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Calling this episode “The Rat,” is a little mean to Martha, but okay…

The feds are close on her trail, and Philip is the only one in the KGB who is convinced her cover has been blown. “I brought her into this,” he tells Elizabeth. It’s fascinating to see how much she means to him. This “fake” wife is not so fake after all.

Martha packs her handgun and turns off a Today show broadcast featuring a woman talking about how she no longer feels the need to be married. That has never been the case with Martha. Throughout this series, we’ve gotten the sense that this unwitting KGB asset was something of a lonely heart.

When Stan Beeman and Agent Aderholt go through her history back at the office, we get confirmation: Only child. Never married. Engaged to a high-school sweetheart, but that was long ago. “He dumped her after she got pregnant,” Aderholt says. Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘The Rat’

“Clark” owes Martha an apology. “Where have you been for the last two days?” she asks.

He can’t tell her he was holed up in his handler’s apartment with his wife undergoing antibiotic treatment to stave off a potential bio-weapons infection. So he gives her the typical, vague “something came up” excuse.

Martha clues him in to Agent Aderholt’s dinner and the fact that the FBI knows the counters on her office copy machine are off. She thinks she is under suspicion. She felt alone and abandoned when she couldn’t reach him.

Clark gives her an operator number for the Center, who can contact him any time, day or night. “I will need that back tomorrow morning,” he says — so she needs to memorize it.

“Of course,” Martha says. “Why would I expect to keep anything?” Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘Clark’s Place’

“My husband and I need to postpone deliveries for this weekend.”

That’s Elizabeth’s way of telling the Center: DO NOT KILL PASTOR TIM AND HIS WIFE. She and Philip are trapped, having discovered Gabriel overcome by the weaponized glanders, and they can no longer participate in the family trip to EPCOT that would have served as their alibi.

Instead, they’ll be spending the weekend in Gabriel’s apartment being administered the antibiotic that gives this episode its name: “Chloramphenicol.” Their reluctant doctor: William (Dylan Baker), the asset who is trying to deliver these chemical and biological weapons to the KGB.

Elizabeth also calls home and breaks the news to Paige that the trip is canceled due to unforeseen circumstances. Paige panics — she’s sure this has something to do with Pastor Tim leaking their family secret. Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘Chloramphenicol’

So much for that Epcot trip.

After getting exposed to the deadly Glanders pathogen in Gabriel’s (Frank Langella) apartment on The Americans, Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) have to stay quarantined for 36 hours on Wednesday’s episode for the antibiotic to take effect. That means their family trip to Epcot — aka their cover so the KGB can kill Pastor Tim — needs to be called off.

That, however, is the least of their worries. They may have come too late to save Gabriel, who’s wheezing away on his (death?)bed, while Elizabeth’s body has a tough time handling the antibiotic William (Dylan Baker) has given them… or is that the symptoms of Glanders? She fears the worst and has that “If something happens to me…” convo with Philip.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Nina (Annet Mahendru) awaits word on her appeal now that she’s subjected to “exceptional punishment” after trying to send a note to Anton’s son. Oleg (Costa Ronin) asks his father, Igor (Boris Lee Krutonog), to pull some strings, and he proposes a deal to his son in exchange for his help. Does he come through? Nina’s fate will be revealed by the end of the episode.

Source: http://www.tvguide.com

This episode is all about the way we project a future for ourselves, existing in possibilities, imagining destinations, and then slamming face-first into the inescapable present.

Titled “Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow,” it involves a plan to visit Walt Disney World’s futuristic EPCOT Center near Orlando, Fla., but you know what happens to best-laid plans, right?

The hour opens with “Clark” waking up beside Martha on his fold-out sofa. She’s staring at him, and it’s easy to read her eyes: This is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful spouse. “Still not used to it,” she says when Philip wakes up and catches her staring.

Elsewhere, Elizabeth is undercover, apparently infiltrating a Mary Kay makeup sales meeting. A Korean-American woman named Young Hee (Ruthie Ann Miles) is talking about how most store makeup counters don’t know how to apply foundation that matches Asian skin tone, making them appear green. But, ah, Mary Kay has the personal touch that solves that!

