The Americans is coming back for its final season and I am nervous about Stan and Paige. Too nervous, probably. “It’s just a television show,” I tell myself in fleeting moments of rational thinking, moments before my brain flips the all-caps lever and shouts things at itself like “PAIGE NEVER HAD A CHANCE AT A NORMAL LIFE” or “STAN IS A TARGET” or “OLEG IS DOING THE BEST HE CAN.” This last one is especially weird because Oleg is a KGB operative during the Cold War and years of American history education has trained me to view these types of people as the enemy. Hell, I’m even nervous about Philip and Elizabeth, the show’s two main spies, who murdered an innocent American scientist last season using what can best be described as a WWE tag team maneuver.
But this isn’t about them. Or Oleg. There will be plenty of time to discuss their various issues when the season starts and I resume my very normal and healthy next-day Anxiety Reports. For now, we focus on Stan and Paige, because they are the show’s most doomed sympathetic characters and I am not prepared for their fates, whatever they are. I think it will help to talk through it a bit. Let’s do that. Let’s try to figure out which one is more screwed. It’s a fun game because they winner is actually the loser and vice versa. Television is fun.
The case for Stan
Stan is hosed in at least two ways.
WAY NUMBER ONE: This happens if/when he figures out that his neighbors and friends are Russian spies. You have to assume that’s coming at some point. And with it comes two sub-issues. The first is that, if he reports everything to his superiors, he will be completely disgraced. One of the FBI’s top Cold Warriors has been duped for years by Russian spies. One of them was his best friend. His son dated their daughter, who is also on her way to becoming a Russian spy. He’ll be a laughingstock at best and a suspected collaborator at worst. And that’s if it doesn’t reach the media, which it probably will, because “Top FBI Agent Unwittingly Socialized With Murderous Russian Spies” is a juicy headline. He’ll be ruined, professionally and personally, and I’m not sure I’m ready to see Sad Stan again.
The second sub-issue is, like, what if this potential unending shame is used as blackmail fuel? What if Stan becomes compromised and starts helping Philip and Elizabeth with stuff in an attempt to cover his years-long naïveté about their work? He won’t, I’m almost sure of it, because Stan is a pretty solid dude, except for the whole Nina-Oleg thing, which, upon further review, I guess we can’t just brush aside. Don’t do it, Stan! Prove to me that you learned your lesson!
(Also, they might kill him. Which wouldn’t be great, either.)
WAY NUMBER TWO: His new girlfriend Renee is up to something. I don’t know what yet, but I don’t trust her and never have, dating back to their first racquetball encounter. And she did that whole thing at the end of last season where she was a little too insistent that he keep working at the FBI when he brought up idea of leaving. Is she a Russian agent digging for information? Is she a CIA operative looking into his potential Russian ties? (Do they know about Philip and Elizabeth?!) Or is she just a badge-chasing thrill-junkie who wants him to stay in a job that makes him miserable because she likes the idea of dating an FBI agent? I suppose the last one isn’t as bad in the short term, but still. Not a healthy relationship.
Also, be prepared for me shouting “TOLDJA” when Renee’s duplicity is revealed, as though I figured out a mystery that the show hadn’t been hinting at with obvious camera angles and side glances from the first moment she appeared on screen.
The case for Paige
Have you seen the teasers for the final season? You should watch them. Because, in a few of them, Paige appears to be engaged in a martial arts battle. With Philip. Who is her father. I don’t know how much we are supposed to extrapolate from a short teaser like this (probably much less than I am extrapolating), but that seems… bad. Yeah. Let’s go with “bad.”
Which would not be anything new for Paige. Paige’s life has been a damn hellscape for a few seasons now. It all started with the Pastor Tim thing. That’s not true. It started before that — remember the not-fun hitchhiking adventure with Henry and the beer-slugging creep? — but it really started with the Pastor Tim thing. I feel like about half of her screen time the last two seasons involved shots of her lying in bed with her eyes open, staring off into the middle distance, pondering the fact that her parents are secret Russian spies and telling the one adult she trusted led to a massive ongoing crisis that ended with him getting shipped off to South America. Not ideal. For her, I mean. I bet Pastor Tim likes living in Buenos Aires.
Also not ideal: She is being trained and groomed to be a human weapon and teen superspy by her mother. That sounds much cooler than it is. (Spy Kids? More like LIE KIDS.) (Sorry.) (Kind of.) Think of the things Elizabeth has seen and done. I don’t want that life for Paige. I don’t want that life for anyone, really, but especially not for Paige. She should be going to the mall and gossiping about teen heartthrobs and instead she is broken in ways that I don’t even know how to begin to fix. It bums me out spectacularly.
And here’s the other thing: If Philip and Elizabeth get caught, then what? Because as much as I don’t want Paige to turn into an icy Russian spy, I also don’t like the idea of her being known across the country as the child of infamous Russian spies. Being a teenager is hard enough, man. She doesn’t need all that. (One silver lining: At least there’s no Google yet.) The best case scenario for her is… I’m not even sure. Getting taken away and placed with a loving family who will get her about a decade of intense therapy? And even then, think of Paige at age 40. This is all stuff you can’t erase. It’s not good, any way you slice it.
We have to find a way to save Henry. He still has hope. Just send him to his fancy school and let him become a ladies man tech billionaire. Give me one win this season, The Americans! Geez!
Verdict
Oh great. Now I’m worried about Henry. I can’t be expected to make a decision under these circumstances.
