Accepted Manuscript (AM) version This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM AND VIDEO on 22 April 2020, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2020.1747354 If, for academic reasons, you are interested in the final published version (Version of Record) and your institution does not have a subscription to Quarterly Review of Film and Video, you can send me an email to albgarcia@unav.es. Taylor & Francis kindly gives every author who publishes in a subscription journal 50 free e-prints to share with colleagues.  “Just Being Us” – Secrecy, authenticity and identity in The Americans (Alberto N. García & Pablo Castrillo) Alberto N. García Associate Professor School of Communication, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain Email: albgarcia@unav.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4017-5791 Alberto N. García Martínez is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Navarra. During 2018, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Queensland (Australia), where he researched on television aesthetics (2018). He has taught at the University of Stirling, Arizona State University and the University of the Andes. Visiting Professor in the MA programme in Scriptwriting of the Pontifical University of Salamanca. Former Visiting Scholar at Fordham University and George Washington University. Co-editor of Landscapes of the Self. The Cinema of Ross McElwee (2007) and author of El cine de no-ficción en Martín Patino (2008). In the last decade, his academic work has focused on English-language television and has published articles on the nature of the television narrative, the evolution of the zombie, Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Shield, In Treatment and Supernatural. Author of articles published in journals such as Continuum, Cuadernos.info, Post Script, Palabra Clave, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, Zer and Comunicación y Sociedad. His latest books are the edited collections Emotions in Contemporary TV Series (Palgrave, 2016) and Cine y series: la promiscuidad infinita (Comunicación Social, 2018). Pablo Castrillo Assistant Professor School of Communication, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain Email: pcastrillo@unav.es https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0277-8081 Pablo Castrillo Maortua holds a BA degree in Audiovisual Communication with a Minor in History of Art from the University of Navarra (2009). Winner of the National Award for Excellence in Academic Performance. Fulbright scholarship granted by the Ministry of Education for graduate studies in the United States (2010-2013). Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting by Loyola Marymount University (2013). PhD degree in Communication from the University of Navarra (2017). Screenwriter of short and feature films, he is also Deputy Director of the MA programme in Screenwriting at the University of Navarra. His doctoral thesis examines the American political thriller, on which he has published articles and book chapters pertaining to both film and television. Abstract This article analyzes, from an aesthetic and cultural point of view, two pivotal moments in The Americans, a Cold War spy thriller set in the heart of Ronald Reagan’s America. Both samples—one from the mid-series episode “Stingers” (3.10.), and the other from the series finale, “START” (6.10.)—show how the protagonists, two KGB spies living undercover in the United States as a married couple with two kids, disclose their secret identity to characters with whom they have a special emotional bond: their daughter, who has become a devout Christian; and their best friend and neighbor, who happens to be a counterintelligence officer in the FBI. After exploring how identity and performance play a crucial role in the spy-thriller genre, the article investigates whether it is possible for the audience to interpret the feelings and thoughts of characters with multiple identities who excel in the art of duplicity; and whether the viewer can infer intention from performance. Following this epistemological discussion, the article then sets out to explain the sociocultural relevance and timeliness of The Americans as a text whose thematic and aesthetic concerns ultimately revolve around individual identity vis-a-vis collective allegiances and ideologies. Key Words The Americans; Television Studies; Spy-thriller; Authenticity; Aesthetic Criticism Summary. 1. Introduction. 2. Layered performances and identity crisis as recurrent tropes in spy-thriller narratives. 3. The Americans in two key televisual moments. 3.1. “Stingers” and the logic of reversal. 3.2. Ambiguous performance in “START”. 4. Conclusion: the spy’s quandary as vindication of individual identity. References. Funding details: This work was supported by the Ministerio de Innovación, Ciencia y Universidades (Government of Spain): Proyectos de I+D+i «Retos Investigación» del Programa Estatal de I+D+i. Research project reference: RTI2018-096596-B-I00. Acknowledgements: We owe a debt of gratitude to Ted Nannicelli, Elliott Logan and Lisa Bode for reading earlier drafts and providing valuable feedback. The authors are grateful to the ‘TV reading group’ of the School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, for their helpful and constructive dialogue on The Americans. Disclosure statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.  1. Introduction The Americans (FX, 2013-18) is a spy thriller set in 1980s Washington, D.C. during the last throes of the Cold War. Its narrative follows an apparently archetypical American family that happens to harbor an earthshaking secret. Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are actually two KGB officers, born as Mischa and Nadezhda in the Soviet Union, who got married to each other at a very young age. They now have two kids, American born and bred, who are also part of their cover despite being their own flesh and blood. Thus, their now all-American happy family and suburban way of life serve as the perfect disguise for their undercover work. Consequently, their marriage and parenthood are essential parts of their professional duty. In the pilot episode, a series of events triggers Philip’s anxiety. The most troubling of these events is the arrival of a new family that has just moved into the house across the street: the family of an FBI agent. Philip’s lifelong commitment to the cause that has shaped his entire existence begins to waver. In a conversation with his wife, he suggests defecting to the enemy: “Maybe this is the perfect time for us just to think about living the life we’ve been living but just really living it. Just being us.” In these words, there surfaces an explicit reference to a certain dissociation between reality and simulacrum, between authenticity and performance. This shifting tension offers one of the most complex aesthetic and dramatic issues raised by The Americans during its six-season run. The convoluted relationship between appearance and identity, especially volatile given the protagonists’ profession as secret agents—that is, as performers, impersonators, and ultimately, liars—poses a constant epistemological challenge to the audience. The dramatic core of The Americans—and in our view, also