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Title: Open House

Episode M.V.P: Keri Russell and Mathew Rhys
It’s impossible for me to separate Russell and Rhys’s performances in “Open House.” This was an episode that reminded us what a great partnership Philip and Elizabeth have, so it only makes sense that it was also an episode that allowed the acting partnership between Russell and Rhys to shine. Just as Philip and Elizabeth came to see in this episode just how much they need each other, the episode itself needed both Russell and Rhys to be at the top of their games in different ways for it to work as well as it did.

Both of their performances played off one another and complimented what the other was doing perfectly. For example, the scene between them in their bedroom wouldn’t have resonated so strongly if one of them was bringing less to it than the other. Russell’s openness had to be met step-for-step by Rhys’s petulance. And both shaded those initial impressions with the right amount of depth. Underneath Elizabeth’s playful teasing, we saw the somewhat sad attempt to use her sexuality to fix things with her husband because she doesn’t know what else to do to make things better between them. And underneath Philip’s cold response to her flirting, we saw his deep sense of hurt that she would talk to Gabriel about Paige without him. That scene felt so much deeper than simply a husband shutting down his wife’s sexual advances because he’s mad. That’s the stuff of lesser shows. On The Americans, in the hands of those two actors, it became a layered portrait of two people who use their bodies to manipulate other people but have reached a place of honesty with one another where that won’t work between them. This scene brilliantly conveyed the idea that, when you’re really honest with someone, sometimes you can’t pretend that you can just kiss and make up, especially when you’re two people who frequently use sex to cover up the truth about themselves.

The way these two actors handled the buildup and release of tension between them throughout this challenging episode was stunning. It was their ability to communicate so much with just their expressions that made “Open House” something special and created a moment the likes of which I’ve never seen on television before and am not sure I’ll ever see again. It was their talent and their director’s trust in that talent which made a scene that—for all intents and purposes—should have been horrifying to watch instead feel like something beautiful and moving.

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Title: Baggage

Episode M.V.P.: The Sound Effects Team
“Baggage” was another episode of The Americans filled with fantastic performances, but let’s be honest: This episode belonged to the team that created the sound effects used in the scene that gave the episode its title. “Baggage” will forever be known as “That episode where they broke a dead woman’s bones to fit her in a suitcase,” and so much of the unforgettable horror of that scene came from the sounds of Anneliese’s bones breaking. No television scene has ever produced that kind of visceral reaction in me before. I didn’t know which to cover—my eyes or my ears. In the end, it ended up being the sounds that are still haunting me hours later. And I think that was supposed to be the case. The scene was so eerily quiet except for those sounds, emphasizing the cold, businesslike attitude of Elizabeth and Philip as they went about snapping a woman’s bones like it was just another day at the office.

Some might think of those sounds (and the scene as a whole) as gratuitous (especially because it all centered around the dead, naked body of a woman). However, that scene needed to be as disturbing as possible to prove a point about the life Philip and Elizabeth lead (and the life Anneliese got herself involved in): It’s absolutely brutal. If this whole season is going to center around the conflict of whether or not to let the Center recruit Paige, then we need these reminders of what exactly Paige could be asked to do (or could have done to her). As Elizabeth’s motivations are becoming clearer and more emotionally compelling with each passing episode, Philip’s also need to be just as clear and compelling. The disgustingly vivid sensory details of that suitcase scene made Philip’s words about never wanting his daughter to have to put a body in a suitcase or end up in a suitcase hit home in a way they wouldn’t have without hearing those horrible, bone-snapping sounds before hearing him say those lines.

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