“I tell my friends they don’t have to look like Martians,” Young Hee says. “We are all Americans now.” Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow’

This episodes picks up moments after the last, with Philip coming back into the house after Stan roughs him up in the garage (with a vial of deadly pathogen in his front pocket).

Elizabeth (Keri Russell), naturally, wants to know what’s up, so Philip (Matthew Rhys) explains that Stan is angry because he was hanging around with Stan’s ex-wife at a meeting of the new-age-y EST self-help group.

These two regularly sleep with informants and subjects to discern information, but suddenly Elizabeth feels…betrayed. What was bothering Philip so much that he needed the therapeutic embrace of this group?

In the next scene, Gabriel (Frank Langella) discusses ways to smuggle the pathogen back to Mother Russia while suggesting that Philip and Elizabeth need to find a contact at the Fort Detrick bio-weapons lab who has higher security clearance than their current contact, William (Dylan Baker).

Gabriel also offers the Jennings family a personal computer. Their first. Welcome to the mid-1980s!

Back home, Elizabeth is listening to recordings from Pastor Tim’s telephone line and discovers their daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) has told him all about her secret agent Soviet parents.

Mom’s first reaction: kill the pastor. Dad suggests they wait. Killing Pastor Tim will send Paige fleeing from them.

He breaks into Pastor Tim’s home and figures out that he goes to a cabin to write his sermons. Elizabeth thinks it’s the perfect place for a hit. “If you’re going to pull her into this job, and she gets even a whiff of what we really do…she’ll figure out we killed him,” Philip protests.
Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘Pastor Tim’

Philip is having some not so pleasant dreams: It’s about a young boy (apparently him) beating another kid to death with a rock. Oh, the hazy crazy days of youth.

He wakes with a start and Elizabeth asks if he’s all right. “You were right about Martha,” he says, passing it off as regular workplace restlessness. “I need to tell her about Gene before she finds out at work.”

So begins season 4 of The Americans. Gene, of course, is the FBI computer technician Philip murdered at the end of last season so he could plant the recorder at his apartment that would absolve his other wife, Martha, of spying on the same office.

From there, we see Philip (Matthew Rhys) head to his other home, his other bed, that of Martha (Alison Wright), the well-meaning but somewhat gullible secretary who thought he was her husband “Clark.” And he is. Sort of. At the very least, it becomes clear in this season premiere that he cares about her as more than just a KGB source.

“In the next day or two you’re going to get disturbing news at work,” he says. “Gene Craft is dead. He’ll be found in his apartment. It’ll look like he killed himself.”

“I don’t understand,” she tells him.

“The recorder will be found in his apartment.”

This is too much for her. “My recorder?”

“It was the only way to protect you.”

Martha begins melting down the way any fundamentally decent person would when informed they’re responsible for the death of another person. “I didn’t agree to this. I don’t want this …” She weeps, she pushes back, she tells him to stay away.

“Clark” informs her that he can’t visit her home, their home, anymore. But he has one of his own she can visit.

While he’s away, Elizabeth (Keri Russell) is at their home with teenage daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) , who is still getting used to life with parents who are secret Russian agents. She wants to know where her father is.

“He’s with what we call a source. He might get some information,” Elizabeth says.

Paige doesn’t understand. Is he lying to this other person, tricking them?

“It’s more about getting people to trust you,” Elizabeth says. “To help them understand that you want the same thing they want, which is to make the world a safer place. Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘Glanders’

The Americans is heating up.

When the spy drama starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys returns with its third season this Wednesday, it’ll bring several conflicts to a head, say the showrunners.

“Really all the major storylines that have been going on for all of these years are reaching boiling point,” says creator Joe Weisberg, with executive producer Joel Fields adding: “Because the characters now are so fully formed and rich and there’s so much history there, we can finally reach the crisis point in some of their conflicts that we’ve been waiting to see.”

While Weisberg and Fields have a vague idea of how they are going to end the series, they still aren’t sure when that will be, though they’ve noted that it will likely run five or six seasons. The pair doesn’t seem too worried about not being able to give the show, which has long been critically acclaimed but never a major ratings draw, its rightful conclusion. Continue reading ‘The Americans’ Bosses: Season Four Reaches “Boiling Point”