The Americans: "The Clock" Review

The mission-driven spy drama is on full display in the second episode of The Americans.  For those who wanted cloaks, daggers, and dead drops, “The Clock” doesn’t disappoint.  All that was missing was a self-destructing message.  I’ll be better able to speak about that as soon as I pull this speaker foam out of my esophagus.

The central theme to this episode, though never stated overtly, is leverage, which, of course, is the central theme to the Cold War.  Whichever side can get more leverage will have the upper hand.  Stan Beeman and his partner shake down an electronics store owner and his Soviet caviar salesman while Liz and Phil infiltrate Caspar Weinberger’s house via his maid.

What this episode does is give us the prototypical spy mission, and a relatively small one at that, and make it dramatic by focusing not on the goal, but on the process of finding leverage.  For Liz and Phil, they have a mission.  They actually only state that the mission is “nearly impossible” and lament that they could very easily be exposed for attempting it ¹.  Instead of saying “WE HAVE TO BUG THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE’S HOUSE?! ZOMG!!” They put their heads down and get to work figuring out a plan to accomplish the task.  They won’t even be doing the actual listening to the bug – they test it, but they’ll turn over the frequency to the rest of their KGB brethren in country.

The part of the episode that messes with my mind is the parts of the mission planning that are skipped.  In fact, from Phil’s girlfriend photographing SecDef Weinberger’s house to the poisoning of the young man outside of his school, only a few minutes elapse.  We aren’t told of the poison, where they got it, what it is, or how they know who Weinberger’s maid’s son is.  At first glance, this could just be lazy writing: “Eh, I don’t think the viewing audience cares about scenes where Phil and Liz stake out the Weinberger house, attempting to discern which one is the maid who dusts a clock in Caspar’s office,” which is true.  But, instead of just ignoring that point, the tone of the episode is “of course we knew.”  This provides an unsettling notion that the KGB knows.

This is more establishment of the setting – early 80s, the Soviets have yet to fall, and the cracks have yet to be understood by the American Public.  They are still the Red Menace.  They know not only all about our government, they know how to exert leverage on our government to subvert it, and we are to accept that fact as the premise of the show.  They always have an in.

The other part of the Liz and Phil storyline is the notion of faith.  Phil whines that they are dealing with someone of faith, and those people are always hard to crack.  However, he ignores the fact that Weinberger’s maid accepts on faith that they hold the magic bullet to save her son.  Based solely on their word alone, she understands that taking her sick child to a doctor will mean certain death.

Of course, as we learn, this is the wrong way to attempt leverage on her.  Her faith is shaken, but she defies them because she is given enough time to accept the death of her son as she does the right thing.  Instead, Phil is forced to remove from her the decision of when her son dies by attempting to smother him violently.  She was willing to allow him to drift into death by inaction, because she would not work with the devil.  When his death is presented as gruesome and unexpected, she breaks, and the clock is put in place.  That was their leverage – instead of offering her control over her son’s death, removing that sense of control.

Stan Beeman’s storyline is hailed as good-old-fashioned detective work.  They follow a Soviet secretary who is trading beluga caviar for stereo equipment that she stuffs with money to send back to the Soviet Union.  While they have far less screen time, Stan and his partner are able to gently pressure the electronics store owner at first, by taking his caviar delivery.  It isn’t until later that they try the rough interrogation style, stuffing speaker foam into his mouth, Jack Bauer-style².

They then gently confront the Soviet secretary with her situation – she is violating Soviet laws.  She has managed to place herself in the difficult position of living in a country hostile to her, and piss off the group of people who would protect her.  She is between a rock and a hard place; Stan and his partner found their leverage by roughing up Clark, the store owner.

Other Items:

From the 80s:

-The Electronics store is wildly anachronistic.  Nowadays, they’d be roughing up some kid at a Best Buy who needs six more credits toward his associates’ degree.  And Best Buy doesn’t accept caviar as payment.

-I love that Phil and Henry play hockey against one another, an obvious reference to the Miracle on Ice.  The Reagan Administration having dawned, they aren’t more than a year out from the greatest moment in US Sports History, a moment for which Phil and Liz must’ve had to shine on their excitement:

Still gives me chills.

Liz and Phil’s Family Dynamic:

-Phil has a girlfriend.  He seduces the Swedish Ambassador’s wife, and gets her to take pictures of Weinberger’s office, which touches off the entire episode.  Liz knows about this, and knows it is part of the job.  Still, there is a lingering jealousy when she sees a picture of the young Ambassador’s wife: “You didn’t tell me she looked like THAT.” She tries to sound casual, but it comes off as envious.  This flips from the previous episode when Phil listens to Liz dropping a digit on her mark from the bar.

-Liz spends the episode focused on their children, worried about Henry, and displaying fear that Paige³ is growing up too fast because she needs a bra.

-Both of these points make me wonder: are Liz and Phil able to swap familial roles when necessary?  Is that part of their training – to keep balance in their “household”: one needs to be focused on the mission while the other focuses on the family to give the illusion of reality to anyone watching?

The Paranoia:

-The diplomats partying at Weinberger’s house casually mention K19, referencing the submarine that was eventually a bad biopic in 2002 featuring an even worse Harrison Ford Russian Accent.

-They also reference Nuclear Missiles in Nicaragua, referring to the Nicaraguan revolution.  The Reagan administration had previously identified Nicaragua as a place where the Soviets might try to make inroads to have a foothold or, as they put it, “beachhead” in the western hemisphere.  There was fear that there could be a second nuclear missile crisis the likes of Cuba in Central America.  This precipitated the US funding radical change via the CIA, including what would eventually come to be known as the Iran-Contra affair.

-The Soviets mention Directorate S. This brings me back to JJ Abrams and Alias, as the first season or two of Alias, the direct enemy of SD-6 is K-Directorate.

-At the end of the episode, those tasked with listening to Weinbergers tapped office overhear the discussion of the missile defense shield, and realize that the Americans have a way to remove the mutuality of Mutually Assured Destruction that comes with pointing all of the nukes at each other.

The timeline on this show is about to either become very deliberate and elongated, or something big from history is going to happen very soon into this show’s run.  Just google “March 30^th, 1981” if you’re curious as to what I’m referring.

¹-As an aside, I have to state that I am not a fan of, in the second episode, making the mission seem like it is impossible, when it was never completely impossible.  It makes every successive mission, which will no doubt become incrementally more difficult, with more peril, and more opportunity to be exposed, seem equally “impossible.”  Liz and Phil are not new to the spy game. They’ve been in country for 16 years, and they killed a guy and dumped his body while listening to Phil Collins last episode.  Poisonings and bugging offices isn’t exactly cleaning up a murder from the trunk of your Olds.  Act like you’ve been there before, you two.

²-In season 1, early on, Bauer threatens to stuff a towel down Ted Koffel’s Coffel's throat, into his stomach, before allowing it to start digesting, then pulling it out, along with the lining of his stomach.  “It’s extremely painful, and it takes most people about a week to die.”

³-I was curious if Paige and Henry were extremely common names in the late 1960s/early 1970s.  I had this great idea that they must’ve just looked for names to blend in during the 1970s so their kids seemed less obvious. Neither are on the top 40 list from that time period.  Yeah, but still.