If I had to sum up this hour-long portrait of how Elizabeth’s studied, professionally mandated distance from the emotional needs of other people — except insofar as they can be instrumentalized and weaponized — is slowly destroying her, I’d do it with an exchange she has with Claudia. Elizabeth can’t help but see how Paige has responded to the woman’s grandmotherly presence in her life. “The way Paige has taken to you,” Elizabeth says to Claudia, “if something were to happen to me at any point…” Your mind fills in the blank before Elizabeth can do so herself — surely she wants Claudia to care for her daughter in the event of her own death — until Elizabeth finishes the thought: “I think you could finish with her.” Just as when she uses her children as a ploy to get the general to let down his guard when he pulls out the gun she’ll eventually use to kill him, the mission is the priority, not the well-being of another person, not even that of her own daughter. It’s clear where that leads them both.

I reviewed last week’s episode of The Americans, in which Paige gets a good look at her mother’s monstrousness, for Decider.

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

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