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'The Americans' Season Finale Recap

The most reactionary show on TV weighs in: Ronnie was right

"Paige, now, you're a great American. Don't let those commie folks of yours get you down. Have a jelly bean." (AP)
April 23, 2015

The third season of FX's The Americans will be discussed below. So, you know, spoilers and such. 

In the end, Ronnie was right.

The title of the third season finale of The Americans is "March 8, 1983." It's not necessarily a famous date, though fans of Ronald Reagan will probably recognize it. It's a date that marked one of the defining moments of the Gipper's presidency and the beginning of the end of the Cold War. It's the date of the Evil Empire speech.

And, indeed, we get a glimpse of the president delivering the speech toward the end of the episode. It comes when Philip (Matthew Rhys) is baring his soul to Elizabeth (Keri Russell): He was forced to kill a young FBI employee today and frame him for a crime of espionage committed by one of his assets. It's the latest in a string of murders committed by the Soviet spy and he's having trouble living with himself. In fact, earlier in the episode he has said as much, telling another of his assets—this one a Pakistani whom he helped cover up a murder by literally breaking a woman's body until he could fit it in a square suitcase—that he simply doesn't like himself much of the time.

As Philip is trying to explain this to her, Elizabeth hushes him. She wants to hear Reagan's speech. They, and we, do:

So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I've always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

Elizabeth, like the progressives in this country, heard only the phrase "Evil Empire" and she is shocked, appalled. She is working for good! For the struggle of workers around the world! For justice and racial equality! It is not she and her husband—who have spent the last three seasons murdering and spying and rutting their way through D.C. and its environs—who are evil! It's Reagan. It's the United States.

But Philip knows the truth. You can see it in his eyes, in the realization that he and Elizabeth will never be on the same page. This is a struggle between right and wrong and good and evil—and he is doing the evil.

I've argued before that The Americans is the most reactionary show on television, and this season has done little to dissuade me from that notion. There are little things—like the program daring to show Nelson Mandela's ANC engaging in the brutal, terroristic practice of necklacing or the decision to have Ronald Reagan personally sign off (through an intermediary) on a FBI agent's rogue operation while simultaneously denouncing government bureaucracy. More broadly, though, The Americans is about the evils of a government trying to destroy the family unit in order to serve the nation. Consider the plight of the Jewish scientist who has been kidnapped and repatriated to the Soviet Union in order to crack the code of stealth technology. He has been forcibly split from his wife and child, tempted with harlots to make him forget their love, and forced to write letters he hides in his mattress and knows they'll never receive to maintain any sort of spiritual connection to his loved ones.

Splitting child from parent in order to fulfill the greater good is something Elizabeth is fine with but Philip struggles. Philip doesn't want The Center to have control of their daughter, Paige (Holly Taylor), doesn't want her to experience the horrors with which he struggles. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is copacetic. She's a true believer. She thinks she hasn't been damaged by the things she has been forced to do for the motherland, and thinks Paige will be happy to follow in her footsteps.

But, as we see at the end of the episode, Paige isn't happy. Despite their best efforts, Philip and Elizabeth have managed to raise a God-fearing American—and the revelation that they are actually Soviet spies has broken her spirit. It's fitting that Reagan gave the Evil Empire speech to a convention of evangelicals, given that Paige's newfound faith has sparked her crisis of conscience: as the episode draws to a close, she is on the phone with her pastor, confessing her parents' sins.

The USSR has managed to destroy this family unit. But they're not going to like the results.