For all of it's trappings of Cold War politics, 80s settings and technology, and espionage, at it's core, season one of The Americans revolves around one central question.
How much can I trust the person I share a bed with?
Spycraft and marriage have things in
common. They’re both
games of trust, of making decisions in the face of uncertainty and ambiguous
evidence, games where reliable information is the most valuable currency.
Phillip and Elizabeth have been together over 20 years. But things keep coming up from new developments to old flames. Passion ebbs and flows.
And the questions keep coming up:
To what extent can one of us make
unilateral decisions for what he/she believes is the other’s own good?
What is the statute of limitations
on old lovers and the road not taken?
Can a lie told 20 years ago be used
against us today?
What are you telling people outside
our relationship about us? About me? Do those people have our best interests at
heart?
Do the years we spent together count
for something when things aren’t working now?
In a relationship where both of us
are having sex with other people, what counts as a betrayal?
What do we tell the kids?
Perhaps the biggest question is this
one:
What makes a marriage a marriage
anyway?
Phillip and Elizabeth have made no
official vows, gone through no ceremony.
Their commitment is a professional requirement, not a personal
commitment. They report to different bosses, have different priorities. They sleep with other people.
On the other hand, they live
together, raise their children together, work together. Officially, they are
married. They live a married life.
Is their marriage real? Some days it
seems like it is. Some days it seems completely false. There are times they
both believe what they have is real…but they don‘t
always both believe it on the SAME days.
Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings spend
their lives being pulled in many different directions. They are
constantly trying to serve the demands of multiple masters from their bosses,
to the other relationships in their lives, to each other, to the demands of
their own conscience. They are two individuals trying to make their way in the
world, juggling and balancing their needs with the conflicting needs of those
around them.
And they’re trying to do those things while both
depending and being dependent on another person who is walking a parallel, but
different, tightrope of their own.
Which, I suppose, makes it as real
as any other marriage out there.
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