Throughout its runtime, the episode remarkably threads together the impressions of shared torment.
The real danger in the world of The Americans is that one fails to notice they’re being crushed.
Having been told so many lies, Paige has now become the teller, her parents’ child after all.
The episode reexamines the distinctions we draw between offense and defense, between the necessary evil and the greater good.
The episode is, in one sense, a portrait of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Indeed, it’s another faintly electronic rhythm, this one a music cue, that sends this dazzling season of The Americans hurtling toward its conclusion.
Michel Gondry’s film is a delirious representation of incipient personalities in bloom.