering the titular rat also delivers a bit of background that calls slightly into question what Gabriel said about him at the start of the season, when he told P & E that William and his partner hadn't worked out together, which made it sound like they didn't get along. What William says that his partner, Eliza (obvious point about the name is obvious) was sent back and he wanted to protest that but didn't have the courage to, which makes it sound more like they got along too well for the KGB's taste. Hmmmm.
Elizabeth making the Korean dish Younghee taught her for Paige and referring to Younghee as a friend (again) when talking to both Paige and Henry continues the unprecedented way in which she lets her professional relationship swap over into her private life - meaning this friendship IS real to her, meaning, this show being this show, disaster must follow. I repeat my guess that this time, Elizabeth will be forced to watch the fallout for Younghee of whatever the reason for her assignment was, and it won't be pretty, or quick.
Philip taking the Chekovian gun from Martha's handbag is such a great ambigous moment. Is he afraid she'll kill herself? Or someone else? Either way, he does it, and that contributes to the impending tragedy. (It also very much makes me fear he'll end up shooting her with this gun.)
