The Americans Force Don To Face The Consequences Of 'His' 'Actions'

"Patty" vs. Don

Remember how the last episode ended with Gabriel offering to intervene with The Centre and see if maybe Elizabeth wouldn't have to blow up Don and Young Hee's lives to carry out Tatiana's bioweapons project? Well, he did, and she does. So "Patty" sits outside in her car waiting for Young Hee to leave in the morning with the kids, and then gathers her strength...

...and walks up to ring the doorbell once she knows Don is alone. Don is so wary of Patty that, at first, he doesn't open the outer door for her, so she has to push her way past him into the house to announce, "I'm pregnant." Don blinks, but when he has no other reaction, Patty demands, "Well, say something." "How did this happen?" he asks, hesitantly. "It happened because we had sex! I don't know what we're going to do! What am I going to do?" But Don does: "You cannot have this baby." "What do you mean?" Patty sputters. "I mean, what are you saying?" "That would destroy everything," says Don. "For you!" Patty yelps. "And Young Hee," he reminds her. "So you want me to get rid of it?" Patty guesses. "It's the only way," Don intones. Elizabeth nods, but looks around nervously while she waits for Don to take the further step she requires, and it doesn't take long before he does: "I will pay for everything." "I don't want your money!" yells Patty. "I don't want anything from you! Don't worry, I won't upset your perfect little life, okay? I'll take care of it myself." Grubby mission accomplished, she stands there a moment while Don wrings his hands, and then leaves.

Winner: Ugh, no one. Well, Elizabeth, since she successfully manipulated Don into the reaction she needed him to give her, but really no one. Stupid bioweapons ruining Elizabeth's nice even if essentially fraudulent friendship with Young Hee!

Philip Learns A Tough Lesson About Discretion

Stan's come by after work, shaken, to tell Philip about Gaad's murder. Philip is both genuinely surprised and a little shaken as Stan explains: "They say it was a robbery in his hotel room, but I don't buy it. I think the Soviets did it. KGB. I don't know why, exactly. He was out of the game. He couldn't do anything to them anymore. But they-- They're animals. You have no idea. I could tell you stories -- well, I can't tell you, because they're classified. But trust me, they do things you could not imagine."

Gee, I hope I'll be able to hear the dialogue in the rest of this scene over the DRAMATIC IRONY ALARM.

Fortunately, Elizabeth comes home at this point and makes to head straight upstairs, but Stan tells her he's taking off, and as soon as he's gone, Philip asks about her meeting with Don and whether she's all right. She says she doesn't know: "It's all yours now." But before we can find out what that might mean or how Philip feels about it, their dumb wiener kids come home. Paige is coming from youth group, and says she's going to be working a couple of nights a week at the church's food pantry downtown. (Careful, don't push the beets too hard or people are going to suspect!) They take off soon enough, whereupon Philip tells Elizabeth what Stan just told him about Gaad: "He was murdered in his hotel room. Stan told me Gaad was going to Thailand with his wife....I put that in my report." Philip, of course, can't know that, from what we saw, the intruders wanted to talk to and possibly recruit Gaad, not kill him, but since Philip does know that...uh, the KGB kills people, he feels very guilty that, whatever happened, he's the reason (with an assist from Stan and Stan's own big mouth.)

If You Love Something, Set It Free (To Continue Living Its Fundamentally Restrictive Life)

Who called the meeting? Stan.

What's it about? His weird friendship with Oleg, and where it's going.

How'd it go? Great! They had the DTR conversation and agreed to see each other exclusively! JK, what actually happens is that Stan -- still rattled by Gaad's murder, understandably -- decides to open his kimono with Oleg. He says straight up that everyone he works with is very interested in Stan's ongoing communication with Oleg; there's even been talk of Stan trying to use what he knows about Nina, and about Oleg's brother, to blackmail him. And then he tells the story of his old partner Amador, who was killed by the KGB, and how Stan's grief and anger about it made him do "something terrible. Just as bad" -- which, if you don't remember, was fatally shooting Vlad, an innocent employee at the Rezidentura. "I haven't felt the same since," Stan concludes. Oleg doesn't know how he's supposed to respond to that, and Stan gets it: "Right. What can you say. Amador. Nina. My old boss got killed -- I think you guys might have done it. Somewhere in there my wife left me. I don't want you on my conscience too. This is the last time we're going to see each other. That's what I wanted to say." He holds out his hand for a manly handshake, which Oleg gives him. And that's it. Or is it? That's it for now, at least, as Oleg watches Stan leave and, one assumes, thinks about how reporting this to Tatiana could make her like him more.