its main thematic concern—revolves around the dichotomies laid out between secrecy and revelation, identity and disguise, authenticity and performance. These dualities are presented to the viewer not only in very convincing ways through dramatic conflict, but also in deliberately uncertain or ambiguous epistemological terms: it is sometimes genuinely difficult for the viewer to tell the difference between operational deception and truthful behavior, because it is also difficult for the characters to manage both dimensions of their personae. How does secrecy work when true love and affection are also at play? How does the narrative deal with the revelation of Philip and Elizabeth’s identities to their kids or to their friends? What is the dramatic impact of this truth on the status of their family and marriage? More specifically, based on what Goffman called the “information game”—a potentially “infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation, and rediscovery” (1959, p. 8)—is it possible to reconcile true friendship and deceitfulness in the case of Philip’s relationship with his new neighbor, who happens to be a counterintelligence operative? Does the narrative provide the audience with sufficient tools to grasp the true meaning of the characters’ actions and words? All these questions converge into a broader one that reflects the cultural resonance of the series: by choosing family as their operational cover, does the representation of the Jennings deliver a particular anthropological understanding of individual identity vis-a-vis its submission to collective ideology, and of the resulting multiplicity of personalities derived from their clandestine activity? In order to answer these questions regarding the identity puzzle that connects the whole series, our text addresses The Americans at both the aesthetic and cultural levels. Firstly, drawing on genre theory and the sociology of treachery, we will contextualize the spy-thriller genre, emphasizing the links between identity and performance. Then, we will undertake an in-depth analysis of two essential narrative and dramatic moments of The Americans, both built on the dramatic device of the spy’s self-revelation to other characters. Through close formal analysis of these sequences, the article examines Paige’s discovery of her parents’ true identity and undercover work (“Stingers”, 3.10.), and Stan Beeman’s final face-off with the Jennings (“START”, 6.10.). Following the kind of aesthetic analysis that some television scholars have fruitfully applied to specific sequences of TV series, See, for instance, the works of Cardwell (2005), Jacobs (2012), Logan (2014), or Moylan (2017), in such diverse series as Perfect Strangers, Deadwood, Mad Men or Top of the Lake. we will carry out a stylistic analysis of the particular aesthetics of those scenes in order to unpack their deeper hermeneutic and epistemic significance. Our argument will point out a particular aesthetic approach intended to create interpretive uncertainty in the audience, thereby questioning the possibility of an authentic self under conditions of duplicity and deceit. The conclusion connects this dramatic-aesthetic core of the series with broader contemporary anthropological issues regarding personal identity as performance, and in doing so, highlights the sociocultural timeliness of The Americans. 2. Layered performances and identity crisis as recurrent tropes in spy-thriller narratives By definition, the spy thriller revolves around the concealment of identities, with protagonists often aiming to deceive their enemies into perceiving them as allies or friends. Moles, infiltrators, double agents, sleeping cells, defectors, and other variations on the same motif within the genre depict dramatic conflicts around the secreting of the true self. As Denning summarizes, “the plots of betrayal, disguise, and doubles” are “at the heart of the genre and of the reader’s investment” (2014, p. 2). A spy is, therefore, the ultimate performer. And a performance, as Goffman wrote, “may be defined as all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants” (1959, p. 15). In this sense, the Jennings are performers to the extreme, each one akin to an onion of selves, or a Russian doll, with each layer concealing another: Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell play Mischa and Nadezhda, who in turn play Philip and Elizabeth, both of whom play the perfect couple (hiding deep marital issues), while at the same time playing a host of other identities, sometimes as short-term disguises for one-time operations, and other times as fully fledged individuals who enter relationships aimed at developing assets over time. This multiplicity of performances is a crucial factor when analyzing scenes of revelation in such a lengthy narrative, because regular viewers will reach those moments after dozens of hours “accumulating knowledge of a character through the details of performance, the repeated gestures, glances, eye movements, expressive use of body and face, [and] inflection of voice” (Drake, 2016, pp. 6-7). These moments of truth for Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are witnessed by a viewer who has previously seen their different modes of performance, including their registers as “deceitful” and “truthful” (although, as will be shown, in these crucial scenes one cannot decipher with full certainty which mode are the characters choosing to enact.) What complicates The Americans further is an almost impossible epistemology of authenticity. Once Philip and Elizabeth assumed their ideological commitment to the Soviet cause, they became actors in a script written by Moscow. The dramatic journey of the protagonists is a constant back-and-forth between roles, as shown in the very first episode, with the couple arguing over the possibility of “living the life we’ve been living, but just really living it” (“Pilot”, 1.1.). This desire highlights the existential dead-end faced by the characters, who aspire to find out whether, considering their status, it is possible to “really live” anything at all. It is a question the viewership will likely ask as well, and a question the series does not always answer. As philosopher Xunwu Chen states in his Being and Authenticity, a lack of authenticity also triggers a crisis of identity: “Authenticity is a value whose absence will render other so-called values of our being meaningless” (2004, p. 4). This idea is an archetypal trope of the spy thriller: duplicity and deception lead to existential frustration, as seen in other fictional spies, such as John le Carré’s Alec Leamas or Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer. Indeed, beyond the fast-paced intrigue of solving mysteries, obtaining and communicating critical information, and uncovering perverse political machinations, part of the emotional appeal of spy narratives comes from the inner tension of dual identity and conflicting allegiances: the political and the (inter)personal. All spies embody a dichotomy between authenticity and deception, truth and lies, professional life and private self, ideological principles and pragmatism, duty and free will. All this imbues the spy persona with an internal, insoluble existential contradiction, as Hepburn puts it: Spy