The Americans: "The Oath" Review

The penultimate episode of The Americans, “The Oath,” is jam-packed with plot developments.  I review it, but only after I’ve caught at least five grapes in a row, thrown from across the room by my daughter¹.

I know very little about drama.  Not the “interoffice, who’s sleeping with whom” drama, or even the section in Netflix, but rather the construct of drama as a theoretical underpinning of classical written artistry.  I took a course in undergrad to fulfill one of my English major requirements called “Theory of Drama.”  I wrote my big paper that semester about the reliability of narration with regard to the movie Derailed starring Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston. Other than that, I really don’t know much beyond the “character foil/dramatic irony” plot devices.

I did learn a little something about a theory called “Chekhov’s Gun,” which is mostly appropriate because of the use of Guns, and the fact that Anton Chekhov was Russian. Synergy! Chekhov’s gun is a literary device that basically means, if a gun is introduced in the first act, it must go off by the end of the play. Otherwise, why is it introduced at all?  Of course, the gun could be a red herring² meant to draw the attention of the viewer, all the while the real object of concern is in front of their face.

I will always have a soft place in my heart for the long form storytelling that has come into vogue on TV in recent years, and more so, I will always be a sucker for a writing team that respects its viewers enough to make callbacks to things that happened ten episodes ago, which may mean three months or more prior³. The writing staff on The Americans respects their audience enough to call back from old episodes plot twists that were seemingly forgotten.

At the start of this season, I bemoaned the fluidity of the episodic mission-of-the-week, especially when they picked up on the Star Wars Missile Defense program, and then dropped it like a bad habit the next week, or SecDef Caspar Weinberger’s clock.  It made me feel all smart and stuff to know that, when they started referring to Weinberger, it was the Secretary of Defense, or that a brief flash of a strategic missile defense program would eventually blossom into FRICKIN’ LASER BEAMS ATTACHED TO METEORS…. INNNNN…. SPAAAAAAAACE⁴.

As we delved deeper into the Jennings’ marriage, and learned more about our characters, the writers felt less of a need to utilize the nostalgia crutch to tie episodes together.  The characters are now fully fleshed out, and I think we’d rather an episode about Nina as a triple agent, and how she has learned through osmosis (or sexual transmission) how to manipulate her contacts with just a smile and doe eyes than an episode about Stan and Phil, without their wives, drunkenly trying to figure out a Rubik’s cube while waiting for the next episode of Miami Vice to start⁵. To be fair, I’d probably enjoy watching Stan and Phil fumble drunkenly with a Rubik’s cube before Miami Vice starts.

All of the exposition about the Jennings’ marriage, and the thought that Nina could possibly expose them, especially with her taking the titular “Oath” (or was it Clark and Martha’s sham wedding vows?), drew us away from the very obvious gun introduced early in the season: the cleaning lady.  She has put the Jennings in far more danger. Stan’s Spidey Sense is tingling, and that is never a good thing if you’re in the crosshairs.  Unfortunately for the Feds, Nina is now back on board with mother Russia. She takes the oath seriously, and now has a specific prime directive – protect the “Illegals”⁶.

The questions left for the remainder of the season are:

-Is this mysterious high ranking Colonel a set up?

-What can Claudia/Granny do to either regain the trust, or failing that, the fear of the Jennings?  Especially Elizabeth?

-How long does Martha survive? Or, rather, how long does Martha’s marriage to Clark⁷ last? And how does it end?  Clark “cheating” with Elizabeth? Or does Martha get the Vlad treatment – a bullet to the back of her skull while she’s chewing a burger?

For all the potential build up, there does not feel like the final episode has lots of pressing questions.  Perhaps that is because I’m not getting the sense that Nina’s admission to the Rezident, Arkady, of her duplicity to Mother Russia, is some type of play.  I get the sense that she believes Stan is responsible for Vlad’s death, either directly or indirectly, and now she is recommitted to the Soviets.  I see that as a safety valve for Philip and Elizabeth.  Also, I know that there is a second season, so it won’t just be Philip and Elizabeth in the clink, and Stan eating caviar alone at his kitchen island, looking wistfully at a darkened dining room.

I welcome your thoughts in the comment section below!

¹-This is why I’m not an actor (other than the fact that, even in stupid videos I’ve made for my job, my nickname should be “destroyer of the fourth wall.”) If I were Matthew Rhys in that scene, and chucked a grape across the table to the actress playing my daughter, and she did catch it in her mouth on the first try, I’d have celebrated like I was Joe Carter in Game Six of the 1993 World Series:

²-Meaning a diversionary tactic.  Not the character from “A Pup Named Scooby Doo”: 

³-This is yet another reason why the “non-stop” season, which would be promulgated by my revised network television schedule (cheap plug coming):

http://pointzerothe.blogspot.com/2013/02/BetterNetworkTVSchedule.html - that’s a page view device called log-rolling, my friends. Which would be great if I got paid per click.  Or at all.

⁴-If you’re scoring at home, that would be an Austin Powers reference that bled into a Muppets “Pigs in space” reference.  I think that’s a six-four-three double play.

⁵-Though Agent Gaad only played the role of the clueless idiot foil to Arkady’s… now slightly less clueless idiot character, I had been referring to Gaad as Agent John Boy, which is because Richard Thomas plays both Gaad and John Boy Walton.  A quick Google search turns up that The Waltons was still on the air in 1981, wrapping up its run in June.  Judging by the snowfall when the defense contractor was arrested, this is still early April (wasn’t it warm enough for Paige and Henry to walk home and almost get molested by Donny in his dumpy thunderbird while he drank beer by the duck pond?!) or maybe they skipped the whole summer.  Either way, it would be a nice winking throwaway line to have someone ask “did you see the series finale of The Waltons last night?” and have Gaad, steely eyed, say something like, “I’m far more interested in the 1980s, not the 1940s.”

⁶-No chance this nomenclature isn’t a specific reference to our ongoing, and increasingly idiotic 2012/2013 immigration debate.

⁷-Full Name: Clark Herbert Westerfeld.  That’s the greatest dork name ever.  Clark Herbert Westerfeld.  The only way it would get any worse would be if he were named something like “Myron Yancy Poindexter.”