Season 3, Episode 2: Baggage
What I am thinking about this week on The Americans is the idea of a “calling.” I have no idea how people who haven’t spent a significant amount of time in church settings are with this term, but I heard it a lot growing up, especially as a teen and young adult trying to figure out what my “calling” was.
I’ve been listening to The Americans Podcast, which aired along with the show and was, at least in this season, hosted by people who made the show. On the corresponding podcast episode, one of the executive producers said they made an intentional decision this season not to do every story in every episode, which is why we don’t see much of the Paige/church drama, but we know that Elizabeth has been going with her for the last few months, bonding, learning about “the enemy,” encouraging Paige’s yearning to make a difference.
image: Paige saying “I…read the newspaper” while standing at the kitchen island.
sure Paige, me too
In the final moments of the episode, Elizabeth confides in Philip that one of the reasons she feels so strongly that Paige should join the KGB’s efforts is because her mother encouraged her to do it. “When I was called, my mother didn’t hesitate.”
image: Elizabeth in The Americans sitting by a filing cabinet and saying, “When I was called, my mother didn’t hesitate.”
I don’t know if that word was intentionally meant to invoke the idea of “calling,” or if it was meant more literally, but it returns us to one of the central tensions in the show: Elizabeth and Philip’s differing feelings about their jobs. For Elizabeth what they do is a noble pursuit put above discomfort or pain because of the meaning, fulfillment, and purpose it brings into one’s life. I’m not sure we know at this point why Philip joined the KGB in the first place, but our sense that for him their work is a burden that saps away at him continues to grow. (Hard to disagree in an episode with one of the most viscerally upsetting scenes in the series—the packing of Anneliese into a suitcase.)
And yet a calling is frequently spoken of as both: a source of fulfillment and a source of pain, purpose and burden. The show is uninterested in which of them is “right,” it’s interested in asking which perspective you identify with, and why, and in reminding you that however complicated you think the answer is, it’s probably 10 times more so.
