Season 4, episode 8 of The Americans stood out last year, even more than the vein in Elizabeth’s (Keri Russell) forehead. It may not have struck you at first, but just a few minutes into the episode, you knew something was up. And that’s because Martha (Alison Wright) and Clark (Matthew Rhys) got dressed, went about their morning routines, and drove to the middle of nowhere to shuttle Martha off on a plane to Russia, without saying anything at all. It was a significant moment made even bolder by its lack of verbal communication. The movements said it all.

The scene was beautiful and interesting, and you can’t help but wonder if it’s inspired even more similar scenes in season 5. So far in episode one, there was the hole digging scene, again employing long stretches of silence from the actors to explain what was happening: they were digging a hole to recover an important (and rather toxic) item. No “Heya pal, how’s it going over there?” was necessary. Even in the darkness, we could understand what was happening.

In episode two, Elizabeth takes a walk through a science lab to gather intel, snooping around until she’s swarmed by bugs, and opening her mouth would be the worst idea possible. And in last night’s episode a similar scenario plays out, where Phillip and Elizabeth break into the facility where the pests are being grown and tested and stare in silence, with only the sounds of a door opening or closing, careful footsteps, and of course those disgusting wings flapping away. A full 3 minutes and 25 seconds goes by without any words uttered between the pair.

These special stretches vary in length, in intensity, and sometimes even in the overall importance of the episode. But they are truly important to the show. The Americans, with it’s complex themes and sneakiness, does not need to rely on words and dialogue to get the point across. It does the viewers the service of respecting them and their intelligence and allowing them the fun of putting it all together. While sometimes a little exposition might bring clarification, it also would not carry with it the intrigue that waiting and holding out to see what happens next does.

So is this intentional? Is the FX drama including a dialogue-free scene in each episode just for funsies? We asked showunners Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg what the deal was with the continued use of these silent scenes, with Weisberg noting, “It’s funny to hear you say that because I don’t think we were aware that there was a progression season to season. If that’s happening for us unconsciously I’m a little scared to think what’s coming next season!”

He went on to say, “When I think about the scene at the end of the first episode of this season, our goal was what it often is, which is to try to just make a realistic scene. If they’re not going to be talking and what we’re going to be showing is just the physical labor and the hard work, then it’s not going to have dialogue. And what we try to do is not be pushed into a corner or afraid, so we try not to feel that, ‘Well its gotta have dialogue because you can’t do that long of a scene without dialogue.’ Well let’s see, maybe you can. Maybe if it’s real and you’re with them and you feel like what they’re doing makes sense, maybe it’s fine. We thought it worked out pretty well.”

Fields added, “Part of what Joe’s saying is that both the subconscious answer to the question and a conscious answer. Consciously, we talk A LOT about letting the actions speak for themselves. So we’ll go through our scripts and we’ll take out any clever lines of dialogue that feel like they were written by us and smart writers to show off our writing, and we try to whittle things down to the scenes as we feel they really would have played if these characters were real and these things were happening. And that is a conscious effort on our part, but if less and less dialogue is emerging and you’re noticing it in certain places in the show, I guess the best we can do is let our subconscious take credit for that. That’s just happened.”

It’s incredible to think of this show ever being “whittled down” considering the layers upon layers of both spoken and unspoken information exchanged between characters in any given moment. Unconscious or not, something tells us there will be even more of these stunning silent scenes to come. And we’ll be listening.

Where to watch The Americans