Why do they never wear gloves?

Question

Is there any particular reason why The Americans Philip and Elizabeth never wear gloves when they are on a mission?

Apparently they know about fingerprints and how they can be used to identify someone. In Season 1 there is mentioned multiple times that they wiped their prints after using a car. This even leads to suspicion when the FBI finds Amador's car without any prints in it.

In Episode 2 of Season 2 Philip breaks into a house, but uses a screwdriver not to leave any prints, which I imagine is quite inconvenient for opening doors and searching the house in general.

Why are they not simply wearing gloves?

Answer 1

There are a couple of reasons why they might choose to not to wear gloves when on a mission:

• They would look more suspicious if caught (holding a screwdriver would look odd, but not quite as suspicious)
• If it's not winter (which it generally isn't in the show), having gloves in you possession while going to your mission draws attention
• Gloves would smudge existing fingerprints, such as on doorknobs, alerting forensics to the fact that someone wearing gloves was there

That said, I think there are definitely a few times when they might have benefitted from wearing gloves. I imagine they avoided those situations so that they could either show how clever Philip and Elizabeth are or to look more dramatic (pushing a door open with a screwdriver is far more interesting than slowly opening a door with an off-shot gloved hand).