This was definitely a slow-burn place-setting episode, and maybe a bit too much so for my taste. Lots of ratcheting up of tension, not much actually happened.
ODing on valium would proving a convenient way of disposing of Martha; she’s getting less & less useful by the day. Is Oleg’s family Jewish, or is having the mourners start to fill the grave themselves a Russian custom too? And let’s not forget the Jennings; did Pastor & Mrs Tim buy their act or see though it?
Great use of Queen’s “Under Pressure”, what with pressure and tension being the episode themes. I’m finding it very difficult to watch Martha’s scenes knowing that any of them could be her last.
I loved the look on Matthew’s face when Henry was totally butting in on father/son time.
I find the Martha storyline the lease believable on the show and I keep waiting for her to be killed. BTW, what happened to the teen daughter of a CIA officer that Phil was working last season? Did they wrap that arc up?
I thought that maybe Oleg’s father asking about Nina accidentally made her situation worse; that they decided to execute her quickly before any kind of political support for helping her could coalesce.
I think that not only is Oleg ripe for starting to spy for the Americans, but so is his father. He seems pretty bitter about the death of his sun and the Afghan war in general.
The “teenybopper” plotline seems to have disappeared, as has that of the black lady who works at the defense plant.
They’ll be back – when you least expect it! This show never just discards plot-threads, but does allow them to stay off-screen for extended periods. I was thinking the teenaged girl that Philip was ‘seducing’ (working, really) would be a way to work Paige into the family business - “Honey, hang out with her, get to know her, become her confidante, and then…STAB HER IN THE BACK!”
Loved the grunt dismissal when they dropped off the “Jesuit Priest” – “Do you think he’s really could be a priest??” “Ehh…who knows?”
I like Martha and want her to find a way out. But as we learned last week, nobody gets spared. Still, she’s been a surprising character throughout her run on the show. She seemed like such a gullible patsy in the beginning, then demonstrated that she wasn’t quite as dumb as she pretended to be (conniving “Clark” into marrying her, calling him out on his ‘toupee’, keeping her shit together while being questioned by Walter Taffet). I feared for her life a lot more when Gabriel promised “we will do everything we can to protect her…”, just like Claudia said about that woman in season one.
All in all, this episode seemed like a bit of a let-down after last week, but last week was so stellar that a slow-down probably couldn’t be helped.
The episode was certainly slow, but I’m always waiting to see what the final scene is (like Nina’s fate last week). Going into the ending this week, I remembered the TV-MA warning, with nudity and sexual situations, and started wondering if I had missed something. I was not disappointed. The “Under Pressure” sequence is one of the best things they’ve done on the show.
I read an interview with the showrunners – either in one of the linked articles from this thread or maybe Entertainment Weekly or something – and they were asked this very question.
They said that Philip is still seeing her on a regular basis because he still needs to keep that bug on her father active. We just aren’t seeing it in the show because it’s essentially drudgery, with the same once a (month? week?) interactions.
I think they mentioned that there’s multiple examples of this, but generally we only see the process of creating the relationship. It’s conceivable the black lady storyline is the same deal.
In other words, don’t be surprised if the show never references them again, and also don’t be surprised if they all of a sudden reappear with a major arc.
Do we know anything about the Asian lady other than her fixation with Mary Kay? Is her husband the target? Maybe he’s some high-ranking dude.
(Sorry to continually refer to minor characters by their ethnicity, but I’m lousy with the names of, well, minor characters and it does work as folks do know who I’m talking about.)
I love this show, no doubt… but in addition to all the obvious things that require major disbelief suspension (so much muuuuurder…) I have such a hard time believing that these two non-superhuman beings can run a travel agency 30-40 hours a week (which is, after all, a genuine job for both of them, requiring genuine effort, focus and participation), shop and prepare meals, do the laundry, the dishes and all the other things required to keep a house from turning into Grey Gardens, make some attempt to parent two teenagers,take care of personal grooming, form and sustain multiple relationships of varying degrees of intimacy with multiple parties by embodying complete fictions, all requiring major clothing and hair changes of nearly endless variety (which must be acquired, fitted, etc. and of course hidden, so maintaining hideyspots…), necessitating entirely different data sets for each persona which must be learned and maintained, keep up their physical fitness and general SpyPeople abilities so they can be sure to be in condition to murder people fairly regularly and deal with body disposal afterwards, stay in regular touch with Frank Langella, and go bowling in their spare time. I guess the Soviet Union conquered the human need for sleep?
They make James Franco look like a slug.
I loved this episode. And I totally called it way last season that they would use the whole El Salvador sanctuary movement as their way in with the pastor.
So William had a wife who was “sent home”, that explains a lot.
It would seem that this time around the Centre really was planning on exfiltrating her, but I think that ship sailed when she ran away from Gabriel (who ironically was telling her the truth about “Clark”). Not that sending her to Moscow wouldn’t worked out all that well either once she realized “Clark” isn’t coming with her. She’d end up spending the rest of her life* in a KGB sanitarium under a suicide watch while they to pump her for as much information as possible.
I was surprised about the exfiltration plan, I thought for sure that Gabriel would kill Martha once he got Philip out of the house. Martha still believes “Clark” really loves her, so yeah…she’s not going to the Soviet Union without him. Still not convinced she’s going to die either - but it may be at her own hands given the pills she’s popping.
Great work by Keri Russell in the scene where she discovers Philip revealed his true self to Martha.
Have P & E been in such danger of being caught since the last episode of season 1?
Maybe because Vinyl and Better Call Saul ended this week, I stupidly had it in my head that this was the season finale of The Americans too. I was pissed that it “ended” that way until they announced scenes from next week.
Martha’s instincts are mostly right and she’ll probably end up dead and Phillip will have to do the deed. That will totally break his spirit. Will Martha go back to work in the morning and pretend business as usual?
Even if she did there’s such a cloud of suspicion about her now that she’ll have to tell all about Clark.
Funny how the KGB handler is more open to pulling her out than Stan’s boss was about exfiltrating Nina.
I don’t know how historically accurate this is, but in the show the KGB seems to have been quite serious about protecting its people, even people like Martha who didn’t know she was working for the KGB.
This was a fantastic episode. Can’t wait for next week.
The actress who plays Martha (Alison Wright?) has been so amazing on this show.
If they can get you out, they will. They certainly did with Kim Philby. It isn’t altruism or honor, it’s naked self-interest. It’s easier to convince people to spy for you if their retirement plan isn’t a hollow-point.
Yes, its only naked self-interest when they did it, of course when we did it it was honour.
[QUOTE=madmonk28]
I think that not only is Oleg ripe for starting to spy for the Americans, but so is his father. He seems pretty bitter about the death of his sun and the Afghan war in general.
[/QUOTE]
The death of your sun leaves your entire world fucked no doubt.:dubious:
As for spying, I hope not. This show has been generally* good at avoiding cliches and stereotypes. Angry at child’s/brother’s death and upset with direction of country does not mean a person is ready to start spying for the enemy.
*(exceptions exist, ISI apparently thinks they can detect religiosity of officers by asking them to list it from 1-10, and the whole Afghan war sub plot is very anachronistic especially with the rather inaccurate “Mujahideen= Taliban”, implication)