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I Wish I Knew How to Quit You

Some Thoughts on That Elegiac, Brilliant, and Resonant Finale of 'The Americans'

By Karen GoldfarbPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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In the last sequence that ends the haunting finale of The Americans, the car carrying former Soviet spies Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, who have fled back to their homeland after years of posing and living as suburbanites in the United States, all while carrying out their (at times) murderous mission, are finally coming home. Years after Mischa and Nadezhda arrive in the United States to become Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, it has all finally fallen apart.

As the car they are riding in makes its way on the final leg of their journey to Moscow, Tchaikovsky's elegiac "None But the Lonely Heart," floats through the scene as Elizabeth and Philip sit together in the back seat, intertwined. That music—which I can't stop listening to, and hearing in my head, long since that haunting ending—underscores their emotional devastation as the car moves through a desolate stretch of road. The lights of Moscow glimmer distantly and Philip asks their driver, Arkady, to stop. He and Elizabeth go and stand on the edge of the road and stare at the distant city. "It feels strange," Philip says in English.

"We will get used to it," Elizabeth says in Russian.

One can only imagine what they must be feeling as they perhaps contemplate the emotional and physical wreckage left behind, and the loss of their two children, who have not come with them back home. Paige, their daughter, who they were grooming for a life in the Spy Game, and who abruptly abandons them at the train station, and Henry, who they leave to live on his own as an "American."

All through this final season, I kept thinking what a monster Elizabeth had become; how heartless—a stone cold killer. I see her now, though, as a warrior who now must confront, when she returns home, the fact that the Soviet cause that she killed for and was willing to die for had long since turned corrupt. When the finale takes place, it is 1987, and the Soviet Union was four years away from officially crumbling, and two years from the collapse of the Berlin Wall. There was some hope then for a better society, but as we all know, Russia has since devolved into a fascist state, run by Oligarchs and strongman Putin. Can you imagine the sense of betrayal Elizabeth and Philip will likely feel once they encounter the true nature of the regime?

One of Elizabeth's targets for information before the upcoming U.S-Soviet Summit that haunted her all through season six was negotiator Glen Haskard—husband of the dying Erica, a brilliant artist. Elizabeth, in one of the many transformations, becomes Stephanie, her nurse. The painter, though suffering through cancer, forces her to learn to draw. She begs her to look —to really see. This, I think, is the beginning of Elizabeth's transformation and change. This new ability, I think, will help guide her, hopefully, for the rest of her life.

In the end, I think, the show was about living with loss, with shattered dreams. How do you go on when all that you have loved has been lost? Actress Keri Russell expresses a similar sentiment in an interview with The New York Times: "So this ending is still an ending about family dynamics. What is the most painful within that? That's why it's so appropriate. Philip letting Stan down, and having to look at that and live with the look on Stan's face, the shock and the huge betrayal. And Elizabeth knowing what Paige thinks of her. Those are the real fireworks," she said.

I keep asking myself: What will become of them—Elizabeth and Philip and Paige and Henry and Oleg and Stan, the FBI agent, whose vulnerability to friendship and love made him transcend his cop role to become something else. I keep wondering what will become of them, and us?

It's been two weeks since that haunting finale played. That sense of loss has been compounded by the tragic suicides of both Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Obviously, one can't compare the loss of fictional characters to that of two incredibly gifted human beings, whose deaths have left a void in the texture of our universe. Yet—I keep going back again and again to the finale—because in its sorrowful ending, I am able to live within those feelings of sorrow. Perhaps that is one of the purposes of great art. We can live within these stories, and they help us feel our lives.

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About the Creator

Karen Goldfarb

I am a filmmaker, writer, and teacher. I love many things -- but especially my dogs, Lucky & Charlie. Here is link to my film: Fascination: Helena's Story, which won Best Documentary at NYCIFF.http://fascinationfilm.weebly.com/

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