The Americans ‘The Colonel’ review: That’s what they always say before our people die for nothing

The big question at the beginning of The Americans was: what is the difference between who these people are and who they pretend to be? At what point do the two worlds blur and become not quite so well defined? For Philip and Elizabeth, that blurring happened almost immediately; for Nina, it’s just beginning.

Tonight’s finale was fittingly all about deception; although this of course occurs on the show all the time, everything tonight was on a grand scale. In addition to the meeting between Elizabeth’s and Sanford’s new recruit, which may be a setup, now there’s another meeting to deal with — one taking place at the Secretary of Defense’s house, which is definitely a setup. The FBI is all over that bugged clock, and they’ve managed to trace the signal to the car Phil and Elizabeth use to store their recording equipment, so they know that someone has to come and pick up the tapes in person. The plan is that Elizabeth will meet with the colonel as agreed and Phil will pick up the tapes from the Weinberger meeting.

This all sounds too easy to Elizabeth, who is sure that she is headed straight for a trap. Philip wants to step in and take her place at the meeting, and at this point, it’s clear that he’s not doing it because it’s the logical thing to do; he’s doing it because he loves her. Although he ends up being arrogant and controlling about it (his note when he springs the switch on Elizabeth begins: “I did it the way I wanted”), he approaches the entire situation not as a KGB agent but as a husband and father, telling Elizabeth that he loves her and that the kids need her. She, however, is adamant that if one of them stays with the kids, it should be him, leaving unspoken that if one of them goes to prison, it should be her.

There are a lot of reasons behind her refusal to let Phil go: her stubbornness, her belief that she’d probably stand up to the interrogation better — the issue of Philip liking America too much was never really resolved between them –, and her secret belief that the kids like Phil better. This is really sad to see, especially when Elizabeth pulls out an old tape of her own mother, who she hasn’t seen in years and may not even still be alive. She doesn’t want her own kids to have to be separated from their mother like she was, but she still has managed to convince herself that Philip is the one who deserves them. Paige proves her wrong by looking for her after having a nightmare, but Elizabeth still insists on being the one to meet the colonel while Phil gets the tapes and then takes the kids to Canada…until he pulls a somewhat rude switcheroo on her and runs off to meet the colonel himself.

Next comes THE TWIST, but first, let’s talk about Nina. Last we saw her, she had just admitted to Arkady that she was spying for the Americans. Now, rather than being sent back to Moscow for a trial (which Arkady assures her will not end in execution), she’s being given a chance to “redeem” herself by continuing her relationship with Stan so she can pump him for information, maybe plant something on him, and eventually try to turn him to the Soviet side. This puts her and Stan in almost the equivalent of Phil and Elizabeth’s relationship back in episode one; there are real emotions on Stan’s part, but for Nina, this is now just part of the job, and whatever she may feel is only going to cause confusion and likely be pushed to the side as she walks the line between showing Stan real feelings and fooling him into thinking she’s still loyal to the Americans. Stan’s earnestness when he tells Nina that he can finally get her out is met with real sadness on her part that they wouldn’t see each other any more if she had to leave, but it’s also met with a betrayal — she knows that he wouldn’t be able to get her out unless something big was going down, and in a moment that pretty much seals the fate of their romance, she leaves the safehouse to alert Arkady to the trap.

While Nina closes herself off to Stan, Claudia actually does some opening up in this episode, completing her shift  from sinister, mysterious opponent to ally — at least, for now. She was so clearly set up to be untrustworthy that either her character was planned to be something completely different or she still has some tricks up her sleeve. However, for this episode at least, all her cards seem to be on the table, as she gets to do some kickass spy work of her own and takes out the man who killed General Zhukov in the most stone-cold fashion possible: paralyzing him, slitting a vein in his neck, and leaving him on the floor to die while she sits on his sofa and regales him with the history of herself and Zhukov. It seems that she really was sincere when she told Elizabeth that she cared about him. Off the top of my head, this might be the first episode in which we get to see Claudia have a conversation with someone other than Phil or Elizabeth, and they’re oddly non-sinister for Claudia conversations. Apparently she’s been telling the Center all along that the meeting with the colonel is probably a setup and that they should pull the Jenningses out so they don’t get hurt. She seems disgusted at the thought that she is being forced to send her agents into an obviously disastrous situation. Her claims of caring and responsibility could just all be a put-on for Arkady’s sake, but if that were the case, she wouldn’t have been so quick to pull out after the marked car and rush into a meeting that could have been surrounded by FBI agents. Is it possible that Claudia’s integrity is showing? If so, I’m quite scandalized.

