It is surprising how much Oleg has disappeared from the narrative lately. I thought they were setting up a much more major final arc for him.
A logical follow-up would be to check with the airlines to see if they took a flight to Houston that night. That would likely blow the whole thing wide open.
Ohhhh…shit, you are right! I read your comment wrong at first, thinking you meant to check if they flew under their own names to go to the scene of the crime, which they obviously did not. But what you are suggesting would indeed be very revealing.
I knew both of these shows are/were on FX, but didn’t know they were by the same creators. But that helps explain why I like both of them so much. Man, I LOVED Justified. It was my favorite show for several years, and now The Americans is my favorite. Both are just so well done, with realistic morally-ambiguous characters, offbeat humorous elements, terrific dialogue and complexity that you just don’t usually see on CBS/NBC/ABC dramas.
Checking on the flights had occurred to me as well. Would they cover that? Perhaps by having others travel under their names. (Fellow travelers?)
John Landgraf, head of FX, deserves a shoutout as well. He is pretty awesome.
I was just happy to see good clear images of the rock wall when Stan went around back! 
Yeah - I think Stan’s “a-HA!” came a little too quickly - which makes me fear they may move too many pieces too quickly to do whatever they want in the last 3 eps. Wonder if they’ll regret wasting much of a show digging, and 10 min in the dark? 
What is the blemish on E’s face? I don’t remember it always being there, and don’t recall a specific beatdown.
Stavros got mentioned again - will he figure more prominently?
You’d think that as soon as the drawings come in, that should be enough to turn Stan into full attack mode.
Damn - everyone shot well at and from that speeding van!
Yeah - the checkable plane travel seems a big omission.
My prediction - Oleg kills E, then gets killed by Stan. P and Paige get away.
P&E may be good enough at tradecraft to make sure that they never say they’re taking an emergency trip to a city without first ensuring there’s a flight at approximately the right time. And they’re travel agents, so they should be able to check quickly and easily, even in the pre-internet world.
If Stan takes the next step and really starts digging into their backgrounds they’re toast of course, but he presumably can’t easily do that without reporting his suspicions to his superiors.
Yeah, but they said they were going to Houston, not Chicago. A simple check of flight manifests to Houston on that evening would unmask them.
Oh, you mean not just the existence of flights, but the names of the passengers on the flights?
Yeah, presumably. (Unless they actually bought tickets and had some of their less-important spy buddies go sit in the seats, which seems pretty unlikely.)
I think it’s clear that if Stan were sufficiently all-in on his P&E-might-be-spies theory, he could unmask them quickly any number of ways. And I do think the show hasn’t done a great job of showing exactly what his mindset is. But presumably there’s some combination of he-doesn’t-REALLY-think-it-could-be-true and it-would-be-a-massive-professional-embarassment-to-falsely-accuse-his-best-friend that’s keeping him from really bringing the resources of the FBI to bear. I’d imagine that he he’d have to submit the request for flight manifests through some official channels, questions would be asked, etc.
I guess they could have flown to Houston as Philip and Elizabeth and then on to Chicago as Mr. Hammer and Mrs. Sickle.
Also, Marilyn is Colleen? Erica’s gonna need some more home care guys, I guess.
Yeah, and I’m not sure it makes a whole lot of sense. It went from suspicion in the pilot, strong enough to break into their garage; to absolutely no hint of suspicion at all for most of the series; to suddenly for no apparent reason becoming suspicious again.
I don’t agree that there was “no reason”.
Ohhhh…true, good call!
His suspicion comes from a combination of being back in Counterintelligence and knowing that the operators have inside information at the FBI plus Philip’s response to him when called out on hiding something. Knowing that something was up (albeit not what) his casual questioning of Henry—particularly about when Elizabeth disappeared to take care of “Aunt Helen”—was looking for cracks that could indicate any kind of malfeasence from mafia connections or money laundering to running the kind of racist death cult everybody was in a moral panic about in the ‘Eighties.
Frankly, for as much as I’ve criticized Stan, he has good instincts. He knew that there was something odd about Philip and Elizabeth, he formed a working relationship with Oleg and managed him well, et cetera. He seems kind of shell shocked from his previous undercover work and the collapse of his marriage, and he’s going to be kicking himself for not realizing that his first instincts were right all along, but he’s not dumb; he just hasn’t been a very effective or focused agent.
Stranger
Yeah, okay, the last few episodes aren’t the problem so much. But I think the really weak part of the narrative was the notion that he was suspicious enough in the pilot to actually break into their house… but then his suspicion level just dropped to zero and was never mentioned again.
I think the pilot was the mistake. What’s much more plausible is that he would reject from the outset the preposterous coincidence that the people he was desperately looking for just moved in across the street. Then he notices a few odd things but continues to shrug them off. Then more odd things until finally he just has to take the idea of this preposterous coincidence seriously…
I think you’re forgetting that in the pilot, he approached Philip when he had the trunk open (but obscured from Stan’s view) and the KGB colonel was tied up in it. Philip basically had to make a suspicious maneuver to block Stan’s path and then direct him away from any viewing angle. There was no way to play it smooth: either it was to allow the FBI agent neighbor to see someone tied up in there or be very awkwardly blocked. So it was natural for him to want to investigate. Philip did a great job of getting the trunk to look very ordinary (not just empty but with normal items in it) in record time for Stan’s return visit, which he anticipated. Philip was lurking in the shadows with a gun, waiting to take Stan out if necessary, but he saw the look on Stan’s face of “okay, I feel stupid” so he held his fire.
ETA: Also, it was Stan who just moved there. Philip and Elizabeth had been there for years.
I think there is deeper drama in Stan discovering a few pieces of the puzzle but not knowing what the final picture is than there is Stan knowing what the picture is but shrugging the pieces off.
The discussion of the flight manifests misses one point in that Chicago is a hub and they wouldn’t necessarily have direct flights from Dulles to Houston. They could go via Chicago.
WIth regard to the quick Sherlocking on Stan’s part. I rewatched the cringy Thanksgiving prayer and one could make an argument that Stan had an inkling before that. I feel as if there have been a couple of lingering shots on Stan this season as if we were supposed to see the hamster wheel turning.
I liked that this episode was really back to the 3 leads for the show- bit parts for the others (Paige, Marilyn, Oleg, Aderholt) with still a big scene for our all-american boy. I’m convinced that he has a huge part to play yet. And with no basis at all, I am going to say that Henry convinces Stan not to shoot or arrest Philip (or maybe Paige). I think Henry and Philip are able to continue as The Americans as they are the two who believe the system and country is better.
The subject is on his mind again because of the illegal find in Chicago. He’s thinking about all the ways that illegals might operate. And the Jenning’s behavior has ramped up in bizarreness in recent weeks - witness Stan basically directly confronting Philip and saying “you’ve been really weird/suspicious lately, what are you up to?” - combined with his opportunity to spend extra time with Henry and question him about his parents lifestyle, which only confirmed his instinct to be suspicious. The timing of Elizabeth and Philip both making mysterious, urgent trips and what’s going down in Chicago (and what happened to the Russian defectors) might also play a role.
In the pilot, Stan’s break-in seemed more like a sign of his eff-the-rules attitude than any real suspicion of P&E. He’s curious about his neighbors, he knows how to pick a lock — he just breaks in. No skin off his nose.
Stan has actually become a better person over the course of the series, right? He certainly shows more empathy now. There was something wrong with him at the beginning — maybe related to his undercover stint with the white supremacists. (That whole story could make an interesting series.) He was a bad husband and father (and the break-in makes him a bad neighbor).