Know a Person: The Americans, Season 4, Episode 1

Martha says this to Stan when news breaks at the FBI office where they work that Gene, the resident computer geek, has taken his own life, seemingly for feelings of guilt about working as a double agent.
The truth is that Gene was killed and that Martha knows it, that she is the one who planted the bug that was discovered, but that she didn’t know at the time that she was working for the Soviet Union. She was doing it for her husband, Clark, who she believed to be an investigator of internal affairs within the FBI.
But Clark doesn’t really exist. He’s actually Philip, a Soviet agent working within the US. Martha knows that now, or, rather, she knows just enough to continue believing in the love she has for Clark. At this point, she knows she has been deceived and doesn’t seem to want to know the full extent of it. That’s very understandable.
In the midst of all of its layers of deception, I don’t think The Americans believes what Martha says here, that to really know a person is impossible. I think that Philip and (his wife and fellow Soviet agent) Elizabeth do really know each other. It is only because they know each other that they are able to rely on each other to the extent that they do. It is only because of this that they can truly be partners. I don’t think that either of them would have the strength to do what they do without the other. The two characters who have to put the most energy into pretending can only truly let their walls down with and for each other.
To have to pretend so much when they have each other in their lives, someone real and true to hold on to, is difficult. To have to do it alone sounds to me almost impossible, and I know a thing or two about pretending.
If you are fortunate enough to have someone who really knows you, someone you can be real with, remember:

Notes
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