Now then, back to that twist. Every season finale has a twist of some kind, but even though I was expecting one, this one was still nerve-wracking and fanastic. Everyone on the Russian side is operating under the assumption that since the meeting with Sanford’s guy came so easily, it had to be a setup; getting the tapes from the Weinberger meeting was just a routine afterthought. Unfortunately, no one’s been checking up on Viola since the bug was planted, so no one has any idea that she spilled her guts last week and the whole meeting at the Secretary of Defense’s house is phony. As both our heroes head off to carry out their respective tasks, we have no idea if the colonel is for real, but we do know that whoever gets those tapes is in a shitload of trouble…and with Phil’s little switch, now that person is Elizabeth.

Thanks to Nina, the Rezidentura makes the call to abort the operation, but they have no way of getting the message out other than to spraypaint the “abort” symbol on several cars and have them speed around the streets. This leads to a great moment in which Claudia sees one of the cars, goes tearing ass to the meeting with the colonel, demands to know who he told, and then she and Phil realize that no one is coming to get them. Everything is perfectly quiet and safe, which means that Elizabeth is the one being set up. Philip gets to her just as she’s reaching the car with the tapes, but it’s far from a clean getaway; Stan sees the couple and connects the dots almost instantly, realizing that it’s the couple they’ve been looking for, and a shootout and car chase ensue. This whole sequence felt almost cinematic with its adrenaline-fueled spy thriller vibe, and culminates in a classic but still affecting conundrum when Elizabeth is shot.

The scene in which Philip has to help a nameless doctor perform surgery to dig out the bullet is short but powerful. It closes the loop on the question of who the Jenningses are — yes, they’re spies, and they’ve probably been trained to expect taking a bullet and trained to help in a medical emergency if necessary, but that’s not why Philip is helping. In this moment, even after all the double-crossing and car chasing, this isn’t about the mission; it’s about his wife. It’s clear that the mission is no longer separate from the marriage. The whole season has been laying the foundation for this, and it really pays off here, as we realize that the Jennings marriage hasn’t been a cover story for quite a long time.

As the episode draws to a close, not everything is perfectly rosy, however. Nina and Stan are becoming the inverse of Elizabeth and Phil; Stan now feels like he owes Nina because the setup didn’t work, so he can’t get her out. I’d be very surprised if she didn’t use this to get information out of him next season as she adds more and more layers to her deception. In addition, the FBI still has Sanford on those alimony charges, and he now wants immunity and money in return for telling them everything he knows about his KGB handler. It seems the trail leading to the Jenningses will never go cold — but then again, they’ve made it this far.

The season ends on a portentous note; in the episode’s final moments, Paige comes home from the Beemans to get her homework, gets curious about why her mother was up doing laundry so late the night before, and snoops around in the laundry room. There’s all kinds of stuff she could find in there — Elizabeth’s tape of her mother speaking Russian, all the spy equipment that Phil and Elizabeth keep hidden in the basement, maybe some coded messages — but what does she find? Nothing but piles of folded clothes. To her, there is no deception or pretending. Her mother is still her mother, but this incident is significant in an even larger way; if Elizabeth is so scrupulous that her own daughter still has no suspicions, it seems pretty likely that when the FBI continues to try to find the Russian spies they’re after, they’ll find exactly the same thing as Paige: nothing.

• After 13 episodes, Keri Russell finally gets a nice wig!
• The technology  on the microdot won’t actually be real for another 15 years
• Claudia has to fill out a form after Elizabeth’s request for her reassignment; it has 27 sections. Claudia is not pleased