Don’t Be Alone–On The Americans, Season 4, Episode 8
There are no villains on The Americans. All the characters are struggling with the systems in which they find themselves, systems which require them to live without integrity, to compromise or destroy parts of themselves.
At the beginning of this week’s episode (entitled “The Magic of David Copperfield V: The Statue of Liberty Disappears”), Philip says goodbye to Martha, who is put on a plane for Russia.




Philip seems to understand that not being alone means living with some integrity, being whole and real and honest with himself and with another person, and that wholeness is exactly what his job denies him, though he keeps reaching for it.






And sure, hockey might be part of it, but really, it’s the things Philip has to do but that go against his nature that prevent him from living with integrity, and I mean integrity in the sense of being whole. He has to cut out pieces of himself to do the things he must do, and he is trying to at least acknowledge and honor those parts of himself that hate the things he must do, as when he goes to visit the grave of a man he very reluctantly killed. But even in this act, this gesture toward wholeness, he is held back, and must pretend to be visiting someone else. He keeps a safe distance from the grave, and can only look at it from a distance.



Meanwhile, Elizabeth goes to an est seminar.









That’s complicated. We do. Our cultures do. For Philip and Elizabeth and other characters on The Americans, their jobs and their countries do. But what made this episode of The Americans so effective and uncomfortable for me is the way in which Elizabeth mercilessly perpetuates the cycle, putting her daughter inside a box where living an authentic life is impossible.


















And Paige does. We see her, months later, pretending to happily spend time with Pastor Tim and his wife.

But it is not honest. It is not authentic.











The light inside her has gone out. Paige may be living with her family, but because she can’t live an authentic life anymore, she’s actually deeply, entirely alone.
Notes
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