fiction repeatedly challenges the idea that action determines character since actions are undertaken not because of personal conviction but because of necessity. […] The spy is not the totality of what he does. Character overrules conduct the way a whole exceeds the sum of its parts. (2014, p. 23) This internal dispute explains why the identity crisis is a recurrent trope in spy fiction – because, at a certain point, the character feels the need to reconcile the split self. Besides the logical narrative imperatives—internal conflict as one of the core features of any drama—there is also a psychological and anthropological reason justifying the need for character integrity. It is usual to find protagonists in spy stories facing a mid-life crisis, a moment when they reassess all their previous work and convictions (if any). Although the mid-life crisis conforms, no doubt, to a cliché of folk psychology, it has traction in the academic literature. As Elliot Jaques, the psychoanalyst and social scientist who coined the “mid-life crisis” concept, puts it, “[t]he paradox is that of entering the prime of life, the stage of fulfillment, but at the same time the prime and fulfillment are dated. Death lies beyond” (2018, p.11). It comprises a moment when one can start to feel that the end of life is nearer than its beginning and in which the idealism and optimism of early adulthood withdraw, giving rise to self-examination, resignation, and gloom. Consequently, when the now-mature individual ponders his or her life choices thus far, the mid-life crisis is no longer just a matter of time, but also a disintegration of the sense of purpose. It is only fitting that such conflict be a recurrent scenario in spy-thriller narratives. For the spy, the meaning of life is now perceived as different from that when the path of espionage was undertaken. This vital reassessment comes with a sense of alienation that often leads to dissent and rebellion. Philip Jennings – in a more acute way than his wife, as we will detail – embodies such a mid-life crisis conflict throughout the six-season arc of The Americans. The pilot episode indeed puts Philip’s lifelong commitments to the test with a succession of dramatic events: the death of a fellow spy on the job, the temptation offered by a former Soviet agent turned defector, and the realization of his daughter’s fragility when verbally abused on a casual encounter in the mall. These incidents certainly awaken Philip’s awareness of his vulnerability, but most importantly, the Beemans’ arrival in the neighborhood adds an ever greater danger to his mission while, at the same time (or to make matters worse), it makes things easier for him to defect, which is something Philip is only a heartbeat away from doing. What stops him seems to be love for his wife. We emphasize this seemingness because, as will be analyzed below, interpretative certainty is something The Americans deliberately tries to avoid. The series’ dramatic premise fuses family and mission, home and work spheres, the domestic and the political, truth and simulation. Because the cover story consists of a nuclear family, and the home is the quintessential locus of trust and intimacy, the two major dimensions of the protagonists’ lives become mutually exclusive, thus setting up a rich and tortuous dramatic trap. Ambiguity in the relationships between the characters’ actions and their feelings or thoughts is one of the dramatic trademarks of the series. For Philip, Elizabeth and their children appear to have become the driving force in his life, displacing his political-strategic mission; yet at the same time, his wife’s vital purpose and political commitment remains unchanged. When, in the same pilot scene, he suggests “taking the good life”, Elizabeth retorts: “Are you joking? […] You want to betray our country?” Philip then responds, firmly and with conviction: “our family comes first.” This recurring tension is the main subject of scrutiny in this article, as it is precisely where The Americans becomes an excellent case study for how the espionage narrative and television aesthetics can coalesce to illuminate the deepest dilemma of undercover work—the irreconcilable dissociation of secret identity and cover story—by denying the spectator the possibility of a convincing interpretation of the characters’ actions, words, and feelings. Nonetheless, beyond Philip’s reluctance to solve his emotional, familiar and ideological dilemmas, the pilot episode makes a thorough job of bringing him to a watershed moment, or turning point. As the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner has explained, turning points are “critical to the effort to individualize a life” (2001, p. 31). But individuality is exactly the opposite of a spy’s condition, where the nation’s interests surpass those of the individual. As Horn explains, “[t]he revolutionary task requires more than techniques and tactics; it also demands a surrender of the self that goes beyond any submission to the party. The very moral integrity of the individual has to be sacrificed” (2013, p. 222, emphasis added). Spies, however, given their chameleonic nature, lack history and convention. As Hepburn suggests, “a spy belongs nowhere” (2014, p. 11), a statement The Americans emphasizes several times during its narrative. This is not merely for the obvious reason that the Jennings were forced to adapt to a new country or to forge an intimate relationship without a prior natural foundation, but also because they had to cut ties with their previous lives, being able to hold onto only a few small personal effects. At the same time, this feeling of not belonging anywhere is in itself a paradox, because the best spy is precisely the one who can be viewed as a local wherever he operates. The better integrated he is, the more effective his work can be. This implies a tenuous line between loyalty and defection, as explored in the episode “Trust Me” (1.6.), in which the Jennings are abducted by KGB agents trying to ferret out a mole in the organization. We later learn that they are under suspicion due to Elizabeth telling her superiors how Philip “liked it here too much.” Having managed to escape, an enraged Philip argues with his wife after discovering she has “snitched” on him: “I fit in! I fit in like I was supposed to. And, yes, I like it! So, what?” Here, again, the tension emerges between their personal will and their tactical role. The competing loyalties collide, and the recurring tension between self and nation (and consequently between the institutions of marriage and the State) comes to the fore. The following analysis of two pivotal scenes in the series will illustrate how The Americans articulates these character conflicts and, along with them, the question of whether the viewer can access their authentic selves, and to what extent. 