I'm just talking about the framing of a big reveal. End the season teasing what is coming after the FBI learns the KGB operatives they've been chasing are a family with two kids and the response to the finale would be much better.

This season finale felt like a mid season filler episode. a couple storylines advanced a little bit.

the season finale would have been horrible had this been the series finale, but I wonder how much the writers even care about that. they could always shrug their shoulders and just say the show got cancelled on them, and that's the story didn't end very well. Ditto if they had ended in a big cliffhanger that never got resolved (like Jericho did).

Strong possibility I'll assume the family dies on its way back to its home planet Moscow and move on to greener pastures

Finished up the season and liked it quite a bit. Wasn't caught up in thinking about it too much.

Only thing that I haven't seen covered in the thread is the retired fbi guy getting killed overseas when it was Phillip that sent the info that he would be there. Direct link for Stan to suspect Phillip.

Not sure where the story is going to go, but hope they get to Gorbachov and glasnost.

That's what happens when FX tells you before the start of the season they're giving you two more seasons regardless of the ratings (it's the only way the storytelling pace of this season makes sense). They can't blow their wad this early. We still need to happen toward the end of next season.

Basically they set up that Philip's son is coming to find him, and Paige's rebelliousness is going to put them in all kinds of danger of being exposed. Coupled with the William revelation, it's showing that the big mistake these agents might have had was that they had kids. They ruin everything, and make it impossible to have the "invisibility" William had. William never would have been caught if the Centre had not pushed so hard.

That's just deus ex machina stuff to drop plot and propel the story forward. You've watched four seasons of a show that never pays off anything that could be paid off properly (a game being played, a con being shown, etc.). At some point, you just have to realize that's their thing and go with it. The biggest fans of the show defend it as "oh the writers let you fill in the blanks yourself". There were also several murders and a suicide that happened this season that had absolutely no payoff or investigation, despite all kinds of red flags being around the scenes. No one putting together that the Administrator of the lab William worked at killed himself is pretty outlandish (it would lead right to his wife, who would say she had a friend she doesn't see anymore who wore a lot of bad wigs). You can be optimistic that they can pay something like that off down the road, or you can go on past history. I think it makes no sense they killed the woman Elizabeth was running in season 3, unless they're paying it off down the line as another clue of a dead person having something to do with spycraft. I just don't think they will, or they'll jam it into the plot in some nonsensical way like the Gaad death.

It's hard to expect much with a Joel Fields/Joe Weisberg written episode. Those two do nothing but tease when they write together.

Strangely, it appears there was absolutely no conning to either side of the Oleg/what's her face storyline. It was just two people banging. She should have been major collateral damage for what he told Stan, but they never even went there (yet?).

I'm disappointed that people in this thread still can't learn Adderholt's name. He is by far the single smartest law enforcement person who has ever been on this show. He has broken everything (mail robot, Martha, William, and more). He's the one that got what William was saying about the family/kids, and how it tied in. Stan is an idiot, and he's going to ride Adderholt's coat tails to success, until he doesn't. It will be so glorious to see when Stan finally realizes what an idiot he is, especially when he had it figured out in the first episode of the series.

I also found it bizarre that they put them going back to Russia on the table. There are two seasons left. That's not gonna happen, so it makes those stakes zero. As others have said, it was a disappointing finale after the last two episodes and the build up to the William capture. But at least Gabriel finally doesn't need a cane anymore.

They just showed us they're in early 1984. We won't see them for about another year. Henry is supposed to be like 12 right now, and looks like he's going on 15. Paige is supposed to be 15 and is going on 20. So that will give them a good set up for a time jump. As long as we get the Russian Fashion Show Wendy's commercial (a true classic), I'll be happy. If that doesn't end up in this series, it will be a big loss for everyone. I would love to see Elizabeth's reaction to the commercial.

Hahahaha I remember that.
"Day Wear!"
"Evening Wear!"

They sure have dropped the ball on integrating '80s culture. Though I'm amazed they can find that many old cars in good shape.

A lot of the cars are from the 70s, too, but occasionally they'll have a new one like the Camaro or the Volvo Philip was driving.

I don't remember Don killing himself. Did I miss something? She just left a message saying he was acting weird. ???

That's right, it was Elizabeth that "killed" herself. But I can't remember if they buttoned him up. It seems like everyone would be questioned in a situation like that.

Or the correct spelling

That would take too much effort...Aderholt...lol.

Nunnehi,

Stan was the first to suspect Martha and he brought Aderholt in on it

Stan's work with Oleg got them the intel which led to William

It looked to me like both of them got what William was saying about the family

There's no way I'm going back to watch all of this again, but I think Aderholt was definitely the first to suspect Martha, and he also had issues with the mail robot very early on.

