The Americans on FX

Yeah, my guess is that Renee is the writers messing with us.

 

Yeah, "Renee working for the FBI" is the "Russian running into the woods" of The Americans.

 

I think Renee is there because you can't have Stan being a mopey bachelor for 5+ years.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with this from a character standpoint but do you really hire Laurie Holden to do only that?

 

Well, they hired Susan Misner to be a nothing character for 3+ years.

 

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced this week is The Big One in terms of the Jennings finally getting fingered.

As the Harvest revelation reminds us, when you make an opposing asset, you don't run in and arrest them that day. You milk it for as long as you can, observing them, turning them to work for you even if they don't realize it. And they're both conveniently out of town, which gives the FBI an episode to case their house (as seen in the preview for next week) before actually confronting them. There's three episodes left after this week, and that'll give us time to work through the fallout and possible deal-cutting or running or pill-taking or whatever happens after.

Seen through that lens, I wonder if Stan asking Philip if he's involved in something isn't theater on Stan's part and he knows exactly what's up.

 

I'm resigned to believing that Stan may be referring to Philip's marriage. I WANT to believe he's suspicious about them --- and Henry saying "they're always going somewhere at odd times" certainly leads credence to that. But those tantalizing previews have fooled me too often. And three episodes is a LOT of time to spend on fallout and whatnot. I fully expect an 80-minute cliffhanger finale.

 

Misleading trailer is *very* possible, but for now I'm choosing to believe. But I'm guessing Henry's line about flying off to work is unrelated. That's just going to be him talking to Stan about why he suddenly needs a ride back to the boarding school because both his parents are out of town.

 

I think the best way to end the series would be to out them now and have multiple weeks to run through what happens.

But I think what was in the trailer is going to be Henry having told Stan the travel agency’s gone bust.

 

Sepinwall did an interview with Joe Weisberg (the writer who's also an ex-CIA officer) and talked about the typical financial arrangements Philip and Elizabeth would have.

He says KGB would finance them starting their travel agency business, but after that they were on their own to make the business work. In other words, no KGB salaries coming in to cushion everything. KGB financing was limited to what they needed for their spy work (travel, disguises, passports, safe houses, etc.).

That struck me as odd. Making a business work takes TIME. Spy work takes TIME. Seems like you should be compensated for both. But he said the show makes it look like they're spending the bulk of their time spying, when in reality most of the time would be spent in their regular business.

 

Money leaves trails. The fewer the better.

 

At some point Stan may become suspicious of the Jennings' just for their bizarre business practices without assuming anything about espionage.

Also, I feel like they established the Jennings' suspicions of Renee as a possible Russian agent, then dismissed it pretty quickly. Wouldn't surprise me if that came back around here at the end.