Elizabeth Jennings dreams of death. As she lies in bed, burning with fever from an adverse reaction to chloramphenicol, the powerful antibiotic that gave last night’s episode of The Americans its title, her mind takes her back to her childhood in the Soviet Union. She’s tending to her late mother, suffering from her own early brush with mortality in the form of tuberculosis. The woman gives her daughter instructions on what to do if she dies, though in reality her death is still decades away. When Elizabeth awakens, she’s determined to give her own daughter the same gift her mother gave her, at least according to their liaisons at the Centre: the knowledge that she died loving her child. If the Centre goes through with the plan to murder Pastor Tim and his wife Alice, their own daughter, Paige, will never forgive them, never understand that the love they say they feel for her is real and not a Soviet mind game. After all they’ve put her through, isn’t sparing her that the last they can do?
I reviewed this week’s episode of The Americans for the New York Observer. I’m proud of this piece.
Tags: new york observer, reviews, The Americans, TV, TV reviews