I’ll close with one of my favorite-ever scenes of allegorically resonant sickness in a series that’s been full of them: Elizabeth in her home-care disguise, taking her patient to a World Series party so she can spy on the woman’s husband and a potential double agent with in the Russian negotiating team, then getting vomited on as the dying artist panics and gushes up food and fluid from her disease-ridden guts. It’s Elizabeth who pushed the woman into attending the party in the first place so she’d have a chance to spy first-hand; it’s Elizabeth who talked her and her husband out of euthanasia to keep the information channel open; it’s the hated Russian negotiator who rushes over to help clean the vomit by Elizabeth’s side.
As best we can tell, Elizabeth’s primary reaction to the incident is dismay that it interrupted the taped conversation between her husband and the Russian. But earlier in the episode, the artist told Elizabeth she wishes she’d spent less time painting and more time with her spouse “The work is the best of me,” she thought, “something to leave behind. But really, who cares? Who cares. All those hours, just…honestly, I wish I’d spent them with Glenn. Just being with him, doing I don’t know what. Just…doesn’t matter.” Something’s eating Elizabeth up from the inside, too: her work. “There’s something rotten about it,” Oleg says to Philip; perhaps that’s why the artist vomits three times, once for each of Elizabeth’s victims earlier in the episode. Will Elizabeth listen to the woman whose suffering she’s aiding and abetting and get out before any more lives are wasted, with bullets or otherwise?
I reviewed last night’s episode of The Americans for Decider. This is such a rewarding show to write about. It’s got so much to give.
Tags: decider, reviews, The Americans, TV, TV reviews