BingeyKohan

Part of me thinks that just for the drama and sadness of it. Do P and E get on the train and leave anyway? Part of me I guess wants to see a Spy Kids esque caper, maybe a reversal of the season 1 bottle-smashing where it's Paige who gets them out of a jam and Henry is like wtf? where'd you learn that? But in the end I think Henry will not want to go. In a way this is just extreme, extreme empty next syndrome. Even a regular family wouldn't stay together as the original unit as the kids reached this age. Stan's intervention and Paige's overestimation of her own abilities (and lingering mistrust of her parents) are the wild cards.

One other question to throw out: We know that Elizabeth was counting her chickens before they hatched in telling Claudia she'd stopped everything and gotten word to Moscow. But in a way isn't Nesterenko standing over the dead body of a woman from the Rezidentura who had a dart gun on her in a way doing the same thing? I guess that's a way of asking about or clarifying the stakes for next week: The FBI is the Jennings threat in the near term and (should they escape) the hard-liners are a vindictive threat in the long term?

Question about the interrogation scene with the priest who was not Andrei: he’s about to name another Father when the knock on the door interrupts him. Is there meaning to that? Are we supposed to care about the loyalties of now a third priest? Father Renee?

Here’s where my main anxiety is now located: the family gets near st edward’s and realizes the best bet of getting to Henry is sending Paige in to blend with students. They designate a meeting point but the kids never show.

Anybody want to revise or double down on a Renee theory after last night? I felt like Stan had more lines about Renee last night than Laurie Holden has herself had all season. Obviously next episode will largely be the highest stakes family road trip ever but I’m sort of worried the B Story will be Renee. Her interview is ‘next Wednesday’ after all. They even made it a Wednesday! Dennis: what time Wednesday? Stan: 10 pm/9 central. May run a little long. It’s kind of a big deal.

Cougar on the prowl in the DC area! Totally agree it was a little cheap to have Paige hear about a seductive older woman at a frat party and think ‘Gawd my mom is so embarrassing.’ (Also, isn’t that the plot of the new Melissa McCarthy movie?) I thought since we’re in Weisberg/Fields hands the rest of the run this episode would be a bit more...masterful...but still a lot to like. Did we hear a whisper of Elizabeth’s Russian accent in her vein-popping at Paige? I wanted just a hint more of that cracked veneer. I liked how that sequence began with her washing off her last mask, basically. (Although I swear this was the ep with a credited water safety person on set -surely that wasn’t so Keri Russell could wash her face and Margo Martindale could ladle stew.)

Story Takes A Renee Twist. Stan, Think About Retirement Tomorrow! Suburban Travel Agents Really Traitors! (A 1987 Washington Post headline) ...or maybe just what you said. (I have to fill the next two hours somehow)

So true. They should have done a half hour animated special just for fun. Just for us!

Hmmmmmmm that’s interesting. Sort of a reversal of the season 1 finale dynamic where P thought he’d claimed the riskier scenario for himself and E ended up walking into the trap. Claudia was with the Jennings who was the least endangered in that moment too...

omg. I'm so glad you shared this. I love that they asked if it could be photographed by Annie Liebovitz. (which it wasn't.)

It's kind of a hard scenario to speculate around, right? they don't spend much time around water, other than the very specific usages we've mentioned. Not a color in their palette so to speak. Maybe a car chase where a car goes into the water? They could fake a death that way, though Alias did that and it's a little soapy. But who knows, maybe they have to have a water safety person on set just to film a scene of Keri Russell taking a shower.

Yep, she drives a Jeep Waggoneer I think. Visible in the scene of her unpacking her boxes when she moved in, then prominently in the scene you describe. Maybe one other, when Philip was watching her at one point and she got in her car? My Dad used to do that kind of goodbye honk pulling out of the driveway sometimes, it was sort of like a horn-honking version of a secret knock. Maybe it's an era-appropriate thing - this was in the 80s as well. I fixated on the sound her car made, a loud rattle (also era appropriate I guess) which Paige's also made in a subsequent scene when she pulled up in her parents' driveway. Maybe it's a Renee-specific intent, or maybe it's all just the producers' subliminal way of saying 'cars are important this season, y'all'

Semi-Serious Predictions for ‘Jennings, Elizabeth’: spoiler-tagged because of reliance on previews

I will stop banging the Renee’s Jeep drum after this I promise but they have elaborately made us notice and remember what kind of car she drives. I don’t even really know what car Stan drives but we know Elizabeth’s, Phil’s, Paige’s, and Renee’s. Maybe hers best of all.

