can't believe Philip did not at least lie to Martha about joining her later. Let her have some hope for a while, she is going to Russia for gods sake at least let her think she won't be alone longterm. Even Elizabeth recognized she needed that hope.

also they lost a perfect opportunity plotwise in that park for Stan to catch a glimpse of elizabeth maybe from afar. that would have been awesome. like from above or below on that bridge. in disguise at least just as she gets martha out of there.

and philip was really dumb going to the park without disguise knowing the feds were after her too.

That was quite a moment where Elizabeth was telling Phillip to leave and go back with Martha. Almost felt sorry for her, like she saw some sort of love from him towards Martha that she never felt from him.

This morning I woke up calling my wife Martha and just giving her as much bad news as possible

-Martha, Cruz nominated Fiorina as his running mate

-Martha, I need you to pick the kids up today

-Martha, I'm gonna play golf this weekend

If I was Martha, I think I'd ask if I could just stay in Cuba instead of going to Moscow.

How many real-time days has this season been? The Martha thing has only been a day or two, they were quarantined in the house for a day. It does feel like a slow build, but in show time not long has passed.

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If I was Martha, I think I'd ask if I could just stay in Cuba instead of going to Moscow.

How many real-time days has this season been? The Martha thing has only been a day or two, they were quarantined in the house for a day. It does feel like a slow build, but in show time not long has passed.

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I told my wife the same thing about staying in Cuba. Life on the beach, mojitos, good cigars.............I guess Martha would not care about the cigars.

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If I was Martha, I think I'd ask if I could just stay in Cuba instead of going to Moscow.

How many real-time days has this season been? The Martha thing has only been a day or two, they were quarantined in the house for a day. It does feel like a slow build, but in show time not long has passed.

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I told my wife the same thing about staying in Cuba. Life on the beach, mojitos, good cigars.............I guess Martha would not care about the cigars.

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I like the idea of an Office Space-style ending. Stan gets killed. Phillip tries to desert and gets executed in Russia. Elizabeth leaves Phillip and is forced to live on the run for the rest of her life, always looking over her shoulder. The kids live as orphans. And then we cut to Martha on a Cuban beach sipping a Mai Tai and complaining to the waiter that she ordered a pina colada.

Who else thinks it would be fun to have Stan's job?

am i the only one who thinks martha isnt going anywhere, alive? i fully expect kgb to kill her and lie to phillip about it, unless she kills herself at this point since she sees nothing ahead but the same pre-clark lonely life, and now in russia. wonder how many vicodin she still has

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am i the only one who thinks martha isnt going anywhere, alive?

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No. See every page of any Americans thread

Martha will never make it back to Russia. Otherwise, they wouldn't have made a big deal out of finding a different pilot.

Infected rat + plane + new pilot + Martha = perfect chance to experiment with the new pathogen and kill two birds with one stone.

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Infected rat + plane + new pilot + Martha = perfect chance to experiment with the new pathogen and kill two birds with one stone.

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ummmm....you might be onto something there.

That still gets into "we kill our own recruits" problem.

I think the point of the new pilot was to show that other lady at the embassy had been running her own operations and was very competent.

And also that Oleg is getting left out of stuff.

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That still gets into "we kill our own recruits" problem.

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If she goes bezerk and starts yelling KGB in the streets, etc. then they are in the clear. All they have to tell their recruits (agents) is, "we'll take care of you as long as you don't run to the authorities and threaten to turn us in". Recruits would be fine with that explaination.

They've got to be setting up something for Oleg to flip to the US side I think, he was way to big a part of the show a season or so ago to just have him left out of so much now.

I think Oleg is at the point, or close to it, where he's more attached to Stan as a friend than he is to Mother Russia. He'll flip sooner or later.

I didn't see it mentioned, but I enjoyed the brief comic relief of Paige showing up and asking for a beer. Nothing was made of this, so maybe reading too hard, but I wondered if she was trying to keep an eye on Henry since he's been at the Beeman's so much. Kind of her very basic introductory version of spycraft.

There was no news on the Pastor front this week, but following up on the last discussion we were having on this, I think while Paige still has a bit to go before she's approving her parents taking them out, it's a much bigger and less inline with the show leap for the pastor to suddenly turn pervy or her to go all Lolita on him. I can't see either of those things happening at all. I think the beautiful complexity of this storyline is that the Pastor is a good guy who has done absolutely nothing wrong, learned dangerous information because a secret was burning a hole in Paige's conscience, and now may be on the hook for that having that knowledge, possibly at Paige's hand/order. That type of storyline would fit the nuanced moral dilemmas that this show is built on.

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I think Oleg is at the point, or close to it, where he's more attached to Stan as a friend than he is to Mother Russia. He'll flip sooner or later.

I didn't see it mentioned, but I enjoyed the brief comic relief of Paige showing up and asking for a beer. Nothing was made of this, so maybe reading too hard, but I wondered if she was trying to keep an eye on Henry since he's been at the Beeman's so much. Kind of her very basic introductory version of spycraft.

There was no news on the Pastor front this week, but following up on the last discussion we were having on this, I think while Paige still has a bit to go before she's approving her parents taking them out, it's a much bigger and less inline with the show leap for the pastor to suddenly turn pervy or her to go all Lolita on him. I can't see either of those things happening at all. I think the beautiful complexity of this storyline is that the Pastor is a good guy who has done absolutely nothing wrong, learned dangerous information because a secret was burning a hole in Paige's conscience, and now may be on the hook for that having that knowledge, possibly at Paige's hand/order. That type of storyline would fit the nuanced moral dilemmas that this show is built on.

