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They got to Pastor Tim. They tempted him into biting the apple, and he didn’t even know it.

While he and Paige are saying their farewells after a successful afternoon of food-banking, the good reverend tells her he has accepted a job with the World Council of Churches in Argentina, running their interfaith mission.

He has her parents to thank for that career boost, although he doesn’t know it. And he certainly doesn’t realize he’s being moved out of the picture.

“Wow,” Paige says. “Wow.”

“We’re going to miss you, Paige.”

“You and Alice have been really good to me. Meeting you changed everything for me,” she tells him.

“We’re going to keep in touch,” he responds.

She wants to know who will be the next pastor, and he says that’ll happen in the weeks ahead. He has two months before his departure. (If he can keep his mouth shut and not get a dose of polonium tea from the KGB before that.) Continue reading The Americans recap: ‘The World Council of Churches’

The punishment doesn’t always fit the crime. Sometimes it merely worsens the crime.

This is as close to a stand-alone episode as we’re likely to get this season, with Philip and Elizabeth dispatched to investigate whether a late-middle-aged woman from Boston is actually a Nazi collaborator hiding under a new identity.

We start with Henry getting a promise from his father that he will be allowed to leave for the private boarding school he wants to attend.

“I’m going to have to talk to your mother. But it’s fine by me,” Philip says.

Then Philip goes to see Tuan, his “other” son, and the two sit silently watching TV while Philip daydreams of his own father, pretending to be airplanes as they fly around their old apartment. Continue reading The Americans recap: Dyatkovo

Quite a day to recap The Americans. Pity the TV series about Russian subterfuge that has to keep up with real life.

Anyway, time for a stiff drink.

Alexei Morozov offers Philip some home-brewed Soviet-grade moonshine, and they have a gripe session about married life. Alexei, whose wife Evgheniya (unbeknownst to him) is having an affair with one of her CIA students, has noticed a cooling off in their house after relentless fights over his decision to defect. “Now, no fights. She is quiet. Like dog somebody beat with stick.” His son is no better off. “Just sad, sad, very sad boy.”

Philip, Elizabeth, and their second son Tuan are helping make life miserable for Pasha Morozov because the KGB wants this family back, back in the U.S.S.R. The man the wife is having an affair with will soon be the CIA’s man in Moscow. They want the affair to continue. Good blackmail fodder.

Even Alexei is feeling a little homesick. He tells a story about his mother, a biology professor, who took him ice skating rather than rush home to make dinner. “Moscow was nice city with my mother.”

Elsewhere, Elizabeth meets with Tuan, who was last seen sneaking off to a mystery meeting in Pennsylvania, allegedly to check in on his brother. “I know I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I failed you. I failed my people,” he says. Continue reading The Americans recap: Darkroom