3. The Americans in two key televisual moments At the outset of the series, an FBI agent working in counterintelligence, Stan Beeman, has just moved into the house across the street from the Jennings. The threat of being discovered, however, is also perceived as an opportunity to obtain better intelligence for Moscow. Thus, Stan and Philip eventually become confidants and best friends. In an analogous way, the first two and a half seasons force the Jennings to re-evaluate their relationship with Paige, who will gradually become more aware of her parents’ contradictions and shortcomings. The relationships between the Jennings and their daughter Paige, on one hand, and with their friend Stan, on the other, are two major sources of tension in the series, and both are particularly concerned with the limits between truthfulness and deception in the main characters. The two scenes we have chosen for our analysis are pivotal in the constant dynamic of revelation and concealment underpinning the entire series, and they are also critical in that they take the plots concerning these two characters to their climax and resolution. Throughout the series, whenever Philip and Elizabeth find their cover threatened, they resort to violence and eliminate the possibility of it being blown. A poignant example of such drastic measures is seen in “Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?” (3.9.), when Elizabeth forces an octogenarian bookkeeper to commit suicide because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, the danger of being unmasked, first by Paige, and later by Stan, is handled in a very different way: Philip and Elizabeth find themselves cornered by suspicion and evidence, and as a last resort, they make an extemporaneous decision to reveal their true identities. But their course of action here is not merely a tactical move: these are scenes of personal crisis, because in both the protagonists confront not external threats but rather their own vulnerabilities, fears, and, ultimately, themselves. Paige is the most beloved fruit of the Jennings’ tumultuous marriage, and the most promising hope of reward for their sacrifices. Stan’s friendship is the only experience Philip has ever had of an ordinary existence, and outside of Elizabeth’s intimacy, the only one in which he has been able to confide and even let his guard down. Moreover, these sequences appear to be structural pillars of the six-season narrative, not only because of their sheer dramatic caliber, but also due to their dramatic placement in the series: “Stingers” is the 36th episode out of 75 (almost an exact midpoint), and “START” is the series finale. The first sequence is a game-changing moment because of the vast moral, emotional, and operational implications for both the Jennings family and the Soviet espionage task force in Washington, while the second sequence amounts to the closure of the narrative set-up that launched the whole story. In this way, both moments act, paraphrasing Moylan, “metonymically, communicating an overarching thematic preoccupation” (2017, p. 271). In both cases, the underlying concern is the impossibility of reconciling identity and secrecy in the deceitful métier of the spy or, in other words, the moral dead-end of espionage itself, underscored by the contrast represented by the truth-based relationships of family and friendship. To grasp the full significance of these scenes, we must take into consideration their placement in the larger narrative and the broader understanding of the viewer. Television series usually develop a kind of protracted narration that is especially fitting for espionage stories, because it matches the patient, slow-burn relationships that the characters must forge and manipulate in the course of their undercover missions. The Americans leverages this mode of narration by focusing its dramatic payload on character relationships, through the conflicts faced by Philip and Elizabeth as they develop assets, an activity that shares with the familial duties of the husband/father and wife/mother the need to foster trust, creating spaces of intimacy and confidence, albeit always compartmentalizing information. The show not only applies this unhurried tempo to the grooming of strategic targets, but also to personal subplots dealing with family and friendship. Thus, the tempered pace becomes an overall aesthetic trait of The Americans, one that also permeates the two scenes examined here. Despite being narrative climaxes or crises, both sequences display a calmness and visual sobriety that contrast glaringly with the commonplace expectations for a spy thriller: The Americans deliberately favors slow scenes with subtle gestures and lingering glances over frantic chases and physical violence, one of the many inversions that the show deploys in its aesthetic design. 3.1. “Stingers” and the logic of reversal Given the thematic importance in The Americans of secrecy, double identity, concealment, and disguise, it seems logical that the narrative should feature a distortion of social conventions and anthropological spaces: parenting, for example, seems the perfect cover; friendship is a means to acquire strategic intelligence; the workplace is just a façade; and home is, in actuality, the headquarters of an undercover operation. The same logic of inversion that characterizes espionage is at play when Philip and Elizabeth disclose their identity to Paige in “Stingers”. Visually, both their sudden decision to tell their daughter the truth and the mixture of motives for doing so are expressed and reinforced through the mise-en-scène. The scene takes place inside the family home. Paige is awake, waiting for her parents in the kitchen, determined to confront them about their suspicious, secretive habits, the truth of which she cannot yet fathom. There is a kind of oppositional layout of the characters at the outset of the exchange: they stand on opposite ends of the kitchen island as if entrenched on different sides of a deep divide—in this case, the hidden truth. In this first beat of the sequence, Paige puts forward two arguments: “You’re out in the middle of the night” and “we have no family here.” It is interesting to note that these two arguments are, precisely, two of the trademark conditions of the spy: the sense of abandonment, and the lack of belonging. Even though Philip and Elizabeth have tried to raise their children without disclosing their real identity, the “removed” status of the secret agent taints their whole existence. Once Paige leaves the kitchen and moves toward the dinner table, Philip and Elizabeth step into her space, flanking their daughter in a new composition that is no longer oppositional. The director orchestrates a visual dialogue between the spouses (revealingly, these glances will be absent from the other major revelation of the narrative, as we will explore in the next section) by positioning parents and daughter in a triangular arrangement while the unveiling of the secret slowly takes place. [Figure 1: The Jennings' dinner table is a space devoid of function (Credit: FX Network)] It is worth noting where the revelation happens: at the dinner table, The dinner table also serves as the setting for a scene in the finale to Season 2 (“Echo”, 2.13.), where Philip looks in astonishment at his wife when she suggests that Paige’s future could be the same as theirs. An awkward silence pervades the scene as an otherwise ordinary family dinner begins. but not during dinner. Instead, it is late at night, at a time unsuitable for a family gathering, as if emphasizing the idea of their irregular identity: a family for whom social conventions are hollowed out and spaces take on distorted meanings. A dinner