The Americans on FX

I'm sure it would have started with Phillip telling Gabriel, although I don't remember seeing that happen in the show. From there, yeah, I'm not sure how many people it has to go through to get to Arkady.

The relationship between Arkady and Phillip/Elizabeth has always been unclear to me. Arkady's obviously aware of them and supports them when necessary, but he isn't the one calling the shots. That comes from "the Center." Why then was he the person Phillip approached to keep the Russians away from recruiting Paige?

 

Unless he felt this was the only way to send a clear "stay the fuck away from my daughter" message that wouldn't be ignored or denied (as the Center is wont to do).

I really hope "the Center" is not this:

 

OK. There's always two different kinds of spies: diplomatic and illegal. A diplomatic spy has permission to be in the country and it's sort of implicit that they can snoop around, as long as they stay within certain written and unwritten parameters. If they get caught going too far, they're usually just sent home unless it's something really egregious. An illegal spy is there under a fake identity and has no legal right to be in the country. If they get caught, they are in deep shit.

Arkady is head of the diplomatic spies. Presume that some percentage of the diplomatic staff in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow are CIA, and they have a person in charge of just them. That would be analogous to what Arkady does.

One of the ways you maintain security of the illegal program is that they have no contact whatsoever with the diplomatic side. The diplomatic side is kind of a "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" thing where the FBI knows who all the diplomatic staff is, knows that a lot of them are spies, and follows them somewhat regularly. They're under surveillance. We let them do it because they let us do it, you just try to be better at it than the other side. You don't want your top-secret illegal deep cover people having any contact with your people who are under regular surveillance.

That's why Philip going to Arkady to say "stay away from my kids" was a big deal. He was breaking protocol in a major way, saying "my kids are so important to me that I am willing to risk exposure just to tell you to back off, so back off."

 

So Arkady held no actual sway with whether or not Paige gets recruited? It was more of a symbolic move, like "this is how serious he is"? That makes sense, even if it didn't really work. I still think Paige will be recruited, and she is even taking on the role of spy herself, reading Alice and deciding it wasn't a good time to ask for the tape back.

 

Correct. And I agree.

 

Paige keeps looking like she wants a normal family to eat lasagna with.

 

I could watch an entire hour of Paige asking her parents the questions we all damn well know she must have.

But I guess that wouldn't make for interesting TV for most folks.

 

Not to anyone's surprise, The Americans was picked up for its final two seasons.

 

There was some thought that it might only go 5 instead of 6.

I'm simultaneously happy and disappointed, the latter being because if it were done in five they'd have to really ramp up the pace of the overarching story.

 

Odds that Matthew knocks up Paige?

 

Verify for me ... the woman with Gabriel at Don's office wasn't Claudia? That was the older woman with computer skills that Oleg and Tatiana were looking for, correct?

 

Was definitely not Claudia. The second suggestion sounds right.