The Americans on FX

I know this was nowhere in the actual episode, but I kinda just assumed that Stan hit a bar after watching William die, and who could blame him. So he may have been a little tipsy when he got home, caught the kids and talked to Philip. His actions did resmeble, to me, a guy who had tossed back a few Americas.

Again, that is only what I was thinking as I watched it. I did think Philip played it well. He wasn't high fiving Stan or anything. He just played along until he could get Paige outside, where he really showed how he felt about it.

 

Let's see. This is January 1984.

Paige and Matthew remind me of Claire and Bender in The Breakfast Club.

 

I was wondering if William told Stan anything (off screen) before he died.

Seems unlikely, but it felt a little flat (narratively) to have William's fate left unmentioned.

 

I think we can assume that William died.
Since they didn't show anymore, I think we can also assume that what William gave them is what they showed: operatives posing as married American couple with children, no one would suspect them and the wife is pretty.
That is all super sleuth Stan needs.

 

How did they nab William? They went through a list of employees at these medical facilities and somehow cross-referenced the employee William Crandall with a real William Crandall who had died. Was there anything ELSE that helped them know that he was the one?

If not, then since Stan knows Phillip and Elizabeth's American identities -- and since he was somewhat suspicious of them from the start --- why couldn't he attempt to cross-reference those names against people who had died?

The only difference I can see at this point between William and P&E in Stan's mind is that he KNEW there was an illegal working at the medical facility, and he kinda sorta suspected at one point that one might live next door.

Is there something else I'm missing?

 

Back in the pilot when he checked the Jennings car he was fresh off a long undercover operation. When the car appeared clean he wrote it off as still feeling paranoia from going in with the white supremacists. After that the thought that he was breaking into his neighbor's garage seemed crazy. I don't think he's had an ounce of suspicion since.

But someday the stolen identity might come up in a search and it's all going to hit him like a load of bricks.

 

There would probably not be too many people with access to the secret government bio weapons lab to cross heck.

 

Burov gave him some information regarding the bio chemical stuff. That and the FBI figured out there was a suspicious death at the place that serviced the robot filing cabinet. There's another piece I'm forgetting but Burov helped point him in the right direction.

 

The bugging of the robot wasn't connected to the bio-weapons lab.
But it was part of the FBI's anger that led to them giving Arkady the boot.

Oleg definitely gave him the clues to start the bio-weapons lab investigation.
And that was info Oleg gleaned from Tatiana in the sack.

 

I understand how they got to the bio-weapons lab. But once there all they had were names (unless I'm missing another step).

Somehow they were able to cross-reference the employee William Crandall with another William Crandall who had died years before (the typical way illegals use for ID). Bingo!

Sooooooo . . . my question was since they (Stan) ALREADY know the "names" of his suspicious next-door neighbors, all they have to do is to take the next step and cross-reference those names. Did any couple named Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings happen to die in the past 30-40 years?

Only explanation I can think of is the one mentioned above, where Stan's suspicions simply evaporated in the garage near the end of the pilot. But you'd think an FBI agent would always carry a little suspicion.

 

I think you're right, if Stan did want to dive into the Jennings' background, it wouldn't take long for him to figure it all out. But if he were going to do that, it would have been in the first season, before he and Philip became racketball buddies. At this point, Philip is pretty much his only friend outside of work. Either those suspicions died when he found nothing in the car's trunk, or he is willfully ignoring those suspicions because he doesn't want to find out something about his friend.

 

As Ace gets at, I think cross-checking the names of a couple dozen people at the lab is a task much easier than acting on the info William gave them, which was essentially "couple with kids, pretty wife." Put aside what we know about the Jennings - on this show alone, that description could refer to Pastor Tim, Stan before divorce, the Asian couple that Elizabeth broke up, etc. The cross-checking that the FBI did, it was implied to have taken hours and multiple agents. Doing it without a clear target in mind just seems pointless.

re: Stan and the Jennings, I think he eventually finds out, but I don't think it'll be because he suddenly has one of his patented Great Hunches. I think the Jennings will get sloppy at some point. Already in this past season, Elizabeth had to suddenly kill the factory worked who had the "come to Jesus!" moment and Philip had to kill someone on a public bus. They were getting so sloppy that Gabriel had to put a stop to their operations, plus, the situation in Russia seems to be deteriorating. In addition to that, we have Philip's adult son now in the picture, plus Paige knows but she's an awkward operative, and Henry is simultaneously getting older while buddying up to Stan. There are a ton of balls in the air here, and any of them could cause their identity to be revealed, nevermind an external force (i.e. some of their spy activities actually not going as planned, like when Elizabeth got shot on a past season).

Personally, I think Philip is the one who's going to get caught at some point. I actually though it was going to happen on this latest episode - They were tailing William, and if their search was a bit wider or if Stan / Black Stan was in a different area, they probably would have noticed Philip. He was in disguise, but I think they have a composite of that disguise or close to that disguise.