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I don't see the perv thing happening. At most, he might put her in a "either you tell the authorities or I do" situation.

I actually think that Martha survives this...and that character is dangling out there in he background for a while.

That was quite the jump

When Martha got on the plane...it felt anticlimatic.....then gosh a lot happened

ummmm.....what the hell just happened.

that was insane. i've never seen a show do a midseason time jump like that. they spent an hour wrapping up a long running (really series long) narrative more or less and then jump 7 months giving a few brief glimpses of their new reality....

it's like a different show now. crazy. bizarre.

obviously THE story now is Paige and Pastor Tim and Alice and she is basically managing her agents for lack of a better word. keeping them in line or they are dead.

and WOW that speech by Elizabeth to Paige. do they not see the paradox though of how much it affected them and now they are doing it to Paige while they are taking a vacation and playing street hockey.

and everything is different for Stan I guess but we don't see inside operations, we get a nice wrap up from Gaad instead.

it was so different, so bizarre, so out of left field.....but i'm in.

certain smaller stories are still in play - the guy with the viruses, whatever the hell is going on hith the mary kay korean lady and even Kimmy was mentioned...

but everything has changed.

I wasn't far off on the 18 seconds, but as soon as Martha was gone the show kicked up about 8 notches.
So much interpersonal stuff going on and such great acting and directing in this episode. Really got back to what makes the show great.
And yeah the 7 month thing was really odd but I liked it because it was so different. And if you think about it, they kind of had to - if the center is giving them a break are they going to have months where they just sit around at the travel agency? And after the break, to see Paige is going down the path the center wants her to after her moms speech was cool.
But massive props to Kerry and Johnathan for their acting in that, really really good.

My wife and I have officially jumped the shark on this craptastic show. Season 1 & season 2 was a SPY show. And then the last thing we get is "you guys need a break..." great- so we get to watch some more 80s family drama live their day to day lives as travel agents! Is that what you people really want?

How many more times do you want to see blank stares between Keri Russell and Matthew Ryhs? How many cool scenes do we get with this Paige "struggling" with her parents being half ass spies? And this last episode we get to see blackie that we haven't seen in an entire season and just kill her off immediately while Elizabeth runs around town with, a random Mary Kay Asian woman?!

The icing on the cake from last week... The FBI rushes to the park Martha calls from, stake the park out, and yet BOTH Philip and Elizabeth show up, find Martha on a lone bench and march her ass out?! Was that not the most asinine straw grasping of writing you've ever seen?!

There is pacing (see Better Call...) and then there is this pile of garbage. I won't bag on anymore episodes or clog up this thread to respect you guys, but gd it, get out while you can before you get sucked in waiting for a payoff that doesn't come (I did that with Sons of Anarchy)
Sorry to see you go Martha, you were the only redeeming actress left.

Lastly... They need to hire whoever does the trailers for each episode to produce these things, as those are much more exciting than the excruciating 50+ minutes that we have to endure.

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My wife and I have officially jumped the shark on this craptastic show. Season 1 & season 2 was a SPY show. And then the last thing we get is "you guys need a break..." great- so we get to watch some more 80s family drama live their day to day lives as travel agents! Is that what you people really want?

How many more times do you want to see blank stares between Keri Russell and Matthew Ryhs? How many cool scenes do we get with this Paige "struggling" with her parents being half ass spies? And this last episode we get to see blackie that we haven't seen in an entire season and just kill her off immediately while Elizabeth runs around town with, a random Mary Kay Asian woman?!

The icing on the cake from last week... The FBI rushes to the park Martha calls from, stake the park out, and yet BOTH Philip and Elizabeth show up, find Martha on a lone bench and march her ass out?! Was that not the most asinine straw grasping of writing you've ever seen?!

There is pacing (see Better Call...) and then there is this pile of garbage. I won't bag on anymore episodes or clog up this thread to respect you guys, but gd it, get out while you can before you get sucked in waiting for a payoff that doesn't come (I did that with Sons of Anarchy)
Sorry to see you go Martha, you were the only redeeming actress left.

Lastly... They need to hire whoever does the trailers for each episode to produce these things, as those are much more exciting than the excruciating 50+ minutes that we have to endure.

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I said on the Saul thread that I never criticize someone for liking or not liking a show, tastes differ.
But the show was always using spying to highlight other things, marriage issues, morality, east vs west etc. They definitely took that to another level this year (because of Kerry's pregnancy limiting the action they could shoot I'm sure), but at its heart the show hasn't changed much. At least not to me. From a spy perspective the case against them is still active, Kerry is running an agent and killed another tonight, Philip let one agent go, the pastor Tim storyline, the bio piece is still running and Oleg is still out there for Stan. Not sure how many more spy stories there can be, but tonight was about all of that finally dragging the family down. They did a great job of combining both.
But to school their own.

yeah thats just insane. i mean i've complained a little on the BCS thread about getting to the point. i mean the writing and acting are great but we've had 2 seasons of the brother crapping on Jimmy we get it already. there is more action in the mike story than in the saul story line.

but on the Americans there has been nothing but action since day one and they take 15 minutes to jump the narrative 7 months ahead and suddenly you think its a family drama with no action. thats absurd. it was so intense they needed a break and we didn't have to see that 7 months is the point. but we are to assume in the interim those other plotlines are still ongoing.

smh