table with no food set out on it is a space devoid of function. Similarly, the Jennings are a family devoid of meaning, whose foundation and purpose were corrupted from its very inception. According to socialization theorist Blum-Kulka, “[t]he crucial pragmatic socialization role of family dinners […] lies in their potential to serve as a social support system that eases a child's passage into adult discourse” (2012, p. 10). This is just what “Stingers” offers: a coming-of-age moment, but dislocated to a disused (or misused) gathering place, at an unseemly time of night. The lighting of the scene adds layers of meaning: the only source of light is from the kitchen, bathing Paige’s back and highlighting only the sides of her parents’ faces, making her background more high-key while leaving theirs entirely in chiaroscuro. This lighting suggests a primary moral and epistemological composition: Paige states her motives and principles clearly, while her parents move in the waters of ambiguity and disguise. [Figure 2: Lighting and space as moral aesthetic elements (Credit: FX Network)] Elizabeth begins the confession, but she cannot finish her sentence. It is an illuminating nuance of the difficulties mother and daughter have had and will continue to have in their personal and emotional interactions. Elizabeth looks at Philip, and he completes the disclosure of the hard truth: “We were born in a different country.” From this moment, the dynamics of the conversation flow from one spouse to another: Philip states the facts, while Elizabeth provides the moral context. It is notable, after this, that certain limitations are imposed on the naked truth. While revealing their Soviet identity, Elizabeth emphasizes the nobility of their cause while failing to mention the violent and criminal facets of the job. Thus, she shows that it is still crucial for her to control Paige’s perception, not only for operational reasons (she would most likely not be able to agree with their cause on moral grounds), but also because her questioning of their methods could expose the incongruities of their way of life and even perhaps challenge their own belief, after so many years of getting their hands dirty, that their cause is a noble one at all. It is a good example of what Horn labels “the human factor”, a kind of last vestige of identity that becomes the spy’s Achilles’ heel because it can still be betrayed (cf. Horn 2013, p. 258). The irony for Philip and Elizabeth, who are always trying to find the soft spots in their targets, is that they have their own vulnerabilities as well, and they lie precisely at the core of their cover. As their characters develop throughout the series, their familial dimension appears to grow to the point where a cold-blooded external observer would deem it a liability. In fact, it is the tension that sustains most of the drama between them, and it is also the touchstone upon which all the plots converge: What does it mean to be a family? Which duty comes first? Are Paige and Henry children of the Soviet state as much as they are Philip and Elizabeth’s children? In Talcott Parsons’ classical Family Socialization and Interaction Process, the author states that the ‘basic and irreducible functions of the family are two: first, the primary socialization of children so that they can truly become members of the society into which they have been born; second, the stabilization of the adult personalities of the population of the society’ (2002: 16). For the Jennings, the family was conceived as an alibi, but it has outgrown its design, developing dimensions that were absent from its origin. Moreover, the intersection between family and profession is where the contradiction that traverses The Americans becomes exacerbated: natural anthropology clashes with ideology, and nurturing competes with indoctrination. The effect is an aggravated sense of alienation that lays down roots mainly in Philip, but also in the children. It may be helpful to point out what the French ethnologist Martine Segalen, in her Historical Anthropology of the Family, remarks: ‘[Kinship] networks give a feeling of stability and belonging, and function as a system of identification’ (1986: 93). Precisely at the dinner table, what should have been a place of safety and belonging, Paige accesses the grown-ups’ truth. But it is a truth that, if she ever disclosed it to anyone, would make her parents “go to jail, for good”, as Philip warns her. In this way, access to the truth amounts to a loss of innocence, and poses a threat to the family precisely because this family was created through, and with the purpose of, the concealment of such truth. This dynamic reveals a new inversion: instead of liberating their daughter, Philip and Elizabeth impose a greater burden on her. Contrary to the biblical wisdom by which Paige abides (John 8:32), truth cannot set her free when it comes with a strict order of secrecy and, consequently, a mandate of deception. Truth cannot liberate if it cannot be shared. In line with the essential contradiction that characterizes spycraft, truth and secrecy always form two sides of the same coin. Philip and Elizabeth’s revelation (a truth) has the paradoxical effect of imposing a duty of secrecy on Paige (which will require deception). Overwhelmed by the information she has just acquired, Paige leaves the kitchen, breaking the triangular composition of the characters and creating a new, linear arrangement, with Paige and Elizabeth on opposite ends and Philip in between them. This brief moment foreshadows the family dynamic that is to follow in relation to morality and ideology, with Elizabeth and Paige tugging at the extremes and Philip caught in the middle. Paige then takes refuge in her room, a place that, in contrast with the communal dinner table, symbolizes her individuality, a place she can customize according to her beliefs and sensitivities. The camera lingers on a brief close-up of her bedroom door as she locks herself inside, but the sound of it closing acts as a kind of punctuation, a period for the sequence. It also reinforces a feeling of crossing a threshold, since knowing cannot be undone, and it is thus a point of no return. German philosopher Georg Simmel, the precursor to the concept of symbolic interactionism, wrote about the door as an emblem: “Precisely because it can also be opened, its closure provides the feeling of a stronger isolation against everything outside this space than the mere unstructured wall” (1997, p. 172). Moreover, as Mezei puts it, a door also “serves as a structural device of passage, entrance, and departure” (2005, p. 94). This moment in “Stingers” is decisive and life-changing for Paige: her life has just entered the realm of duplicity and split identities. Similarly, the revelation of the truth does not make things easier for Philip and Elizabeth: now their daughter is either a potential traitor of both the family and the State (note how the decision made in the familial-domestic realm could have severe consequences at the political-strategic level), or an asset in a field of work whose likely outcomes no parent would desire for their child. Daughter-ness, therefore, is a kind of relationship that poses serious problems for the agent-asset association. The Jennings have just