“I am alone without them, here. Alone.” This line — delivered by Soviet hockey player turned double agent turned defector turned likely divorcé Gennadi to the FBI agent he considers his only friend, Stan Beeman — hit me harder than anything else in this week’s episode of The Americans. As a reminder, this week’s episode of The Americans opened with Elizabeth Jennings washing a man’s brains and blood off her face, then yelling at her traumatized daughter Paige for making the unforgivable mistake of running toward the scene to make sure her own mom was still alive. It includes Elizabeth straight-up lying to Paige about the nature of the man’s death, which she calls a suicide without mentioning that “assisted suicide” is closer to the mark but still woefully inadequate. It includes Elizabeth rolling some poor sap who may have been her easiest mark ever, effortlessly getting him to tell her everything he knows about the weak spots at the secure warehouse where he works before grabbing him from behind and choking him to death on his way out the door. It includes Stan apologizing to his old ally Oleg Burov for his inadvertent role in the CIA threatening him and his family should he refuse to turn double agent, and Oleg rejecting the apology. It includes Philip Jennings growing so alarmed about Elizabeth’s contempt for the United States and oblique hints about her participation in some kind of power struggle against Mikhail Gorbachev that he accepts Oleg’s proposal to spy on, and potentially act to stop, his own wife. If you’re in the market to get hit hard, this is an embarrassment of riches.

So why did this line from a minor character in the grand scheme of things affect me so much? “I am alone without them, here. Alone.” When he says this, Gennadi has been unceremoniously yanked from his double life in the middle of the airport, where in the middle of one of his courier missions Stan approaches him saying he understands he’s requested political asylum — an agreed-upon signal that he’s at risk and must end his life in the Soviet Union forever. Stan’s old partner Dennis Aderholt does the same with Gennadi’s wife Sofia, the TASS news agency worker who helped the flip Gennadi in the first place, but who’s now so unhappy in their marriage that she’s leaking secrets to her new beau, some unseen guy named Bogdan. Other agents pick up her son Ilya from elementary school. The protection they’ll need as defectors ensures that they’ll be moved far away; if the divorce goes through, they’ll be moved to separate locations where they’ll be unreachable to one another. So Sofia moves ahead with her plan to divorce him, Gennadi will never see her or Ilya again. What all of this means for Gennadi is that he’s lost his homeland, his home life, both of his jobs, and his family in the space of an afternoon. He is a man without a country.

Is there a better way to describe each individual member of the Jennings family?

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Americans for Decider. As an aside, it’s nice that the soundtrack calmed down a bit.

Tags: decider, reviews, The Americans, TV, TV reviews

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