It's Deadly Already On 'The Americans' Season 3

If you haven't watch The Americans on FX yet, get started on the catch-up process right away because things are already heating up. In the Season 3 premiere "EST Men," the double lives of Philip and Elizabeth Jennings already started catching up to them when two jobs go completely wrong: Elizabeth almost got caught by FBI agents and Philip inadvertently led to the death of his recruit Annelise. The latter ends the episode but will most likely start a chain of further terrible reactions that could prove to be dangerous for Elizabeth and Philip's lives, both public and private.

While meeting up with Annelise as Scott Berman (Philip's Swedish Intelligence alter ego) to see what information Annelise has seduced out of Yousaf, the Pakistani ISI officer who may or may not have information about a CIA mission in Afghanistan, Annelise reveals some news that proves she was always too inexperienced to take on such an important job. She tells Scott that she has fallen in love with Yousaf. She is encouraged to keep going but while having a romantic night in with the ISI officer, she starts to reveal her real reason for meeting and being with him. She tells Yousaf that she is doing "important work" and in a rage and paranoia spiral, Yousaf strangles Annelise until she dies. Unfortunately Philip, still in his Scott Berman, gets to the room much too late and tries to salvage the mission by telling Yousaf that he can help.

It seems obvious that Philip will try to take advantage of the unfortunate situation at hand and either convince Yousaf or blackmail him into giving him the information he needs. But it seemed that Philip had a real soft spot for Annelise, so there's no way he won't be effected after the debacle. In the promo for next week's episode, "Baggage," Elizabeth reprimands Philip for his actions and for letting Annelise handle Yousaf over herself. Philip seems to try to use this situation as proof that their daughter Paige has no business being recruited into such dangerous scenarios.

And here's the thing. He's right. Elizabeth has been trying to argue since Season 2 that because Paige seems to be searching for something deeper in her life, that means she's ready to learn the difficult truth about her parents. I think that's utter nonsense. If both Elizabeth and Philip have had opportunities in the past to doubt their mission, to doubt their real identities as actual Russians who were sent for the sole purpose of being spies, how could Elizabeth believe Paige is ready to voluntarily jump into the same environment seeing as how she was raised as a prideful American?

Every scene in The Americans has a meaning, and in the Season 3 premiere there's one particular quick moment with Paige that shows where her mind is currently about the issues of the world. We see Paige flipping through the channels on television and she comes across the death of the Russian president. Seeing the news, Paige immediately changes the channel to watch The Jeffersons. Could Paige have some kind of subconscious inkling of her parents' secret identities? Could she know more than she's letting on? Or is it more likely that she just doesn't want to care about that world, the ugly, difficult, dangerous and tension-filled issues that plagued the country in the time this series was set? It seems to me that Paige needs to find her purpose in life but that at this moment, her mother's purpose for her and her own purpose definitely don't line up together.

And what about this Yousaf situation? What will come of this and Philip? The most important thing now is for Philip to earn Yousaf's trust enough for him to not want to call his own people to take care of the mess he's made with Anneliese and, in the process, take care of Philip himself. He needs to prove that he can get rid of Yousaf's problem and also give or show him something that will convince him to come to Philip's side. I have no idea what that's going to be, but with The Americans it will definitely be something worth watching.

Images: Michael Parmelee/FX; theamericansfxnetworks/Tumblr