invited their daughter into their tragic existence, where knowledge is both the strongest weapon and the weakest vulnerability. From this point on, Paige’s quandary pushes the narrative theme of the series to extremes, offering a refined example of the spy’s moral and emotional stalemate. It is impossible to pinpoint one single reason for Philip and Elizabeth’s decision to reveal their identity to Paige. They improvise, perceiving her increasingly sharp inquiries and the gradual deterioration of their relationship with her: it is a gesture of trust, a way of recognizing her maturity. The imperative from Moscow also weighs on their decision, since the KGB plans to turn their daughter into a second-generation illegal. But fear is an incentive as well: Philip and Elizabeth make Paige their accomplice—as they have done in various missions with other targets—before she has a chance to give them away. Consequently, the new situation is not only difficult for Paige, but for her parents too: can they trust their own daughter? Will her filial love push her moral compass toward the Soviet cause? Or is she so angry and hurt, and perhaps even disgusted, as to consider giving her parents away? In this respect, there is a telling detail at the end of the sequence, when Philip leaves the phone dangling off the hook so that the sound of the busy signal concludes the scene. Horn points out that “[t]he telephone became the symbol for a politics that championed remote control exercised by a central command” (2013, p. 205). In this case, this little gesture may show that, although the Jennings are normally available to Moscow at all times, perhaps this time they want to isolate themselves to give priority to Paige’s wellbeing. But there could be a different reason for Philip’s careful action: is he so cautious, savvy and cold-blooded as to cut off the phone line to prevent his daughter from speaking to someone (such as Pastor Tim)? These questions suggest that interpretative uncertainty is the ultimate effect of the sequence, regardless of the writers’ or director’s intentions, precisely because of the contested identity of the protagonists. A similar epistemological ambiguity is exemplified in the other sequence chosen for our analysis. 3.2. Ambiguous performance in “START” Undoubtedly the most anticipated face-off in The Americans, once Paige is on board with her parents’ secret, is the eventual confrontation between Philip and Stan. Consistent with its trademark slow pace, The Americans plays the long game in this relationship as well, putting off the climax of the Beeman subplot until the last episode of the series. In this sequence, as we will show, the narrative also disappoints the audience’s expectation of certainty by having Philip enact a seemingly heartfelt and painful confession, while keeping a few aspects of his performance inconsistent with the whole. In this case, the location of the final encounter between Stan Beeman and the Jennings is also worth examining: an underground parking lot is a space for circulation, for passing through. People enter it only to leave it immediately afterward, and the only thing that stays in a parking lot is a vehicle, an inert machine. It is also a covered space, built out of sight on purpose, as well as neglected, dirty, cold, and impersonal. It is the kind of location French anthropologist Marc Augé would label a “non-place”, that is, a space that “cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity” (1995, pp. 77-78). This differs vastly from the usual locale of Philip and Stan’s friendly meetings during the show’s six seasons: the home is the epitome of an anthropological place, “a space where identities, relationships and a story can be made out” (2000, p. 8). However, the “Stingers” scene triggered the collapse of the notion of home for the Jennings. Tracing a continuous line from there, the revelation in “START” confirms that there is no place worthy of such a name for them: they do not belong anywhere. This is why, from the moment of their revelation to Stan, all their interactions occur in non-places: parking lots, abandoned warehouses, fast-food diners, trains, and planes. Even the last scene, revealingly, shows them contemplating a Russian city, not from the comfortable interior of a new home, but from an empty park at night, another epitome of the non-place. [Figure 3: The START revelation and the emotional politics of “non-places” (Credit: FX Network)] The contrast between these two scenes from “Stingers” and “START” brings to mind the following observation by Marc Augé: “Place and non-place are rather like opposed polarities: the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed; they are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten” (1995, pp. 78-79, emphasis added). This parking lot, this space devoid of personal meaning, is where their final and biggest revelation takes place: the Jennings are rewriting their identity—or lack thereof—for the last time. Once they have been confronted by Stan, Philip and Elizabeth’s first reaction is of feigned surprise and overt denial, which is their recurrent strategy every time they are suspected or challenged. Denial tactics are a sort of automatic routine for spies, as shown in “Trust Me” (1.6.), when the Jennings are abducted by KGB agents trying to test their loyalty, and throughout Season 6, in the cyanide pill Elizabeth carries inside a pendant. In “START”, once they realize there is no fooling Stan (“It’s over. It’s all over,” he declares), Philip suddenly veers off from the usual script. His expression changes radically, as he keeps repeating “We had a job to do. We had a job to do,” while calmly putting his hands down. The camera emphasizes the unexpectedness of Philip’s new strategy by cutting to a medium shot of Elizabeth, who turns towards him. In contrast with her husband’s meek demeanor, she appears barely able to hold back the aggressive, dangerous expression of a cornered predator. The contrast between the two—reinforced by the audience’s knowledge of their differing temperaments and approaches—leads the viewer to take Philip’s confession as a true departure from the spy’s rulebook. Indeed, Philip’s switch of tactics pays off: Stan begins to engage in the conversation, and the arm holding his gun slackens. Philip seemingly exposes his authentic self to Stan, overwhelmed by guilt and shame for having betrayed a real friendship; a friendship that had grown strong as they, both middle-aged men engulfed in a midlife crisis, had attended the “est” psychological therapy seminars together. And yet, this friendship remains the perfect example of the very essence of spycraft: to gain someone’s confidence in order to access their secrets and advance one’s own political-military agenda. In such moments, the narrative and aesthetic accumulation specific to TV series helps the audience evaluate a particular scene in a more complex and aesthetically fruitful way. After six seasons, the spectator should be familiar with the actors’ idiolect—that is, the gestures and expressive nuances that characterize every performance. In the case of The Americans, as Drake puts it, “Rhys and Russell are playing Philip and Elizabeth, but also a range of other characters in disguise, and their performances need to