If there’s one recurring theme on The Americans, it’s that everything Philip and Elizabeth touch turns into garbage. This is especially true of the people they interact with. Just run down the list: Young-Hee and her family, the Northrop employee Elizabeth met in AA, and of course, Martha. She was just a lonely secretary, living by herself and desperate for love, and by the end of season four Philip had turned her into a treasonous double agent who is still hopelessly alone, but now in Russia, where she doesn’t speak the language and she can’t even call her parents. Not ideal. Poor, poor Martha.
(While you technically can’t count it as “a person,” Philip and Elizabeth’s interference also resulted in the temporary decommissioning of the Mail Robot. It says a lot about how jaded you can get watching this show that Elizabeth literally murdered an old woman while they were bugging the Mail Robot and I was still watching like “LEAVE THE ROBOT ALONE, IT’S THE ONLY GOOD THING LEFT IN THE WORLD AND YOU’RE RUINING IT!”)
This brings us to Stan Beeman, Philip and Elizabeth’s neighbor, FBI Russian hunter, and all-in-all nice — if occasionally misguided — guy. I am very, very worried about Stan.
It feels a little weird to say that now, as we move into season five. Things are actually kind of okay in Stan-world, all considered. Especially when you think about where he was even just at the beginning of season four. Dude was a mess. His wife had left him, his son wanted nothing to do with him, and his Russian girlfriend — which was a whole thing, and involved him killing someone and almost committing treason and really just falling apart all over the place, often while partially unshaven — got sent back to Russia and executed. He even got into a spat with Philip, his only real friend (“friend,” more on this in a moment), when he found out Philip and his soon-to-be ex were out socializing after their EST meeting. It was also not ideal.
But now? Stan is kind of good now. The Nina thing still hurts, and he’s still bummed out about Gaad’s mysterious screen door demise, but he’s actually starting to put a life together again. He’s dating. Things are better at work, as his relationship with Burov has made him a Justice Department golden boy. Matthew and Paige’s budding little romance seems to tickle him in a way that is both adorable and wee bit creepy (he seems a little too excited about his teenage son and best friend’s daughter getting it on, right?), but even then, kind of adorably creepy, to the extent that’s a thing. He seems happy for the first time in a while. I’m happy for him. He’s even offering people beer in a way that seems to suggest “Wanna kick back and have a cold one?” instead of “I’m gonna drink until I cry whether you accept my offer or not.” Progress!
And that’s why I’m so worried about him. No one on The Americans stays happy very long. In fact, a character displaying any signs of peace or well-being is usually a signal that doom is on the horizon. (Think about how happy Frank looked on vacation.) It’s easy to see how this all falls apart for him, too. One of the FBI’s top intelligence operatives, whose job — nay, specialty — is to identify, expose, and hopefully flip Russian operatives, has been living across the street from two notorious Russian spies for years. One of them is his best friend, possibly his only friend. His son is dating their daughter, who is also working as what you could now safely call a Russian operative trainee. He’s had dinner at their house dozens if not hundreds of times. If Philip and Elizabeth ever get exposed (arrested or found out after they return to Russia), Stan could be thoroughly embarrassed and disgraced, even if he’s the one who catches them. There’s a very Breaking Bad Walter/Hank vibe to it all, if you think about it. I half-expect Stan to put the whole thing together one day while sitting on the toilet.
It would be a big deal, too. Picture the headlines. Picture the news stories. Picture Poor Stan running into his house with a trench coat covering his head to trying to hide from the throng of reporters in his lawn who want to know how a man trained to notice Russian subterfuge lived 200 feet from a decades-long KGB plot without picking up on it. People will suspect he was in on it all along. If he is ever cleared, he’ll be a laughingstock. His whole career, THWOOP, down the tubes. He’ll be devastated, both in his professional and personal life. It will hurt me to watch. Physically. Real, actual pain.
The worst part of it all? The scenario I just laid out, Stan’s life’s work and entire personal lawman identity going up in flames, is not even the worst version. The worst one involves Stan figuring it out and Philip and Elizabeth using all that potential shame as a lever to blackmail him. It wouldn’t be out of character for them at all. It would hurt them, sure. Elizabeth felt awful about what she did to Young-Hee and Philip was all torn up when the Martha operation broke bad. This would definitely be more intense and personal and devastating because of their long, wig-less relationship with him, and I’m not sure Stan even goes for it after coming through the other end of everything with Nina, but it is out there. It could happen. It would not be fun. I don’t want to talk about this version any more.
Now, there is a chance that this ends well for Stan. It’s a slim one, admittedly, a longshot of historic proportions. I’m not even sure how it would have to play out to work. We’d need, at least, some combination of Stan catching them and uncovering something big and everyone kind of just ho-humming his years of close clueless proximity to them. (“Clueless” isn’t really fair. He did have some small suspicions at the beginning. He poked around their garage a little bit. But still. So many dinners.) In this scenario, the heroic nature of his discovery overrides the history of errors, and Stan gets, I don’t know, a parade. Or a medal. Or at least a cake. A happy ending, of some sorts.
But I think we should all know by now that The Americans doesn’t do happy endings. No, this will not end well, in all likelihood. And the most painful part is that we’re going into the next two seasons fully aware of how everything could turn sour for him. We’ll be watching the new, happy-ish Stan smile and goof around with Philip, waiting for the bottom to fall out. It’s rough to be rough. I’m not sure I’m ready.
Poor Stan. Poor, poor Stan.
