Matthew Rhys, ‘The Americans’ finally get their due
PLOT points through the series finale of “The Americans” are mentioned in this essay. The entire show is available on Amazon Prime; if you have not watched through the finale, I strongly recommend you do.
After six seasons of largely being shut out by Emmys voters — the exception being famed character actress Margo Martindale’s pair of wins for guest-starring spots midway through the show’s run — FX’s “The Americans” took home some major trophies at last night’s show. Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg pulled in an award for outstanding writing for a drama series while Matthew Rhys won outstanding lead actor in a drama series, both trophies coming for work in the series finale, “Start.”
Some voiced their understandable disappointment that Keri Russell failed to take home a trophy of her own last night for lead actress, and that’s fair. I want to focus instead on Rhys’ work for the show because his character, Philip, provided most of the actual moral conflict on the programme.
When the show begins, Philip and Elizabeth (Russell) are Russian spies living in Reagan’s America under such deep cover that even their children Henry (Keidrich Sellati) and Paige (Holly Taylor) have no idea who they are, really. Neither does their neighbour, Stan (Noah Emmerich), who works in FBI counterintelligence. While projecting the appearance of a normal American family, Philip and Elizabeth spend their time tracking down threats to the USSR in oft-brutal and bloody fashion.
“The Americans” was much more than your standard fare about antiheroes acting immorally while still being attractive to us. The soul of the show derived from the tension between Philip and Elizabeth and their increasingly divergent desires for themselves and their families. Elizabeth was the true believer of the pair, the good soldier, the one who had no doubts about the Soviet Union or its righteousness. Even in the last season, when she finally turned against the Center (which ran the Soviet spy operation), she did so only because it was in turn working against the Communist Party’s leadership.
Philip, on the other hand, was charmed by America, grew to love its openness and its low-key opulence. He was tormented by the actions he was forced to take — the murders, the seductions — and enamoured of the material wealth Americans took for granted. Philip grew up in an impoverished household. He had to struggle for everything he had. He saw the ease with which American children live and knew that this country and capitalism are not the bugbears they had been made out to be. He may not have loved America by the end of the show, exactly, but he appreciated the nation and what it represents.
Philip’s transformation would only have been believable with the work of a first-rate actor, and Rhys delivered the goods. We saw it at the end of the third season, with a simple look: As Reagan delivered his “evil empire” speech on a TV in the background, Elizabeth turned, wide-eyed, outraged at his impudence — and Philip couldn’t hold her gaze. He knew, in his heart, that Reagan is right. The things he and she did were immoral. The empire they were in service to was evil. And the wickedness was consuming his soul.
Philip’s disgust with their endeavours earned the family their freedom later on. Confronted by an armed Stan in a parking garage, Philip, Elizabeth and Paige were in a tight spot. Elizabeth’s instinct, as always, was to fight: Her eyes were steel as she stared down the barrel of Stan’s gun. But he has them dead to rights, literally. Another step forward and Elizabeth would die, Philip might too and Paige would be taken into custody if she wasn’t hit in the crossfire.
Philip knew this, and he came clean. Or, at least, as clean as he can so they could get away and let the Russian leadership know about the coup that has been put into motion.
“I have to run away from the place I have lived for so many years,” Philip said, a pained look on his face. “I have to abandon my son. He can’t come with us because I got caught. I finally got caught. And here we are. And I don’t even know what happens if we make it home because after all these years of being scared of Americans, and recruiting Americans, and following Americans, we finally got something - and it has nothing to do with you. It’s our own people.”
It’s the anguish in Rhys’ face as Philip admitted, finally and verbally, that he and his people all along were in the wrong that won his family his freedom. It’s that anguish that won Henry, who had been kept in the dark throughout the show’s run, a chance at a new life. It’s that anguish that betrayed the fact that Paige stood no chance — she knew too much to avoid prison, yet she had no friends, no money and limited skills — when she bailed on her parents and decided to stay in America during the finale’s closing moments.
And it’s that anguish that won Rhys his welldeserved Emmy, too. — WPBloomberg