While Bowie's Young Americans plays!

Got it - thank you. So if Elizabeth is assigning herself to watch Nesterenko that's a longer-lasting mission than I realized (and maybe she would need loyal back-up, like Julie/Paige (Jaige?)...who would of course be only supposed to signal her mother if something looked funky, not act herself, but you know what a self-starter Paige is!)

Side question based on this line of thinking: Do you think we'll still be in Summit timeframe for at least the next episode? Since Gorbachev was only in DC for 3 days, and Claudia feels like there's a chance he won't even go home, there's going to be an obvious looming failure at least to the chain of events that would have Nesterenko killed by an Elizabeth proxy, leading on to Claudia's master plan. It seems like every minute will still be counting in this week's episode but perhaps for START the timeline can free up a little and move forward. But who knows! "It's gonna happen fast," says Dennis!

@earlbny consider it a tribute to your fan-dom that my first thought when I read this was, I wonder what earlbny will think of this: http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/unreal-will-reportedly-end-with-season-4-on-hulu.html

I've wondered about this too - is he in New Hampshire, and St Edward's is sort of a stand in for St Paul's? Anyway my thought is New Hampshire is very much on the way to the Canadian border, which is a direction his parents may be running. They get the train to slow down long enough in New Hampshire for Henry to hop aboard but he's like, eh, no thanks, I'll take my chances here and at the tannery this summer.

Not sure where to put this question but do folks who love The Americans also dig Killing Eve? Any overlap? Was thinking of giving that a try.

Yeah the Renee part is probably a little bananas but in my scenario she protests her innocence (which would be accurate) but they don't believe her. P and E would have constructed her a quick KGB paper trail. Unless Stan has confided in her (which I doubt) she'd have no reason to point a finger at P&E. I think P killing Stan would be like E burning the painting, to the nth degree. There'd be an element of, can't do it/but I have to/can't do it/but I have to...and the hardest hitting tragedy of the finale is, he does.

Totally agree. I don't think we'll get much of a time jump in the finale but in a way we've had theoretical time jumps all along - you could always read Gabriel and Claudia as possible future versions of Philip and Elizabeth. (Notably, Claudia went back to the Soviet Union but came back complaining of estrangement from her daughter.) I also think last season's mission to kill the older woman who'd been a Nazi sympathizer was a possible future Elizabeth: Maybe Elizabeth gets away, for now, settles into a quiet life, maybe she's a Sunday painter, then someday she comes home and someone's waiting for her in her dining room. And then we saw the Jennings in old-age drag on the plane back from Chicago - older couple, no kids.

I need an exfiltration from my obsession with how it all ends. New theory to pass the next 36 hours or so: Through an interaction with Stan, Oleg realizes Stan is the only one at the FBI who seriously suspects the Jennings. He gets word of this to them. P and E jointly realize that to protect their children they have to kill Stan. Very reluctantly, P does it, the most Elizabeth-like thing he's ever done. They get away but are now karmic equals. They also know that having their neighbor die in the middle of this investigation will still point fingers their way (and still compromise their children), so P says: hey remember when I thought Renee was so suspicious? She's probably fine but there's enough weirdness there where we could frame her as KGB. So not only do they kill Stan but destroy his legacy, by making it seem like he was essentially another Martha. The only minor (and phony) victory the FBI achieves is to dodge the bullet of hiring Renee, which they were about to do. Series ends with Dennis, who has inherited Stan's suspicion, watching Henry, who stayed behind.

My Renee spidey sense has gone faint or just gave up. I’m still intrigued by the frame in the season 6 trailer that looks like her Jeep getting stopped. Crazy spec just for the hell of it: Liz is on the run on foot, Renee pulls up and yells ‘Get in!’ in Russian. There’s a false bottom in the back for E to hide under. Renee does get stopped but can play the ‘but my husband works with you guys!’ card. Even the ‘in fact I just left a job interview myself!’ card. It checks out so she’s allowed to go, and lets E get away. Do I think this will happen? No. (But: that trailer scene tho!) Do I agree this has been an oddly nothing part? Totally.

Inspired by someone on the Reddit thread just as obsessive as I am, I checked out the (admittedly purposefully incomplete) IMDB credits for Jennings, Elizabeth: