Now Philip will “magically” find that his business will suddenly be making money.
And Stavros will be living like a king in Rio.
Damn capitalists!
Agreed on both points. I posted it not that long ago, so I won’t detail the many things Stan has done right. Clearly we can cherrypick lists on either side of the argument, but I would just point out that even the best detectives IRL have hits and misses.
Cool! 
Martha’s gun was mentioned upthread. Some others:
–The girl who just happened to be on the bus with Paige, and connected her to Pastor Tim but IIRC was never seen again.
–Who would have predicted Jared killed his family, after the terrorized way he jumped out of the room upon “discovering” them? (Not even the writers, I believe; I think that was the dumbest plot they ever wrote and was probably an audible after Margo Martindale was too busy for her lover to have been the culprit.)
–Even harder to imagine, if that’s possible: what if I told you when Philip’s Russian son started traveling to the U.S. that he would make it all the way to DC, then be sent back without Philip ever knowing anything about it?
Yes, good point. This gets chalked up to the rule of cool, I suppose: that show would be pretty boring. Or maybe it would still be a good relationship/family drama. But wow, would that throw people off after earlier seasons’ events!
Stan gets points for realizing that the defector was bogus. And roping in Oleg to prove it.
In a book about the KGB that I read, they said that the easiest thing to explain away was skin tone (I have a “Red Indian Granny”, then accent (“spent several years in France”). Manner of dress and etiquette were very difficult.
I don’t know why skin tone would even be an issue. The USSR looked whiter than the U.S. to me.
Asian republics were quite a different story. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia which span Europe and Asia/ME, also quite distinct from majority of Eastern Europe. Obviously, P&E aren’t from those regional ethnic populations.
Its not like they only ever spied on the US and Europe. The book mentioned that skin colour was often the first thing identified by laymen as a giveaway, was actually the thing that concerned them the least as far as detection was concerned. Social cues, etiquette, pop culture etc were far more important.
In early seasons, this was alluded to, in the very first scene, Philip is having a discussion about the merits of a Japanese Olympic Judo team, and that quickly established something “off” about him.
They aren’t in story. But the excellence in casting is such that while still beautiful actors, the two leads are very obviously ordinary looking people and could easily pass for locals in a large part of the world, excluding sub-Saharan Africa and the Far East.
Business in the background in “Chicago”: “Things For You”. What do they sell?
“Food combining”: that flashed me back to that same year, 1987, when my girlfriend’s parents were into that fad.
The axe scene was a tour de force in every respect.
I see in myself a strong tendency toward a recency bias, in both directions. A disappointing episode is “Worst. Ever.” A really good one is “Best. Ever.” So I don’t trust myself to say this was the best episode of the show ever. But wow, was it good.
My memory is failing me. What is Stan’s big lead? “Six years ago, we had a team on a woman in Philly, wife of an illegal that got killed. She disappeared right from under us.” Should I know who he’s referring to?
I was impressed with the guy who played Harvest. Jonathan Kells Phillips.
That was the guy that got shot and had the Hispanic wife that they told they were going to take to Cuba, but killed and made it look like an OD.
I loved Harvest’s messages to his parents. 
Stan breaking into the Jennings home was a nice callback to the pilot.
It was neat how they showed him checking out the circuit breaker panel, but the mechanism was too tricky for him to cotton to.
I half-expected them to get home and notice some kind of subtle indicator they had left to let them know someone had prowled around. Do you think that might pop up next time?
Can’t believe there are only three left! Shit is going to get real.
I had an issue with Stan going from clueless to Sherlock Holmes in 9 seconds. I wish they had fleshed this out a bit with another clue or two. I just don’t see how a business trip (OK two, even if it is for a travel agent) brings this all home for Stan.
It was also the weird way Philip was acting, the late night outings, the stuff Henry was saying about never meeting the aunt, the fact that Stan was chasing a couple and shot at them right before Elizabeth went to care for the aunt, and the way the bioweapons guy described them.
Stan did get suspicious of the Jennings early on. I can’t remember exactly how the plotline went, but he was snooping around and searching their stuff and something happened (IIRC Philip did something) that made him think he was just being paranoid and wrote it off. Does anyone remember specifically how this plot line went?
So it’s understandable that any weirdness he witnessed after that could be dismissed as just being paranoid. But the weirdness is ramping up a lot lately. He got the opportunity to talk to Henry alone and probed a little - which lead to him investigate further.
I really don’t buy the “Stan is blind and incompetant” idea that a lot of people here seem to hold - it’s easy to assume a character is dumb for not seeing what the audience knows to be true. I feel like Stan has been fairly consistent and is decently competant, but not outstandingly so.
It was in the pilot. Philip cleaned up the car’s trunk, so Stan felt foolish for being suspicious.
Also, Aderholt (sp?) had planted a bug in Stan’s mind by telling him about some tendencies they had picked up on by following Harvest for a while.
The thought has also crossed my mind that P&E might be betrayed in the end by their own side. The Soviet regime is changing and they’re not even sure exactly who they should be supporting or taking orders from (well, they may differ on those things). Plus the show is keeping Oleg around for some reason even though he’s not adding much to the plot right now, with precious few episodes left. I’m gonna miss this show.
He also had Aderholt describing the people spotted by the FBI in Chicago. Which included a white male and white female, the same day his neighbors left on an Emergency Travel Agent trip. By the look on Stan’s face when he heard that, he was re-evaluating everything he’d ever noticed being “off” about P&E. It’s not exactly an “A-Ha!” moment, but definitely an “I wonder if…” moment.
Well, they need someone to ride off into the sunset. And Oleg is just about the closest to a “Good Guy” character in the whole series. A legitimate patriot, who wants what’s best for his country, but who won’t cross certain lines despite that.
Oleg wants to stop Elizabeth’s mission and Philip hasn’t been much help. If Oleg went to Stan, the FBI would get the job done.
I’m going to miss Keri Russell. She’s mainly known for being a pretty face, and she’s been in a lot of dippy romance movies and shows. I hope she gets another chance to show what an actress she is.