Friday, April 1, 2016

The Americans S4 E3: Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow


Isn’t that always the way? You’re looking forward to a fun trip to Orlando with the family. You’re envisioning repeated rides on Spaceship Earth and the People Mover, winding down the day with dinner in Italy and a beer in England. Then your stupid boss comes down with a case of the glanders and he’s coughing up blood and it turns out you might have it too so you chase down the bioweapons guy and spit in his face to make sure he has to give you the vaccine and then you have to be quarantined for 36 hours.

“I guess we’re not going to EPCOT,” Philip pouts.

It didn’t take long for Chekov’s bioweapon to explode and the Jenningses came perilously close to death as the cap could easily have come undone in their garage. I’m guessing Claudia will again become the handler because it looks like Gabriel is about to die. After all, William told them they should have wrapped his body in plastic and burned it. William, by the way, is fascinating so I hope they keep him around. He’s allergic to dust, butter, sausage and candy. He has no sense of smell and his body produces no natural lubricants.

I am curious why Elizabeth is working that woman from the Mary Kay group. “You don’t have to look like a Martian. We’re all Americans now,” she says in the latest bit of loaded dialogue for this show. “That’s Americans for you,” Elizabeth tells her fellow immigrant about the toys kids throw away when they’re done with them, offering an inadvertent revelation of how she, Nadezhda, feels about the spoiled Americans.

It’s interesting to see that Elizabeth, with a much stronger connection to Russia, doesn’t want to return home (though I did like her wistfulness when she talks about living by the sea in Odessa, a retirement dream that will probably never come true), while Philip, who is enjoying life in America, is ready to run. I hope they do get to go to EPCOT, since the fake American family wandering around a theme park with fake countries would be thematically rich.

The choices are exfiltration or killing Pastor Tim and Alice, but as everyone notes, there is no good choice. This was bound to happen one way or another. Gabriel feels it was a mistake to bring Paige into the fold but she would have found out anyway due to her natural curiosity. Philip is already getting her to work as a spy and work the pastor and his wife.

I was surprised everyone took such an open tack to this dilemma, with Philip and Elizabeth actually talking to Tim before doing anything. I liked Paige taking initiative and trying to reason with her pastor. She seemed offended by his suggestion that her parents might hurt people in their spy work but Pastor Tim’s comments did pique her curiosity, leading her to ask her parents more questions (and have them lie their faces off again about not hurting anybody).

I’m guessing this may be the last we see of Nina alive. I wonder if they will execute her off-screen and that dream was a symbolic afterlife for her. She took some satisfaction in what Anton wrote to mitigate her sentence. I think she’s just done with being a victim and even if she gets killed for it, her actions have given her a form of control.

Meanwhile, the Mail Robot is back! Yay! It delivers a message about feelings. Gaad gets pissy about the unlogged copies and OH MY GOD STAN TOTALLY KNOWS MARTHA DID IT.

The first three episodes have been good but a little quiet. With the glanders quarantine and Martha’s surveillance, I think things will really ramp up soon.

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