My favorite moment of this week’s The Americans was silent. Told that she’s been found guilty, that the only question is whether she’ll survive her punishment, triple-crossed triple-agent Nina is handed a letter written on her behalf by Anton Baklanov, the kidnapped scientist she was instructed to monitor but befriended instead, risking her life and that of her estranged but supportive husband to help him make contact with his son. We don’t know what it says, don’t even see the writing on it, let alone have it translated by subtitles or read aloud by Nina. But whatever it is, in that grey room, in her grey prison clothes, it makes her smile. Moments of happiness are so few and far between in the ironically optimistically titled “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow,” last night’s episode—the next closest things were Paige Jennings watching her oblivious brother Henry play video games, Stan Beeman figuring out that Martha Hanson is the mole in his office, and Agent Aderholt agreeing to help him figure it out; none of these characters have much happiness in store if things proceed in their current direction—that this has the impact of an explosion.
I reviewed last week’s The Americans for the New York Observer.
Tags: new york observer, reviews, The Americans, TV, TV reviews