cue the relevant frame for us to determine which character they are performing” (2016, p. 11). In fact, there are certain moments in the narrative when Philip steps out of character, taking the wig off and, accordingly, transforming his visage suddenly, revealing the real Philip. This can be seen at the end of “Martial Eagle” (2.9.), for example, when he visits Pastor Tim, or when he, disguised as Clark, tells Martha the truth about himself in “I Am Abassin Zadran” (3.12.). This is a crucial moment too, because showing his true identity to a lover-asset (also an improvised departure from the rulebook) is perceived by Elizabeth not just as a strategic risk, but also as a betrayal of their personal—marital, romantic—relationship, akin to having let Martha into their bedroom. However, the layering of performances that is connatural to the protagonists of The Americans poses a challenge to such familiarity. At this point, for instance, the viewer is witnessing Matthew Rhys perform Mischa, who is performing Philip Jennings, who is performing a relatively sincere confession (“You were my only friend”) while simultaneously enacting a deliberate deception (“We don’t kill people”). The epistemic complication is that “START” makes it impossible to scrutinize when the (spy) performance ends and when the (authentic) self takes over. It is also possible that the stress of the situation, along with Philip and Elizabeth’s heightened parental instincts (they must save Paige at all costs), has resulted in the collapse of their identity boundaries. Thus, given that duplicity is an essential attribute of the spy, is it possible to ascertain Philip’s feelings by following the scene’s textual clues? If his confession were truthfully sincere, why would he deny, barely a minute later, Stan’s accusations about the slaughter of Gennadi and Sofia (“The Great Patriotic War”, 6.5.), one the most brutal murders committed by the Jennings? Philip puts on a fake air of stupefaction and disbelief, even turning his face towards Elizabeth for the first time in the scene as if asking her for any information about this shocking revelation. The deception continues when Stan challenges Paige about the number of casualties caused by Soviet agents in recent years. Elizabeth quickly steps in (“We don’t kill people! Jesus!”) to support her husband’s performance: “He doesn’t even do this kind of work anymore. He quit. He is a travel agent now. That’s all.” Part of her statement rings true: Philip had indeed quit, leaving her to work solo for three years. But she astutely hides the fact that Philip has returned to active duty in recent times, getting blood on his hands, sometimes quite literally (“Harvest”, 6.7.) Elizabeth’s reaction to the new situation in the garage is not only tactical—that is, aimed at escaping from the enemy—but seems motivated by devotion to her family, and to her maternal instincts of protection, of which the viewer had already caught a glimpse in “Dinner for Seven” (4.11.), when she stabbed the muggers who assaulted Paige. But Stan, a trained and seasoned agent, does not give up easily and commands the Jennings at gunpoint to get down on the ground. Philip retorts by doubling down on his act, intensifying his guilty stance, and exhibiting the moral and psychological dilemmas he has been grappling with for a long time. His voice trembles and his eyes moisten as he stutters: I… I did all this… stuff, Stan… I don’t even know why anymore. It… it seemed like the right thing to do, for my country. My country wanted me to. (…) [Now] I am just a shitty, failing travel agent. Except I guess I am not. Because now I… I need to leave. If… I can. This new testimony will also add two more layers to the previous confession: Philip shares intelligence with Stan regarding a KGB conspiracy to remove Gorbachev from the Soviet leadership; and he brings up Henry’s pitiful situation. Philip knows that Henry has been the closest one to Stan, in whom the young man found a supplementary father figure (no less because of Philip’s prolonged absences), thus also giving Stan a second chance at fatherhood after the break-up of his own family. The FBI agent’s tenacity begins to crack; after all, the “human factor” works both ways. [Figure 4: Philip's face and the interpretative uncertainty of performance (Credit: FX Network)] There is even a metareference during this last exchange between the Jennings and Stan, when Elizabeth reveals the internal treason they are facing on their side: “It’s our own bosses. They were gonna fake my reports (…). People I trusted all this time.” The Jennings have been betrayed in the exact way Stan has been deceived by the friends he had trusted all this time. The disappointment in their political cause, which triggered the initial decomposition of Philip’s dual identity six seasons earlier, is now tipping the balance for Elizabeth too. After witnessing her journey through the web of lies woven by Moscow, and thanks to the accumulated experience of her maternal instincts toward Paige—and perhaps also moved by Philip’s decision to assist her despite his principled withdrawal from duty—the audience may very well construe her subsequent actions in light of a newly developed moral and political hierarchy: she is a mother and a wife first, and only then is she a Soviet operative (in fact, she is the one who expresses greater resistance to the idea of leaving Henry behind, despite its obvious strategic advantages). Nevertheless, the inscrutability of these spies permeates the scene’s closing moments, because Philip lies again, stating that he does not know Oleg Burov. The constant mixing of truth and lies conforms to the crux of our main argument: ultimately, it is impossible to dissect in a clear-cut manner whether the Jennings are telling the truth, because their identity is, fundamentally, a contradiction. In trying to use a family relationship as their cover, they have emptied themselves of any and all identities. Trying to solve the Jennings’ identity conundrum is part of the appeal of The Americans. Olen Steinhauer’s comments on the protagonist of his Milo Weaver trilogy could perfectly fit a psychological profile of Philip Jennings: “[A] guy who’s spent his entire life lying and living identities others have handed him, and […] you see him trying at times to be ‘himself’ and wondering if there is any ‘self’ left over to animate his domestic life” (as cited in Horsley, 2012, p. 161). 