'The Americans' season finale closes out with a focus on the young

Family melodrama, morality play, superior spy yarn: FX's superb drama The Americans wraps up its third season 10 p.m. on Wednesday.

This season has belonged to Paige Jennings (Holly Taylor), the 15-year-old daughter of Soviet sleeper agents Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell).

She finally learns from her parents that they are Russian-born KGB officers who have spied on the United States since the mid-1960s. (And yes, they've killed quite a few people too, Paige. Though, I wonder if they'd ever tell you.)

Since that fateful scene, the Jennings - and the audience - have held their collective breath, wondering if Paige will spill the beans and get her parents arrested.

Paige has cast a shadow over the season from its opening scene, a flashback: A much younger Paige stands poolside with her mom at a public facility. She looks terrified and refuses to go into the water.

Elizabeth, intent on teaching Paige to swim, comforts her, tells her there's nothing to worry about. But Paige is inconsolable. So Elizabeth looks around to make sure the coast is clear, picks up an astonished Paige and throws her into the water.

Merciless? Cruel? Heartless?

They have an intense relationship, full of complexity and ambivalence.

Things are bound to get more fraught now that Elizabeth and Philip's KGB bosses insist they recruit Paige as a second-generation spy. Elizabeth agrees, Philip does not - the Paige problem already has put a heavy strain on their marriage.

The Americans is such a superior drama as it takes a long, serious look at the dynamics of human relationships.

Frankly, the relationship between Paige and her parents is a mess.

The girl has been systematically lied to for her entire life. Her parents have never shared their actual selves with her, or taught her their real moral values.

The sad thing is that Elizabeth and Philip are mere actors when they are around their own kids - they maintain their cover as they would with their neighbors and coworkers.

Elizabeth and Philip are extreme cases, of course, but their attitude to their children seems endemic to many an adult from their generation and the ones that preceded them.

The Americans suggests that Paige could be the child of any parents who spends most of their waking lives preoccupied with their careers, adults who don't respect their children enough to share themselves, adults who keep entire aspects of themselves secret, whether that be their actual feelings, their jobs, their extramarital affairs, or their deadly missions on behalf of spy organizations.

Paige has always been a powerful character. Sneaky, suspicious, and smart, she's a bomb about to explode.

There's a suggestion that Elizabeth may visit her dying mother in the U.S.S.R. with Paige in tow. One wonders whether this will cement their relationship or destroy it.

Is she really worth the risk?

The Americans

Season finale at 10 p.m. Wednesday on FX.

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