* Henry is thriving at his private school, a hockey star with his own cheering section of girls (and the time jump also means the show no longer has to try to hide Keidrich Sellati’s frequent growth spurts, or do its own equivalent of Taller Ghost Walt from Lost);

* Oleg left the KGB, got married, became a dad, grew an impressive beard, and now works under his father in the transportation ministry, while Arkady (last seen in season four) is still in the spy game, and supporting the pro-Gorbachev forces in the government;

The Americans is no stranger to time jumps, most famously the seven month jump that happens late in the classic episode “The Magic of David Copperfield” . Still, the three-plus years that have passed since the season five finale make for by far the biggest jump the series has ever taken, and it takes a while to adjust to the many changes:

The Americans is back for its final season. I published my review of the early episodes last week , and I have specific thoughts on the premiere coming up just as soon as I’m aware of my wife…

* Paige is a college student, but also now a member of Elizabeth’s support team, doing the kind of surveillance and counter-surveillance jobs Hans (RIP) used to do, and her relationship to Elizabeth is a secret from the rest of the team, who know her as “Julie”;

and

* Philip is loving life as a travel agent, having expanded the office, bought a slick new car, and finally getting to go country line dancing in public without shame, a touching and funny callback to the moment from the series premiere when he kicked up his cowboy-booted heels to “Queen of Hearts” while out shopping with an embarrassed Paige.

Really, though, the time jump serves two purposes, for both the plot and emotional core of the series: it takes us straight to this precarious moment when Gorbachev’s push for a more open Russia had the potential to end the Cold War, and it deposits us at a point when Elizabeth has been a solo agent for a long time, and it is weighing on her as much or more than we ever saw Philip suffering in episodes like “Martial Eagle.”

Scene after scene, I found myself thinking, “God, Elizabeth looks like hell,” not just because the makeup artists and Keri Russell’s performance were playing up how physically exhausted she must be after years of working without her partner and most trusted confidante, but because of how well Russell was conveying the emotional fatigue Elizabeth is experiencing by now. She’s always been the true believer in the partnership, and her belief hasn’t wavered — down to her willingness to take orders from these anti-Gorbachev forces looking to preserve what Elizabeth has no idea has become an untenable, unlivable status quo for most of her people — but as she warned Tuan in the season five finale, “It’s too hard — the work we do — to do it alone.” Claudia, Paige, Norm, and the others provide some degree of support, but all the hard decisions and harder actions are down to her and her alone, and if she wasn’t so devoutly committed to the cause, she’d clearly be screaming to get out by now.

“Dead Hand” has to spend so much time playing catch up, and on setting up the main conflicts for this abbreviated final season, that it could run the risk of being nothing but exposition. As it is, certain scenes like Elizabeth learning about the eponymous nuclear response system nearly choke on all the names and technical details being listed. But The Americans has always wisely emphasized character over plot, so that no matter how dense or outright confusing the missions may be, all that really matters is how Elizabeth and (until now) Philip feel about them. And there is no shortage of feeling throughout the premiere, between the palpable joy and relief Philip is enjoying living his cover identity for real, the weight that’s crushing Elizabeth, the unexpectedly strong grandmotherly bond that’s built between Paige and Claudia in our absence, and Oleg’s reluctant decision to return to America in hopes of recruiting an even more reluctant Philip to join him and Arkady in stopping whatever mission Elizabeth has been given.

Spy husband vs spy wife had long seemed like a road the series could go down at some point, though usually in the context of Philip’s love of America versus Elizabeth’s disdain for their adopted country. Instead, the conflict is about their homeland, with Oleg risking his freedom, and in turn asking Philip to give up his cushy travel agent lifestyle(*), in order to win this cold civil war for the heart of Mother Russia. This is a more complicated and fraught reason for the spouses to potentially be at odds, and also one that ties in neatly with the way the time jump has brought us so close to the conclusion of the larger conflict between the US and the USSR. The Americans is at its best when it makes the global local, and in inviting Philip to unretire as part of this Cold War endgame, the series has again deftly connected the big and small pictures.

(*) Stan’s two buddies — whom he knows in two very different ways — working together will almost certainly not end well.



Like most problems in less homicidal marriages, this conflict could perhaps be solved by open communication between the two partners, but Elizabeth is so tired and angry at having to kill the sailor who held onto Paige’s ID that she won’t even let Philip talk to her in the episode’s closing moments. Oleg and Philip are potentially risking a lot, but so is she, with this new assignment so important and so well-guarded that she now has to wear a cyanide capsule around her neck at all times in the event the mission is compromised.