Episode Report Card LuluBates: A | 55 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Your Revolution Is Beautiful
By LuluBates | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 03.05.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Welcome to Season 2 of The Americans, and when it comes to watching the show, the edge of your seat isn't edgy enough.
After witnessing the gruesome murders of her friends and their daughter, Elizabeth has gone into full mother bear mode and can't work, can't sleep, can't do anything, but be on the lookout for bad guys angling to take out her family. The utility worker never looked more suspicious.
While Elizabeth hunkers down, Kevin heads out on his own to investigate Emmett's agent and try and figure out if he was the one who got the family killed. Unfortunately, the agent, Fred, has booby trapped his house and Philip gets a big shock (literally) when he goes snooping. Philip wakes up tied to a dresser and not in a fun kinky way, but in a holy-piroshky-I'm-trapped sort of way. He tries to talk himself out of the situation, but the agent, Fred, isn't handling the stress and the home invasion very well. As he holds a gun to Philip's head, Philip has to convince him that he's not the enemy and simultaneously break the news that Emmett and his family are dead.
Once Fred unties Philip, he tells him that the information he was passing to Emmett was incredibly time sensitive and Philip must act immediately or the whole endeavor would be for naught.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth is forced to ditch her kids at the movies in order to answer a 911 call from another operative. She finds a hysterical young woman drugged out in an alley with a doped-up Congressional aide, who she's worried is dead. Elizabeth fixes the situation and leaves the woman with the words, "Your revolution is beautiful," when, clearly, it is not.
At the Russian embassy, Nina can't escape Oleg, the newcomer at the Russian embassy who likes to make grandiose statements like, "I'm a feminist, Nina -- I only work for Mother Russian." As she fends off his stupidity, she discovers that Stan lied to her and actually did shoot her comrade in the head after flat-out denying it before. While she's not in the mood to help him, she does pass along the information that there was a walk-in to the embassy -- an American willing and able to give the Russians intelligence. The FBI runs with the info, but to what end is still TBD.
Come back later for the full recap, comrades.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!After the events of last week's episode -- the brutal murder of a sweet little Soviet spy family -- Philip and Elizabeth are feeling the heat. Well, Elizabeth certainly is. When we last saw her she was double checking the locks on the doors and windows and wishing she had some *ahem* iron curtains to protect her family from the big bad someone who killed a very similar spy family just last night. We return to the show to find Elizabeth dutifully transcribing a secret code broadcast to her from the depths of a fake-out radio that's sending out secrets from the motherland. She is distracted from her diligent transcription (too bad they haven't told the kids about their double lives, because she seriously needs an intern) when a not-at-all suspicious utility vehicle drives by. She studies the comings and goings in the neighborhood and decides they merit a closer look.
Opting to screw country and duty and go scope out the suburbs, she packs away her radio and heads outside to subtly investigate the front porch. She picks up the paper and looks around deeming everything from the kids laughing to the parents chatting completely and totally… uh, let me look up a synonym for suspicious. Ah, here: Dubious and shady. Everyone looks shady. The scene only needed a giant animatronic clown and it would have been just like that scene from Pee-wee's Big Adventure when his bike is stolen and he passes out into a line of bicycles while blowing an air horn. As Elizabeth doesn't have an air horn in her arsenal, she instead retreats inside to a safe world of pancake breakfasts and orange juice.
Meanwhile, Philip is making breakfast for his other wife who is definitely taking her marriage seriously as she rolls over to the breakfast table in curlers and a pink housedress, which a single lady would never do. It's true gentlemen: You put a ring on your fake wife's finger and it's all downhill from there. (Side note: whatever happened to housedresses? I would wear the heck out of a housedress.) Philip serves his beloved bride some eggs and notes that she looks like crap, which is not a commentary on the housedress, because that thing is rockin'. She admits she may be coming down with something. She also mentions that she saw an opening for a better job in a different department. Obviously that won't work for Philip, who needs her to stay in counter intelligence forever and ever, through sickness and health, until death do they part.