4. Conclusion: the spy’s quandary as vindication of individual identity Through the close analysis of two key scenes in The Americans, we have explored the existential paradox in which its characters are trapped, and how the serial text, through its accumulative aesthetics—with a particular focus on performance and mise-en-scène—prevents the audience from falling into the cul-de-sac of a single, specific interpretation. The resulting uncertainty, however, has a blunt taste: the spectator cannot draw firm conclusions because, in a way, neither can the characters, not even in some of their most intimate decisions. We do not have space here to explore the specificity of the Jennings’ marriage in depth: a strategic lie that becomes something emotionally truthful. Any categorical definition of it remains unviable, given the complexities at play. Two brief examples point out how, even when their marriage seems to be solid and sincere, there is still a blurred line between performance and genuineness. In “Salang Pass” (3.5.), Philip and Elizabeth discuss the professional sexual relationships of the former. She asks, “Do you ever have to ‘make it real’ with me?” and he responds, “Sometimes.” In a similar vein, after several episodes of marital coldness and hidden agendas between the two, Elizabeth suddenly seduces Philip in “Mr. and Mrs. Teacup” (6.5.). It is difficult for the audience to figure out whether she does this in a spontaneous burst of desire—since she has been supressing her affection for Philip—or because she wants to keep him in line with the KGB. Such incapacity is a good indicator of how the inscrutability of a split identity (not knowing who one really is), further obscured by duplicity (deliberately pretending to appear as someone else), is one of highest thematic concerns deliberately explored by The Americans. The series’ title itself harbors a multiplicity of plausible interpretations: who are The Americans? Are they Philip and Elizabeth as themselves, or as operational counterparts of Mischa and Nadezhda? Or are they Paige and Henry, around whom the series’ dramatic denouement revolves most centrally? Or, perhaps, is the title referring to the enemy as perceived from the perspective of two Soviet heroes who find themselves living among the others and entering a relationship with them? This identity conundrum that runs throughout the whole series is compelling thanks to the imbrication of the political/strategic and domestic/personal spheres. It is the institution of the family that sucks Philip back into the espionage plight once again—helping Elizabeth in the operation because he loves her. A tragic irony underpins Philip’s journey: the reason for distancing himself from espionage in the first place is what keeps dragging him back. Philip’s no-choice scenario is consistent with the dichotomy Horn describes about traitors: “It ultimately leads back to the dead end of inescapable binary decisions. [...] there is no innocent and autonomous apostasy, no retreat into the forest” (2013, p. 205). That is, one cannot truly escape taking sides; a spy cannot have it both ways. Deception and duplicity are not compatible with a life well lived, with fulfillment and satisfaction. As Goffman has written, “to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others” (1959, p. 229). Herein lies the the core and source of the series’ cultural relevance and resonance for its time: the anthropological and political battle between collective and individual identity. This does not just follow from the obvious fact that Philip and Elizabeth have devoted their lives to serving the cause of Communism —the supreme example of collectivist ideology— but rather because they themselves act as a near-perfect metaphor for the struggle between individual free will and adherence to a collective norm; in this case, the American-ness to which the series title alludes. The two scenes examined in this text show us that, even when the protagonists bare themselves, stripping off the layers of deception and disguise, they never tell the whole truth. The identities performed by Philip and Elizabeth have become so powerful for them, so definitive —not the least through their bringing children of their own into the world— that they have actually turned into their real identities. As a vehicle of knowledge, a kind of “epistemological figure” (Horn, 2013, p.34), the archetypical role of the spy can also contribute insights into the human condition. As Horsley has put it, “the isolation of the secret agent or assassin is by implication an exploration of the nature and importance of community” (2012, p.168). In the case of The Americans, the juxtaposition of a community built on confidence and enduring safety with the modus operandi of intelligence agencies and secret wars illustrates the dangers of attempting to manipulate and fragment the personal identity. It would seem that The Americans serves as a vehicle for taking the issue further: the Soviet illegals of this show deliver a portrayal of human beings as essentially communicative and bound by inalienable ties of community. As ‘Stingers’ shows, the protagonists are familial individuals who, consequently, cannot sustain their deceptive way of life indefinitely. It is destined to crumble and collapse, and could also destroy the household, as it in fact does because the anthropological requirements of family bonds tear at the seams of their inner and outer duplicity. In a similar manner, ‘START’ tests the notion of friendship in a very specific way (as Stan reproaches Philip: ‘You were my best friend’), demonstrating that it is inherently incompatible with secrecy and deceit, because it prevents the relationship from accessing its materia prima: intimacy and self-knowledge. Most importantly, both of the analyzed scenes reveal another intrinsic impossibility that could be construed as the series’ cornerstone: the spy cannot be authentic. The spy —ultimately a performer— does not lord over his own identity; instead, he is a mere administrator. The spy cannot reveal his or her own self in a thoroughly sincere way, because deceptions past are now ingrained in present identity. Noting this existential tragedy, critic Emily Nussbaum wrote that The Americans “is a show about human personality as a cruel performance” (2014). Dictionaries define identity as ‘oneness’ or ‘sameness’. The creation of alternative selves for the sake of deception in the service of a political/ideological cause, no matter how idealistic, destroys the possibility of owning or cultivating an intimate self, because that which is duplicitous cannot be identical. And thus, when Philip and Elizabeth choose to speak with candor, when they try to confess, to tell the truth, neither the other characters nor we, the viewers, can be certain of whether they are truthful. Their existences, lived as live performances, have shattered their identities, making “just being us” an impossible task to accomplish. The series finale proves very revealing in this regard, with the final subplot about the fate of Philip and Elizabeth’s children. Despite their attempt to bring Paige into their world, the young girl will choose to affirm her own autonomous individuality. When it comes to Henry, on the other hand, the protagonists choose to respect his personal identity because—after having gone through this process with Paige—they know that the trauma of unmasking their familial secret would make it impossible for him to follow them to Moscow. Indeed, during their last phone call, in which they cannot say goodbye despite it being the last time they will ever speak to each other, Philip’s heartfelt words are of affirmation. Henry tacitly recognizes this and reassures his father: “I’ll be myself, Dad.” Henry will go on to become his own authentic self, something his parents were never able to do.The fact of the matter, what is left at the end of the Jennings’ journey, is that reality exceeds their categories—an excess perfectly embodied in the new, and now foreign, lives of Philip and Elizabeth’s children.  References Augé, M. 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