What's On The Dinner Party Menu Chez Jennings?

Pastor and Mrs. Groovyhair having accepted Elizabeth's dinner invitation, the time has come for the two families to break bread together. But will there be fishes to go with those loaves?

Lamb: I kind of like the idea that Elizabeth chose this entrée as a shout-out to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But a taste for baby animals would be in line with her personality -- and if Alice is bothered by the symbolism, she doesn't say so: "Oh, I devour anything put in front of me these days."

Crow: After everything that went down the last time Alice was there, she feels the need to apologize for herself on top of Pastor Groovyhair's earlier apology for her...kind of? What she actually says is, "I didn't ask for this, any of this. I'm not vindictive. I don't threaten people." Elizabeth kindly says she would have done the same in Alice's position, which is KIND OF A HILARIOUS UNDERSTATEMENT.

Extraneous Condiments: And then Stan pops by to drop off a VHS tape for Henry OMG JUST IN TIME FOR DINNER! It's pretty clear he's chosen this time purposely in the hopes of mooching an invitation, though he clearly regrets it as soon as he sees that there are actually invited guests already present. Still, Henry DGAF about the Groovyhairs and invites Stan to stay; Elizabeth and Philip hesitate just long enough in joining him to let Stan know he shouldn't accept, and he does seem like he's trying to let them off the hook, but everyone is very polite and LOOKS LIKE IT'S GOING TO BE SEVEN FOR DINNER, UH OH.

Getting To Know All Abooooooout You

Situation: Stan joins the Jennings/Groovyhair dinner.

What makes it awkward? The reason this dinner is happening at all is that Elizabeth and Philip are, after recent events, even more desperate than usual to project an image of all-American wholesomeness. That project is somewhat derailed when Stan shows up all "divorce" this, "I'm an FBI agent" that. But Pastor Groovyhair also does his part to make everyone uncomfortable: when Stan comments that joining Pastor Groovyhair's congregation has been good for Paige, Henry announces that Pastor Groovyhair once chained himself to a fence at a rally, and law-enforcer Stan is all

Pastor Groovyhair shrugs, "We believe in social justice with a healthy dollop of Jesus in the mix."

How is order restored? ...Everyone leaves?

It didn't take long for us to find out why Tatiana needed Oleg to get her a female computer expert in her fifties or sixties -- preferably one who speaks perfect English: she and Gabriel are joining Philip, in costume, as they march into the lab where Don works and demand to see him. When he comes out, Philip -- who in this story is Patty's brother, with Gabriel and his new blonde friend as her vaguely infirm father and caretaker stepmother -- demands that Don take them up to his office so that they can talk about WHAT HE DID, and even though it's clear that Don not only doesn't want to bring them inside but isn't supposed to for security reasons, he's so desperate to forestall the scene he thinks Philip is about to make that he gets them badges and ushers them in as his guests. DON, NO.

In his office, a quietly furious Philip tells Don why they're all there: "Patty's dead." Don is stunned, and says it can't be true, but Mrs. Patty says she killed herself. "You knew that she was pregnant," accuses Philip. "You told her to get an abortion," Mrs. Patty recaps. "You killed her," rumbles Gabriel. "You killed my beautiful girl, you bastard!" Don plaintively asks Gabriel to lower his voice, but it's okay, they're getting down to business: Mrs. Patty says that they want to bring her body back to California, and Philip adds that they expect Don to pay for her transport and funeral expenses; Philip is equipped with paperwork that shows how much it's all going to cost. Don is too upset to react or respond, so Philip has to prompt him: "We want the money now." Don has to say he doesn't have on his person what must, even in the mid-'80s, been well over $1000, but Philip's prepared for that answer, and volunteers to accompany Don to the bank, telling a theatrically coughing Gabriel and Mrs. Patty to wait in Don's office while they're gone. Don, of course, says they can't...