Stan told Oleg they would never see each other again. Oleg came to him with one last batch of deus ex machina intel it makes no sense for him to have. Stan did nothing other than report a meeting. He wasn't running Oleg at that point, so you really can't give him credit for that.

The point is that without Aderholt, in my opinion, none of this stuff would ever have broken. Stan has missed nearly every key development that should lead right to his neighbors' living room. All the signs are there, he's just ignored them. Stan is not a good FBI agent since returning from deep cover. He's just not. All the instincts he learned in deep cover have been basically ignored since he butnah'd the garage scene in the first episode of the series. He really is basically Hank from Breaking Bad.

Nope. Aderholt was not the first one to suspect Martha. He was totally clueless about her. Aderholt had a crush/liked Martha and I believe he wanted to go on a date/have drinks with her. When Stan started to get suspicious, he approached Aderholt. At this point, he still thought Stan was 100% wrong.

You're gonna have to give me an episode to verify that.

Stan told Aderholt that he suspected Martha. Aderholt agreed to take Martha on a date to feel her out a bit, find out any information about her life. During the date Stan inspected her apartment. It was definitely Stan.

When Stan told Oleg he wasn't going to try and extort him or manipulate him, and that they would never see each other again, Stan was playing last shot against Oleg. Stan respected Oleg and knew that Oleg would not submit to the usual tricks, so he made the only play left, which was to be honest and let him go, and hope that Oleg would eventually come back. Which he did. (At least this is my interpretation, it's also possible that you are right: Stan was just tired of the game and gave up on Oleg, then got lucky. There's no way to know.)

Just marathoned this season. Good season, but they really blew the finale. Not that it was bad, but it felt like just a midseason episode. I could see so many different avenues for different cliff hangers, but they basically didn't have one.

Really strange decision.

I picked up this show recently and recently marathoned all four seasons of it.

Nunnehi, you're being an overcritical nit. The Stan character is very well-done. He's absolutely the one that figured out Martha first; if you recall, Aderholt was at first convinced that Stan was the one that had bugged Gaad's office, and it took Stan a while to convince him that Martha was worth looking into. Going back to the beginning, Stan senses something is wrong with Philip/Elizabeth, but ends up liking them and now interprets what he sees from them in light of his trust/affection for them, rather than through an FBI agent's critical eye. I think that stuff is well done.

You're right about the nuclear tension, though. I was an undergraduate from '81 to '85, and I took several classes in arms control and one on the physics of nuclear weapons. That was definitely an issue of serious social concern -- much of the social debate was over the cold war, and a fair number of my undergraduate friends really didn't believe that the Soviet Union was an evil actor. The left absolutely pilloried Reagan for calling the Soviet's an evil empire -- and while nobody really thought that some dope would launch nukes, you're right to articulate that this debate was in the general social fabric.

The Day After was a huge event -- EVERYBODY watched it. I remember thinking that it had a pretty significant left-biased agenda to it, but it was impossible even so to not be moved by it.

In those days, that Camaro was the bomb.

I actually sort of like that they didn't articulate the premise to Elizabeth's manipulation of the Korean couple for a long time. Most shows have some dumb and predictable foretelling, and this one caused me to think and wonder rather more, a fact I liked. You're right that the ultimate plan to get the code from Don's office was very poorly thought out and dependent on circumstance. What happens if Don has the money in his office? Or pulls out a checkbook and writes a check? Or says "let's go to lunch and discuss this away from the office" or any one of many other choices.

The leads are ridiculously good.

I rather liked the absence of a silly cliff-hanger at the end of season four. Yes, the last episode was anticlimactic, but I don't mind varying from the usual TV studio formula: I've become emotionally invested in the characters and would like to see how it plays out.

I also really like the Oleg character: he's introduced originally as a complete bozo but ends up being very competent.

The Jared plotline was outstanding, except for the fact that the one American guy was a bit too much like Kaiser Socze for my taste: he should not have been able to track/follow Elizabeth and Jared on his own, and the show played up his ubercompetence to the point of it becoming somewhat comicbookish.

I don't understand the Gaad death, or how it plays into the rest of the plot -- if it does.

All in all, the show gets a solid A from me. I'll watch every S5/S6 episode.

Stan mentioned to Phillip that Gaad would be in <foreign city>. It was acted upon intelligence that Stan can/will tie to Phillip.

Remember, this isn't in a time when individual movements could be tracked easily. Gaad wasn't a well known face.

just starting season 4. need to read through s1-3 threads.