...but they just glare at Don in silent recrimination until he relents...

...whereupon Gabriel and Mrs. Patty wait about five seconds before messing in his filing cabinets and copying his hard drive. It really doesn't seem like it took that much to spook Don, but I guess once you've had the experience of impregnating one of your wife's friends and having ZERO MEMORY of any of it, you probably wouldn't trust your own judgment for a while.

Don and Philip return to the lab to find Mrs. Patty tending to Gabriel and definitely not touching anything she shouldn't. "I know nobody can forgive what I did," says Don. "I'm ashamed and very sorry." Patty's survivors:

They all trudge out, leaving Don alone to hate himself.

At the FBI, Aderholt tells Stan there's a weird detail in a report he filed about the investigation about Martha's espionage. Everyone knows that Gaad kicked the shit out of the mail robot.

But what no one at the FBI knew until today was that something weird happened right after they sent the robot out to get fixed: the company's owner's mom died. Sure, it was from natural causes but STILL, WEIRD COINCIDENCE, RIGHT???

Elizabeth calls in for Patty's messages, but can't stand to listen to Young Hee's distress and hangs up in the middle of her freaking out about Don's weird behaviour and Patty's disappearance. You know poor Young Hee definitely isn't meeting her Mary Kay sales targets this month.

Elizabeth walks down some stairs to a church basement currently set up as a food pantry, where Paige and Pastor Groovyhair are working. Since self-doubting conversations also come in threes, apparently, Elizabeth tries to start yet another dialogue with Pastor Groovyhair about Life, so she comes out with this stream of nonsense, "You know, if-- If you have something on your mind, and you know, you can't stop thinking about it? You want to, but you can't." "I pray," says Pastor Groovyhair immediately. "For guidance." Elizabeth, knitting her brow, asks, "What if you-- What if you don't believe in God, or religion, or prayer?" "None of those things matter," says Pastor Groovyhair. "All that matters is how we treat each other." Is Pastor Groovyhair's low-key Jesus version of Christianity going to turn out to be Elizabeth's est?! WHAT A SQUARE.

Walking back to the car after her shift, Paige asks Elizabeth, "Is this forever? With Pastor Tim and Alice?" "I don't know yet," says Elizabeth candidly. "You know, Alice accused us of something that we didn't do, so that works to our advantage....She feels bad. Pastor Tim feels the same. Do you understand?" "You pretend to forgive them," Paige concludes. "Your father and I love you and we'll do anything to keep this family together," says Elizabeth. "And maybe a difficult situation will get easier for all of us -- including Pastor Tim and Alice." Paige asks about the tape, and Elizabeth says she's not sure: "But if it makes them feel good knowing it's sitting in a safe somewhere, maybe it's not such a bad thing." Paige then tells Elizabeth about the intel she gathered from Matthew, about Martha's dad's visit to the area and Stan's encounter with him, but Elizabeth keeps cool and doesn't tell Paige, for instance, "Sounds like the other wife your dad had for a while! She a FREAK!"

Paige has just finished asking and being denied the chance to drive them home for the practice when a couple of vagrants ask Elizabeth for a cigarette. Elizabeth says they don't want any trouble, but when that doesn't chase them off, she volunteers her wallet to the older guy. And it might have ended there had the younger guy not gone on to ask how old Paige is and the older one to sort of lunge drunkenly toward Elizabeth...

...because then Elizabeth is basically forced to stab the old guy in the neck and take her wallet back while the guy bleeds out and his partner runs away.

This first look at the kind of thing her parents really do seems pretty upsetting to Paige? Quick, Elizabeth, get her home and keep her away from any recording equipment so she doesn't make a tape herself!!!